The Fourth Case

Weeks had melted into one another like candle wax in summer heat, each day bringing me deeper into the strange domesticity I had never imagined possible. From our shared mornings to evenings spent in the sleek embrace of my office, I found myself inhabiting a life that felt stolen from someone else's dreams—someone braver, someone more deserving of such happiness.

The cases came sporadically, small mysteries that required more patience than brilliance, but on quiet days I discovered the thoughtful pleasure of simply existing among those I had come to cherish. Yoko's businesslike presence, Ashley's barbed commentary, and always, always Xiao Ru's warmth threading through it all like sunlight through dark water.

But then came the day when thunder began gathering in distant corners of the sky, and she arrived.

The tengu descended through our doorway like a single, perfect ash flake drifting down in the moments after a great fire, her movements carrying the languid precision of someone accustomed to being watched. Wings of burnished copper folded against her back as she settled onto the floor, each feather catching the office's pale light. Her form possessed curves that belonged in Renaissance paintings—the kind of beauty that made mortals start wars and write poetry. Even my sluggish vampiric pulse quickened by the smallest fraction.

When she spoke, her voice carried the smoky texture of expensive whiskey poured over velvet… though I would have words with the scoundrel whom I know naught to such an affair. "Rumor paints you as a rising star in this capital's firmament, Detective Mei-Ling. Some whisper you may be the finest investigator these streets have ever known."

Heat radiated across like the ghost of a red lantern's glow on wet cobblestones, and I found myself looking away, my lips pressing together. Behind me, Ashley's eyebrow arched with sardonic interest, while Xiao Ru's usual brightness had dimmed to something approaching storm clouds.

The tengu glided closer to my desk, leaning forward with the fatal beauty of a blooming nightshade. "My family suffers under the weight of blackmail, detective. Will you extend your talents to our salvation?"

Thunder rolled across the city like bowling balls in heaven's attic. The storm had been brewing for days—some claimed the Empress herself had summoned it for purposes known only to her unknowable mind, though I suspected such gossip gave her too much credit for common weather.

I nodded toward Yoko, who had already begun her meticulous note-taking. "Tell me about this blackmail."

"My mother leads our clan," the tengu explained, her voice dropping to conspiratorial whispers. "Something old threatens to surface—a secret that would shatter her reputation like glass against stone."

She produced a scroll from within her robes, its vertical columns of elegant script dancing across parchment like captured butterflies. I accepted it with raised eyebrows.

"I cannot decipher this," I admitted, though the craftsmanship impressed me—actual ink on actual parchment, quaint as candlelight in an electric age.

"Naturally," she purred, her satisfaction evident as cream on a cat's whiskers. "The text exists in our ancestral tongue. Your inability to read its psychic impressions makes you perfect for this task."

Beside me, Xiao Ru stepped forward with uncharacteristic sharpness. "Might I examine the document?"

The tengu snatched the scroll away with protective fervor. "Impossible. A kitsune of your spiritual sensitivity would experience the emotional resonance embedded in the ink—you would learn what must remain hidden."

She drifted toward the door with the fluid motion of oil on water, pausing to deliver her parting instructions. "Meet me in my village after darkness falls, detective. You'll find us beside the mirror lakes in the western quarter."

A wink, a blown kiss, and she vanished through the membrane like fine sand trickling through the fingers of a clenched fist, leaving behind only the faint scent of mountain air.

Xiao Ru stood rigid as carved stone, her eyes blazing with something I had never seen there before—fury, pure and uncomplicated. I approached her with tentative steps, draping myself across her shoulders like a living shawl.

The transformation was immediate. Her anger melted like ice in flame, her tail beginning its telltale dance of contentment despite her obvious efforts to maintain indignation.

Ashley chose that moment to rise from her chair, moving toward the exit with purposeful strides. I do believe she mumbled something along the lines of "idiots" along the way.

"Where are you bound?" I called after her.

"Meeting Serena for a stroll through this delightful precipitation," she replied, not bothering to turn around. "Some of us appreciate romantic weather when we encounter it."

The village squatted between its mirrors like a collection of infected teeth, each building weeping light through windows that seemed cut from the cloth of flesh rather than built from stone or wood. The dwellings breathed with their own luminescence—not merely warm, but feverish, as if the architecture itself ran a temperature. Between them stretched the Mirror Lakes, surfaces so perfectly still they might have been made of solidified silence, waiting to swallow whatever broke their contemplation.

I found the place through instinct rather than direction, following the pull of something that felt like gravity working sideways. The memory of our parting sat heavy in my chest—the defeat that had carved itself into Xiao Ru's big beautiful eyes, the way her fingers had captured my hand against her cheek as though trying to press my warmth into her bones permanently. Even Yoko had watched our farewell with the bewilderment of someone witnessing a sacrament in an unknown tongue. Though that may have been her first exposure to… us.

The tengu waited on the bluff—the silhouette of an angel, her form etched like a geometric plague, the fine craquelure of the varnish a web of delicate scars against a moon so grotesquely swollen it seemed ready to birth itself into the world below. The satellite hung with the awful certainty of a tumor about to rupture.

"In three rotations, that moon will fall to the Makai," she said without turning, her voice carrying the finality of a coffin lid closing.

It was… just, come on. Really?

"When it falls, the blackmail notes will scatter through the village like ash from a crematorium. My family's shame will take root in every household." Her shoulders moved in what might have been a shrug or the first movement of wings folding. "There will be nowhere left to hide."

I studied her silhouette, weighing the moral arithmetic. If the scandal could destroy an entire bloodline when exposed… but politics was a machine that ground up simple truths and spat out complicated lies.

"What can I do? I cannot even read your script."

She turned, and her smile was a festering wound of moonlight. Something hungry lived behind her teeth, something that knew the taste of blood as well as I.

"We suspect a shapeshifter walks among us. Someone who steals faces to spread their poison. You must find them."

"I could begin interviewing—"

"Heavens no." The words sliced through my suggestion. "No one must know of your presence. Rather, you will trace the ink to its source."

"How? I know naught of tengu ways or—"

"Tomorrow, we'll perform the first part of a ceremony here beneath this dying moon. I'll connect you to the ki winds, grant you ancestral sight. You'll see through our eyes, taste through our blood."

My brow furrowed. "Why can't you use this ability yourself?"

Her smile widened, revealing teeth that belonged in nightmares. "The emotional feedback drowns those born to ki like water in the lungs. But a vampire with no native awareness? You'll experience none of the… drowning."

Cold recognition settled in my gut—the detective's instinct that tasted lies wrapped in reasonable explanations. I began backing away from the bluff, my footsteps careful on the uncertain ground.

Behind me, the tengu began to hum. The melody was beautiful the way that funeral dirges are beautiful, threading through my thoughts like smoke seeking the cracks in a sealed tomb.