A small man stood in the doorway to the study, an Asian man. His expression was calm, and he wore a simple white shirt with black trousers. His hairline was receding. He wore large wire-frame glasses. Eddie stared at him, blinked. Looked again, concentrating. He blinked again and then saw something else.
“Jesus Christ!” he muttered.
A black haze flowed around the man in the doorway. It filled the corridor behind him, peeking through over his shoulders and whirling like angry tendrils of dark-white cloud. When Eddie looked again at the man, a symbol burned in gold on his forehead. Eddie blinked again, lost his focus, and the cloud and symbol disappeared. The man appeared smaller.
“That is my safe.”
“We was just looking, man,” Gong said. His pistol was pointed straight. “And now we’ll be leaving. Come on, Eddie,” he said. He took a step forward, leading with the gun. The man in the doorway smiled, then shrugged his shoulders. Shivers raced up Eddie’s spine.
Gong screamed. His arm-and the gun-vanished. Eddie stared at it in horror. Gong screamed and screamed and screamed, waving the steadily shrinking stump of his arm as if he could fling whatever was eating it away. Eddie concentrated and looked again.
The cloud was climbing up Gong’s arm. Tendrils were already starting to encircle the small man’s head, caressing the loose ends of Gong’s hair and his ears. The screaming stopped. The Asian man at the door chuckled.
And then Gong was gone.
The Asian man smiled with satisfaction and turned to Eddie. Eddie felt the blood drain from his face. The cloud-was Gong really gone, or had it eaten him, or what?-rolled backward through the air and whirled around the Asian man’s head. “You can see it,” he said.
Eddie grunted and shoved himself up off the floor. The desk was between them, with Gong’s case still lying open. Rows of gleaming tools, a drill, and little odd-ended picks for locks flickered as the penlight played across them. Behind the case, off the edge of the blotter, were two ornate golden goblets.
“He called you Eddie,” the man said, softly, as if it were an everyday occurrence for a shimmering monster cloud to eat someone in his presence. “Is that your name?” The cloud flickered, shimmered a deepening blood red, and slid forward.
“Nope,” Eddie said, and took two steps forward-Jesus, here it comes!-and grabbed the goblets. The man’s eyes widened behind his glasses. He reached out, taking a step forward. The goblets were heavier than they looked. Eddie looked around, desperate. The window was large, a few feet behind him.
“Put those down,” the man in the glasses said. His voice held a tinge of steel, all the softness and humor gone.
“Where’s Gong?”
“Nowhere you would like to be,” the man said.
“Bring him back.”
“That’s not possible.”
Eddie shivered. The cloud was hanging between them, a malevolent mist, the haze a harbinger of pain and death and somewhere he’d rather not be. He hefted the goblet. “I just want to leave.”
“You never should have entered,” the man said. His mouth moved, whispering words in a language Eddie had never heard, not Korean or Chinese or Japanese or anything else he expected. The haze pulsed, deep golden, and then undulated larger, redder. The golden symbol glowed brighter. Eddie looked down at the goblet, expecting to see the golden light playing across the decorations, but he saw nothing. There was nothing to see.
Light reflected… not whatever he saw, whatever let him see through metals and walls and safes and the dressing room doors at Macys. What he saw wasn’t real. What he saw didn’t affect the real world.
But Gong was still gone. Damn it.
Eddie spun and hurled the goblet in his left hand at the window. It was heavy enough, but if the man had spent as much money on his windows as he had on his safe it would be transparent plexi and not glass, and the goblet would just bounce off it. He dove after the goblet, toward the window.
The window broke.
Eddie fell through, tearing his arm and his sleeve on the jagged glass. He heard the man scream from behind him, and then the first crash of thunder as a storm rolled in. He hit the ground hard, grating his arm to the bone on the pavement, but he forced himself up and into a run. He still held the other goblet.
Peeve would know what to do. If he could get that far. Lightning crashed around him, casting great shadows against the alley walls.
He didn’t look back.
There was a guy at Peeve’s when Eddie got there, a big black man in a nice suit with a wet overcoat. His head was shaved bald-not just his hair, either… no eyebrows, no beard, no nothing-and he was standing near the end of the counter, ignoring Peeve.
Peeve was Peeve. He stood about five-ten, two hundred pounds. His hair was receding, but he kept spiking it up in the front like he had a shark fin on his head. Hawaiian shirt, shorts, flip-flops. He was four or five stereotypes rolled into one. He looked up when Eddie came in, frowning.
“You’re dripping all over everything,” he said.
“Sorry. Listen, Peeve… I need you to look at something.”
“Did you get them?” the black man asked. Eddie looked at him.
“Get what?”
“The rings,” the man said. “The things you were sent to retrieve.” He looked past Eddie at the door. “Where is Gong?”
“Gong’s dead.”
“What?” Peeve hustled out from around the counter. He locked the door behind Eddie and then turned around. “How?”
“Did you get them?” the black man asked.
“Who the hell are you?” Eddie snapped.
“Edan Boukai,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “I am the one who hired Gong to enter Mr. Kim’s home.” He looked at Peeve and then back at Eddie. “This was to be our meeting point.” His voice was think with accent but understandable.
“We never got the safe open,” Eddie said, and turned away from him. “Listen, Peeve-” he began.
“How did Gong die?” Boukai asked.
“That guy-what’s his name, Kim?-he killed him, all right?” Eddie snarled and shook his head. “Listen, Peeve, I need you to tell me what this is.” He reached into a pocket and brought out the goblet.
“It’s a cup,” Peeve said.
“God damn it, Peeve,” Eddie started, but Boukai cut him off.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was on his desk,” Eddie snapped. “Shut up a minute, will you?”
“Were there two?”
Eddie waved the goblet. “I’ve only got the one.”
Boukai looked down at his hands. “Then they are separated…” He turned away, muttering under his breath. Eddie stared at him for a minute, then looked at Peeve.
“Tell me what happened,” Peeve said.
“We were working on the safe, but it wasn’t going well.” He told him how Gong had pulled a gun on him. He explained the markings on the safe and how he couldn’t see inside it. “It was like the markings blocked me.”
Boukai spun around, eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, blocked you?”
Eddie steeled himself. He didn’t advertise, but the guy had already heard most of the conversation. “I can see through things, okay? Walls, doors, metals, anything. Just like Superman. Except I couldn’t see through the safe.”
Boukai’s eyes widened, white-rimmed against the black of his skin. “You are a seer?”
“A what?”
“You can see the inside of things?”
“I just said that, didn’t I?”
“Prove it. What do I wear around my neck?”
Eddie stared at him. He opened his mouth to argue, then thought about it. His head already hurt. His friend was dead. There was a good chance this guy was nuts anyway, and if nothing else, the whatever-that-ate-Gong might catch up with him. He concentrated. “A horse.”
Boukai stared. “Who trained you?”
“No one trained me.”
“A natural…” He shook his head. “How did you come to learn this?” Then he saw the goblet and shook his head. “Never mind. Tell me of these markings.”