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Chapter One

T he rush of people hurrying towards the ticket counter tapered off as the two main trains of the hour dropped off their passengers and carried new ones away. I was leaning against the brick wall with a churro in one hand and a paperback novel in the other, playing the part of an art student waiting for my train.

“Brown hair, medium build, neon blue polo shirt. Twelve o’clock,” my partner Brannigan said through my comm from the other side of the station where he was slouched on a bench, looking handsome and bored.

I pushed my hair behind my ear and glanced up to take in the crowd, looking back down before the suspect noticed me. He definitely fit the description we’d been given of the known pixie dust dealer freshly arrived in Singsong City. I took a deep, centering breath and closed my eyes, focusing on the afterimage, searching through the crowd with my mind’s eye. My only real magical talent was reading auras. For a neutral witch, it wasn’t much, hardly enough to join the local coven, but in my job, it gave me an edge that was the only reason I’d made detective at my age.

The man he’d pointed out had a pretty pale blue aura that bled yellow around the edges. He was wearing a glamour. Interesting. Slightly behind him and to the left was another aura that flared with bright green and red sparks, like Christmas. I opened my eyes and focused on that pinpoint of energy and saw a short, wrinkled old goblin woman wearing a black knotted shawl over her green-gray hair. I’d never seen such an old goblin before. I’d assumed they were ageless, like the elves.

She was looking around, clearly disoriented and anxious. Goblins were fascinating creatures, part assassin, part banker, all dangerous. This woman might be ancient, but maybe that made her even more deadly. I needed to protect this crowd from the curse she might lay on them if she got to upset.

I headed towards her, tucking my novel under my elbow and stretching my legs as I headed over. On my way, I passed the blue polo shirt and slipped a tracker into his pocket without him noticing, then stopped in front of the old woman.

“Hi. Can I help you?” I asked in my most polite goblin. I’d learned the language from my grandfather’s notes he’d kept when he was a goblin ambassador. At least that’s the story my dad tells. He barely remembers his dad at all.

She blinked at me, golden eyes too bright, too filled with emotion and magic. She studied me, the apparently human girl who spoke her language. I wouldn’t smell very much like magic to her, but she’d probably pick up on the sushi. That meant I’d smell particularly edible. Most goblins didn’t eat people anymore, at least not in public, but she was ancient, so who knew what kinds of habits she’d held onto from a former, less civilized age?

“I want to go to Goblintown. Do you know it?” she asked in a sharp voice that went with her piercing eyes. She reminded me of my mother.

I smiled and moved closer. “Of course I do, wise one.” Hopefully that was respectful enough. I bowed and straightened in time to see her face up close, smiling with still sharp, pointed teeth, even though they were chipped and yellowed with age. She grabbed my arm, threading her fingers through mine as she tugged me down, closer to her height. I wasn’t very tall, but she was very short.

“You will take me.” She wrapped her other hand around my wrist so her weight dragged me down.

I looked up to see Brannigan sauntering in the direction the perp had gone. He’d be hearing all of this on his com, not that he’d be able to understand. I spoke in English. “Take you to Goblintown? I actually have to catch a train, but I can get you a cab so you can?—”

“You will take me,” she said with another broad smile that would have given me shivers before I’d gotten used to goblins. Still, those teeth were very close to my arm, and she could probably bite through it, bones and all, with one snap of her jaws.

“I really can’t…”

Brannigan’s amused voice in my ear was something she hopefully couldn’t hear. “Better take her to safety. I’ll follow the mark and get all the praise and prestige when I bring him in while you help the civilian. And hearing you speak that infernal language gives me shivers.”

I almost glared at his back, but instead, I gave the old woman a tight smile. There was no way I was getting her off my arm without losing it. “All right. We’ll take a cab to Goblintown and then…” And then I’d have to write a report about this and Joss, our Lieutenant, would ask why I knew Goblin and why I’d gotten distracted from my assignment, and then he’d extend how long my parking pass was revoked. I was the only detective this young, but I was also the only one without a functioning parking pass. I had to park three blocks away from the precinct in a dingy garage that I had to pay for out of pocket.

I could get her off me. I had a taser and cuffs. I wasn’t helpless, but I’d seen her flickering aura and stepped in to stop the immediate threat. It was the right thing to do, and now, with the mark hopefully leading Brannigan to his partner, I could take care of this other threat.

She patted my cheek. “We’ll walk. You will explain the city.” She pointed at my churro. “What is that?”

“It’s a sweet bread. Do you want some? We could stop at a churro stand and…”

She snatched it out of my hand and swallowed it whole. She frowned her wrinkled face and then shook her head. “Not goblin sweet bread. You will learn to make it for your husband. It will help you catch a good one. The better the bread, the better the man.” Was this a wise goblin proverb?

She sounded more and more like my mother all the time. The walk from the train station to the nearest lift down to Song, and then through the undercity until we reached the entrance to Goblintown, was slow, and the longer we walked, the slower I got, until she was dragging me along. She was probably stealing my energy and life force so she’d be young and beautiful again to catch another man with her sweet bread. And then eat him. No, that shouldn’t be possible, but you never knew.

When we finally reached the small building that led into the underground warren I’d never actually gone into, I stopped.

“This is Goblintown,” I said, gesturing at the door. I started pushing her hand down and off my arm, but her grip was strong and mine was weak. I really was unnaturally weak. There was definitely something supernatural going on.

“Magga. What are you doing in Singsong?” a girl with curious eyes said as she came out of the shadows, but she was looking at me, not the old woman.

“She’s mine,” Magga said, yanking me tighter to her. “I found her first.”

“Actually,” the new girl said, looking at me with a great deal of curiosity while her green nostrils flared. “Corcarn has prior claim.”

Magga hissed and then turned and pulled me close to smell my neck. She wrinkled her nose and then sniffed my shoulder.

“Okay, you can’t just…” I said in English, but it didn’t matter because she wasn’t listening. She’d gotten to my wrist and then hissed at it, glaring from me to the girl.

She shrugged. “Magga, you shouldn’t have come here. Singsong isn’t the old world, and the Goblin Authority doesn’t allow anyone to damage the goblin image he’s worked so hard to build. Neither will I. Release the sushi girl and relinquish your claim, or suffer the consequences.”

It was time for me to go. I hit the precise joint in the old woman’s wrist that would make her grip go slack and then ducked away from her, avoiding the slash of her curved, wickedly dangerous claws. I held my hands up as I backed away.

“You took my energy. Leave it at that, otherwise, you’ll have more than the Goblin Authority to answer to. Singsong cultivates peace between the infernal and the angelic as well as the human. Balance, not dominance. If you harm anyone else, goblin or otherwise, you will serve time in a facility.” I turned to nod at the girl, whose expression was somewhere between horrified and bemused. Oh. Because I’d spoken Goblin. “Thank you,” I said in English. “I hope that the Goblin Authority cares about more than just the image of his people.”

She smirked. “Oh, he probably cares about something more than that.” Her English was as accentless as Sashimi’s, but communicated much more emotion. She wasn’t nearly as guarded as my regular Thursday customer.

Leaving the goblins, I jogged back the way I’d come, checking the time and flinching when I saw the hours that had passed in the old goblin’s grasp. Yes, she’d definitely done something to me. I’d have to neutralize all the curses and hope the exhaustion was something I could just sleep off. Or I could take a nice energizing elixir, but I’d hate myself later for that, and I had a long weekend off work ahead of me that I could use to recuperate. First, I had to check in with Brannigan.

I pulled out my phone and called him. He picked up immediately, and I got to hear Joss’s voice in the background. “You don’t leave your partner. She’s probably goblin stew right now. Is that her? Give that to me.”

I didn’t even get a chance to hear Brannigan’s voice before Lieutenant Joss was on the line. “Sato, you’d better have a good reason for dodging the pixie dust case. Brannigan ended up chasing the wrong perp. Apparently, the real one glamoured some random civ as a distraction. You could have seen through the glamour, right?”

I fought back the long sigh. On the one hand, I had a gift that the department could use, but on the other hand, it wasn’t as great a gift as Joss wanted it to be. “Sorry Lieutenant. I can’t see through glamours, I can just read auras.”

“But you didn’t stick to your assignment. You’ll have to write up a report on that.”

I flinched. Writing up reports was my usual assignment for everything, and now I had another one to do? I cleared my throat. “Of course, sir. I needed to take the old goblin out of Grand Central before she panicked and cursed everyone. She was an immediate threat, and I trust Brannigan to get the job done. Neither one of us could have realized he was a decoy, but you’re right. I didn’t follow protocol.”

He snorted, then said in his loud, blustering way, “You sound positively wan. What did the old goblin do to you?”

“I think she drained some of my energy,” I replied, trying to sound pulled-together and failing miserably.

He huffed. “Well, you’d better get that looked at. Don’t come in for the rest of the day. See you Monday.” He hung up on me like it was his phone, not Brannigan’s, dismissing me as clearly as he ever did. Joss was struggling to maintain a department that had too little manpower when a lot of our populace was super-charged with magic of various kinds. The department didn’t pay well enough to attract any serious magic users, and a lot of the specialized orders like the Gray Society didn’t see the purpose of having a local police department, so he was constantly undermined. He didn’t like being undermined, so for me to not follow the rules…If the department wasn’t so short-handed, then I probably would have just lost my job. As things were, it was better for both of us if I didn’t go in until Monday.

I felt like I could sleep that long.

I dragged myself back to the lot where I’d parked my purple hornet. It whined when I turned it on. I should take it into a shop for a tune-up, but not today. I drove home, parking in the small lot through the block from my parent’s restaurant, the Cat’s Pause. My dad did the sushi, my mom did the management, including taking people’s orders without their permission. Her magic was in knowing what a customer needed. Mine was in reading auras. My mom had managed to find a way to use her magic for her livelihood, and I’d tried to do the same. Some days, feeling like I’d had half my life sucked away, I had my doubts about whether or not I was on the right path.

I parked my car between my brother’s hot yellow motorbike and my parent’s gray sedan, locked up, and climbed the narrow iron steps to my apartment, just off my parent’s restaurant. They’d rented it out when I was little, but now I got it as partial payment for my work at the sushi piano bar. As it was Thursday, I’d be expected to cover the evening shift. I’d take a short nap and then get started on the paperwork. Brannigan would email me the pertinent details along with an excessive list of his awesome, amazing prowess that he’d want me to insert into the paperwork. I never would, because if I’m doing the paperwork, I’m not making it any longer than necessary. Brannigan had his strong points, but humility wasn’t one of them.

My nap went too long. My mom’s pounding on my door woke me up. I grabbed an apron, splashed my face, and rushed downstairs and into the piano sushi bar. My mom shot me a frown before she headed out to the local coven meeting while I covered the usually slow shift with my dad in back, cooking and singing under his breath to whatever tune Madame Granite was playing.

“Rynne! My true love!” Gabby called from the table where she sat with her mom and Libby. I grabbed their orders and headed over, pausing to refill a water on my way.

“Hi, ladies. Taking a break from the husbands tonight?” I asked, putting down the enormous sushi boat that they all stared at in wondering awe.

“Yes,” Anna, Gabby’s mother, said, stabbing a sushi roll with her chopsticks and staring at it with adoring eyes. “The men might eat some of the sushi.” She popped it into her mouth and closed her eyes in contentment.

“They’d probably also order more,” I said with a slight smile. Sushi was okay, but I wasn’t obsessive about it like some of our customers.

“But we can’t count on that,” Libby said seriously before she started stuffing her face.

Gabby grabbed my hand and tugged me down into the extra chair she’d pulled out for me. “How’s it going? Rough day at work? You know, at court?” She batted her lashes at me and I sighed. She’d ended up being the lawyer, which was great because she could help me cover up my real job.

“You’re very subtle.” I patted her head and stood back up. “Work’s good. Quiet. I’m just doing contract cases right now, so nothing very interesting.”

“Contracts? Like with demons?” she asked, raising a brow.

“Contracts like with goblins.”

“Goblins are dangerous,” Anna said soberly.

“But they do respect contracts,” Libby said, spearing a sushi roll Anna was eyeing. “What kind of contracts would you deal with? Assassination? Banking? What else do goblins do?”

I shrugged, trying to think how to put this in a way that didn’t give me or the job away. “I guess whatever they want to do. I’ve got to get back to the counter. Holler if you need anything else.”

The shift was short in that I kept dozing off, and long because I was so tired. I hugged the sushi ladies at ten when the place closed, giving Gabby one last wave as I locked the front door behind them. The sushi bar closed at nine, so almost everything was cleaned up by ten when they’d left. My dad had already gone up to his apartment, leaving me to lock up and mop.

Also, give Thursday Sashimi his sushi. I was mopping up in back near the sink when the light tap came on the alley door. I tripped on the mop, then slipped on the wet tile and hit my elbow hard on the metal counter on my way down.

Ow. My tailbone. I lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, noticing how dusty that vent was. Seriously, this was not my day. I groaned and took my time getting back to my feet, walking gingerly to the back door. I opened it a crack to see the shadowy goblin lurking outside. His eyes glimmered gold in the dark and he nodded at me- his customary greeting.

“Hold on. I’m a little slow tonight.” I closed the door and went to the fridge to get the carton of sashimi sushi. I opened it to check that it was the right carton, and there they were, the rows of extremely cute sashimi that my dad had carefully prepared.

I turned around and then jumped, dropping the carton when I was faced with the goblin, who was supposed to stay outside in the alley.

He deftly caught the box of sushi in his slender fingers and then stepped away from me, giving me the usual three feet distance. “I heard something like bone on metal. Did you hurt yourself?” he asked in goblin. He was the reason my accent was anything close to coherent.

I wrinkled my nose at him. “You heard that from outside?” I didn’t speak goblin. For some reason, I was slightly goblined out tonight.

He tilted his head slightly as he studied me with his golden eyes that glowed ever-so-slightly. “I also heard that you escorted the Magga to Song. Don’t you know that goblins are not to be trusted?”

He pulled out a chair and nodded at it.

I stared at the chair, then at him. “You want to take the chair with you? There’s already one at the alley table that you won’t use.”

He blinked at me. “Sit down. Your mother isn’t here or she would be tucking you in bed and pouring broth and potions down your throat. How much of your life force did Magga drain?” His English had no accent. It was unnatural to hear a goblin speak my language so easily.

“Can you quantify that?” I asked, feeling cross for no particular reason other than that he was a goblin and never warned me about Magga or anything else relevant. “You’re going to make me a broth and potions since my mother isn’t here? I never took you for the mothering type, Sashimi.”

He blinked again and then smiled, showing all those sharp teeth. His were in much better shape than the Magga’s had been. “I am so mothering, Rynne.”

I stared at him, then narrowed my eyes. “You never call me by my first name.”

“You named me Sashimi. Does that not put us on familiar terms?”

“No. Knowing each other for almost a decade puts us on familiar terms, or it would if you weren’t the most suspicious goblin in the world.” I sat down in the chair, cradling my throbbing elbow and wincing when I bumped my tailbone against the metal.

“You are irritated with me? And you haven’t even tasted my vile potion yet. You are in bad shape or you would have kicked me out by now.” He frowned for a moment, then reached out and brushed his fingers across my forehead.

I was too shocked to do anything other than stare at him while he stood over me, neat, clawed fingers so close to my brain. “Sweet bread? Is that brain?” I blurted out in that incredibly awkward moment. He’d never touched me before. Absolutely never. I’d started thinking he had an actual aversion to me.

“I believe so, yes, but I wasn’t going to make any for you at the moment. You’re feverish.”

Right. His hand was on my forehead to check my temperature. My dad did that whenever I felt achy. He was nothing like my dad, except his touch was surprisingly soothing. Gentle. “You need to eat your sushi before it goes bad,” I said, staring at him while his cool fingers rested so lightly on my forehead that I almost didn’t believe they were there. I’d rarely seen him so clearly, since he usually hung in the shadows, refusing to come inside even when it was pouring rain, just taking his sushi and leaving after spending a few minutes chatting in Goblin, mostly to fix my accent.

He had all the usual goblin features, golden eyes, green caste to his skin, but his hair was long and silky while most goblins kept their heads shaved or in dreadlocks. His mouth was usually in a firm line, but not when he gave me a slight smile, like now, as he studied me in return, like he’d never seen a real live human before.

He took his hand off my head and turned to put the sushi box back in the fridge, then put a pot on to boil and started rummaging around in the lower cabinet where we kept onion and garlic. He crouched there, back to me, black shirt and pants draping just the right way so the stretch of his shoulders was interesting, so much more interesting than Brannigan’s.

I blinked at him. I wasn’t finding Sashimi attractive. I wasn’t that desperate. I’d known him too long to ever think of him romantically. The Goblin Authority, on the other hand, I’d had more than a slight crush on until he broke my heart, mostly from not writing to me anymore. I should definitely like a guy who wasn’t a goblin. Like Brannigan. I smiled at the thought.

“Do you know the Goblin Authority?” I asked as he retrieved the ingredients he was hunting, garlic, onion, and ginger, apparently.

He paused, then shrugged and pulled out a knife. It was so beautifully deadly, long and curved like a wicked soul. “As well as I want to know him. Why?” He started peeling the ginger in long graceful curls.

Why indeed? I sighed heavily and leaned back in my chair. “He wears a mask.”

He started chopping the onions and garlic, mincing everything with that dangerous curve of blackened metal. “And that is all anyone should want to know.”

I snorted. “Now you sound like my mother.”

“Who is exceptionally wise. I thank you for the compliment.” He stopped his mincing to give me a slight bow.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m making a noxious potion to pour down your throat. I am like your mother.” He nodded soberly, then scraped all the ingredients into a tall glass.

I tried to stand up and tell him to take his sushi and go home so I could go back to bed, but for some reason, it was too difficult to move. “She’ll be back soon.”

“Unless she gets caught up in a spell and stays all night. Do covens really drain their weaker members to support the spells of the strong? How clever of you to avoid that. But you ended up getting drained by a goblin instead.”

He took a small paper packet out of his coat, took a pinch of powder from it, added it to the glass, then put it back.

“What was that?” I demanded.

He took the packet back out and tossed it to me. I barely caught it, and then sniffed it and made a face at him. “Why do you have this? It’s specifically given to witches who devote their life force to the greater good.”

“That’s what they call it? The greater good? How noble. It’s also used for disguising the effects of poison until it’s too late for the victim.” He grabbed the tea pot and poured water over the other ingredients and started stirring with his dangerous knife.

I stared at him, appalled that our regular sushi customer would be a despicable assassin.

He glanced at me with a slight smile. “You’re shocked? But I’m not a banker, ergo, I must be an assassin.”

“Are you telling me that in case I want somebody killed? You must be low on work just now.”

He flashed a smile with all those sharp teeth. “You couldn’t afford me. And I am never low on work.” He finished stirring and then handed me the glass. “Drink this. Hopefully it helps.”

I squinted at it, then at him. “Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that I trust you. Why would you want to help me instead of poisoning me? Some random old goblin lady sucks out my energy, but what does that have to do with you?”

His eyes glimmered gold. “How long have I been coming here for sushi?”

I frowned, trying to concentrate, but I needed to go to bed. “Almost ten years?”

“And never once did you think of poisoning me.”

I snorted. “Poison you? My mother would kill me. You’re one of our best customers.”

He smiled, showing sharp teeth. “And I intend to remain so. Also, if I was going to kill you, you wouldn’t think of being suspicious, you’d just be dead. I assure you that you have nothing to worry about.”

“Because I’d be dead before I thought to worry? That’s very reassuring.” It wasn’t, not remotely, but I drank anyway. It tasted like garlic, ginger, and exotic herbs that were almost bitter, but not quite. Instead of charging me up, it made the exhaustion hit double hard. I slumped over the table, barely able to keep open my heavy eyelids.

He smiled slightly as he took the glass out of my limp fingers. “Now, do I leave you here in that uncomfortable position, or do I break into your apartment and tuck you into bed?”

“I’m fine,” I mumbled. “I’ll just rest here for a second and then…”

He picked me up, smooth and easy, like he was used to hauling around limp bodies all the time.

I squinted up at him as he carried me through the kitchen and to the back stairs. “What are you doing?”

“Tucking you into bed, like your mother.”

“My mother isn’t a goblin,” I pointed out, but then let my head drop against his shoulder heavily because it was impossible to hold up. He shifted me so my forehead was against his neck. He smelled like the fresh woods after a rain.

“No? You really are as limp as a dead fish. Good thing it’s a goblin carrying you and not your mother, or she’d have to drag you by the ankles, and then your head would hit every step on the way up. You’d get a concussion for certain.”

“Mm.” I closed my eyes, and the world drifted around me. I vaguely noticed my weight shifting as I settled against my mattress, and then my sheet being tucked beneath my chin, and then nothing.