Back in her flat, she hung the slip dress against the taped window and watched it drink the city's weak light. It wasn't much fabric, but it made promises. The jade disc hung at her collarbone, indifferent as the sea. She threaded a red thread through it out of spite to every god who might be listening. The earrings were cheap and brutal; they would do.
She put on music because silence was a lie she didn't have time for. Throat-singing crawled out of her speakers, old as earth; techno-fusion from some illegal 2038 rip layered in under it, bass like a mechanical heart learning to be an animal. It held her hands steady. It knotted her spine where it needed to be knotted.
She showered, scrubbed storm-sweat and law out of her hair, scraped a razor down both calves and nicked herself because she was thinking about exits instead of ankles. She swore at gods who didn't care and patched the nick with a triangular scrap of ward paper she tore off an old charm. The paper curled against her skin, affronted, then held. It hummed faintly in a frequency only her bones noticed.
Wulong watched from the counter, tail flicking. When she bent to do eyeliner, he put a paw out to help. It didn't help. He smudged her corner and she smudged the other to match, because symmetry is dignity.
She tried the shoes. They tried to be kind and failed. The ward-thread ankle ties sparked when her aura brushed them, then settled into a sullen truce. She stood, the heel pitching the city into a new angle, and walked the length of the flat like it was a bridge. The first turn went wrong. The second found balance. By the third, she looked like she meant it.
"Float," she told herself, and did.
The AR mirror on the cupboard door tried to project "How To Behave At A Gala: Ten Easy Postures" and then choked on her. It flickered through diagrams of handshakes and bows and settled on a horoscope: AVOID DRINKS FROM STRANGERS. TAKE THE LEFT EXIT. She laughed and saluted it with her smoke.
She practiced her smile. The first one looked like a knife. The second looked like a bruise. The third looked like mercy you couldn't afford. That would do.
She practiced not fidgeting with the jade disc. She practiced putting her weight on the balls of her feet and pretending she was taller than glass. She practiced not picking fights with men who could not keep their traps shut.
Wulong got bored of judging and started hunting the moth. He leapt, smacked the tape, fell, bounced, and went again. It calmed her, the violence of his joy.
Time walked on its hands toward the door. She let it.
She dressed slow. The black was a mirror that refused to show anyone else. The hem hit mid-calf. Under the jacket, the dress could have been a blade. With the jacket—she pulled her cropped storm-scarred leather on and felt the conflict snap—the whole read was wrong in a way that pleased her dangerously.
She zipped the jacket half-high and stopped.
Maybe not tonight.
The jacket went back on the chair. The room felt colder without it, which was half the point.
Her comm throbbed, once, polite as a servant clearing its throat.
She ignored it, crouched, and scooped Wulong up. He was warm and purring and smelled faintly of burnt sugar. She pressed her forehead to his and felt the little engine of him thrumming against her skull.
"You're not coming," she said softly. The softness was a betrayal she'd permit. "They don't deserve you, and you don't deserve their aftershave."
He nosed her lip, sneezed a spark, and didn't burn her. He never burned her.
She tucked him under her arm and went next door.
Auntie Ping opened on the first knock this time. She saw the dress, saw the shoes, and let her eyebrows do four separate crimes before her mouth caught up. "Waa."
"Feed him," Iris said, holding the kitten out like an offering, "and don't let him eat the wiring."
Auntie took Wulong like he might turn into money. He purred, rude and pleased, and put one paw on her cheek. Sparks danced. The kitchen light blinked twice.
"Oi," Auntie said, charmed against her will. "Little gangster."
"He'll cry," Iris said. "You can ignore it until he sounds like he means it."
"I ignore men just fine," Auntie said. "Go. Before your policeman thinks you run away."
Iris hesitated on the threshold, an instinct louder than science telling her not to leave her small god with anyone. She buried it. She smoothed Wulong's head with two fingers. "Back soon," she lied, because time in this city had never listened to her.
"Wait," Auntie said, and reached into a drawer. She produced a safety pin threaded with red string and a sliver of something pale—a fishbone? a scrape of jade? She pinned it to the inner hem of Iris's dress with the practiced, vicious stab of someone who'd warded grandchildren against typhoons and landlords both. "For not falling," she said. "And for not being seen when you don't want."
"I excel at that," Iris said.
"Mm." Auntie's eyes softened that same half-millimeter. "Tonight you want to be seen. Just not eaten."
Iris grinned, real. "I'll try both."
She stepped back into her flat. The music had wound down to the throat-singing alone, old as caves. She ground the ember out on the edge of the sink, set the lipstick down, took it back up, repainted her mouth with a steadier hand.
Something in the air changed. It wasn't gods. It wasn't luck. It was the angle of her jaw when she stopped pretending she was the girl in the funeral dress and became the woman who delivered things into the mouths of storms and came back laughing.
The knock at the door didn't come so much as arrive, punctual as a tram bell.
She opened.
Kwan stood in the dim corridor like a problem. Not in uniform. Black suit that knew how to behave, collar clean, no tie, hair damp from honest air. A ward-sticker glowed faint on his lapel, would have curled and died if he came into her flat. His gaze slid to her face and then failed to move at all.
For once, he did not have a sentence ready.
The hallway light hummed. Somewhere in Auntie's flat, mahjong tiles clacked, and someone swore about a bamboo seven like it was a character flaw. Iris held the door with one hand, the other at her side, and let him count the seconds until he remembered how to breathe.
"Inspector," she said, the word smoke-smooth. "You said gala. I found one."
He blinked. It was the tiniest tell she'd ever seen him give.
"You clean up," he began, and then aborted whatever stupid end he'd planned to that. He tried again and settled for, "You look—" which was more dangerous, so he shut that door too.
"Relax," she said. "I know which fork is the sharp one."
He stepped back to make room for her to lock up. She took the key, turned it in the damp wood, felt the apartment sigh shut like a lung. Wulong yowled once from Auntie's, indignant, and Auntie yowled back louder, triumphant. The ward-thread at Iris's ankles warmed like a promise and then went cool. The jade disc lay indifferent at her throat, which was how she liked her gods.
They walked.
The building's stairwell smelled of wet concrete and curry. On the landing, a kid sat cross-legged with a half-assembled drone in his lap, soldering iron in his teeth. He looked up at Iris with a small, satisfied awe people get when the world chooses a shape and sticks to it. The drone's LEDs flickered nonsense as she passed, then straightened when she was gone.
Outside, the alley held the last of the day like a grudge. A car waited at the curb that was not a cop car: black, glossy, AR paint muttering to itself in some middle register that said the company would sue the weather if it tried anything. A small talisman was taped under the grille, Cantonese for smooth. It was losing, but it was trying.
Kwan held the door. She slid into the car like slipping between ward-lines. The seat pretended it had been waiting for her this whole time. The door thunked shut with the sound of money smoothing guilt. For a second, everything was quiet. Her reflection looked back from the black glass: a courier who had convinced silk to behave, a mouth painted a problem, a throat hung with a circle that meant nothing to anyone but her.
Kwan got in. The driver lifted them into the city, which unfolded ahead in polished lies. Harbourview Tower's AR skin was already awake, scrolling charity in three languages like a billboard with a conscience.
"Rules," Kwan said finally, as if remembering he was supposed to be good at talking. "Don't drink what I don't drink. If a man named Cheng makes you smile, check your pockets. If anyone asks why you're with me, say you owed me dinner."
"I do owe you dinner," she said.
He glanced at her. "After tonight, I might owe you two."
She turned her face to the glass, watched the harbor slide by, watched cranes blink their one red eye in the mist like sleepy gods. Monks on a ferry pier repainted talismans with brushes that looked too delicate to matter and made the world obey anyway. A drone above them tried to hold its course and shuddered when her aura went by like wind.
"Relax, Inspector," she said, and let the city's light find her cheekbone like a signature. "I'm just a courier."
He looked like he wanted to say something about that. Instead, he watched her not look back at him and let the car carry them into the aquarium.