The limo pulled to the curb outside of her apartment on Fortress Hill before finally letting her out into the cold night air.
She stood there a moment, watching the tail-lights vanish around the corner. Then she dug a stick from her clutch, lit it, and let the violet ember flare against the wet. Smoke curled metallic-sweet in her lungs, the taste sharp enough to scrape the casino out of her mouth. She held it until the heat bit, then dropped it to the gutter and ground it cold under her heel.
Auntie's door was already open.
"You," said Auntie, in the tone that meant the whole stairwell was about to hear about it. She wore a flowered housecoat and a scowl that had paid for itself fifty times over. Another Auntie leaned in the kitchen doorway behind her with a colander and a cigarette she wasn't supposed to have, pleasure tucked into the corner of her mouth like a secret.
"Me," Iris agreed. She put on the grin that had gotten her out of worse rooms. "I take back my monster."
Auntie snorted so hard the raffia calendar on the wall trembled. "Monster? He is an angel. A greedy, screaming, ungrateful angel." She jabbed a finger over her shoulder. "He ate two tins of fish and the tail from my lucky carp. You buy me a new tail."
"That's not how—" Iris squinted past her. "Where is he?"
"Under my bed," said the second Auntie with relish. "He learned to open the cupboard. He learned to open my heart. He learned to scream in my dreams."
"He sang," the first Auntie corrected, offended on principle. "His voice is like gongs in a temple. If the gongs were possessed."
"Inspirational," Iris said, and stepped inside.
They had done what Aunties do: wrapped their whole home around a tiny terror and pretended they hated every second. Bowls she didn't own had migrated here. A scrap of red silk had been tied to a whisker as if to ward off bad luck—already chewed through. A plastic wand toy (dragonfly on a wire) lay decapitated by the fan. The floor had been swept in concentric circles radiating outward from the single spot where chaos refused to budge.
The bed skirt shook.
"Wulong," Iris called, soft as the inside of a hand. "Don't pretend you don't know your name."
Silence. Then a low, questioning trill, like a violin wondering what key the scene was in.
"He answers," the second Auntie whispered, delighted even in complaint. "Like a dog."
"He answers like a god," the first Auntie snapped, because blasphemy was cheaper than belief. "A small one."
Something black and glossy uncoiled from dust. He came out on long legs he hadn't had two days ago, fluff turned sleek in patches, face still absurdly round. His eyes were wrong the way stars are wrong when you look at them too long—green around the iris, a wash of violet when they caught the light from the altar lamp. He blinked once at Iris, then stalked toward her with the measured disdain of a prince who had been kept waiting at his own party.
"Look at you," Iris said, unable not to grin. "You grew crimes."
Wulong head-butted her shin. Static bit her skin through silk. A spark leaped to the anklet where Auntie had tied ward thread; the thread sulked and went quiet. He meowed a syllable that might have been MOTHER in some vulgar dialect of thunder.
"Enough," Auntie said, but not to Iris. She crouched and scratched the kitten's spine. "You go now with your bad woman. She keeps bad hours. She brings home wet shoes. She will teach you to be useless."
"I can hear you," Iris said.
"Good," said Auntie, and put the kitten in Iris's hands like settling an argument.
He was heavier than physics wanted. Warmth traveled up her wrists to the spot behind the jade. He vibrated with a purr that sounded less like contentment than like someone lighting a match far away.
"We had rules," Iris said to his ridiculous, serious face. "No screaming, no eating the lucky fish, and no telling Aunties my secrets."
"He told us nothing," Auntie lied, affronted. "Only that you leave him with old women while you go wear a dress and insult the gods. Hmph." She stood, patted Iris's cheek like blessing or punishment. "You bring him back for dinner tomorrow. We make congee. No money."
"I have—"
"No." A finger jab, a decree. "You save your money for when the gods change their mind."
The second Auntie flapped the colander at her. "And bring the dress. I will fix the hem. It disrespects your knee."
"It disrespects everything," the first Auntie muttered. "Get out, Iris. You drag noise behind you like a cart. Go put it in your own house."
"Yes, Auntie," Iris said, because sometimes obedience was the faster road.
They watched her go like generals seeing a conscript back into the jungle.
The corridor felt brighter with Wulong under her arm. The lift rattled in a better mood. She pressed her door open with a hip and let the flat exhale.
Home was small and stubborn. She'd taped the window for the last storm and never untaped it; the crisscrosses had become part of the view, white slashes over the harbor glow. The cheap speaker on the counter sulked where she'd left it. A tea mug had died and refused to admit it; its handle waited beside it like a promise she kept not to keep.
"Alright," she told the room, which did not care. "We survived dinner theater at Diamond Hill. We collected you from your cult."
Wulong made the sound a violin makes when it doesn't like the rosin. He leapt from her arms to the couch, misjudged his new legs, skidded, corrected with offended grace, and stopped on a stack of mail like he'd planned that all along. He put a paw on the top envelope and pressed. Electricity traveled up into the paper; the corp logo leaked color.
"Politics can wait," Iris said. "You, however, cannot."
She went to the kitchen and tore open a packet of the expensive fish she pretended not to buy. He ate with scandalous efficiency, small jaws operating like a well-designed tool. When he paused, he pointed his face at the bowl and thought very loudly: MORE.
"You can't read my mind," Iris informed him, rinsing the knife. "It just looks like that because you're pushy."
He hammered the thought again. M O R E. The lightbulb over the stove hummed and then chose life.
"Fine," she said, and added two more strips. "But if you throw up you clean up yourself."
He finished, licked the empty bowl with scrupulous care, and then turned in a slow circle in the middle of the kitchen mat like a priest deciding where to spill blood. He settled as if he'd discovered gravity. After three seconds, bored with gravity, he got up and followed her as she crossed to the bedroom.
The dress peeled away with a sound the room hadn't earned. She left it draped over the chair like the skin of a decision she didn't regret. Shower steam wrote sigils on the mirror. Hot water drove Rua da Felicidade from her hair; the last shards of garlic from Wei's apartment gave up and fled. When she came out, she was cotton towel and bare feet.
Music shook itself awake on the counter: throat-singing folding into 2038 bass, old voices riding a synthetic spine. The apartment enjoyed having something to echo. She poured gin and held it against her palm, the glass stealing heat until her skin decided to take it back.
Outside, the harbor wore a different storm—the patient kind that never ends, cranes blinking one red eye at a time, ferries ticking across the channel like brushstrokes. Ward paint gleamed on the ferry pier, fresh over older layers that had never learned to stop flaking. A drone paused outside her window, stuttered when her presence touched it, and rethought its life. It drifted away with injured dignity.
She didn't sit at the window. She didn't stand. She let the music set her slower, and found the couch the way a tide finds the line it always meant to reach. Wulong jumped onto the back cushion because cats don't believe furniture has a right way up. He paced the ridge like a general reviewing a parade, then decided to parade directly across her spine.
"Don't," she warned, already sliding toward laughter.
He did.
Soft paws, ridiculous intent. Shoulder blade, ridge of ribs, soft center. He weighed exactly the amount a small god weighs when it is making a point. She caught his shadow dragging a half-second behind him along the wall, a lag like a bad feed; when she blinked, it reconciled, innocent. He stepped onto her sternum and put all his crimes into one paw.
"Absolutely not," she said, and performed the yoink.
It was a single smooth motion, unarguable, a trick learned from years of dealing with machines that thought they were smarter than she was. One hand under his front, one under his back, a twist and a tuck—suddenly Wulong had become a croissant configured for snug. He made a noise that might have reconsidered gods as a category.
He tried the wriggle. She increased snug by thirteen percent. He tried the plaintive head turn. She tucked chin to crown and stole his leverage. He tried telepathy. She put her mouth to his ear and said, "No. I win."
He gave her the long, outraged silence of a prince whose subjects had unionized. The purr came anyway—reluctant, then resigned, then industrial. It rattled her ribs and made the gin in her hand think about it.
"That's right," she told his fur. "You're a hostage to affection. Tragic."
The room went warm at the edges. The music clawed gently at the air. Her breath matched the old rhythm under the synth until she didn't know which had started first. She could have thought about Rua da Felicidade, the ridiculously normal tea shop. She could have thought about Wei in an apron, a man who was father and empire in the same breath, tapping a cedar lid like a bell. She could have thought about Kwan's silence, sharp as a filed coin, weighty as a promise he hadn't decided to make.
She didn't. Ritual is not thinking; it's choosing which ghosts to feed.
Somewhere two floors down, someone argued with a kettle that thought it was a radio. Down the hall, the kid with the soldering iron sneezed; his drone lights flickered and then decided to behave. Across the alley, a woman practiced scales until the scale apologized. The city made its small, ordinary music. Wulong's purr harmonized in the key of engines.
Her comm buzzed the first time. She let it ask the room and didn't answer. It buzzed again, more certain of itself. She slid her eyes toward it and did not move. If it was Kwan, he could practice patience. If it was Wei, he could practice humility. If it was a job, the city would still be hungry in an hour.
Wulong kneaded the couch with one paw, ceremonial. The jade at her throat kissed his crown. Heat met cool, both refusing to flinch. He sighed—an adult sigh, ridiculous from something that still had milk fur under its chin—and accepted the reality of being loved against his will.
"Good," Iris said, eyes falling closed in stages. "We have consensus."
The harbor kept its red-eyed vigil. The taped X on the window turned the view into quadrants like a map of places she would not go tonight. The music slid to a low hum that trembled in her teeth. The glass sweated a little; her fingers stopped.
Wulong tried one last time, a subtle test of whether sleep had reduced her grip. It had not. He settled into a curl engineered by gods, tucked his nose under her wrist, and let the purr drop an octave into something like thunder heard through mountains.
Iris slept with her mouth tilted toward a smile no one would witness, cheek against the cushion's threadbare seam, one arm a bar across a tiny ribcage that glowed with very small, very important heat. A peaceful sleep, for once. The city turned another fraction. The comm tried one last buzz and gave up.
Outside, cranes blinked. Inside, nothing needed her for a while.