A fellow dancer put pen to paper and look how cool!!

This of course is a small dalliance, Harry Dresden and all the worlds he lives in is Jim Butcher’s. I am just playing for a time. Simon Wu, is mine, and I hope he amuses you, amused the hell out of me.

This takes place perhaps just after Grave Peril, and before Summer Knight. This Harry is not as shell shocked, and this Ancient Mai, is more like the television series’ portrail.

Of course I appreciate comments, and I hope that this amuses you for a short time...the band is hired, the hall is rented…I guess this is my dance….

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The knife in my hand was sharp, heavy, and comforting. Have you ever held something so beautiful that as your hand warmed it, it warmed you from the inside out? That’s what my knife does; it’s a friend, a cohort, an extension of me. I always thrill a little when I hold it, its weight steadies me, makes me feel bigger than I really am.

I had run it across my sharpening steel only seconds before and it fairly rang with potential, almost as if it was eager to be about its work. I rolled my head slowly on my shoulders, hearing the deep cracks and cricks of my loosening muscles. There were simply no more excuses; it was time to get to it. The deep thump of bass pounded in my ears from the boom box in the corner, music of the devil my Grandfather used to call it.

I brought the blade up perpendicular to my body, and moved with confidence. The carbon steel blade glided through the flesh like a freight train through tissue paper. I increased my pace, letting my arm follow the knife, falling into old patterns that my body knew all too well.

In moments there were two dozen Roma tomatoes sitting in a steel prep container, halved, seeded, and hollowed waiting for the crab salad mixture I had prepared. I passed their pulp through a sieve and into another container already containing lemon juice, spices and oil. I could already taste how good this dish was going to be.

See I’m a cook, a simple preparer of food, one of the hundreds of invisible souls that fix the thousands of meals that folk eat everyday. I slice, sauté, and sauce day in and day out, happy to make something I can be proud of, if only for a moment. The fact that I am also a magician; well that’s kinda a whole different kettle of won ton.

Magician you say, like with kids parties? Like pulling rabbits out of hats, and sawing beautiful women in half? Well no, I am the other kind of magician, you know with the throwing lightning, summoning demons, and causing broomsticks to dance. Not that I have ever really done those things, cause that’s just creepy. I mean have you ever seen a demon? Those things will jump on your face and lay eggs in your eyes man.

I whipped the tomato mixture furiously, forcing liquids that had no business being together into an emulsion that would hold together forever if I had any say in the matter. I poured the dressing into a small plastic squeeze bottle and capped it. I took my knife back into my hand, and attacked a small bundle of chives, reducing them to a fine green mist.

My grand pop was a magician back in the old country, and he brought the lore and the power with him. He married my grand mom, who was from here, but still had ties to a different old country, and they had my pops.

Now there is much you can say for my dad, he was a great cook, a brilliant business man, and quite the tinker, but a magician, not so much. Dad was a practical man, his head was supported by Mr. Science and the Los Angeles public school system and he wasn’t about to dabble in things that he couldn’t see. Part of me really can’t blame him, I mean knowing what I know about magic I would have stayed away from it too if I had the choice.

Thank the celestrials for my mom, I don’t know if it was fate, coincidence or if my dad was looking for someone like dear old grand mom, but he fell in love and married one of the west coast’s more power witches. She and my grandpop were the ones who taught me to use my talents, to control them so as not to hurt myself or anyone else. They kept it a secret from my dad for sixteen long years, teaching me to feel the unseen world around me while teaching me to slice tomatoes into roses.

My pop’s restaurant is in the heart of Los Angeles, near the park that Wilshire cuts across. The Cloud Dragon is a 1920s storefront with a parking lot behind it and a funny pink neon dragon sign over the doorway. My dad wanted a fiery red dragon, but there must have been a thing with the magic cause all it ever did was flash a very cute pink. See with most people who use magics, technology kinda goes haywire around them, or fails to work at all.

Our sign reads the Cloud Dragon in English, the Celestial Dragon in what I believe is Chinese, and not one person in the area can give you directions to us if you ask them where either of those places are. But you ask them where Pinky’s is and they will point us out without hesitation.

We are closed on Sundays, as the area’s business foot traffic dies out completely and the area becomes a market place for street hustlers and the homeless. I spend many Sundays cleaning the kitchen, and playing with dishes that I will never be able to serve, like the crab and tomato salad that I was working on now.

See we‘re a Chinese restaurant, one of the hundreds of small places that serve fried rice and two meats to the hungry Los Angelelinos that have only an hour for lunch. We are clean, and our egg rolls are pretty good, but the crowds won’t be beating down our doors for them.

But someone was doing just that, a sharp rap on the glass door was loud enough to be heard over the devil music and to bring me back from my concentration on my cooking. I hate when people interrupt my day off, I really hate it. I wiped off the knife on a side towel and went to go vent on the poor fool who chose to bother me. The lights were off, there were no servers to be seen, heck even Pinky was turned off, why would anyone think we were open for service?

I got my answer maybe a step or two past the counter. A small spot between my shoulder blades began to itch fiercely. See my grand pop on my eighth birthday took me to a friend of his, and with promises of ice cream and a video game if I was good, got me tattooed like a sailor.

Not just with any kind of tattoos, glyphs and dragons all over my body with inks from the old country. I remember being held down and screaming for what seemed like hours as a man with a very kind voice burned horrible shapes into my body. I remember also waking up shaking and crying in my grandfather’s Oldsmobile, completely mark free with my mom asking me what was wrong.

When I told her what grandpa had done, she just held me and told me it was all a bad dream, and that I was okay and that she wouldn’t ever let anyone hurt her one and only baby, and you know being eight I even believed her.

The rapping came again and the spot on my back began to itch furiously, I steeled myself for some very bad news. That particular spot thanks to the magics that my grandfather had etched into my skin only reacts to powerful magics, the stronger the magic, the stronger the itch.

A tall lean figure tapped on the glass of the door with what looked like a mop handle, sometimes homeless folks will ask if they can wipe down our windows for a meal, and most carry their own tools. This guy was not one of them, he was dressed in a long duster, dark pants and sneakers. The duster had a sort of cape thing that fluttered behind him in the April breeze.

When he saw me his lean sharp features broke into a ragged smile and he waved at me with his free hand. I reached under the cash register for the bamboo backscratcher I keep there for just such emergencies and pushed it down my back to give me a little relief. Not only does my backscratcher provide me a straight line to focus my will through, it is also hella good for getting the itch I can’t reach.

“Simon Wu?” the man asked through the glass with a friendly enough voice. He kept his eyes locked on my nose and that told me volumes. See certain wizards can look through you if they catch your eyes. They can see all the truths of you in one fell swoop if they get you a staring contest, and they can pretty much open your soul up like a sardine can if they do one of those lifetime channel dramatic stares at you.

“Closed!” I shouted in my best bad movie accent, you have to keep up appearances, “No open! Come back Monday, closed!”

The man’s smile went from friendly to businesslike, and he tried again, slower and more deliberate. I love it when people think speaking slower makes English universally understood. He probably thought I couldn’t understand him through the door.

“I am looking for Simon Wu, I was told that this was his place?” he reached into a pocket and produced a scrap of paper. I could see a small silver pentacle on a chain around his neck. I was hoping that I could bluff him into go away. See our type of folk are exclusive, not hermits you understand, but we really don’t work well with others.

“No food!” I shouted again, yes I felt stupid, but I try to give folks what they expect. “No clean windows! Comeback Monday please, food Monday.” I turned away and started back toward my kitchen. I could feel the man’s eyes on my back literally and I scratched a little more furiously with my scratcher.

“Look bub,” the voice boomed from every flat surfaced in the restaurant, “Why you gotta go and bust balls?” The kitchen lights flickered and my boom box squealed, sparked and died. I froze, something like that took a lot of power, and to go and do it out in the open meant that this joker wasn’t afraid to hurt someone when he didn’t get what he wanted.

I spun around and in one leap, was back at the door, I pulled the backscratcher out of my jacket and slammed the “hand” part against the small brass symbols mounted on the door jamb, most folks think it’s Chinese, but those symbols were ancient when Chinese was just a bunch of grunts and hand gestures. I pushed my will down the line of my body through the grain of the bamboo and into the symbols activating the circle that my grandfather built into the walls of the restaurant.

Like I said grand pop was from the old country, and he learned coming here that even if you are not looking for trouble, it sometimes trouble comes looking for you. He built guards and wards into the building when he bought it back in the day. Mom put even more protections on in the way of glyphs and sigils painted into the walls and the roof of the place when she married dad, and I added a thing or two when I learned how. All these magics made the Dragon one of the most secure places in the spiritual world.

My will wakened the magics that both grand pop and mom set, and the walls of power shot up with a bang that I felt in my very core. I was pissed, I hate bullies, and ones that use magic like a club, well they really pissed me off.

The man must have felt it too because he stumbled back from the door like he was pushed, he looked shocked and angry and I prepared for the suck. A scarlet aura sprang up around him, outlining his form as I felt the power flood into him. His eyes seemed to glow with fire and I pushed even more will down the backscratcher.

“Bug off Gandalf!” I shouted, “movie ‘s over, and the Shire is four thousand miles that way!” I said hooking my right thumb over my shoulder. The man, ’s aura stuttered, his eyes opened wide and he began to chuckle, the chuckle turned into a laugh, a deep one of real mirth. He covered his face with one hand and leaned on his mop handle as the laughter shook him.

When he could look up again shaking his head, the friendly smile had returned, great, this guy wasn’t just a magus, he was a crazy magus. I wondered if mom had ever had to deal with something like this.

“Sorry. sorry,” he chuckled, “Gandalf…that’s funny,” He put up his free hand again placatingly, “bad manners, it was a long trip. I had to ride a train here, and they almost lost my luggage. I came off like a jerk. Is Mr. Wu available? I was told I could find him here.” I lowered the backscratcher and found that my back had stopped itching.

“And who are you again?” I said without the Mr. Miyagi accent, he told me and the fear shot back into my throat.

Do you remember the last time you were pulled over by a cop? Remember how your stomach fluttered as he walked up to your window. Well multiply that by a million, this guy wasn’t a cop, most cops had guidelines, rules they had to follow. This guy was Luca Brazci, he was an enforcer, and showing up at my door meant something very bad was going to happen.

We might be an exclusive people, but things get around. Where he’s from, this guy is legend, he killed a vampire baroness, smashed up a full grown loup garu, and death followed him like a small dog on a leash. People died when this guy showed up, weather they deserved it or not.

He must have seen the fear on my face, cause he put down the mop handle and held up his other hand showing it was empty.

“Whoa, whoa, “he said, “what’s the problem? I said I was sorry about the showboating.”

“The problem,” a pleasant voice out of nowhere said, “is that Mr. Wu has heard of you. He knows your reputation for mayhem, and he is a very cautious man.”

The voice belonged to a girl of about twenty who had just appeared to the right of the man. Now when I say appeared, I don’t mean she walked up, or slipped around him, I mean one moment she wasn’t there, the next she was. She was cute, dressed in a green t-shirt, blue jeans, with a black backpack covered in cartoon character stickers. Her hair was cut in a rough mop, and was purple on one side. She looked like a club kid, wide eyed and innocently sexy. Both the man, and I jumped away the door, and he stumbled nearly falling to the sidewalk.

“Hells Bells Mai!” he shouted, “what are you trying to do, give me a heart attack!”

“Oh and the lightshow I just saw was what, to impress Mr. Wu here on eco-friendly light bulbs?” Mai purred, he looked sheepish and picked up his mop handle, or should I say his staff, cause he sure as hell wasn’t here to do the windows.

Ancient Mai walked up to door and smiled at me, her green almond eyes were warm and she was careful not to get too close to my threshold.

“Mr. Wu, I have to apologize, this is all my fault. I should have notified you immediately when I called this one here,” she said pleasantly. “I became involved in some council business, and it slipped my mind, if there is any damage I of course will make it right. May we come in? I am sure we can straighten out matters to your satisfaction.”

I unlocked the top and bottom locks of the door, but I didn’t break the circle. I pulled the door inward, and stood away from the threshold.

“Why is this all about, why are you here?” I figured I would get right to the point, no sense in delaying it if Ancient Mai was involved. She would try to kill me or not, and I would hope that all of my protection magics would turn aside enough of the blast so that someone could identify my body.

“Oh no trouble to do with you Mr. Wu, we just needed a safe place to meet, the war you know.” She glared at the tall dark wizard, and by all the celestrials the man glared right back at her. “Just let us in, we will be about our business quickly and then we will be gone. “

“You’re bringing the war here?” I said, my belly fluttering again. My family had stayed out of the council’s way by working subtle magics, nothing to directly influence others. We built things, traded information with the Los Angeles wizarding community, created protection spells for people who didn’t use magic, but mainly, we cooked.

My mother was the one who had started trouble, she put down a group of ghouls who was tired of eating corpses and had started going after homeless people. She said it was because embalmers were using stronger chemicals, and the bodies that the ghouls usual fed on were becoming poisonous to them. It was during a battle at the city college that my mom had met Ancient Mai.

“Oh by the stars and stones no boy, your mom and I had an agreement. I just need a place to discuss some business with this out of town wizard. So will you please invite me in?” She smiled warmly and her green almond eyes smiled with her, “I promise you, that during this meeting you will have my full protections.”

Now you may think with all the talk of protections, that I am a coward, I am not, I am a cook. Listen buddy, you try to bring in a lunch rush when you are down a server, your second cook is half asleep and you suddenly run out of onions, then you’ll see real bravery. My folks (except for my mom) never had to go toe to toe with the darkness. We used the craft, knowledge, and surprise to fight the things that threatened jumped out of the never never. The war between the vampire court and the white council was big, it was all about going face to face with the things that went bump, and it was no place for a little old fry cook like me.

I reached out my hand, breaking the circle and Ancient Mai took it gracefully, I felt her power thrum up my arm like I had dipped it in ice water. I shivered a little, remember the glyph on the doorway? Well Ancient Mai was teaching that language a couple of hundred years before to whatever was on the earth before there was a China. She stepped through the doorway like a princess, confident and graceful and then turned around to face the wizard who was right behind her.

“Not you,” she said, and the tall man stopped, his face surprised.

“What?” he said exasperated, nearly tripping again.

“A lot of testosterone was splashed around just now boys, and I don’t need the fall out from you monkeys messing up the business, so I want you to shake hands and make nice.”

The man made like he was going to say something smart, but Mai shut him down with a look, you just don’t mess with a million year old something carrying a cartoon covered back pack. He shook his head, and stuck out his left hand without hesitation.

Not wanting to look bad in front of Mai, I took it, he didn’t try to crush my hand like a jerk. He simply gripped it firmly, and pumped it up and down once. Then the strangest thing happened, it was like someone gently took my chin in their hands and turned my head to meet his eyes. At first I thought it was him, a compulsion spell or something to do with force, but the look on his face showed me that he was just as surprised that it was happening to him. I tried to turn my head away, but it was too late.

We saw each other, and the bottom dropped out of my head. I rarely use a soul gaze, it is to much like standing naked in front of an audience and trying to belt out the stars spangle banner. It opens you up, both for the person looking at you to see, and for you to see them. Humans aren’t supposed to see into each other that deeply, it shorts out all the pleasant lies we tell each other as social lubricant.

I was wrong, this man wasn’t an enforcer, he didn’t like hurting people, the violence that he had done hurt him deeply. He was a passionate man, one who was sick of no one helping those people who didn’t have magic. Sick of people with power just turning away and letting those didn’t die for them like ants. This was a man who had lost a great deal, and was willing to lose even more to stand by his convictions. This man wasn’t a bully, he was a hero, and I felt like a jerk not treating him like one.

I saw something else too there in his eyes, rage, dark and terrifying. Not like anger all hot reds and blasting whites, this was something so dark that I didn’t have words for it. His rage was built like a stained glass window made up of his fears and frustrations, but mostly it was made up of loss. He had lost so many he loved, and the thought of losing more drove his rage into a force that if he unleashed it, would probably turn half of LA into a new satellite. He held it in check though, using his knowledge, his humor, and most of all the duty and responsibility he felt to those he still loved. This was a good man, hollowed out by tragedy and violence, but a good man.

I broke the soul gaze first and sat down hard on one of my tables causing a little earthquake of teacups. He spun around and threw up on the sidewalk. Like I said, soul gazes are not something that any magician likes to do.

He came through the door wiping his mouth, and he was more than a little pale, but his smile was back and it was genuine. I don’t have a lot of mirrors in my life, too many things jump out of mirrors, and I really don’t want to be that honest with myself about anything. What he saw in me made him barf, and I hoped that he never needed to tell me about it.

“Sorry about the stupid accent thing,” I said not really thinking, “People usually leave me alone if they think I don’t understand them.”

“Got that” he said sitting down in one of the seats at a nearby table, “it’s why I read science fiction.” Now it was my turn to smile.

“Good,“ said Ancient Mai cheerily, “now we can get down to business.”

“Do you think I could get some water?” the man asked, his dark eyes coming up to rest on my nostrils.

“Sure Mr. D”, I said getting up, I closed the door and then bolted it. “Say are you hungry? I was playing around in the kitchen and I have some stuff.”

“Hell yes!” he said with gusto, “whatever you’re making smells great.” I looked to Mai who nodded and sat down opposite Mr. D.

“Thank you Mr. Wu,” she said, “there is nothing better than good food to eat when discussing the apocalypse.”

Both Mr. D and I turned to her and stared at her stunned.