It was still dark when I reopened my eyes, but I could see some shapes. Rugged walls, a tall rocky ceiling above me. It seemed like I was inside a cave.

  That reminded me of something Fred gave me after I closed my first case.

  I snapped back my thumb with a clack.

  Fwoosh.

  A tiny flame appeared on top of my bent thumb, enough to light a few feet around me.

  I think he just wanted a portable lighter.

  The disheveled girl appeared in front of me like a ghost as I turned to investigate my surroundings.

  I stumbled back with a gasp.

  “Sorry!” I said, catching myself before I scared her again. “You startled me.”

  But she seemed different.

  The girl fidgeted with her dress. “Who... are you?”

  “Huh? You don’t recognize me?”

  She shook her head. “Are you friends with the fox?”

  “The fox?”

  “She... brings me food, but then she leaves.” Her eyes swelled with tears. “I want to go home.”

  I glanced behind her.

  Open packets and crumbs. It seemed like someone was feeding her, indeed.

  My heart shattered as she began to cry.

  I knelt. “What’s your name, sweetie?”

  The girl hesitated, looking up at me with swollen eyes. “Yun.”

  “I’m going to get us out of here, Yun,” I said, wiping away her tears. “I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  To be honest, I didn’t see any exits. Whatever strange door I used to get into this place, it wasn’t accessible from the inside.

  I forced myself to smile as my stomach churned. “Did you notice any weak spots on the walls, anything?”

  “No... there’s just the big hole over there.”

  “Hole?” I moved towards where she pointed, carefully not to fall into this ‘hole’ she mentioned.

  I halted as the ground disappeared right in front of my feet. Yun was right.

  “This is not nothing, but still...”

  Time to find out how deep this thing is.

  I set my chopstick on fire and dropped it into the abyss.

  Darkness swallowed it fast. But as the chopstick went down, I noticed light reflecting around it. In other words—

  There was more ground at leaping distance beyond it.

  “Okay, this is not the end.” I looked back. “Yun, come here, please.”

  “No... I’m scared.”

  “Close your eyes and hold onto me, don’t even think about it,” I said. “We need to cross.”

  The girl stepped back, shaking her head.

  “Oh man...” I sighed. “Let’s do this then, I’ll find an exit, then come back for you, okay?”

  She didn’t reply.

  With a heavy chest, I measured the distance between the two edges, then took a few steps back for impulse. It was quite a leap.

  “Wait for me, Yun. I’ll be right back!” I set off in a sprint.

  The abyss rolled beneath me as I leaped.

  A deep voice echoed above me, throwing me off balance as soon as my feet touched the ground.

  “It seems you got caught by a Fae.”

  “Fred?!” I looked around me, but there wasn’t anyone. “Are you stuck in here as well?”

  “No, I’m talking from the door. I’m not stepping inside the shop.”

  “Oh...” My blood boiled all over again. “You don’t need to burden yourself with my screw-ups, just leave me.”

  “No, it’s not entirely your fault.”

  “Whose fault is it then?!”

  He stopped, probably smoking. “Are you done?”

  The nerve!

  I massaged my temples, trying to calm myself down. This wasn’t just about me anymore. I needed him.

  “The missing girl is here, Fred. I need to get her out.” I asked. “What do I do?”

  “What do you see?”

  I waved my fire thumb around, trying to find any clues.

  “I don’t know, it’s just an endless cave...” There was something leaning against the wall. “What the hell?”

  “What?”

  I picked it up. An old teddy bear with a missing eye. “A toy.”

  “Is there any other child in there?”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Not that I saw.”

  “Not even corpses?”

  “My God, no! What’s wrong with you?” I swallowed. “I hope not...”

  He went silent.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “No, I was just thinking. Keep going.”

  “Alright.” I continued, feeling the jagged wall with my hand.

  “How is she?”

  “Terrified—”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He cut me short. “Is the girl physically harmed in any way?”

  I snorted bitterly at that, shaking my head. “You know, there is more than one way you can hurt someone.”

  “Just answer my question.”

  Argh! I hate you, Fred, I hate you!

  “No!” I said, squeezing the wall to calm myself down. “The fox, whoever the hell that is, has been feeding her—”

  Crack.

  I froze when something shattered under my feet.

  “What was that?” Fred asked. “Sounded like glass.”

  I lifted my foot.

  A picture frame.

  “It’s just one of those photographs. I think this Fae is playing with me.”

  “Unlikely. You’d know a bored Fae if you ever saw one. What’s in the photo?”

  I went down to inspect it. “A family in traditional clothes.”

  “Is the girl in it?”

  “No, there are elderly people and...”

  A young boy holding a teddy bear.

  My breath stopped.

  “Fred... what is she doing with these kids?”

  “Calm down, Connie—”

  “No.” I sprang to my feet and set off running in the dark. “I’m tired of these games. I need to find a way out!”

  More objects cracked under my feet; I didn’t look down. Then a mountain of rubbish rose ahead.

  “Shit—”

  It collapsed on top of me. I clawed through toys and fabric until I saw light.

  “Yes...” I looked back and saw that I had carved a clean path towards the exit. “Yes!”

  Yun was visible in the distance now.

  But she wouldn’t have crossed the gap with me.

  Maybe I can bring some tools.

  “Stay right there!” I shouted. “I’ll be back as fast as I can!”

  I was about to leave, so very close, when a chilly gale froze me in place.

  My chest tightened.

  I turned around, slowly.

  A small fox with sharp blue eyes stared at me.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” I muttered.

  It hissed at me, and the walls around us cracked. Dust fell from above as the whole cave began to shake.

  “Wait—”

  The fox stepped back with another hiss, and the ground split open at places, sucking the piles of rubbish into the abyss below.

  Yun!

  I darted back into the cave, dodging massive boulders that plummeted from the sky, then stumbled as rock shards hit me like shrapnel. “Argh!”

  I raised my head again, and the clean path I had created before was gone.

  “Yun!” My voice ricocheted across the crumbling cave in a desperate attempt to reach her.

  But she was so far.

  There was no way I could get to her in time.

  What have I done?

  I fell on my knees, my senses growing numb, when the air pressure changed—a tiny orange spot flickered above Yun.

  My lips moved on their own. “Fred?”

  He emerged from the dust like a shadow and stood beside her.

  But he was not moving.

  “W-what are you doing?” I asked, my voice shaking. “There’s no time... you’re going to die!”

  Boulders crashed down around them, worse than where I stood.

  “Most likely.” He looked down as Yun took his hand, hiding her face against his arm. “Almost certainly.”

  My heart sank.

  Red fur flashed in front of my eyes.

  Hovering in the air, the fox whipped its tail, sending me flying all the way back to the exit.

  “NO!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, but the rumbling swallowed my voice.

  That’s all I remember before the air pressure changed for the last time.

  A pile of rubble appeared as I opened my eyes, a wooden sign with something in Chinese by my feet. I recognized that sign.

  All this belonged to the shop, which now stood leveled between two buildings.

  I panicked and began digging through the stones with my bare hands. “No, no, no...”

  No sign of them anywhere.

  Tiles scattered everywhere as I punched the rubble.

  The one-eyed teddy bear peeked at me from beneath some bricks.

  I was about to slam the bricks once again when a deep voice rang out behind me.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself. Again.”

  My eyes widened as I turned.

  Fred stood on the sidewalk, Yun in his arms.

  He was alive.

  “H-how?!”

  “I don’t know how, only why.”

  “Argh, I’m not in the mood for puzzles!” I grabbed my head; it was about to explode. “I thought you... died.”

  “I’ll spare you the details then.” He stared blankly past me. The dark circles around his eyes were worse than ever. “There’s nothing we can do anyways.”

  The way he spoke gave me goosebumps.

  “Fred... what did you do?”

  “Nothing, literally nothing.” He walked off. “Let’s go.”

  I grabbed the teddy bear and went after him.

  Yun bounced softly as Fred walked, knocked out from exhaustion in his arms.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. Are you?”

  I glanced down at my hands, dents and scratches. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten myself trapped like that.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “You’ve already said that.” I looked away, enduring a pressure behind my eyes. “Why can’t you just accept my apologies?”

  “No, I mean it. The Fae wanted to make a point. It would’ve happened either way.”

  “A point?”

  Fred fell silent as we walked.

  “Can you give me a smoke?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I put a cigarette between his lips and snapped back my thumb.

  Fwoosh.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I knew this was a good idea.”

  I gasped. “I take back what I said. You’re a jerk.”

  “Yeah, well.” He blew off smoke. “Too bad.”

  “Argh!” I picked up my pace, storming off ahead of him.

  We were getting close to Chang’s compound when I had a feeling of déjà vu.

  It was a house like the one I saw in the photograph, simple, more traditional than the neighbors’.

  “I’ll meet you at Chang’s,” I said and went to knock on the door.

  A woman opened it. “Yes?”

  “Is this...” I lifted the teddy bear. “I found—”

  Seeing the toy, she fainted. A man held her from behind.

  He stared at the bear. “Have you found my son?”

  I shook my head. “No. Only this.”

  “I see.” He took the toy and closed the door again.

  I bit my hand, holding back tears.

  Fred must know something. We need to get to the bottom of this.

  I wiped away the tears and ran back to him.

  The Chinese bosses met at a rural property for the exchange. My heart stung when a pair of thugs came to take Yun back.

  Here, the wind cut straight at us, no buildings to slow it down. Fred stood at the edge of a lake, something black like a pebble in his hand.

  I approached him as the bosses did their thing.

  “Fred, about those other missing kids, I think there’s something much darker going on—”

  “Leave it, Connie.”

  My jaw dropped. “I can’t! What do you mean by ‘leave it’?”

  “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “I’m not afraid of Chinese gangsters, if you’re not going to tell me what you know, then I’ll figure something out myself—”

  “They are gone, Connie.”

  What?

  His words punched me in the stomach.

  I blinked slowly. “Then why did the fox...”

  “The Fae was na?ve. Maybe she wanted us to solve this issue for good.” Fred leaned back and hurled the black sphere into the lake. “But I can’t do shit about human nature.”

  I hugged myself as the temperature seemed to drop. “What was that?”

  “Opium,” he said. “Some old woman gave me.”

  “What?! What were you going to do with it?”

  “I thought about blazing it.” Fred walked off towards Chang. “But it changes nothing. Nothing does.”

  The peace-talk had ended, and the other boss and his men left with Yun.

  In the distance, thugs dragged a tied-up Savio out of a barn. They beat him up.

  Bastards.

  My hands curled into fists.

  Chang carried a happy look on his wrinkled face as we approached him.

  “Mighty good job, I must say.” He extended his hand to Fred. “Now give me the keys to the house and consider your butler’s debt set.”

  Fred slipped his hands inside his pockets. “We’ll do it differently, Chang. I’m keeping the house.”

  My eyes lit up.

  “What?!” Chang said as if reading my mind.

  The thugs carrying Savio stopped in their tracks.

  “I’m a much more reliable debtor than Savio, so I’ll take the debt into my name instead.”

  Chang’s eyebrow arched as he considered it, then he leaned towards Fred. “That’s twenty percent a week, plus it doubles if you miss a payment.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Hm.” Chang shrugged. “Deal. Bring on the old degenerate!”

  I shot my arms up. “Yes!”

  “Also,” Fred said. “Give my fucking carriage back, I need that to work.”

  Savio limped towards us. “Sorry, Fred...”

  “Don’t let this one out of your sight even for a hot minute, Connie.” Shaking his head, Fred walked towards the carriage as they brought it to us. “He might bet on the bloody birds.”

  Savio sighed. “It’s true.”

  My lips pursed. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  He gave me a swollen, purple smile. “You look good in these weird clothes.”

  I blushed hard.

  “Oh, stop it!” My voice became high-pitched despite myself. “This is just a rent—”

  We jumped when reins cracked nearby.

  “Let’s go. We’ve got work to do,” Fred said from the driver’s seat. “And I’ve got a mountain of debt to pay.”

  We ran after the carriage, cursing him.

  “Too bad.”