I nodded. “That’s okay. I’ve gone ahead with worse information before.” It was true. My acquisition of Grax’thor was living proof of that.
She lowered her head a bit and her tone dropped into a whisper. “You must promise not to tell anyone what I’m about to tell you,” she said, holding my gaze in the most serious look she’d ever given me.
The whole thing was enough to make me second guess myself. I gulped down a knot of fear that was welling in my throat. In all our years together, I’d never seen her look anything like this. Whatever she was about to relate, it must have cost her dearly.
“Go on,” I said with a nod. “My lips are sealed.” I made a closing motion over my mouth with my free hand.
“Hey, Mei!” a voice broke through at that moment. It was Yuri. “What’s a guy to do to get a refill, ya?”
Mei shook her head slightly and pulled back. She glowered at Yuri for a second, then flashed him a smile.
“Be back in a sec,” she told me over her shoulder.
I flashed her another smile. “No worries. Need to hit the pisser anyway.” I eased up from my stool and headed over toward the bathroom while Mei got about fixing whatever drink it was that Yuri wanted.
I flung open the bathroom door and wiggle-walked inside, barely able to hold it. Those drinks went through me pretty quickly sometimes.
Contrary to what you might think, the men’s room at Mei’s bar was actually quite neat and tidy. There was an ocean theme throughout the room, with shell tiles on the floors and pictures of waves and aquatic life plastered on the walls. It even smelled a little beachy, which was a far cry better than the stale urine stench of most public restrooms.
I went over to a urinal and did my business. I won’t bore you with those details. You probably know how a bathroom works by now, and if not, then you really shouldn’t be listening to this story in the first place.
Anyway, I washed my hands and dried them on a neat little folded paper towel and waltzed back into Mei’s bar proper.
Instantly, I could sense something was off. The music from the radio was no longer playing, and the faint smell of sage and dragon’s blood was no longer wafting through the air.
My eyes darted around the room as a chill ran down my spine. Yuri was in the corner hunched over his beer. Sevin was next to him, looking like he’d just seen a ghost or something worse, and there was a slight draft coming from one of the corners of the room.
Then, it hit me all at once. I took in the sight of shattered glass, mixed with a damp towel in the middle of the bar with no one there to tend to it.
Instantly, my heart sank and a chill ran over me as I stood there, blinking my eyes, not able to process what was in front of me. All the while a single thought reverberated through my skull over and over again.
Mei was gone.
3
“Yuri! Sevin!” I shouted, rousing the two from whatever funk they’d gotten themselves into. “What happened? Where’s Mei?”
The big Russian got up first. He shrugged his broad shoulders and held his hands out, palms spread wide. “Is no big deal,” he said. “Maybe she had to tinkle?”
I almost laughed at the way the big man said the word “tinkle,” but I didn’t have time for such distractions at the moment. I had to figure out what had happened to Mei, on the double. My instincts were yelling at me that something was wrong, and even though I hated them sometimes, they’d never steered me wrong before.
“Sevin!” I spat as I walked toward Frenchie. I waved my hand in front of his face and he blinked a few times, then looked around with a bewildered expression.
“I need you, Sevin. In the here and now.”
He looked up at me and nodded. “But of course. What’s wrong?”
“Can’t you see?”
Sevin furrowed his brow. “Non, mon ami. I don’t see anything that’s amiss.”
I wanted to throttle him right then and there, shake him and strangle his fake French accent until he never used it again. But, in fairness, he had been in some kind of funk. It was possible he really had missed the whole thing, just like Yuri had.
“Mei’s gone missing,” I told him. I started pacing the room a bit. “Something happened to her, I’m sure of it.”
Sevin shook his head again. “I’m sorry, mon ami. I didn’t see anything happen.” He frowned at me. “Maybe Yuri’s right and she had to go real bad?”
I grimaced. It was a distant possibility, but one I couldn’t rule out completely without seeing for myself. The broken glass on the bar told me that likely wouldn’t be the case; Mei always left her bar completely pristine. She never would have dropped a glass like that, even for a call of nature.
But it was worth a shot.
I raced over to the women’s restroom and threw the door open so hard it crashed against the inner wall.
My cheeks burned a bright crimson as I walked into the brightly lit space. I knew no one was in there, but it still felt weird to me to waltz into a women’s restroom, empty or not.
It was a far cry from the men’s room, and much nicer. The walls were a muted pink color with a lazy flower design printed on them, the sink had little soaps in the shape of seashells sitting on a tiny ceramic platter next to the faucet, and the stalls had nice wooden doors that stretched all the way up and down instead of cutting off with a foot or two to spare.
Fighting back a hint of anxiety, I pushed on the stall doors, one at a time, slowly just in case someone really was in there. But, of course, no one
