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Wu Xie waited outside Ershu's door with his coffee, his youtiao, and his Pangzi (snacking on roasted melon seeds) for almost fifteen seconds with no one showing up. If he hadn't known Xiaoge had been called in on some super-secret relic appraisal, he would have assumed nobody was home.

But Xiaoge did come here for a super-secret relic appraisal, which meant that in addition to his third angle, Ershu was here somewhere, and so were at least ten or fifteen members of his staff. "On the front step," Wu Xie texted his second uncle. "Is this a test? Because you hate when I use explosives in populated areas."

The sweet sound of footsteps rushing started echoing just moments after he hit send, followed by the door opening to Li Jiale's nostalgically annoyed face. The former Warehouse 11 stocker tried to physically block Wu Xie from stepping in. "You're not supposed to be here."

"But I am here." Wu Xie clapped a hand on Li Jiale's shoulder with a smile, pushing against the slight resistance of the man trying to fill the doorway until he gave in to his better judgment and stepped back. Since Li Jiale had been on the receiving end of that smile—and a huge chunk of the trouble Wu Xie had gone to Warehouse 11 to cause—more than a few times, Wu Xie (internally) congratulated him on his ability to learn from pain. Wu Xie himself never had that skill, not starting and definitely not ending with twelve-on-one brawls in the warehouse locker room while he already had one foot in the grave. He'd tased Li Jiale specifically often enough, moving might just be self defense. Wu Xie actually hadn't brought any serious weapons today, but he would understand the caution. Or maybe Li Jiale actually didn't hate him anymore and thought it was reasonable to let him into his uncle's house? Miracles happened sometimes.

"Xiao San-ye," Li Jiale tried to explain, making a roadblock of himself in the hall. "This is a closed meeting. Everyone had to be screened. It could be dangerous. Please come back another time."

Wu Xie kept walking forward, smile getting brighter and voice getting a little louder like it tended to do when he was being an asshole on purpose. "What could possibly be so dangerous or so secret that Ershu would keep me out of his home? We're family!" Behind him, Pangzi followed slowly, admiring the newly acquired bronze ding his uncle had on display in the hall with a serious nod.

"Is that Cao Wei? Oh… Beautiful. Fantastic preservation on the engraving…"

Right on cue, Ershu himself stepped out, waving at Li Jiale to give way. The young man sighed like three tons of weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

"Ershu!"

"Don't give me any shit, Xiao-Xie. I know Zhang Qiling told you this meeting was by invitation only."

"I know, I came to pick up my invitation," said Wu Xie, trying his best to look like a cute, innocent nephew. At forty-five, with several dozen deaths behind him, that was a taller order than it used to be, but give him a shower and a thick cashmere sweater, and he still did a pretty damn good job. "Did the delivery service get lost? I hope they reimbursed you."

His uncle seemed to be nursing a headache that said more clearly than any words, this was exactly the shit Ershu had asked Wu Xie not to give him. "If Zhang Qiling weren't the best there is at defusing traps—" Ershu muttered. "Look, Xiao-Xie. An outside contractor contacted us through the Ministry of Public Security for help opening a potentially dangerous artifact. His team vetted everyone present before we could bring them in, and they were very understanding about not to looking too closely at certain gray areas, given the work they were asking for help with. But there are risks I won't take with you. Do you understand what I'm trying to say, Xiao-Xie?"

Nodding thoughtfully, Wu Xie asked, "Why do the cops need your help?"

"This isn't cop business. But they are with the Ministry of Public Security, Xiao-Xie. Special Investigations Bureau." Ershu paused, staring at him, waiting for him to back down. He was going to be waiting a long time because Wu Xie was particularly good at playing dumb when he wanted to. "For fuck's sake, I'm not going to let a cop do a background check on you just for some consult. You know what they could turn up."

"If there's anything left to find," said Wu Xie with a shrug, reaching for a cigarette.

"Oh, please. And don't smoke in the house."

"Right, right."

He shoved the pack back into his pocket just as Pangzi came up by his shoulder. "Wu Er-ye! Fantastic bronze acquisition back there. And it looks like there's a new bronze mirror up there? You haven't been holding out on us, ah?!"

Pangzi tried to walk forward to see, only to have Ershu hold up a hand. "No."

Just then, a less familiar set of footsteps rounded the corner. The sound was calmly authoritative but with an energetic edge to it, more like his uncles than his father. Someone who got out in the field instead of just sitting at a desk all day. Wu Xie thought he recognized the cigarette-rough baritone voice that came with the footsteps, but he couldn't have said from where. "Wu-xiansheng! You said it's your nephew? If he's in the business, I'm sure we can come to an arrangement. I don't want to come between fami—"

The man who came around the corner paused to smirk curiously, and Wu Xie could hardly blame him. Now that he saw the face, he knew exactly who this was. As if he'd forget. That had been a very memorable summer.

"Zhao Yunlan?"

"Wu Xie! How the hell have you been?! So you're Lao Jiumen's mysterious Xiao San-ye… You should have told me!"

With a shrug, Wu Xie stepped past his uncle, who was now looking back and forth between them in either shock or betrayal, and gave the former delinquent who was apparently now with the police a friendly hug. "How could I tell you? Your dad…" Wu Xie trailed off, letting implication do all the work.

Honestly, he hadn't really been involved in anything up to that point, but how was he supposed to say, My family didn't tell me about the family business until after I got hunted down by mercenaries crossing Mongolia because I "liberated" a map to an ancient tomb from a foreign state.

"Yeah, yeah. I know. I may have a badge, but my dad was a fucking cop. That's fair."

"You two know each other?" Ershu was reaching new depths of unamused.

Wu Xie looked at Zhao Yunlan, who nodded, then smiled brightly at his uncle. "Well, sure. You remember that summer in college when I did an internship in Longcheng? Well… Xiao-Zhao was home from Shanghai for the summer visiting his family."

Ershu muttered, "Xiao-Zhao…?"

"…We met," Wu Xie offered as explanation.

That seemed like the most politic way to sidestep everything about him at twenty (or was it nineteen?) heading out to a bar to find someone's bed to sleep in that wasn't the museum's worker dormitory—decent but not particularly private—and Zhao Yunlan's incredibly refreshing pickup line of just asking for his name. He'd probably been about a quarter of the way into his whiskey sour when the mutual introductions and flirting had turned to, If you want to get out of here, I can show you around town. Give you the tour.

Does the tour include your bedroom?

It does if you want it to. I'm easy.

What a coincidence. So am I.

Yeah, Ershu didn't want details about him tossing back the rest of his whiskey sour in one gulp and heading immediately off to fuck a near stranger, neither for the first nor the last time. It seemed like he could guess the vague outline of events from the way he was shaking his head at the ceiling anyway. But it had been a very entertaining summer, even if Zhao Yunlan had a habit of disappearing suddenly at odd hours and not talking about why. He was hardly the only person Wu Xie knew who did that, and it wasn't like Wu Xie had been dating him that summer for deep emotional reasons. Everyone Wu Xie knew had things they wouldn't talk about, and Wu Xie didn't plan to pry into whatever his fuckbuddy did in his free time, especially since Zhao Yunlan was actually very fun to hang out with and fantastic in bed.

It was Pangzi who broke the awkward moment of silence, judgmental frown carved into his usually smiling face. "I can't believe you fucked a cop."

With a groan, Ershu walked off, dragging a blushing, horrified Li Jiale with him.

"Pangzi. We were in college. He hadn't joined the Ministry then."

"Once a cop, always a cop," Pangzi insisted, grabbing Wu Xie around the waist and pulling him towards the inner room where this secret meeting must have been happening.

"Even retroactively?"

Zhao Yunlan looked like he wanted to die laughing. "He's got a point, Wu Xie. You knew I was a bad idea!"

"Be honest. Did I ever look to you like I was interested in good ideas?"

"Now, you can't ask me to talk about that in front of your uncle. I try to be a gentleman."

The three of them, Pangzi still pulling Wu Xie along by the waist and Zhao Yunlan strolling behind, made their way into the parlor where a small assortment of people were examining a red lacquered box with some kind of engraved relief. "So we can stay, then, right?" asked Wu Xie, already eyeing the antique from a distance and wondering what kind of closure it had. Probably if Zhao Yunlan had to bring it to Ershu for expert help, it was a puzzle box, right?

And Ershu's staff were piling assorted tools on a table next to Xiaoge. It looked like a tank of nitrogen, bamboo hooks in eight different lengths and thicknesses, some counterweights, and a small army's supply of zip ties. Some people he didn't know who were probably with Zhao Yunlan were labeling plastic bags. Evidence bags?

Wu Xie's eyes flicked to Xiaoge, whom he expected to be studying the box. However, after turning to Wu Xie to offer a tiny smile and blink of greeting, his lover went back to glaring at an emaciated stranger in a coat with many, many pockets. The stranger seemed to be studying Xiaoge with just as much suspicion.

"Boss, I don't think I can work with this guy," the stranger grunted.

Zhao Yunlan sighed. Pointing at Wu Xie, he said, "No, you especially cannot stay. At least not past 2:45. Xiao-Wei finishes teaching his classes at three, and you had better be at least five miles away from the building before then in case he stops by. And you…" He turned to the emaciated man. "What the hell is the problem? Suck it up, Lao-Chu! We need his help!"

"Ah…" Wu Xie murmured, watching this person gesture toward the distance between himself and Xiaoge. He took another sip of the coffee that was starting to get cool (but coffee was coffee), and strained to hear the low grumbles from the near-skeletal Ministry employee. Something about five or six feet. "Xiao-Zhao's current boyfriend is allowed to know about his work. He and this 'Xiao-Wei' must be serious. And is it just me, or is that coworker of his acting like he's being repelled by Xiaoge's blood? Like he's, you know…"

"Pretty sure that guy's a zombie," Pangzi agreed. He crunched on a few more melon seeds. "You gonna tell 'em?"

"Everything about the qilin-blooded Zhang family members is a clan secret. It's up to Xiaoge whether he wants to tell them."

The stony-faced silence from Xiaoge made it very clear that he planned to do no such thing. His good old Menyouping, thought Wu Xie with a smile. That was Xiaoge's I'm doing you a favor by abstaining from violence expression, which always made Wu Xie's heart melt a little and run around his chest like a songbird on speed. But Zhao Yunlan was smart enough. The Ministry people didn't need to know why their zombie cop was compelled to stay away from Xiaoge, probably, to know they had to work around the situation.

"You're my traps and mechanics guy, Lao-Chu," Zhao Yunlan groaned. "You're telling me you can't observe what their traps and mechanics guy is doing because he gives you the heebie-jeebies? Or is it like a barrier?" From the way the zombie cop snarled quietly, looking grumpy, Wu Xie was betting on the heebie-jeebies. Zhao Yunlan turned to Xiaoge, his face screaming I'm trying to be reasonable. "Zhang-xiong. Is this something you can turn off?"

Xiaoge kept staring straight at the zombie cop, arms crossed, face a mask to anyone who hadn't known him for years. "No."

Fuck, Wu Xie wished he had popcorn. Xiaoge was such a troll when he got going.

"Xiao-Xie, a word," Ershu said, coming up behind him.

Wu Xie patted Pangzi on the shoulder as he turned to step away with his uncle. "Tell me everything later."

"You got it."

Once they reached the comparative privacy of the marble-topped bar, his uncle's carefully maintained professional facade of patience gave way to personal family annoyance. "You couldn't have told me you had a history with this Zhao Yunlan? I have to find out by surprise that my nephew fell into bed with the Lord Guardian?"

Oh. This was absolutely not his fault.

Wu Xie shrugged off the complaint, more bemused than offended. "Ershu. Didn't we agree that you never wanted to know about my college boyfriends? That's an exact quote. 'Xiao-Xie, we all know what you do in your free time. Nobody's gonna make it their business as long as you don't make it their business. Be safe, be discreet. The family will help you if you ever get in trouble.'" He shook his head and gestured in mock helplessness as his second uncle scowled. "Also, what the fuck is a Lord Guardian? That doesn't sound like a Ministry of Public Security rank."

"He's the Lord Guardian. He's the only one there is. He may work in the Ministry, but this isn't cop business. Are you telling me, at no point while you were involved with this man did you realize that he is a professional ghost hunter?!"

Wu Xie kept his face carefully blank as he reassessed a few things from that summer.

The unexplained absences. The crazy bruises and scrapes. A razor-edged knife with bronze script markings in the blade, which was no fake antique because no antiquities dealer would look twice at that blade shape in high-carbon chrome steel with a cowhide wrap on the handle. It was obviously made in the last century, if not the last decade. Wu Xie had assumed it was a cosplay prop. Something like that. Like the extraordinary replicas of early Tang Buddhist soul-calming talismans he saw on Yunlan's work table when…

Oh, shit.

Did you do these? Wu Xie remembered asking, drawn like a moth to a lantern flame as soon as the light came on in Zhao Yunlan's room. His host was tossing some things off the bed. Wu Xie didn't remember clearly. He was too enmeshed in studying the cinnabar-red patterns traced on the slips of rice paper. This linework is fantastic. Is there a particular era you're studying? Your models are pre-Wu Zhou, right? This grass script you're using for the invocation to Acala around that 'heavenly fire' seal looks transitional…

You can read that?

Sure, Wu Xie had told him, not even thinking about it. I wish we could get actual paper goods from that era that are still this vivid.

Where did you say you were interning?

The Museum of the Antiquities. Wu Xie had looked up with a grin then to see Zhao Yunlan studying him like a puzzle. It'd been a good look, and he hadn't minded the attention, or the bossy ease of Zhao Yunlan catching him by the hand to drag him closer to the bed. But seriously, your reconstruction work is just as good as the professors'. I bet they'd give you a job. Or you could work on dramas in Hengdian.

Yunlan had just laughed, and said something about his life being planned out already, but it was good to know he had "options." It didn't seem important to follow up when Yunlan was asking Wu Xie if he "still wanted that tour" and tossing him onto the bed. Because fuck yes, he had wanted that. He was twenty and horny, and Zhao Yunlan was hot and charming. Also apparently very good at distracting horny twenty year olds from his ghost-hunting tools.

No wonder those soul-calming talismans had looked so good. He probably needed them to actually function.

His second uncle interrupted his internal rehashing of all the things he may have misunderstood that summer by waving in his face. "Hey! I'm talking to you. You're a smart kid, Xiao-Xie. Too trusting, but you're not dumb. You honestly expect me to believe that you never noticed he's in charge of a damn mystical order dedicated to maintaining the sanctity of life and death?!"

Face still carefully blank, Wu Xie shrugged again. "It never came up. We were fucking. We weren't married."

"Right. First there was that nonsense with A-Ning's brother out to murder you and anyone who knew you. Now this. Is there anyone else you've been involved with I should be warned about?" Ershu growled out.

"So aside from the whole family knowing about A-Ning, whom I never dated, because the whole family did know about all the tombs she kidnapped me to excavate, and none of us had any idea she had a brother… I still don't know why Zhao Yunlan deserved a warning," said Wu Xie, trying to find the fastest way out of this conversation. "We had a casual fling one summer. Both of us knew it wasn't going anywhere. We had a friendly breakup. Obviously nobody has a grudge. What's the problem?"

"You might not do background checks, but I do." Ershu pointed toward the end of the parlor where Xiaoge was still doing his impression of a statue, "talking" to Zhao Yunlan and the zombie cop. "Do you know who that man is married to, Xiao-Xie? Do you know why he tells every ex he runs into on the job to get as far away as they can before his jealous husband shows up?"

Now Wu Xie was just getting annoyed. His uncle could be a little bit of a prick when he got a twist in his briefs. Unfortunately for him, Wu Xie could be a lot of a prick semi-professionally. "If I didn't know anything about him being a ghost hunter, why do you think I know who his husband is? We didn't keep in touch." Wu Xie thought back to what Zhao Yunlan had said about getting clear of the house before this husband's classes ended at three. "It sounded like he's probably a teacher or a professor or something? Do we have a beef with academia now?"

Ershu pulled off his glasses and dropped his face into his other hand. "Okay. Technically, yes, Zhao Yunlan's husband is a professor. He did get a PhD in something about classical poetry and has tenure at Longcheng University. I hear he's a very popular lecturer in their humanities department. Something about breakthroughs in pronunciation of ancient dialects."

"That actually sounds fascinating," said Wu Xie, annoyance forgotten. And popular lecturer was college code for magnetically gorgeous, every student wants to fuck him, which Ershu didn't seem to realize, but it made perfect sense. Zhao Yunlan was a connoisseur. "What's his name? I just want to talk. Like, did he decipher a new rime dictionary? Does he have a paper I can read?"

"He is a fucking five-thousand-year-old demon, Xiao-Xie. He didn't need a rime dictionary! And I think I deserve to know if your fucking around is going to bring problems like that down on the family."

Wu Xie stared at his uncle, trying to decide if he was supposed to have seriously predicted that some hot guy he had a fling with for less than three months over twenty years ago would end up married to what sounded like a jealous, possessive force of nature. Literal demon or not. Probably Ershu was being literal, since he'd included the age. How did he find that out, anyway? But it also sounded like Zhao Yunlan's system for handling it was effective, or his uncle would be telling him what the "demon" did to the other exes right now instead of trying to scare him with "Zhao Yunlan is married to someone I can't pay off or threaten."

"So is that a maybe on the paper?" asked Wu Xie. "All I need is a name. I can check the academic journals online. If he has tenure, I have to assume he's publishing something."

"Fine, you don't believe me," Ershu said with a sigh. "When I say the king of hell answers to this person—"

"I believe you, Ershu! I believe you. Xiao-Zhao's married to a very scary hell demon who moonlights at Longcheng University as everyone's favorite classics professor. But what do you want me to do about it? They weren't married when I dated him. I didn't know they were going to be. Xiao-Zhao wants me out by 2:45 so his husband doesn't get grumpy about an ex," Wu Xie said with a dismissive shrug. "We all make compromises for relationships. It's fine."

That did not seem fine enough for Ershu somehow, because his scowl only got deeper. "What I want is to make sure no more surprises follow you home. I want to keep this family safe. I thought I could do that without knowing who your lovers were but apparently we're both paying for that now."

Taking a deep breath, Wu Xie set his hands on his hips and shook his head. "What, you want a list? How far back does this need to go? Do you need to know the name of everybody I've kissed since I was twelve? Or is this just about people I've fucked? Do you need details, or just names, because if I have to leave in just under five hours, I really don't think I can tell you about everybody."

Not that he planned to give up a list at all. Some things were between him and the doctor who discreetly checked him for STIs back when he wasn't exclusive. And obviously Pangzi and Xiaoge knew who his exes were, but they could tell from looking at somebody for two seconds anyway. Apparently. Since it had never occurred to him to mention his whole bitter, lonely thing with Huo Daofu, and instead of asking him to explain, Pangzi had just rolled his eyes and immediately roasted Wu Xie with a scathingly accurate summary of his own terrible behavior. The part where Pangzi guessed that Wu Xie had never called to tell Huo Daofu that he was actually still alive after being reported dead especially was not just a lucky guess. That was true friends understanding each other on a fundamental level.

On the other hand, Wu Xie did not deserve the pained look Ershu gave him, although he may have been asking for it. "A little warning if you had an affair with someone who could make a problem in the industry. Is that too much to ask?"

"Ershu," Wu Xie said, frustration dripping off his tongue. "If I knew something like that was going to happen…" He waved a hand vaguely around the room. "If I knew something like this was going to happen. Don't you think I would have already told you?"

"Fine, I'll narrow it down. At least tell me if you've fucked anyone from the Jiumen families. That could potentially have consequences."

Wu Xie narrowed his eyes at his uncle, taking a quick glance back toward the side of the room where Xiaoge was standing. Xiaoge's phenomenal hearing must have picked up the question, too, because he'd turned away from his glaring session with the zombie cop to look vaguely offended in Ershu's direction.

"Have I—" Practically choking on disbelief, Wu Xie managed to get his words together. "Obviously I have, Ershu. What kind of question is that? Did you hit your head? Should I get a doctor?"

Ershu held up a hand to cut him off. "I mean somebody other than Zhang Qiling. Everybody in the business knows about your damn Iron Triangle. Zhang Haike already added me to his New Years greetings list, and keeps asking me to name a bride price. I don't think he'll try to kill you again." Wu Xie, who had told Zhang Haike to fuck off about marrying into the Zhang family already, was about to object when Ershu dismissed that whole thing. "Forget Zhang Haike. He's an asshole. Anybody else from the Jiumen?"

Well, Wu Xie still didn't plan to list his sexual history on demand, even if that was obviously a smaller group than everybody. "Yes," he said, and left it at that.

"Would it be faster to ask who you haven't slept with?"

He shook his head, not at all sorry that this seemed to bother his uncle more than it was bothering him. "Nope. My type is pretty narrow. First off, no girls. I respect how Xiao Hua and Xiuxiu conned everyone, but I can't even pretend."

If his uncle was annoyed before, now he looked like he was starting to fume. The half-second silence of boiling rage before Ershu managed to get words out was perplexing, actually, since they'd already covered his chronic inability to keep his hands off Xiaoge. Finally, Ershu took a deep breath and stared at Wu Xie like he wished he could still make his nephew copy lines of idioms for punishment.

It has stopped being a punishment for Wu Xie to write things long before he left boarding school.

"I asked if you were gay before!" Ershu growled. "Why do you think I tried to set you up with all those girls! You said—to my face, you told me—you liked both!"

"When did you ask?" He thought back quickly since his uncle's grumpy expression wasn't the face he made when he was bluffing. "Wait. When I was fifteen and Dad caught me in my room with Xiao-Ke from math class?! Come on, Ershu… I thought being gay was illegal, like you and Dad would get in trouble, and you were asking things like whether I could provide the family with an heir. I said I was bisexual because I thought I'd be grounded if I said girls were never going to happen." He could practically hear Ershu composing two dozen rejection letters to families hoping to engage their daughters to the Wu family's Xiao San-ye in the frustrated pacing he was doing. "I thought everyone knew, Ershu. You know, when I met Xiaoge, I was trying to be subtle. I was…" he insisted after his uncle scoffed. "I can tell I wasn't because everyone acted like we had blinking lights over our heads, spelling out—" Wu Xie swung his arms around to indicate everything that'd been happening between them back then. Pangzi had been teasing him about the mysterious Xiaoge showing up in disguise being the only way to get a "girl" into his bedroom from almost day one. "I honestly thought everyone knew, for years. And that was before we were together. He would barely even speak to me then."

"Zhang Qiling barely speaks to you now," his uncle groused, at least slightly less angry. "And you thought I'd make you pick a girl knowing you were gay? Me. If you told me you're bisexual, am I supposed to think you stopped being bisexual because you start dating a man? Have some damn sense."

Yeah, that was fair. His uncle didn't do assumptions. And he definitely never went out to nightclubs with Wu Xie and the guys when they were cruising, or talked to the maître d's at restaurants who would call to check if they were being scammed because someone claiming to be Xiao San-ye's girlfriend had shown up to eat on his tab, and they had "never seen the young master with a woman." Ershu liked facts, not gossip, a lot. And in fairness, his parents only saying "Erbai has never been that interested in any woman he's met" and "he's just a confirmed bachelor" had been why he didn't realize his uncle was gay until he was eighteen, and had been so confused about why his dad had called Ershu over to give him the sex talk back then. Nobody told their teenage millennial kids that "confirmed bachelor" was how rich people used to say their friends and family were gay.

Well. Ershu had a point.

"Okay. I'm sorry, Ershu. I should have brought it up. But, no, I have not slept with everybody, because I tend to be pretty picky about liking guys. Specifically hot guys, ideally who are… Never mind, you don't need to know that," Wu Xie muttered, considering his usual habit of baiting guys with infuriating sass and backtalk until they held him down and made him beg. "But anyway, hot guys, and with one notable exception, within a few years of my age." Then a memory slipped out from a depressive haze in his past, and Wu Xie had to rethink his numbers with a slight wince. "Sorry. Two exceptions."

Ershu pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath. "And you don't think Xie Yuchen is going to have a problem with your second exception?"

"No," answered Wu Xie absently as he double-checked his memories to make sure he wasn't missing any other immortals or near immortals. "Xiao Hua knows. He was there."

"I honestly don't know what I expected," muttered his Ershu in a classic not-angry-just-disappointed tone. He sort of looked like his soul had sunk out of his eyes to somewhere in his gall bladder, or at least that was where Ershu was gripping his side like he was in pain as he walked off. Maybe he had indigestion, or gas.

"You should have someone make you some tea, Ershu! Or some ginger soup." His last attempted sip of coffee revealed, alas, that his cup was empty. Into the trash it went.

His uncle waved him off and disappeared into a back room, leaving Wu Xie free to go see what was up with the puzzle box. Ghost puzzle box? If Zhao Yunlan was a ghost hunter, did that mean there was a ghost inside? That would be fucking awesome…

"Hey, Pangzi," prompted Wu Xie as he slung an arm around his buddy's shoulders and joined him in watching the standoff most people were performatively ignoring. And since Pangzi offered, he helped himself to some of the melon seeds. He wasn't getting out his youtiao until he could sit somewhere. With napkins.

Pangzi nodded at the scene, where Zhao Yunlan was repositioning a very grumpy-looking zombie cop now wearing a blindfold periodically closer and closer to Xiaoge. "Your ex doesn't take shit. He wants the zombie to suck it up. Says Xiaoge is willing to not be racist, so he should fucking deal with it and do his job." His friend turned to Wu Xie, all seriousness. "Still a cop, though."

Wu Xie nodded, equally seriously. "I know. Ershu says he runs some kind of ghost cop bureau. I guess for ghost crimes. I didn't even know MPS had a bureau for ghost crimes."

"Eh, of course there is!" said Pangzi. "There's laws against ghosts, so there must be ghost cops. There's always cops watching for people who operate outside the law." He scrunched up his face at Wu Xie, making as always a brilliantly reasonable argument. "Why would you make a law saying there can't be ghosts if there never were ghosts? Right? But if you didn't have somebody catching the ghosts, they'd just wander around sucking out everybody's yang qi. Ghosts everywhere. So, a law against ghosts means there have to be ghosts somewhere, and there have to be ghost cops keeping them in hell. Basic physics."

"I think you mean civics," added Wu Xie, nodding as he listened. "Basic civics."

Pangzi shook his head. "No, it's physics. What's that thing that guy said? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction? Like that."

"Right, right, right." He shared a smile with his friend as they turned to watch Zhao Yunlan spinning the zombie cop around to try disorienting him with the blindfold on before having him step closer to Xiaoge again suddenly. The dizzy zombie, even though he was wobbling slightly and looked like he was hating every minute of it, oriented himself to Xiaoge instantly. His face looked like he wanted to throw up, and he yelped in shock, leaping back several feet the same way Wu Xie had seen zombies and shibie do in tombs for years.

"Okay, yeah, this isn't working," said Zhao Yunlan. "Xiao-Guo, see if you can talk to him?" he called out to a mousy kid who was standing nearby covering his own mouth with his hands. "Yes, yes, you can uncover your mouth now. Just see if you can convince Lao-Chu to stop being freaked out by Zhang-xiong over here long enough for us to do this properly. I'm taking five."

"Chu-ge, maybe we can all sit down and talk about this?"

"You talk about it. I'll be by the window getting some air."

The nervous kid turned to Xiaoge. "H-hi, what did you say I should call you?"

Naturally, Xiaoge would never answer that question. It was every man for himself when it came to getting Xiaoge to talk.

"…O-okay. W-well, maybe, can you tell me what's going on? I'll try to help."

"Trade secret."

The nervous child opened and closed his mouth a few times, clearly unsure what to do with that. God, Wu Xie couldn't help smiling when he watched Xiaoge get going like this. He was so fucking petty. It was beautiful.

With a giant sigh, Zhao Yunlan walked over, stretching his arms over his head and plastering a wicked grin on his face. "Sorry, technical problems. I hope I didn't get you in too much trouble with your uncle."

Wu Xie waved it off. "It's nothing. He's my uncle. He worries. Currently about whether I've fucked anybody he works with, and if it's going to make problems for business."

"We work with people you've fucked all the time," said Pangzi, the confusion practically radiating off his face in a solid beam of light. "It's never been a problem. I mean… Huo Daofu, but that was a personal problem. You two worked it out. Why would anybody make something an actual problem now?"

His eternal thanks for Pangzi in his life. Wu Xie gestured to his utterly sensible linked angle, then punched him softly in the shoulder. "Exactly! It's not like my ex-boyfriends, or my ex-fuckbuddies, are the ones who come after me with guns, or knives, or strange alliances with foreign-financed mercenary cults kidnapping us for deadly tomb raids by dropping breadcrumbs about Sanshu…" He turned to a laughing Zhao Yunlan by way of explanation. "You know, if I had a nickel? But it's weird that it happened twice. And I don't think the people transforming into monsters or the Warehouse of Doom were anybody's fault, really."

Pangzi shook his head. "No, those are also your Sanshu's fault."

"It's not his warehouse," Wu Xie objected. "It's Xiao-Bai's warehouse."

"Still your Sanshu's fault you started working there. That feral child nearly ate you alive. Your supervisor was going to wrap you up in a giant spider cocoon and blow you up, with a whole underground dig site. That place was a menace. And they still owe you that airplane."

Wu Xie nodded along, rubbing his forehead and brushing that all off with a shake of his hand. "Sure, sure, sure, but the point is… No ex-boyfriends. Hmm. Well, not my ex-boyfriends." He shot Pangzi a serious look. "You think Ershu is still fucked up about Erjing?"

Pangzi nodded, deep thought wrinkling the lines around his mouth. "Probably. What Erjing did was pretty fucked up."

"Yeah. I'll get him a new video game later and say I'm sorry. I'm still not making him a list." You couldn't feed somebody who got controlling about fear and worries like that. It just gave them more to worry about and control.

Speaking of ex-boyfriends, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome from Longcheng seemed not at all surprised by any of the shit coming out of their mouths. Just amused. "Ah, hell, Wu Xie. I was gonna ask what you've been up to, but it sounds like even the parts you can talk about would take a lot of explaining."

"That…I can talk about?" Wu Xie felt his eyes opening wider on instinct, taking on his habitual innocent, questioning gleam. People who'd known him for more than fifteen minutes never trusted that look whether it was genuine or fake, since either way it probably meant he was doing something stupid. Amazing how often it worked anyway.

Zhao Yunlan shook his head, generally pointing at the region around Wu Xie's face. "Don't worry about it. It's a third-eye thing. I can't just see ghosts. I also see karma, you know? So, uh." Narrowing his eyes as he looked around Wu Xie's face and neck at who the fuck knew what, Zhao Yunlan let out a low whistle. "I'm not gonna ask. It's obvious you've been through some shit. I cannot even imagine how the karma lines between you and every person you've killed got that long…"

Wu Xie straightened up when he heard the word "killed," making sure to keep his face blank and harmless while Zhao Yunlan was talking, and holding Pangzi back from flying in to get rough until they'd heard everything.

The ghost cop just looked perplexed, not suspicious. "And all of them—every last one—looks like the other guy had it coming. I mean that objectively, according to the laws of heavenly retribution, they all officially had it coming. Humans might not live long enough for their karma to get so bad that the heavens send divine lightning, but all their shit gets marked down. Sometimes, you see somebody who's killed one or two people where the heavens put it down in the killer's karma as you doing the universe a favor. Not often, but sometimes. I have never seen anything like this. That is a lot of people."

"No comment," said Wu Xie pleasantly.

"Oh, yeah, never tell me. I would love to know, but please keep doing whatever you're doing to avoid that getting into the papers. As weird as it looks like whatever caused that was, I'd probably get called in to investigate, and that is an enormous conflict of interest over something…" Zhao Yunlan gestured silently at the air for a moment before speaking again. "Yeah, if the great Dao or whatever says you did the universe a favor smiting the enemies of the natural order and moral law, I don't want to get involved in that."

Yunlan jumped as Xiaoge suddenly appeared at his side, as if he'd melted out of the shadows despite how everyone had been watching him refuse to talk to the less undead baby cop by the table. "Hey. Good to see you, too, Zhang-xiong. How's it going over there? You can blink once if we're making progress."

Xiaoge stared at Zhao Yunlan, unmoving, from just slightly too close for most people's comfort. The average person found Xiaoge threatening and unnerving under the best circumstances, but right now, Wu Xie could see he was actually pissed off. There wasn't even the slightest hint of softness around Xiaoge's eyes or mouth until he turned to look at Wu Xie, obviously asking for permission to do something about this guy.

"It's fine, Xiaoge. Zhao Yunlan won't hurt me."

The cautious look on his face as he slowly turned back to study the ghost cop some more said that Xiaoge was taking that position under advisement, and out of respect for Wu Xie's wishes he wasn't going to immediately attempt to eviscerate anyone, but he'd make his own long-term judgment about Zhao Yunlan's intentions.

"Please don't take it personally, Xiao-Zhao," Wu Xie told his ex, who was currently looking back and forth between Wu Xie and his glaring lover. "Xiaoge takes a little bit to warm up to people. But he's got a great sense of humor. I really think you'll like each other."

At present, Xiaoge appeared to disagree.

Zhao Yunlan dropped his usual friendly smile into a sincere but less toothy seriousness, and made a point of easing his shoulders into a relaxed posture, opening up his hands, and blinking slowly without moving his eyes too much. Somebody had gotten a read on the exact kinds of behaviors Xiaoge found threatening since they'd started working together this morning, and he was trying to avoid all of them.

"Please, don't even worry about it," Yunlan said. "You guys are together, right? Of course he wants to make sure I won't hurt you. Everyone's protective instinct comes out a little differently, but as it happens…" All the fake humility and personal control in the world couldn't hide the glow of pride and glee in Zhao Yunlan's eyes. "…the love of my life happens to also be a stunning, very jealous, but incredibly caring immortal. Amazing cook, too." Zhao Yunlan turned carefully to Xiaoge, addressing him directly. "Do you cook for Wu Xie? Wu Xie is a great guy. I bet he's really happy to have someone like you looking out for him."

As Xiaoge continued staring coldly, he lifted one arm to point to Pangzi. Everyone stared silently for a half-second, then Pangzi volunteered, "Oh, yeah, no… I do the cooking mostly."

"Two awesome guys looking out for Wu Xie! Even better." From the way Yunlan was casually negotiating, as if he saw angry immortals on a daily basis (and if he worked with a sentient zombie, maybe he did), Wu Xie felt like the man wasn't scared at all. It was more like watching a school teacher get young children into line, which would certainly explain the annoyed gleam in Xiaoge's eye. "So how about it?" Zhao Yunlan asked Xiaoge. "I agree that I only want the best for Wu Xie, because Wu Xie is a wonderful human being who deserves to be happy, with you, forever, and you three just keep doing what you're doing, because it is obviously working for you."

"Laying it on a little thick," Wu Xie scoffed. His best friends called him an asshole half the time. Even as a sweet, innocent kid, he'd been an asshole. Nobody ever called him a "wonderful human being."

Zhao Yunlan shrugged. "I'd rather take a second now to make sure we're painfully clear than have cataclysmic trouble later we could have avoided. If we can get this whole job wrapped up so that you…" he said, pointing at Zhang Qiling. "…can personally take Wu Xie far away from our team before 2:45 p.m., I think we'll have nothing to worry about. We'll get him out of here no matter what. Wu Xie will be safe. But wouldn't we all be more comfortable if you and Pangzi here were the ones making sure he gets away?"

Xiaoge understood exactly what that question meant, and without looking one bit less frosty, he nodded once, then walked directly back to the table by the possibly haunted artifact.

He came up behind the nervous boy, now drumming his fingers on the table while watching the zombie stick his head out an open window. "What do you need?" Xiaoge asked.

"Ah?!" The boy jumped and screamed. "Oh. Hello. What do we need?"

Back over with Zhao Yunlan and Pangzi, Wu Xie couldn't help admiring Xiaoge's version of being vastly more helpful. It did help that it came with an excellent view of Xiaoge's ass in the very well fitted joggers he always wore.

"But seriously," said Zhao Yunlan, "I'm happy for you. You glow when you look at these guys. That's great. Congratulations."

Wu Xie answered with a wide grin while Pangzi pulled himself up into a thuggish version of dignified. "Same to you, Xiao-Zhao. Ershu said you got married. And he's a professor?"

Zhao Yunlan put a hand to his chest, glancing up at the ceiling and fake-staggering like he'd been shot. "Ah, Xiao-Wei. If you get me started, I won't shut up. He's the best. Yeah, he teaches at the university, so I got us a little condo with a garden in walking distance of campus. It's idyllic. He's neat, he cooks, he wears these cute little sleeve garters so you can see how good his arms look even in a suit… Not that that's why, obviously."

"Obviously," Wu Xie laughed.

"And he's so fucking smart. He'd be annoyed if I said I don't deserve him, so I would never, but I just have to do my best every day to make sure I'm worth coming home to, you know?"

"Ershu wouldn't tell me where to find his papers on pronouncing ancient dialects. I want to read them. Are there recordings? Are you sure I can't meet him, just a little?" Wu Xie fished his notebook out of his inner jacket pocket along with a pen, prepared to take notes. "Purely academic interest. I have so many questions."

Laughing silently, Zhao Yunlan shook his head. "I'm sure you do. But I would rather not take that risk. You'd have trouble doing your work if Xiao-Wei recognized you and decided to cut out your eyes."

"That sounds literal," said Pangzi, breaking in with growing concern on his face. "You said he's a jealous immortal? What kind of immortality, because…"

Oh, yeah, if this guy had been a human who gained immortality from an artifact or some kind of alchemy, knowing that could help them avoid him, or maybe shed light on a weakness. Too bad that wouldn't help in this case. Wu Xie turned to Pangzi, tapping him on the shoulder to cut him off. "Ershu said he was a five-thousand-year-old demon who outranks the king of hell. This is not our lane."

The face Pangzi pulled was about halfway between impressed and bewildered.

"Kings," corrected Zhao Yunlan. "There are ten of them."

"Right! Of course." He'd read so much mythology on burial traditions and the afterlife from different cultures and periods, with so much variation, it hadn't ever occurred to Wu Xie that one of them might actually be true.

Zhao Yunlan just nodded. "Real blowhards, if you ask me. And yeah, of course they get scared when Xiao-Wei throws his weight around. The kings of hell are just human ghosts who happen to be really good at administration, so they get to spend a hundred years of their afterlife keeping the Yellow Springs running, judging all the souls, and all that. Burn off some bad karma and maybe earn some good karma before they reincarnate. But they're still human souls in the end. Xiao-Wei was something primordial… Oh! But not a demon." Zhao Yunlan waved both hands, gesturing from one side to the other to sort demons away from whatever his Xiao-Wei was. "Easy mistake to make, most people sort of conflate the two, but he's actually a gui king, and then sort of became a demigod? It's complicated. But demons basically come in two types. Either people or animals cultivate into demons by drowning themselves in dangerously toxic levels of yin energy and resentment—and pardon me if I don't go into detail. It's bad news. We don't like to put exact methods out there."

"Obviously. Some secrets, you have to keep," Wu Xie agreed. He was going to remember as much of this as possible to write down in his journal later, and go searching through the Longcheng University faculty pages for a classics professor named "Wei," but he wouldn't write down how a person could become a demon even if Xiao-Zhao would tell him.

Probably.

"And the other kind of demon isn't even on this plane of existence. You have to be able to ascend to the heavens and see with a divine eye to even access those realms of the universe. Humans can't comprehend their existence, and they can barely comprehend humans. Mortal lives pass in their entirety while gods and demons are having a single tea party. The human realm is just background noise to them… Now, Xiao-Wei is different. Think of it like this. When Pangu separated chaos into dark and light, heaven and earth…"

Wu Xie nodded slowly, eyes wide, at how those words sure did just come out of someone's mouth, talking about the actual mythical creation of the world.

"…There was just a little pure chaos left over, like a really stubborn dust bunny, or that last bit of broth and noodles you can't get when you finish a bowl of ramen…"

"Skill issue," Wu Xie and Pangzi both said together, then shared a fistbump. They always finished the bowl. Every last noodle.

"Okay, next universe, you make the world. Have fun with that," said Zhao Yunlan, laughing at them. "The point is, we don't need to get into specifics, but the leftover chaos came to life, and became the gui. Xiao-Wei was one of the strongest, so he was a gui king. And since hell decided to gentrify the neighborhood where he was already living, I mean… You can't build your house on a river and then think you're in charge of when it floods. Of course everyone there is afraid of Xiao-Wei. He's oblivion incarnate."

Pangzi's face was tilting more and more toward bewildered, and he seemed to have nothing to say, so Wu Xie knew it was up to him. "Well, fuck," he said. "Gui king. Okay. I'm really happy you guys are working out. That's fantastic. Please stop me if this is a weird question, but you sounded very confident about the creation of the world just now. Were you, like… There?"

Because if he had to revise his immortal-fucking count to three, he wanted to know. For the historical record.

Zhao Yunlan rolled his eyes, vaguely shaking his head. "It's complicated. Long story short, reincarnation is real, in my first life I was a god, for a long time I was a series of humans, but shit happened, my godhood got reactivated. But, I mean, what matters is I still wake up every morning, eat a delicious breakfast my sweetie cooks while he blushes and tries to pretend he didn't fuck me stupid overnight, then I pet my cat, and I go punch a clock. I try to focus on now instead of ancient history."

"You're right, you've got to live in the now," Wu Xie agreed, nodding along. He was going to count that as three immortals. That clearly wasn't normal.

Pangzi waved a finger vaguely in Zhao Yunlan's direction, although possibly not as much in Yunlan's face as he might wave it in some faces. Pangzi always had been sensible of the risks in messing with forces beyond one's comprehension. "Don't think being a god gives you a pass for being a cop. A god who chooses to be a cop is still a cop. We clear?"

"As crystal. I am a cop, and therefore an untrustworthy bastard. I won't argue with that." With a sigh, he glanced at his watch. "Well, I should see if we can get this thing open yet. Xiao-Guo!" Yunlan called out as he turned back to the table where the nervous boy was trying to explain something in a very soft voice while curled in on himself like a snail.

"Y-yes! Chief Zhao! I was explaining how Chu-ge was supposed to d-document the box structure and find any curses or wards. So Chu-ge c-could—"

"Yeah, save it. I'm not the one you need to tell," said Zhao Yunlan, cutting him off. "Have we got a way to make this work, or is Lao-Chu going to need some kind of tranquilizer to get through this?"

The disgruntled groan from the direction of the window sounded like a zombie who didn't think tranquilizers would help.

Meanwhile, Xiaoge looked at the stack of paper, the oversized puzzle box that had to be at least eight hundred years old but was in excellent condition, then back at Zhao Yunlan.

"Wu Xie," he declared.

Zhao Yunlan stared at him, thinking, for almost a full second. Without breaking eye contact with Xiaoge, he waved them over. "Wu Xie, come translate for me."

You didn't need to tell him to approach the cultural artifacts twice. He trotted over, Pangzi strolling at his side and giving the box an assessing gaze once he was close enough to see any detail. "That look like late Song dynasty to you, Tianzhen? Hangzhou carving, right?"

"Oh, yeah. Look at those reclining figures, the quality of the curve on the relief? And the style of dress in the images is late Song for sure. Probably Shaoxing based on the placement and embellishment of the figures in the entertainment house tableau on the top. See the mix of hairstyles and flowing scarves, how the whole thing has gold filigree detailing and inlaid top-quality jade? Actually, this looks familiar…"

Pangzi nodded quickly, starting to scan for signs of wear or tell-tale indications that the materials weren't period. Few people were better at spotting a forgery than Pangzi, and Wu Xie knew all of them. "The lacquer is odd, though," said his friend. "There's a subtle darkening around the edges, and it's not marbling from carving through mixed lacquer layers. It's like a burn, but I don't see any destruction or repair on the box structure…" Pangzi looked up at Zhao Yunlan. "You're gonna say I can't touch it, aren't you?"

"Nah, go ahead," said Yunlan. "I mean, it's cursed, but that's only going to hit you if you open it wrong, which is why we're here." The man who was apparently a god turned to Wu Xie as Pangzi knocked carefully on the side to listen to how the base wood echoed. "You have not changed a bit, have you?"

"Huh?" Wu Xie asked, still mostly distracted by trying to remember where he'd seen sketches of this box before. It must have been his grandfather's journal. But it wasn't like "cursed haunted box" narrowed much down. Late Song, though… Oh, was this one of the early stories? If the box had stayed in Hangzhou…

Zhao Yunlan leaned into his line of sight. "Go on, spit it out. Get it out of your system."

"Did this belong to Jia Sidao?" Wu Xie vaguely assessed the dimensions of the box with his hands, not quite touching it. It looked big enough. "Is Li Huiniang's head in this box?!"

Waving his hand in the air, Zhao Yunlan said, "Yes and no. It was different from the stories, and that wasn't her name, but you got the idea."

Pangzi straightened up and took a step back, then clapped his hands together and bowed to the box. "Sorry, ma'am." Then he hissed to Wu Xie out of the side of his mouth, "I thought Jia Sidao put Consort Li's head in a gold box."

"Grandfather said he found it, and it was a lacquer box. You know how stories change. Anyway, it was cursed, so the family couldn't hold on to it, and I don't think Zhang Da Fo-ye had even thought of the warehouse yet, so Grandfather made a deal with some shady-sounding exorcist from the…" Wu Xie looked up slowly as Zhao Yunlan cleared his throat and smiled. "…Ershu called you the Lord Guardian? The same as this Guardian Order my grandfather was working with?"

"That's what I always liked about you. Cute and smart."

"So I guess… You promised my grandfather you'd keep the spirit contained, and find a way to liberate her? You have a way to do that now?"

As he explained, Yunlan grabbed the nervous boy around the shoulders in a hug that could not be comfortable for someone who looked as stiff in the neck as that tiny bunny rabbit of a human was. "This kid has a knack for getting ghosts to calm down and talk to him. He's just got a trustworthy face, I guess. Anyway, our dearly departed said where her ashes were. If we get her head out of the box and lay her to rest, she can move on. The issue is, apparently in real life Jia Sidao killed the guy he thought was having an affair with her, and then used his blood mixed with cinnabar, and obviously oil and camphor and things—"

"To make the lacquer," Wu Xie finished. "Of course. But blood shouldn't actually cause that darkening effect. Pig's blood was a common base in lacquer items at least as far back as…" The rest of his words were muffled by Pangzi's hand cutting him off. Rude! Wu Xie delivered a solid lick to Pangzi's palm, which solved that problem.

Sure, Pangzi made an annoyed face as he wiped his hand on his pants, but what had he been expecting, Wu Xie wondered, arching an eyebrow right back.

"Yeah, I cannot explain any physical characteristics of this box. Sorry," said Zhao Yunlan. "What I can tell you is that the supposed lover's soul was bound up into the mechanism because he was trying to keep the last bit of her remains safe, and has basically merged with the curse afflicting anyone who screws up opening the box, which everyone does because there are illusions involved. We need to have someone with a working third eye helping to solve the puzzle or you can basically guarantee anyone who touches the box will go insane. Our theory is, once the consort's soul is at rest, the lover's soul will also be able to let go, but for right now, we can't get through him to get to her. Lao-Chu is pretty damn good with traps," he added, pointing to the zombie cop looking peevish by the window. "And he's got a third eye, but the mechanism has layers he thinks he'd need more than one try to get right. If Lao-Chu thinks something is bad enough he needs to ask for help, he's not fucking around. Zhang-xiong here was the best your grandfather knew, and apparently he's still the best if he's who your uncle had at the top of his list. But I need someone monitoring who has a third eye so we can be sure no curses get activated. Someone who can stand close enough to intervene."

Wu Xie turned to Xiaoge, who was waiting silently. "Where do I come in?" He was pretty sure he'd never been able to see any of these third-eye things Yunlan was talking about.

Xiaoge pushed a stack of blank paper and a technical pen toward him.

"Oh! You want me to do a sketch of the mechanism!" said Wu Xie. Xiaoge didn't nod, but he did blink, and he smiled a little, which was close enough. "I can do that. What, should I draw what the sections and joints are, and someone who can see the curses or tell us if there's an illusion can help us mark those?" He looked up at Xiaoge, who was watching him intently. "You can work from that?"

"I'll follow you, Wu Xie."

"Okay, let's see…" He reached out to pick up the box and study the joints on the outside, but Xiaoge grabbed his hand and pulled it back to the table. "Xiaoge, I have to look at it to draw a picture."

His lover bracketed him inside his arms, as if holding Wu Xie from behind and using his hips to press Wu Xie's hips against the wooden edge. The familiar feel of Xiaoge's chest against his back slowly blanketing him in heat somehow managed to be a sudden thrill; it had Wu Xie nearly wrinkling the paper under his hand with his tensing fingers. He felt like they were doing something indecent, even though they'd done far more scandalous things in private, and Xiaoge was really only being practical about the best way to hold up the box in front of Wu Xie.

Behind them, Pangzi was chuckling, telling a very amused-looking Zhao Yunlan, "Yeah, they've always been like that. Back when we met, those two were eyefucking constantly before Tianzhen could even get a word out of him. Yeah, and that thing where your shirt just disappears, Xiaoge? Where you have no choice but to pose for hours looking like an underwear model, tits out, with perfect lighting, in a tomb? Somehow that never happens when Tianzhen isn't there. Crazy how it always happens when he is, though."

Wu Xie could feel Xiaoge turning his head slightly to throw Pangzi a silent but friendly glare, with Pangzi answering in a loud cackle. "C'mon, Pangzi," murmured Wu Xie, most of his attention on transcribing the faint evidence of sliding panels, rotating pins, and hidden buttons in the structure into a technical diagram. "You know it's bad for Xiaoge to overheat. Taking his shirt off helps him cool down."

"Uh-huh. Sure."

"It's true, though!" Wu Xie insisted. It was totally true.

"Two things can be true, Tianzhen."

"U-um, C-Chief Zhao? C-can I go see if Chu-ge i-is…?" The nervous boy who talked to ghosts was blushing as red as a brick and pointing a shaking hand toward the zombie cop.

Yunlan gave him a friendly shove off toward the window. "Yeah, get out of here, kid. Adults only. You don't need to see this." As the boy scurried away, Yunlan glanced at the nearly complete external schematic and scanned the box Xiaoge was slowly rotating according to Wu Xie's instructions. "I don't think we're going to get Lao-Chu within ten feet of you for the rest of the day. This is going to go faster if I do your curse checking, so you don't have to step away. But so we're clear, I'm not as good with devices as Lao-Chu."

"Yeah…" Wu Xie commented absently. "Zombies never like Xiaoge. But don't worry, he can open any trap. He's the best." Inking one last joint into place, Wu Xie pushed the external schematic to Yunlan with a grin. "You just tell us where the ghosts are. Xiaoge can get the box open."

His ex-boyfriend the ghost hunter (or something) pulled out a colored wax pencil that Wu Xie very badly wanted to study later, because it looked like it might have some similar characteristics to traces of residue found at old ritual sites and on the bottom of some porcelain, degraded too much by time to fully decipher. He circled some of the panels, scribbled on others, jotted quick notes by the edges, and passed the diagram back, now looking like it had a faint crayon halo.

Yunlan tapped a panel on the diagram he'd labeled poison, and marked out with an X. "Don't open that."

"Relax," said Wu Xie, leaning his cheek against the warm pressure of Xiaoge's head over his shoulder. "This is what we do."

The sight of Xiaoge trailing the external lines of a mechanism with his extended fingers, finding just the right place to push or turn or slide, never got old. First he studied the drawing with Zhao Yunlan's notes, then Xiaoge traced the same path on the box, his fingers hovering maybe a millimeter above the surface. As he finally reached a hidden latch on a top corner, he gently slid the lacquered key rod out, revealing a crossbar shaped to fit snugly in a star-shaped hole. The patterns of the turned edges on the rod were unique on each side, formed like an old-style key.

"So this is a hidden keyhole," explained Wu Xie, sketching the grooves and the ends carefully. Then he pointed to roughly the area on the box where the rod would terminate. "There's probably a flat spring mechanism inside when you reinsert the key rod in the proper configuration. Right, Xiaoge?"

In his own particular way of answering, Xiaoge turned the rod about sixty degrees, aligning the filigreed design on the outside with a different section of the box decoration. As he slid it back in, Wu Xie felt his breath catch and his thighs clench, waiting to see what would happen. There was a quiet click, and the two top panels slid open to either side. They were remarkably thin for how solid they were, revealing a more erotic, but sort of tastefully bawdy, scene from an entertainment house beneath the outer scene of food and wine while courtesans danced or played instruments. Were there hidden scenes under all the parts of the city? Was this some kind of commentary on corruption beneath the surface of a dynasty in its late years, or was it just a hidden porn box? This could really go either way.

No way to find out but to open it. Wu Xie carefully made a new sketch of everything that had been revealed and passed it over to Yunlan to mark up while he himself made a thorough study of the carvings. For cultural preservation.

"Pangzi, how thick did the box sound when you knocked on it?"

"I mean, I can't do that echolocation thing some people do—"

"We tried sonar echoes on this before," Zhao Yunlan offered. "Ghost images can mess with the technology pretty badly. And apparently they also mess with bat yao. Our guy said something about Escher. Here you go," he said, handing back the marked up diagram.

Wu Xie studied the new notes along with Xiaoge, laying the two diagrams alongside each other. "Our sound mapping guy is in Vietnam for the next two weeks anyway. Shoring up a levee in a flood zone and checking for leaks, I think. Pangzi?"

"Sounded like a centimeter, maybe one and a half. That'd fit the placement of the key rod before. I'm thinking with layers like that, probably three sets of boards?"

That sounded reasonable, thought Wu Xie, watching the ornament Xiaoge slid on the back of the box release a hidden latch, allowing the sides of the box to slowly bloom open like a lotus and reveal the second layer of the puzzle box inside. The intricately carved scenes of murder, betrayal, and debauchery on the inner layer had just as exacting craftsmanship as the idealized city scenes on the outer layer, although inlaid with bits of polished red and black jasper instead of white jade and gold. "Then we'd better keep working."

For all that there was a lot of detailed, patient work involved in the little partnership they were using to get the box open safely, with Yunlan once stopping them to stick a spirit-calming talisman over a panel that he said was leaking angry yin qi, Wu Xie didn't notice time passing at all. Pangzi had taken his youtiao and said that if Wu Xie wasn't going to eat it, he was. They'd get something on the way home, Pangzi insisted, but Wu Xie was fine letting him have it.

Someone ought to eat the youtiao before it got cold, and how was Wu Xie supposed to prioritize youtiao right now? Xiaoge had him pinned bodily to a table, where it would never take more than a fraction of a second for him to grab Wu Xie's hands, since—and Wu Xie knew this—he'd never remember to keep his hands off the cursed artifact. Honestly. Food was the last thing on his mind. Between not being allowed to touch the cursed artifact and Xiaoge's dick being separated from his ass by exactly the space of their pants, his brain was close to exploding. He might eat in the car if someone put food in front of him, but he was going to complain so much when they got home until the fucking started.

The second layer took four moves to open, and they were on about move six of unlocking the third, probably innermost layer—this one lacquered mostly in black and intermediate layers of marbled yellow revealed by carving, covered with pictures of reclining skeletons, ghouls dancing, and weeping ghosts. The details were pristine. It looked like this time the inlay on the figures was mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli. "Absolutely incredible…" whispered Wu Xie, reaching out again to examine the craftsmanship on a skeleton sitting posed like a Buddha. Who had made this thing? Was it Jia Sidao's custom request, or had it been the artist's vision that they offered because a wealthy official could afford to subsidize extravagant art?

One more time, Xiaoge caught his hands, lacing their fingers together and pushing Wu Xie's palms against the table. Normally, Wu Xie wasn't a fan of being stopped from investigating, but it was hard to be annoyed at Xiaoge wrapping him up in his arms and holding his hand. He wasn't quite naive enough anymore that he failed to notice Xiaoge was using his body to… Well, to distract Wu Xie from getting distracted, he supposed, and maybe to keep him from getting frustrated with not being allowed to touch the artifacts. But being allowed to touch Xiaoge was a very nice distraction. Entirely equitable, when you thought about it. He could do this all day.

"A-Lan," called someone with a low-ish, musical voice from nearby. "I brought you lunch. Is everything going well?"

Wu Xie turned slowly, casually, to look at the person he hadn't heard walk in. Based on how Xiaoge tensed up, neither had he. That was weird. Had the guy teleported?

"Baby!" Yunlan jumped down from his seat on the table to greet a shockingly, ethereally handsome man with glasses who was handing him a packed wooden lunchbox, which Wu Xie wanted to ballpark around the early Qing dynasty maybe? And yep, those were sleeve garters. What the fuck. Had Wu Xie mentioned that he was gorgeous? Because humans were not allowed to be that pretty. He was sure there was a law somewhere. It was kind of impressive that a man could be that fucking hot, and the only thing Wu Xie wanted was to run away as fast as his feet could go.

Yunlan was tugging on this terrifying, fae creature's tie with a flirtatious twinkle in his eye. "You're too good to me, coming all the way out here, baby. I was going to get food, and I know you wanted to prep for your classes."

Wu Xie kept as quiet and as still as possible. He tried to avoid breathing except as necessary.

"I prefer being the one to prepare your meals."

"Well, I'll never say no to your home-cooked food. Why don't you and I go out back where we can sit, and we'll eat together?"

"Of course," said the unearthly beauty Zhao Yunlan had married. So this was a… Not a demon. A gui king! Huh! "But show me your progress. It looks like you've nearly…" The gui king's eyes trailed over to the mostly open box, and from there to Wu Xie.

There was no chance he'd be able to bluff his way out of this, Wu Xie realized, seeing the not-a-demon professor's face shift from inquisitive to a friendly, composed smile so perfect it could only be fake. His eyes were like black pools of murderous intent set in a pleasant, serene mask. Wu Xie had seen Xiao Hua make similar expressions, actually, but when Xiao Hua did it, it was fun.

The eldritch monster husband deigned to speak. He sort of sounded like Xiuxiu had that time a certain asshole (not Wu Xie) tried to gift her a B-Grade knockoff jade pin. "Oh. Hello."

"Babe, have you met Wu Xie?" asked Zhao Yunlan, relentlessly normal in the face of absurd danger.

"Not 'met' as such," said the scariest motherfucker Wu Xie had ever seen.

Plastering on his own smile, Wu Xie stuck out his hand, working on being just as relentlessly normal as the person who had married this guy. "You must be Xiao-Zhao's one true love. He has said so much about you. I can tell, you really are perfect for each other. Pleasure to meet you, Professor…?"

"Shen. Shen Wei." He did not shake Wu Xie's hand.

"Please, call me Wu Xie."

The curt but polite press of the chilling creature's mouth into a thin smile was a clear no. "I couldn't possibly, Your Majesty."

Okay, Wu Xie was lost again. He had understood all the words in that sentence, but his brain was stuck in a loop trying to decide what to do with them.

"What was that, sweetheart?"

"You didn't see the auspicious clouds around his head?" this Shen Wei asked Zhao Yunlan, like that was a normal thing.

Yunlan looked at him again, a hint of recognition in his eyes as he examined something Wu Xie couldn't remotely see. "Oh, those are auspicious clouds? I sort of assumed they'd be iridescent. Baby, I'm still sorting through my memories from other lives. How would I know what auspicious clouds looked like? Nobody does those anymore."

They had to be fucking with him, right?

"Yunlan, I know it would upset you to see any soul pass before its time. You've been considerate in avoiding tests of my resolve over those who loved you in the past. But even I would think twice before destroying the soul of the Mortal Emperor, after you've worked so hard to prevent the collapse of this existence."

The Mortal Emperor? Like, with the Mandate of Heaven? Wu Xie wondered. With the Heavenly Emperor in the realm of the gods (fuck knew if that was the Jade Emperor or Yunzhong-jun or what—did it change?), and… Was this part of a set with something in hell, or with the Ziwei Emperor in Middle Heaven? Did it matter? And what was that about existence collapsing? He mouthed to Pangzi, Did I miss the apocalypse? But Pangzi seemed just as lost as him.

He mouthed right back, …Your Majesty?

With all the questions trying to fight their way out of his brain, what left Wu Xie's mouth was: "But…we have a president now…"

There was a cold lack of interest in Shen Wei's eyes. "The operation of mortal government is none of my concern. The qilin chooses the emperor. I work in the reaping of souls."

"The…"

Wu Xie turned his head to look at Xiaoge. His lover shrugged. That was not Xiaoge's shrug for when he didn't know what people were talking about. This was a different shrug. The obvious-thing-that-never-came-up shrug.

"Okay, then," said Wu Xie.

"So you see, Your Majesty, I could hardly call you by your given name," Shen Wei explained. "It would be inappropriate for me to call you anything but your regnal name."

Nodding more in consideration than agreement, Wu Xie tried those words on for size. "My regnal name. Okay."

"It's Tianzhen," offered Pangzi, pointing at him with double finger guns. "The Tianzhen Emperor, Shen-laoshi."

Wu Xie kicked his foot. That was going to stick, damn it! This Professor Shen was obviously a catty, spiteful, possessive jealous bitch! No disrespect intended. As one spiteful bitch to another, Wu Xie knew quality when he saw it.

Yeah, Pangzi's smug face wasn't even a little sorry.

"Tian as in heaven? And is that zhen as in truth, or blessings?"

"It's—"

"Attain," Wu Xie broke in before Pangzi could say anything. "As in attain the peak within your field."

Shen Wei nodded with a cool smile. "The Tianzhen Emperor, Attaining Heaven. Very auspicious, Your Majesty."

Zhao Yunlan strolled up, lunchbox in hand, and casually took Shen Wei's arm with a joking nod of his head. "Well, then, if His Majesty the Tianzhen Emperor will permit us to depart his presence, I'd like to take my darling wife who came all this way to bring me lunch out to the garden so he can monopolize me a little before he has to go."

"Yeah, go have fun. Just send someone out first to make sure my uncle isn't where you want to sit. He's a little jumpy today. And if you're about to fuck—"

"Outside? In broad daylight?" Shen Wei shook his head with a disapproving click of his tongue, a heated blush rising high on his cheeks. "Certainly not."

Wu Xie nodded, contemplating how weird his life was right now. Then again, it got very weird on a regular basis. "Okay. Well, I was going to ask you to get a room. But okay. And I don't suppose there's any way I can get notes from your work on pronouncing ancient dialects? Is there a paper? Because I would be fascinated—"

Pangzi and Xiaoge both slapped a hand over his mouth, which he wasn't going to get out of so easily this time. Xiaoge could do something with his fingers so it was like he'd practically wired your jaw shut. Wu Xie couldn't get his tongue out to lick his friends' hands if he tried. On top of that, Xiaoge wouldn't give a shit if Wu Xie licked his hand. He'd just clamp down harder.

"I believe the article was in the spring edition of Volume 32 of Studies in Chinese Linguistics. Your Majesty should certainly not trouble yourself to visit Longcheng on my behalf."

Mouth still covered, Wu Xie gave a thumbs-up. He could work with an article if this guy very clearly did not want to see him ever again. An article was great. And that was a really good journal, too. He was going to send some very strongly worded burns to all of his college friends who hadn't sent him…

Oh right. They all did architecture. None of them read linguistics journals.

Once Zhao Yunlan and his terrifying husband were out of the room, Xiaoge and Pangzi finally let him go. "I knew it!" Wu Xie crowed. "I knew he'd be published! Hah! Isn't this great, you guys?!"

Pangzi wrapped him up in a giant hug, pressing a kiss to his hair and grunting with what sounded like the restrained frustration of ten lifetimes. "You're ridiculous, Tianzhen. Get over here and eat something. I got your uncle to let me use that pristine excuse for a kitchen."

"In just a second. There was one more panel to draw on the cursed box…"

Except just as Wu Xie had picked up his pen, right as he was about to reach for the black innermost layer of the lacquer box, Xiaoge moved past his line of sight, pulling his sweat-damp, clinging t-shirt off with one smooth swing of his arm. Had it been that much work to pin him against the table while he was drawing, Wu Xie wondered. His gaze clung transfixed to the slowly fading black lines of his qilin tattoo on the smooth, jade-like planes of his chest. He almost didn't notice Pangzi steering him away from the cursed box and toward the table set with food where Xiaoge had perched to rest.

Almost. He had the best friends.

Plus, the glow of Xiaoge's skin in the sunlight as he took a sip of water, just a tiny one even though they weren't underground or anything, was still one of the most beautiful things Wu Xie had ever seen.

He gripped the chopsticks Pangzi shoved into his hand and started moving whatever was in his bowl into his face.

It was food.

And it was delicious.

Oh, shit. He'd really been hungry. Why did that never occur to him until he was already eating? "This is fantastic," he told Pangzi, mostly unintelligibly, around a mouthful of Eight Treasures tofu, followed by another.

"Good! Eat. How many times have I told you, the cursed artifacts aren't going anywhere, but lunch gets cold."

"You're right, you're right. Of course you're right."

"This Pangye is always right." His friend heaped more food in Wu Xie's bowl, now that Wu Xie was looking properly and wouldn't spill it everywhere. "You should make me your Imperial Chancellor. Official guy who tells you what's right."

"If you don't lay off, I'll make you a eunuch," Wu Xie grumbled.

But he was sitting at a table, eating home cooking (even if it wasn't their home), with Pangzi laughing his loud, echoing laugh, and Xiaoge looking at them both with soft, happy eyes. When he could come back to that at the end of the day, no little crazy surprises life had to throw at him could really be that bad.