Chapter Four
Nina and Vlad weren’t the only ones upset by our recent weather pattern. As I pulled out from the underground parking garage, it was obvious that confusion riddled the streets. People walked aimlessly around, faces upturned, brows furrowed. I poked my head out of the car and spotted some teenagers sporting bare arms and naked bellies. They zipped past on bicycles, hooting and hollering and loving the sun. Generally, I feared ax murderers and the zombie apocalypse way more than good weather, but for me and my fellow townspeople who were used to seeing spontaneous drag parades, roadside preachers, and trees that spoke, heat was an uncomfortable anomaly and I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with myself. After a few lights I began enjoying the natural warmth so I rolled down all the windows and played “Walking on Sunshine” on an endless loop.
It’s going to be a good day, I told myself.
I was still hopped up on vitamin D and walking on Katrina and the Waves’ special brand of sun-kissed pop perkiness when I skipped into the police station vestibule, and Alex made a beeline for me. He had a wad of file folders pushed under one arm and an expression on his face that killed any hope for a big musical number.
“I’ve been waiting for you. I need to talk to you about the Sutro homicides.”
As I knew Katrina and the Waves never sang about homicide, the music in my heart came to a slamming stop. “What, exactly, about them?”
It was then I noticed the heavy bags under Alex’s eyes; that the glistening blue of his irises had dulled with lack of sleep. “Is everything okay?”
“Sophie!”
Will’s accented voice pinged through my head as I blinked at Alex, trying to make sense of what had just happened—Alex in front of me, Will’s voice behind? I blinked and Alex stiffened; I felt Will’s hand on my shoulder. I spun and gaped at him.
“Where did you come from?”
Will grinned and jutted a thumb over one shoulder. “Lift. I thought you’d be at work by now.”
I looked from Will to Alex and back again, while the heat seemed to ratchet up at least sixty degrees. I felt the sweat bead on my upper lip and at my hairline, could feel my carefully straightened curls begin to spring back into place.
I don’t belong to either of them, I told myself. I’m walking on sunshine....
Uh-oh.
Nothing was said between the two men. There were no overt dirty looks or scowls, but even without taking a single step, Alex and Will seemed to be doing that menacing staring circle that dogs about to sink incisors in do. I should have felt glorious to be the prize that they growled over, but all I felt was an awkward, both-of-these-men-have-seen-me-naked tension. The ex-boyfriend, the almost-boyfriend—and me, not knowing which was which.
I licked my lips and forced a bared-teeth smile, patting Alex on the forearm. “Alex, you remember Will.”
Alex’s ice-blue eyes were fixed on Will’s hazel ones. “You don’t usually forget the guy who stabbed you,” he said evenly.
“Right, mate, sorry ’bout that. Misunderstanding with the whole Vessel–Fallen Angel thing.” He shot out a hand. “We good?”
I tried to read Alex’s expression as his gaze scraped over Will’s outstretched hand. I tried to decipher the nuance in Will’s stance, the inflection in his voice.
“Yeah,” Alex finally said, giving Will’s hand a quick, dismissive shake. “We’re good.”
“Great!”
Will clapped his hands, looking expectantly from Alex to me. “So, what are we Sherlocking this week?”
I shot him a tight-lipped, keep-your-stupid-English-trap-shut look. He just kept grinning.
“We”—Alex pointed to me and then back to himself—“are working on a homicide. Multiple. Nothing that would interest you. No fires, nothing about guarding the universe or whatever.”
Will, firefighter by day, Vessel Guardian by later that day, narrowed his eyes. “I don’t guard the universe. I guard Sophie from the big baddies in the universe. You know, fallen angels and such.”
Alex’s bristle was physical. “I’ve seen Lawson in action. She can take care of herself.”
I jumped in between the two men, who somehow seemed to have gotten closer by the puffing of chests alone. “Um, thank you, Will, for your guardianship. And Alex’s services are excellent, too, and he’s not a bad angel.”
There was a juvenile flash of triumph in Alex’s eyes and just-as-juvenile indignance in Will’s expression. “Your services are great, too, Will.”
I immediately dropped into a bout of lobster-red embarrassment. Because if you want to keep your romantic trysts under wraps, the best thing you could possibly do is thank a man for his services.
“Good Guardian,” I clarified, clapping Will on the shoulder. “You’re a good Guardian and you’re a good angel.”
There was a beat of dead awkward silence that I’m fairly sure lasted just under a millennium. Of all the times the earth couldn’t break open and swallow me whole.
“So,” I said, breaking the trance, “Will, what did you—?”
“What do you want, Will?” Alex broke in. “Lawson and I have a case to get through. Some of us like to protect the population from actual danger.”
There was a slight flare in Will’s nostril, then an equally as slight upturn of his lips. He raised his hand to eye level, a silver key on an Arsenal key chain pinched between thumb and forefinger. “I just needed to give you my key, love,” he said, his eyes focused hard on mine. I felt my mouth drop open as he looked over my head at Alex, then grinned supremely.
I spun. “I’m looking in on his bush. His plant. His house. Will’s going out of town and I’m watering his plant and thank you very much for coming all this way to bring me your key even though you live across the hall and could have very easily slipped it under the door.” I sucked in a huge breath.
“I know,” Will said calmly. “I meant to give it to you this morning at breakfast, but it slipped my mind.” He cut his eyes to Alex, then they flitted back to me.
“Headed out of town, huh, Will? Didn’t know Guardians got vacation. What are you taking—two weeks? Three?”
Will looked at Alex and back at me, then brushed a finger under my chin. “I’ll just be gone a bit. You’re a cop, right? I trust you to take care of my girl.”
I felt myself gape. “Your girl?”
Then I felt Alex’s arm as he slung it around me, the edge of his chin brushing the top of my head sweetly. “I always take care of my girl.”
Now I spun, fairly certain that one more gasp would send me into cardiac arrest. “Your girl?”
Neither seemed to hear me—or see me—as they held each other in steely glares. I was apoplectic, uncertain as to whether I would be in the middle of a massive fistfight or cuddle fest. I snatched Will’s key and mashed the down button on the elevator, then spun to point first at Will and then at Alex. “You’re an ass and you’re an ass,” I yelled, jumping in the elevator once the doors opened.
“Can you believe those idiots?” I screamed into my phone as I paced a bald spot in my office carpet.
“Yes,” Nina said. “What size do you wear?”
“Eight . . . ish. Ugh! I mean, neither Alex nor Will even raise an eyebrow and suddenly—”
“To be fair, Soph, both of them raised more than eyebrows. Or maybe it was you who raised their—”
“Not helping!” I snapped.
“Sorry. Are you more of a heather blue or a heather gray kind of girl?”
“I don’t know, gray, I guess. What the—are you even listening to me? They were acting like animals! One more minute, and one of them would have peed on me.”
“I’m listening, I’m all ears. I am. Have you ever actually watched the Home Shopping Channel? They have some pretty good stuff.”
“Neens!”
“Right. The guys peeing on you.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping to quell the ache that had started before it became a full-blown migraine. “It’s just that for like, my whole life, I couldn’t get a date. Not one!”
“I set you up with that one guy.”
“He was part goat, Nina.”
She harrumphed. “I’ve seen you eat. You might be half-goat yourself.”
“Remind me to drive a stake through your heart when I get home.”
“I wouldn’t fight you. This heat is killing me.”
“Nina?”
“Okay, I’m sorry. But Sophie, can you really blame two guys for fighting over you? Two incredibly hot, save-the-world guys? I mean, in the last couple of months, you’ve gone from sad and wimpy to uber-confident and gun toting. I mean, ask anyone. That’s hot.”
Even though I had just been called sad and wimpy, my toothy best friend spoke the God’s honest truth and it warmed me.
“Aw, Neens.”
“And you’re also just a little bit slutty.”
“Ms. Lawson?”
I was eyebrows up at “just a little bit slutty” when Dixon knocked on my door and poked his head in.
“Gotta go,” I murmured to Nina. “Dixon, hi. I was just . . . giving Nina her assignments.”
Dixon nodded. “She’s staying out of the light?”
“Yeah. Um, sit down, please. Can I help you with something ?”
Dixon pulled the door to a soft close behind him and I felt my spine immediately stiffen. When he turned to look at me there was something in his eyes—in his stance—that was awkward, uncomfortable. In all the time I had known him, I had never seen Dixon misstep or misspeak; he was a pinnacle of confidence and surety, and this air of uncertainty made me nervous.
“Is everything okay?”
Dixon sat, and produced a folded newspaper from his breast pocket. “Do you know about this?” he asked, handing the paper over.
I gave it a cursory scan, my eyes sticking the second they saw the word “murder.” The story was detailing the incident as Sutro Point and the familiar sick feeling in my stomach bubbled.
I nodded. “I know about it.” I pushed the paper aside. “I was there.”
Dixon’s eyebrows went up. “You and Alex?”
I nodded again and Dixon pulled the paper toward him, unfolded it one more time, and slid it back. He stood over me now, and pressed a finger against the page. “Do you know anything about this?”
It was a tiny article buried amongst the blowout sales and freeway closures—a single emboldened headline: MARINA WOMAN SEES CREATURE.
I chuckled as I scanned the small story.
Eleanor Holt of Marina Green called police to report the sighting of a “creature” running through her backyard on Tuesday night. “It ran on two legs like a man, and then on four, like a dog.” Holt said the creature was “about the size of a bear” and covered in fur; it “snarled and growled” like a dog and frightened Holt’s own animals; she said it was after her rabbit hutch. Police searched the premises and found nothing. Holt maintains that she heard howling and crying throughout the night, that her animals remained on edge, and the creature “was probably Bigfoot.”
I looked up at Dixon. “Is there an article about Bat Boy in here, too?”
Apparently Dixon and I didn’t share the same sense of humor. He blinked at me and I refolded the paper and cleared my throat, folding my hands in front of me.
“No, I hadn’t seen that article, nor did I know that Bigfoot lived in the Marina. Must be making good money; I know I can’t afford a place down there.” I grinned.
“So, you’ve not heard of any sightings from any clients or any of your”—Dixon’s eyes went up the ceiling—“other friends?”
“No, Dixon, I haven’t. And you know as well as I do that Bigfoot is a myth.”
Dixon quirked an eyebrow and I sighed. “An actual myth.”
Finally, Dixon’s shoulders slumped a quarter inch and he eyed me. “I ask because there was another killing.”
I stiffened. “There was?”
“It was before the Sutro Point homicide and it was one of our own.”
I swallowed hard, my mental Rolodex scanning through UDA employees, staff members I hadn’t seen lately. “Oh my God, who was it?”
“Octavia.”
“Octavia Aronson? But she’s a—” I held a hand out, gesturing toward Dixon, finding myself strangely unable to say, But she’s a vampire.
“Yes, she was a vampire.”
“But you’re immortal.”
Dixon laughed, a mirthless, short bark. “No one is truly immortal, Ms. Lawson.”
“Right, but . . .”
“Whoever attacked Octavia Aronson was able to kill her.”
I leaned back in my chair, sighing. While the Underworld Detection Agency is the only agency tasked with keeping tabs on underworld inhabitants, the occasional over-world “protection” agency has been known to spring up. Usually a host of Buffy-slash-Blade type vampire killer wannabes or the intermittent Van Helsing throwbacks. They were rarely successful and generally fell out of their chosen paths when a new superhero took favor or Comic-Con ended, but now and again there was enough hubris to cause my clients harm.
“I don’t see what Bigfoot has to do with a vampire slayer.”
Dixon laced his fingers together and pursed his pale lips. “I think whatever Ms. Holt saw was what attacked Octavia. And we both know it wasn’t Bigfoot.”
“She wasn’t staked?”
“She was beheaded.”
Ice water shot through my veins. “Beheaded?”
“Torn apart, actually.”
Though Dixon’s voice was steady and held his usual air of nonchalance, he seemed paler than usual and was still having a hard time getting comfortable.
He was actually upset.
“Why are you telling me this? And why—” I gestured to the newspaper.
He cleared his throat into his fisted hand. “I know that you and Mr. Grace—”
“Alex,” I corrected.
“I know that you and Alex tend to look into certain police cases that—” Dixon cleared his throat again and looked away. “That may pertain to supernatural assailants. And, frankly, I’d like to ask your assistance.”
I felt my eyes bug unnaturally. “You want to ask me for help?”
Finally, Dixon met my gaze. “I’m not certain, but I think we might be dealing with a rogue demon.”
I nodded, unsurprisingly used to the hypothesis.
“I think the demon we’re looking at is a werewolf.”
I sat in silence after Dixon left, my hand hovering over my cell phone. I began to dial Sampson and then hung up before the call connected.
Do I ask him if he’s beheaded any vampires lately?
I almost lost my lunch when the phone rang on its own.
“Sophie Lawson?” I asked into the receiver.
“I’m bored,” Nina whined on her end.
“Well, play a board game or something. What’s Sampson doing?”
“He’s not here.”
“Well, where did he go?”
I heard Nina blow out an annoyed sigh. “I don’t know, Soph. He wouldn’t take his leash. Can’t you come home?”
“Nina, I’m working.”
“What am I supposed to do here?” She stretched out every word to emphasize her all-encompassing boredom.
“Go for a walk,” I said.
“I’ll die!”
“Risk it.”
I hung up and tried my best to focus on the work in front of me, but my thoughts kept creeping back to Sampson, to Alex, to the mercury gradually rising on my Internet weather tracker. A bead of sweat rolled from between my breasts to my belly button and I sighed, making a mental note to check property rates in Antarctica.
By 1 PM I had highlighted the same papers over and over, and my olfactory senses closed in on themselves when Steve, a troll, appeared in my doorway. At barely three feet tall Steve has the ego of a much taller man and the stench of a rancid hunk of blue cheese smeared on a decomposing cow.
And also, he’s in love with me.
“Steve needed to check in on his woman,” Steve told me, his little troll legs bobbing two feet from the ground.
“I’m not your woman, Steve.”
“Sophie will be Steve’s woman,” Steve reported, undeterred. “It is very hot outside. Sophie makes Steve’s temperature rise.” He waggled his bushy caterpillar eyebrows, grinning at me with a mouth full of yellow snaggle-teeth.
“What do you want, Steve?”
“Steve has some information that Sophie might find useful.”
I stiffened and surreptitiously moved my scented candle closer to my face. “Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“Might Sophie enjoy a cold drink?” Steve waved an icy bottle of water in front of me, his grey hand gripping it tightly.
“What’s the information, Steve?”
“Drink?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Sure.”
Steve unscrewed the cap and pressed the bottle to his mouth. I watched his lips part and his narrow knife of a tongue dip into the water. He took a long drink, then held the bottle out to me. “Lovers share everything.”
“So share.”
“Steve saw you at the crime scene.”
My ears pricked. “On Sutro Point?”
He nodded.
“And?”
“And Steve saw the werewolf hunter.”
I crossed my arms, growing annoyed. “So did I. So did Alex.”
Steve thumbed his own chest. “Steve knows why she was there. Steve and Feng made small talk.”
I cocked my head. “You and Feng made small talk? She doesn’t seem the warm and fuzzy, sharing-small-talk type.”
He grinned, supremely satisfied, then looked alarmed. “Don’t worry! Steve likes it rough sometime, but Steve will always return to his beloved.” He licked his lips and my stomach lurched.
“So why was Feng at the crime scene?”
Steve launched himself out of the chair and stuck his arms out. “The clue is in Steve’s pocket.”
“Get out of here, Steve.”
He waggled his left hip at me. “It’s in this pocket right here. Does Sophie want the clue?”
I folded my arms and raised an annoyed, stench-soaked eyebrow. “Sophie doesn’t want anything that badly.”
Steve shrugged and dropped his arms to the side. “Okay then, Sophie will never know what Feng was doing at the crime scene.” He turned on the stacked heel of his cowboy boot and I bit my lip.
“Fine, Steve. What’s the clue?”
He turned around, grinned, his eyes going toward his pocket. I held my breath, crouched down, and dug a single finger into the pocket of Steve’s track pants. A low, approving rumble emanated from his chest while bile rose in mine.
“There’s nothing in here!”
“Oh.” Steve frowned, then jutted out the other hip. “Must be this pocket then. Innocent mistake.”
I groaned, dug into the pocket, and extracted a single silver bullet.
The heft was familiar. The construction was impeccable. It was one of Feng’s.
“Where did you get his?”
“Steve told you: at the crime scene.”
“And what did Feng say?”
“Feng told Steve that her sister Xian knows there’s a werewolf in town. New scent. Old blood. Feng knows who this werewolf is. So does Steve.”
Heat, like a live wire, raced up my spine. Feng knows that Sampson is here? I pushed myself up and began to pace.
“Who else knows, Steve?”
Steve mimicked zipping his lips. “No one else knows. Steve’s good at keeping secrets.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Zip my lips?”
I nodded. “Yeah, right.”
“Seal them?”
“Sure.”
Steve’s zipped lips rolled into a salacious smile. “With a kiss?”
My allegiance to Sampson was huge, but I wasn’t crazy. “Not a chance.”
Steve shrugged and kicked the leg of my visitor’s chair. “Sophie’s love will come in time,” he said before disappearing in a blue-cheese-scented huff.
I rolled the bullet around in my palm, thinking of the tragic crime scene—the bodies destroyed, lives cut short—and then of Sampson.
“No,” I said to my empty office. “I know Sampson had nothing to do with this.” I slipped the bullet into my purse. “And I’m going to prove it.”
I was able to slip out of the UDA without much problem. The heat had thinned out the clientele and was slowing down the employees, and Steve’s odor knocked out everyone else. With each floor the elevator climbed, my confidence grew. I was going to talk to Feng and Xian. Let them know their wires were crossed. Pete Sampson had nothing to do with this murder. Maybe it was another werewolf. Maybe it was a marauding band of horrible humans. Either way, I would get the werewolf hunters to lay off. I felt myself smiling, even.
“Well, don’t you look like the cat that swallowed the canary.” Alex grinned at me from the police station vestibule. It was a smile that went to his eyes, that made their deep blue sparkle with a kind of sexy mischief that cut right through me and did things to my nether regions. Bad things.
Focus, focus, focus.
“Hey,” I said, using my best attempt at nonchalance. “What are you doing out here?”
“Actually, I was heading down to see you.”
Another zing, this one starting at my belly button. “You were?”
Alex nodded and held up a stuffed manila envelope. “I was hoping we could go over some of these pictures from Sutro Point.”
And just like that, the delicious zing of angelic sex was vanquished.
I bit my lip. “I’m actually on my way out. Later?”
“Yeah, sure. Where you headed?”
I looked over my shoulder at the sunbaked parking lot. Think, I commanded my brain, think! I had the introductory paragraph of my Krav Maga class and three whole seasons of Criminal Minds under my belt. I was practically a special agent.
“I’m going for a pap smear.”
Yes. I was Sophie Lawson: Special (Ed) Agent.
I was closing in on Chinatown when I had the overwhelming feeling of being followed. But unless my pursuers were a Vanagon full of photo-snapping German tourists, my intuition was way off—which wouldn’t be totally unheard of for me. I nabbed a space right along Stockton Street and was skipping through Grant’s Gate before the full weight of what I was about to do—and who I was about to see—hit me.
The last time I’d met Feng on her turf, she’d greeted me with a chokehold. I could still feel her fingers, like steel bars, closing in on my windpipe. I hightailed it back to the car, popped the trunk, and shook the knife out of a plastic Big 5 bag.
To answer your question, yes, I have a gun. But the last time I’d used it, I was forced to shoot a person—a sweaty, bat-shit-crazy, murderous person—but still. He screamed. He bled a heavy river of bright-red blood. And although I only shot him in his plentiful ass, the idea that I could have killed this human being—ended his life—was rough on me. So, I bought a knife. Not so much with the intent to gut and fillet; more with the hopeful idea that my brandishing such a weapon would incite a fearful retreat by whomever was ready to pounce.
I was tucking my new weapon into my shoulder bag when the hairs on the back of my neck shot up. I cocked my head, trying to decipher the sound of footsteps, of heavy breathing from the huffing grunt of the Muni buses and the general clatter of downtown.
I was definitely being watched.
“I have a weapon,” I murmured without turning around. “And we’re in a very public place.”
“I have a weapon, too,” he murmured back.
I turned around, groaning. “Alex! What the hell are you doing here? Were you following me?”
He was looking at me with that stupid, sexy half smile, one eyebrow cocked. “Who says I was following you? Maybe I was in the mood for some chow fun.”
I slammed my trunk down hard and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Are you in the mood for some chow fun?”
“Are you asking me out?”
I felt the unattractive flare of my nostrils and Alex broke into a gale of laughter. “Okay, fine. Sorry,” he said.
I eyed him.
“I was following you.”
“I told you I was going to get a pap smear and you follow me? Man, you’ve got some weird sexual fetishes. No wonder they kicked you out of Heaven.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “So you’re honestly telling me you go to a gynecologist in Chinatown?”
I hitched up my chin. “Dr. Kwan does good work. And I get a free egg roll afterward.”
“You’re a nut.”
“And you almost got yourself gutted,” I spat.
“Is that so?”
“Why are you following me?”
Alex fell in step with me. “Because you didn’t tell me where you were going.”
I opened my mouth and put up my hand to answer—as I had, in fact, told him where I was headed—but Alex grabbed it, pushed it down by my side. “You lied. That much I knew.”
“Since when do I have to tell you where I’m going?”
“Since when do you lie to me?”
I jammed my hands in my pockets but didn’t answer him.
“So, where are we headed?”
“If you must know,” I said, slipping around a heap of tourists posing for pictures at Grant’s Gate, “I’m visiting a friend. And no, you can’t come.”
Alex looked almost hurt and I was surprised to feel a pang of sadness. I sighed. “Okay, you can come, but you can’t come inside. She and I need to talk.” I caught his questioning gaze. “Girl stuff.”
I had some questions to ask Feng, and if I was going to keep Sampson’s secret safe, the less people who heard, the better.
Alex just shrugged. “Sounds fair,” he said. “But do I get to know who you’re visiting? Wait.” He splayed his hands. “Let me take a guess. Can I take a guess?”
I rolled my eyes and jutted my chin in the universal sign for Get on with it.
“You’re going to visit the famous werewolf hunter.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. “How did you know that?”
He slung an arm over my shoulder. “I’m an angel. I know all sorts of things.” He pointed to a bakery. “Pineapple bun? You know there’s not actually any pineapple in them, right?”
“I don’t want a pineapple bun.”
“Well, I do want to talk to the werewolf hunter myself. She was at the crime scene, right?”
“Yeah on the crime scene, still no on the pineapple bun. Come on.”
We walked in companionable silence, huffing our way up two hills and zigzagging through tourists and pop-up sundries shops while doing our best to avoid the wilting, fetid stench of vegetables left to rot in alleyways. I stopped when I saw it and sucked in a sharp-edged sigh: Feng’s workshop.
“That’s it? They set up shop in a Chinatown delicatessen?” Alex asked, skepticism all over his face.
The Du family factory—or at least where Feng and Xian did their tracking and hammering out of silver bullets—was creatively disguised as a Chinese delicatessen. According to its peeling, fading sign, the place was called CHINESE/AMERICAN FOOD DIM SUM FREE WI-FI RESTROOM FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY.
At least some of their wares were transparent.
I shrugged. “Great location. Best dim sum in town.”
“Because that’s what everyone wants right after they meet up with their local werewolf hunters.”
Alex went to grab the handle of the door, but I put my hand on his, stopping him. “I think I should go in alone.”
“I don’t think so. It doesn’t look safe.”
I’m not exactly sure how he could surmise whether or not the place was safe as every single inch of the floor-to-ceiling windows was pasted over with sun-faded Chinese calendars from the years before I was born and curl-edged posters of pretty Asian girls hocking everything from videos to glazed crockery with cute, fuzzy kittens poking out of them.
“I know what I’m doing, Alex. And besides, I have a weapon.”
Surprise registered on Alex’s face. “You do? Are you carrying your gun? Weren’t you the one who told me that of all the weapons one of us breathers could have, a gun would be right up there with a teaspoon in terms of effectiveness?”
“I believe I said a gun would be about as effective as a ladle, but yes. And that’s why I have this.” I dug into my shoulder bag and whipped out my brand-spanking-new Big 5 knife.
I’d expected Alex’s eyes to go wide or at the very least, go slightly hooded and bedroomy (what was sexier than a chick with a knife?). I hadn’t expected him to clap a hand over his mouth and break down into near-snort-worthy guffaws.
“What’s so damn funny?”
Alex, shoulders shaking as he tried to control his torrent of laughter, said nothing. He just pointed at my knife.
“You’re really going to sit there laughing like an idiot while a woman brandishes a weapon at you?” I unsheathed the blade, hoping to scare the piss—or at least the giggles—out of him.
He just laughed harder, tears slipping down his cheeks.
“What the hell is so funny? Don’t think I won’t use this on you!”
Alex’s eyes shot down the length of the blade. “To do what? Gut me?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Maybe.”
“You know what this is for, don’t you?”
I looked down at the blade in my hand. It did suddenly seem slightly less menacing, but it was a blade nonetheless, and blades were made for gutting people.
“It’s for scaling fish,” he said.
Or for scaling fish.
“What?” I looked at the damn thing in my hand again, squinting at the tiny bass imprinted on the side. “It’s a bass knife.”
“For fish.”
So I thought it was a bass-style knife. As in, “Bass! The serial killer fish of the lakes!”
Alex took the knife out of my hand, his finger going over the portion of the blade that carved upward.
“You hook the fish right here. Then you pull it down and fillet it with this part.” He flopped the knife over. “This is how you descale it.”
I snatched it out of his hand. “Well, that might be what it’s for in your world. But in the Underworld, things aren’t always what they seem.”
Alex looked unconvinced. “So you’re telling me Big 5 sells magic bass knives?”
“How’d you know this was a Big 5 knife?”
“Do me a favor,” Alex said, effectively ignoring me and going for the door again. “Leave the weaponry to me. Unless, of course, we run into a giant bass monster in the next twenty minutes.”
I shoved my knife back into my purse and glowered at him. Note to self, I thought, once this whole werewolf incident is over, prove to Alex that a fish-scaler can double as a fallen angel gutter . . . .
“I’m going in alone.”
“No. You’re not.”
“I know what I’m doing, Alex. And besides, I have a—”
“Fish scaler.”
I put my hands on my hips. “I was going to say a plan, jackass. I have a plan.”
“And that is?”
I blew out a sigh. “Well, if you must know, I was going to march in there, paste on my friendliest and most innocent smile, and ask to speak to Feng.”
“Isn’t that kind of what you did the last time? You know, the time you nearly got choked to death?”
“That wasn’t my friendly smile.”
“Well, get used to having company because I’m coming in with you.”
I shrugged. “Fine. But I talk to Feng on my own.”
Alex nodded, considering. “We’ll see.”
“But be prepared for total animation domination.”
I yanked open the door and smiled when Alex’s jaw dropped.
“What the hell?”
Though the sign on the outside of the building advertised CHINESE/AMERICAN FOOD, FREE WI-FI and BATHROOMS FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY, the inside was bright and cheery and looked like a scene out of an episode of Sailor Moon. Brightly colored Formica tables covered every bit of the available floor space and crammed at each table was a selection of glossy-haired people in various states of cheery Anime dress. There were schoolgirls in knee socks and over-the-shoulder nunchucks, sailor girls with wide eyes, argyle socks, and plastic swords, and the occasional guy staring out under extra-long bangs and guyliner.
Alex leaned close to me, his lips tickling my earlobe. “These are the terrifying werewolf hunters who nearly choked the life out of you?”
“Shh,” I hissed.
One of the animaniacs stood up with a sweet grin on her face. She was dressed in a crisp navy and white sailor suit with a kicky red tie. Her red and white striped knee socks were tucked into the hooker version of little-girl Mary Jane shoes and her glossy waist-length hair was pulled into two adorable ponytails that framed her deep set, almond-shaped eyes.
Eyes that immediately clouded over when she recognized me.
“I remember you,” she said, her voice preschool-kid sweet while her eyes shot daggers. “You were here before.” She circled an index finger a half-inch from my chest and then her eyes—and her pointing finger—went to Alex. “You were not.”
“It’s Xian, right? I’m Sophie. I’m not sure we actually were introduced the first time.” I paused, my mouth still hanging dumbly open as I followed the lines of heat that went from Xian to Alex. Her cherry-red lips were pursed, her finger still hovering just in front of Alex’s chest. I watched in horrifying slow motion as Xian’s lips parted ever so slightly. The tip of her tongue darted out and slid across her lips, leaving a glossy sheen around her cupid’s bow.
“So anyway,” I went on, somehow thinking that if I spoke louder, the sex spell would be broken, “this is my friend.” I wrapped my hands around his upper arm. “My dear friend, Alex.”
Alex was stiff, either locked in Xian’s steamy gaze or completely terrified of being pummeled by the sexy sailor. I gave him a rather hard—yet friendly—shake. “I’d like to see Feng.” I spun on my heel, my fingers digging into Alex’s flesh. “Is her office still back here?”
I felt Xian’s tiny hand on my shoulder; she dragged me back with the strength of a linebacker. “Why do you need Feng?”
I stumbled backward, nearly falling against Alex. He steadied me and I quickly learned the daggers that Xian was shooting at me earlier were her kind, fluffy daggers. Her entire countenance changed and I was pretty sure that I was about to be gutted by a life-sized cartoon character and her band of merry ani-men. I straightened and looked Xian in the eye.
“What do you two want with Feng?”
“Actually, Xian, it’s just me.” I put my hand on my chest and smiled slyly, rubbing my tongue over my bottom lip and dropping my voice. “I want to talk to Feng. If you don’t mind, Alex would like to stay out here with you. He’s a huge fan of anime.”
Xian brightened, and I was suddenly off her radar. She grabbed Alex by the hand. “Come with me.”
I saw the terrified look on Alex’s face as I zipped down the back hall.
Take that, angel.