My breath felt short and shallow, and I could feel the damp heat on my palms. “And
I need a favor. I need you to call off the hunt.”
Feng’s lips cracked into an amused smile and she waved her hand around her. “You know
what we do here, right?”
I slowly snaked my arms in front of me, crossing them at my chest while I kept my
eyes firm on Feng’s. “I know exactly what it is you do here, Feng. You’re werewolf
hunters. That’s not in question. Now I’m asking you for a favor. I need you to lay
off this particular wolf, this particular hunt.”
“Why?” She looked me up and down, her expression making it obvious that she wasn’t
all that impressed by what she was seeing. “Does Pippi Werewolf Hunter wanna take
a shot?”
I cocked my head, a lock of my red hair tumbling over my shoulder as if on cue. “I’m
not screwing with you, Feng. You need to stop hunting this wolf. He’s not one of them.”
Feng’s brows went up. “He’s not a wolf?”
“He is a wolf. . . .”
She shrugged. “Then he’s one of them.”
“You don’t understand. He’s not—he’s not bad. He’s one of the good guys.”
Feng picked up one of her own handmade silver bullets and spun it in her hand. “I
think those two women on the trail would beg to differ.”
I sucked in a breath and clenched my teeth. “He had nothing to do with them.”
“Cuz he’s one of the good guys, huh? So, what? Werewolf vegetarian? Is that like a
vampire with a soul or with a movie deal?”
“He didn’t do it,” I said again.
“Then who did?”
“It could have been anyone. Serial killer. Psycho. Jealous boyfriend, angry Justin
Bieber fan, Satanic ritual—”
Feng’s voice was low, steady, and her eyes were fixed hard on mine. “Did you see those
women, Pippi?”
I opened my mouth to answer Feng, but she shook her head and held up a silencing hand.
“Not women,” she said. “There wasn’t enough left of them for anyone to know that they
were human, let alone women.”
My saliva soured and I willed myself to think of something other than the desecrated
bodies.
“Their blood was muddy. There was more of it on the ground—mixed into the dirt, ground
into the grass—than there was on the corpses. One of them—it looked like she may have
been blond—was missing an eye.”
My stomach bubbled and I felt myself step back as if trying to get away from Feng’s
disturbing description.
“It had been ripped clean out of her head. Her eye, half her cheek.”
I bit down hard on my bottom lip, feeling the hot, metallic taste of my own blood
filling my mouth.
“Tell me how something human could do something like that.”
I shook my head. “People do heinous things.” My voice was a bare, unconvinced whisper
and the thought—so brief—flitted through my mind:
Who am I trying to convince?
“Sometimes people do. But people don’t have the kind of strength it took to pull this
kind of torture off.”
“But a gang—”
Feng’s barking laugh echoed through the room. “Tell yourself whatever you want. I’ve
seen firsthand what a werewolf will do.” She looked sad for a fleeting moment, her
eyes going glassy and losing their focus on me.
“But not all of them.”
“I’m not about to take any chances finding out. They’re all capable of this kind of
violence. It’s what a werewolf was bred for. Sooner or later, they’ll all come to
this.”
“No.” I shook my head, a sudden burst of strange confidence surging through me. “No,
not this one. Maybe others but not this one. The werewolf you’re looking for has been
like a father to me. His name is—”
“His name is Pete Sampson. Six foot two inches tall. Turned in 1989 by Addison Brown
of San Francisco, California.” Feng licked her lips. “Since deceased. Interested in
learning anything else?” Feng flashed the paper toward me and I was able to catch
a few snippets of the information printed there: home address, driver’s license and
license plate numbers, car and make.
I shuddered to think what else was contained on that paper.
I wet my lips. “Can I see that?”
Feng cocked her head but didn’t hand it over.
I was astonished, but did my best to keep my focus. “If you know so much about him,
then you know he’s not a threat.”
Feng stood up and leaned across the table. “Look, Pippi, I don’t know if you noticed—and
frankly, I don’t care whether or not you did—but we’re not in the business here of
threat estimation. We do the threatening. So I don’t really care if your canine buddy
there is a flesh-eating werewolf or a tutu-wearing lap dog when he’s changed. I have
a contract. I have a wolf. I will finish both off.” She blinked. “And I don’t fail.”
I felt my stomach churning, the bile rising in the back of my throat, but I worked
hard to keep my stance. “What do you mean, a contract?”
Feng looked at me on a sigh, doing nothing to hide her obvious annoyance. “We hunt
dogs. All of them. And sometimes, someone hires us to put a certain pup on the top
of our list.”
“Someone hired you to get Sampson? Who? Who would do that?”
Feng stared at me for one second longer than was comfortable before sitting back in
her chair and pulling a ledger and a pencil toward her. “We’re done here,” she said
without looking up. “Go away. And I’m sorry in advance for the loss of your friend.”
I opened my mouth to respond to Feng, but my head was in such a fog that all I could
do was close my mouth dumbly, then let myself out of her office. I stumbled into the
alley where the heat had gone oppressive and sticky in the short time I had been inside.
It pressed against my chest and stole my breath, and the stench of sun-rotted vegetables
was everywhere; I felt it on my skin, in my hair.
When I walked into the delicatessen, each of the anime-clad clientele whipped their
heads to look at me. Alex’s eyes were narrowed and angry at first, but upon seeing
mine, they went wide and concerned.
“I’ve got to go,” I heard him say, his voice sounding a million miles away. “This
has been . . . fun.”
I watched Xian get up and grasp his hand. She batted her eyelashes and kicked the
stacked toes of her enormous Mary Jane shoes against the scuffed linoleum. “Can’t
you stay just a little bit longer?” she asked, cherry red bottom lip pushed out.
“We have to go now.” My voice cut out through the din of anime conversation, broke
over the whining hum of an overworked air conditioner.
Alex shrugged his shoulders and broke away from Xian, following me out the door.
“You couldn’t have done that, like, twenty minutes ago?”
I pressed my index fingers against my temples and rubbed tiny circles.
“I was just kidding, Lawson. It wasn’t that bad. If I go LARP with them this weekend,
Xian said I could be the Pirate Prince of Pettigrew. Whoever that is.” He pressed
his lips together in a sweet smile, then cocked his head, his blue eyes clouding.
I was blinking furiously.
“Lawson?”
I wasn’t going to cry. I hated crying.
It was one of the things I was known best for.
“I take it Feng wasn’t amenable to giving you any intel?”
I sniffled. “No. Not at all.”
Alex didn’t look totally shocked and that annoyed me.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest and Alex fell in step beside me. “You didn’t
think she would?”
“First if all, it’s not that I don’t trust your powers of investigation. But Lawson,
they’re werewolf hunters. Generations old or whatever. Did you really think she was
just going to let you in on her plan? No offense, but you and your job? Kind of diametrically
opposed to her and her job. She probably doesn’t think you’re on her side with this
one.”
“On her side?” I spat. “I’ll never be on her side.”
“Weren’t we trying to make sure that if a wolf was the perpetrator of the homicides,
he gets taken care of?” Alex asked. He paused for a beat, then licked his bottom lip
and shifted his weight. “We’re on the same side, right?” He had the gall to look apologetic
and that burned an angry hole in my gut. I seethed silently until Alex sighed.
“Did she at least let you know if she was working that day at Sutro? Is she actually
tracking a werewolf ?”
I gritted my teeth and fisted my hands. “Not anymore,” I said, shooting down the sidewalk.
I situated myself in the car while Alex got himself inside and fiddled with the radio
until he found a Giants game. He cheered when the fans cheered and then looked at
me quizzically.
“Really? You take me to my first game and you don’t even care that we’re creaming
the Rockies?”
“Huh? Oh.” I shook my head. “Is there any new information?”
Alex’s eyebrows raised and pinched together. “It’s a live game, Lawson.”
I blew out a larger than necessary huff and clicked the radio off. “Not the game.
The crime scene. Anything new?”
Alex flicked on his blinker and hung a sharp right, his black SUV veering toward the
police department. “We can check. Can I ask you something, though?”
“Sure.”
“Why are you so interested in this case?”
I put on my super-cool-Sophie face. “What are you talking about? I care about all
of our cases.”
Alex didn’t hide his amusement, but he didn’t look at me either. “Our cases?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.
Your
cases. Cases that affect the city in which I live. Cases that involve rabid maniacs
tearing unsuspecting women apart limb from limb. But they are
your
cases. Happy now?”
I felt the car lurch forward as Alex leaned on the gas. “It was just a question.”
I was still unnerved and uncomfortable by the time I got into my car. Feng was going
after Sampson and she wouldn’t let up.
If I could at least find out who sponsored the contract, maybe I could buy Sampson
some time,
I thought.
But time for what?
I wanted to help Sampson. I didn’t want him to run anymore. But with Feng and Xian
and the entire Anime Army, did he even have a chance? Did we?
I clicked on my earpiece and dialed Sampson’s cell phone, listening to ring after
ring until it went to voice mail. I groaned and clicked off the phone, then cranked
up the radio, hoping the latest pop star du jour would take my mind off the images
seared into my brain, the images that Feng recalled so readily.
My heart was doing a spastic
I’ve ruined everything
pump by the time I pulled into my underground parking space, pop princess cooing
about young love and butterflies notwithstanding. My eyes were wet and I took the
stairs two at a time, huffing by the time I got to the third-floor landing, my heart
threatening to bulge through my eyes, my blouse sticking to my sweat-damp bra.
I rapped on Will’s door, crossed myself, swore that I would lay off the pinwheels
and lay on the treadmill, and tried to chase away the I’m-responsible-for-almost-killing-everyone-I-know
vibe. By the time I was able to talk myself off the proverbial ledge and out of my
pity party hat, I realized that I was standing in front of Will’s door, still knocking,
door still tightly closed.
I dropped my arm, flexing my now-bruised knuckles and pressed my ear to the cool wood,
holding my breath, listening.
Nothing.
“Sampson?” I hissed against the door hinge, hoping my throaty whisper would sail through
the miniscule crack and directly to Sampson’s canine ears. “Sampson, are you in there?”
I glanced at my watch and told myself that Sampson was obviously just out grabbing
a before-the-moon-rose bite, but something—a tiny, niggling bit of doubt—inched at
my periphery.
“No,” I scolded myself. “He’s innocent.”
If I were a true private eye—one of those gun toting, leather wearing rebel chicks—I
would have spun on my heel and jumped on to my Harley, then beaten some answers out
of a low-life in a bar somewhere to locate Sampson and our unsub.
But I wasn’t that girl.
I might have better aim now, but my wardrobe was full of synthetic materials and my
head was a cavernous hollow in the “prove Sampson innocent” department. And motorcycle
rides made my privates hurt.
Instead, I gave a dejected sigh, turned on my heel, and sunk my key into my own lock.
I expected the usually loose-hinged door to pop open, but it stuck. I pushed it and
it moved—slowly. I felt the small stirrings of panic starting in my limbs.
“Nina?” I called, imagining the non-look in her vacant eyes as her dead—dead for real
this time—body sat slumped against our front door. “Nina!”
My heart clanged like a fire bell when the door was yanked open and Nina blinked at
me, her face set in what I had come to know as her “what the hell is it now?” look.
“What?”
I fell into her, wrapping my arms around her, relishing the chill I felt as her skin
touched mine. She shook me off her.
“I thought you were dead.”
She cocked her head, a waist-length lock of glossy black hair tumbling over her collarbone.
“That’s sweet.”
“I thought your body was crushed against the door, pinning it shut.” I peered around
the door. “What was crushed against the door, pinning it shut?”
Nina pulled me in by my wrist, her eyes lighting up with her grin. “Tah dah!” Her
spokes-model arms were gesturing toward a tower of cardboard boxes.
I pointed. “What’s that?”
Nina’s grin didn’t falter. “It’s a hibachi. And a barbecue set. And a
Kiss the Cook
apron. We should have more barbecues.”
“I don’t cook and you don’t eat. And aren’t you afraid of fire?”
She shrugged, noncommittal. Her eyes focused on the stack and she plucked a smaller
box from the tower. She gave it a curious sniff, then a shake, and finally ripped
off a string of packing tape.