She shot me a death glare before flopping down on the couch, pushing out her lower
lip. “ I’m going to die in this apartment. A recluse.”
“Neens, I’ve said it a million times: go out at night.” My stomach gurgled, the image
of last night’s snarling wolf flashing before my eyes. “Or maybe try the fire escape.”
She turned her bitter stare on me. “Not helping.” She brightened, resting her chin
in her palms. “So, what’s on the crime-fighting agenda today?”
I jammed the other Pop-Tart half in my mouth, feeling the crumbs tumble over my chin
and sprinkle on my chest. “Walking the dog and grocery shopping. Not part of the crime
fighting but very necessary.” I grinned and ChaCha yipped her approval.
I let the sun drench my shoulders as I walked while ChaCha trotted proudly in front
of me. I was doing my best to smash the last twenty-four hours out of my brain, and
I was doing it with a sundress that covered my Mort-inflicted wound and a big floppy
hat.
I was trying to negotiate an earth-friendly bag full of groceries—just the staples:
marshmallow pinwheels and cantaloupe—and ChaCha, who felt the incessant need to greet
every vertical object with a raise of the leg, when my cell phone chirped, upsetting
my entire careful balance.
“What, Nina?” I groaned, while pulling ChaCha after an errant cantaloupe.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on my way back from the grocery store. What’s wrong?” I stopped, letting the
cantaloupe lob its way down Nob Hill. “Are you okay? Is Sampson okay?”
“Yes, Sophie, I’m fine and so is your friend
Howard
,” she stressed the name, “But your other friends popped in to see you.”
“Friends?” Something in the pit of my stomach hardened. Sans Nina, Alex, and Will,
I didn’t have friends. “What friends?”
I could hear Nina move around on the other end of the phone line. “Pete and Re-Pete,”
she hissed.
“Pete and Re-Pete?” I asked. Then, a shot of knowing. “You don’t mean Feng and Xian?”
“Oh, but I do.”
I stopped cold and ChaCha danced around me in what I can only assume was a yip-yapping
attempt to corral my fruit. “They’re there now?”
“Yes,” Nina said loudly. And then, dropping her voice to a low, barely audible hiss,
“And they’re weird. Get home. Now.”
My heart was throbbing in my throat and my dress was soaked clean through by the time
I got back to my apartment. ChaCha was panting and slowing down, but true to her traitorous
terrier nature, sprung back to yip-yapping life the second I opened the front door.
She bolted for Feng and Xian, who stood stalwart, collective eyes narrowed at me.
I dropped my groceries and lunged for my errant dog, semi-certain that Feng would
level a revolver at the thing, and pop her with a silver bullet.
“That your dog?” Feng said.
“Oh!” Xian threw her arms open, the gathered puff of her baby pink sleeves hugging
her ears. Today she was dressed as a trampy Strawberry Shortcake knock-off, complete
with striped tights and stacked Mary Janes. “She’s so cute!” She snatched ChaCha from
the floor and nuzzled the tiny pup to her face, her high-pitched pixie laugh ringing
through the apartment.
“Well, this is weird,” Nina said from her perch on the couch.
“Feng, Xian! So nice to see you! Why don’t you sit down?” I gestured to our slightly
puckered and mostly threadbare Ikea couch, and noticed that Nina had set out a spread
for our guests. “Why don’t you help yourself to some . . .” I paused. “Oyster crackers.
And since when did we have orange Crush?”
“We didn’t come to visit,” Feng said, her lips held in what I was beginning to believe
was a permanent snarl. “Xian sensed something.”
Nina, Feng, and I all swung our heads to Xian, who had buried hers in ChaCha’s belly.
“Xian?”
Xian looked up and batted her giant eyelashes. Her candy-pink lips slid up into a
coy smile. “I love puppies.”
“If only,” Nina muttered.
“Um, not that it’s not great to have you drop in this way, but, um—”
“What the hell are you two doing here?” Nina asked.
I shot her a scathing look that she batted away, mumbling, “The heat makes me crazy.”
“So, what are you two doing here?”
Xian went right on scratching and cooing at ChaCha as though I hadn’t spoken, but
Feng pinned me with her hard brown eyes.
“The wolf.”
I swallowed hard. “Beg your pardon?”
She glared up at me. “The werewolf. Are you going to give him up or are we going to
have to take him from you?”
I pointed to ChaCha. “That’s a terrier.”
“And she was a gift,” Nina said indignantly. “And now a part of the family.”
“We don’t want your dog,” Feng said, expression unchanged. “You know what we want.
The
dog.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest and shot my own hard stare back at Feng. “Then
why did you come
here
?”
Feng cocked a challenging eyebrow. “Do I really have to say it?”
“I thought werewolf hunting was in your DNA and she”—I jutted my chin toward Xian,
who blew a raspberry on ChaCha’s dog belly—“was some amazing tracker. Isn’t coming
to me for help like cheating?”
Anger covered Feng’s face like a veil, her features going even more sharp and hard
than usual. “I’m not asking you for help. I was giving you an opportunity.”
I barked a ridiculous laugh. “Really? Well, I appreciate the gesture, but I’d appreciate
it more if you’d get the hell out of my house.”
Feng pressed her lips together so hard all the color drained from them. She stood
for a beat, her almond-shaped eyes challenging mine, before she hissed over her shoulder,
“Come, Xian.”
Xian reluctantly set ChaCha right on her feet, then stood up, straightening her puffy
pink skirt and trudging behind her sister.
“Your puppy is absolutely adorable,” she whispered to me.
Feng’s nostrils flared and her whole body stiffened as if she had just smelled something
awful. She leaned into me so her nose was just a hairbreadth from mine. “When you
find what is left of your friend after I tear him apart, just remember that I came
here, offering you the opportunity to turn him in and give him a respectable, single-bullet
death.”
I blinked, working to absorb the weight of Feng’s words. “Wha—?”
“Don’t worry.” She grinned, pushing aside a sliver of baggy T-shirt to show me the
gun at her waist. “I’ll be sure to tell him that Sophie Lawson said ‘game on.’”
I stood, dumbstruck, watching Xian and Feng disappear down the hall when Nina snapped
the door shut. “I don’t like your new friends, Soph.”
I glared at her.
“Sorry!” She pulled me close to her in an ice-cold embrace. “I know how hard this
must be for you. I know how much you love Sampson, and it must be killing you to think
about turning him in.”
I struggled out of Nina’s hug and pushed her back. “You actually think Pete Sampson
is guilty? You think he’s capable of something like this?”
Nina shoved a lock of dark hair over her shoulder. “I just don’t understand why you
insist on putting yourself in danger all the time.”
I felt my jaw drop open. “I don’t insist. I’m helping a
friend.
”
Nina looked back at me, quiet.
I shook my head. “You
always
think the worst of people.”
Nina’s expression didn’t change; it remained soft, with the slightest bit of yearning
sympathy in the eyes. “I’ve been around a long time, Sophie. I’ve had more experience
than you have.” She reached out and touched her hand to mine. “You know what I love
about you breathers? No matter what happens, no matter how much evil and ugliness
you see every day, most of you still hang on to this unyielding belief that people
are basically good.”
“And once you lose your soul you lose perspective?”
Nina licked her lips. “No. You gain it.”
Nina turned on her heel and was gone in an instant, her weightless body not making
a sound.
I sighed, and leaned against the closed door. ChaCha came trotting over and stood
on her popsicle-stick hind legs, doing her the-world-is-a-happy-place dance. I swooped
her up.
“People are good,” I whispered into her fuzzy muzzle. “Right?”
I waited a good twenty minutes until I was sure that Feng and Xian had left the building—and
the general vicinity—before changing out of my sundress and swapping my floppy hat
for a Giants cap. I stuffed my shoulder bag with my bass knife, a Taser, a granola
bar, and two packages of Juicy Fruit before I paused, my hand hovering over my gun.
I wasn’t chasing demons this time.
I snatched the gun and the bullets, swung the bag over my shoulder, and closed my
bedroom door.
“Geez, Nina, you scared the crap out of me.”
She was standing dead in front of me, silent. She blinked at me. “You’re going to
need this.” She opened her hand, a flashlight rolling in her palm. There was a glossy
black and white
SOPHIE LAWSON
label stuck to it.
“Why do you think I’ll need a flashlight?” I gestured toward the bright sliver of
light that was peeking through the blackout curtains.
“Because I know that you’re going to do whatever it takes to prove that Sampson is
innocent, that I’m jaded, and that you can save the world.” Her cherry-red lips quirked
up into a knowing smile that showed off her sharp incisors. “I count on it.”
This time the lump in the back of my throat wasn’t accompanied by fervent terror or
a weighted bladder. “I love you, Neens,” I said, pulling her into a hug.
I poked my head into the stairwell in true sleuth fashion, craning my head to see
if there were any traces of Xian and Feng still lurking in my building. I found a
stack of discarded Thai menus and someone’s left shoe but no Du sisters, so I tapped
gently on Will’s door.
“Sampson?” I stage whispered into the jamb. “Sampson, are you in there?”
I pressed my ear up against the door when I got no response and listened intently
for any movement inside. Nothing.
If I was going to take Sampson out of the prime suspect spot, I was going to have
to do it on my own.
I hiked up my shoulder bag and headed down to the underground parking, feeling the
adrenaline begin to trickle through my body. By the final flight of stairs I was doing
my own Shaft walk, my own personal soundtrack blaring “Eye of The Tiger” in my head.
I was less enthusiastic when I got to my car, unable to recall any awesome crime fighters
or sleuths who drove dented in Hondas with the word VAMPIRE spray-painted across the
hood.
So much for staying incognito.
I pushed my key into the ignition but didn’t start the car. Instead, I stared at my
cell phone, feeling the gnawing need to call Alex, to make things right.
But what would I say?
I couldn’t come clean about Sampson just yet. And I couldn’t tell him that I’d never
meant to hurt him when I was with Will.
I quashed down the guilt, the need, the unease that I felt.
I need to help Sampson,
I told myself.
I can make things right with Alex when this is through.
It was late Saturday afternoon so cars clogging the city streets were mainly the out-of-state
kind that slowed in front of every big building and changed lanes repeatedly. Two
carloads of people in I
HEART
SF sweatshirts rolled down their windows to take cell phone pictures of my car, what
they undoubtedly believed was one of those wacky SF artist’s statements.
I was overwhelmingly happy to turn into the police station parking lot, where my car
was quite at ease amongst the other criminal junkers. Once parked, I raced into the
station, doing my best to keep my eyes on my shoes and look as unassuming as possible.
I hopped into the elevator, typed in my weekend code—the Underworld Detection Agency
is strictly a Monday through Friday gig—and gripped a lock of my hair, twisting it
furiously over my finger. It was the one nervous tic I had yet to break.
The doors slid open at the Agency and I poked me head out. “Hello?” I asked. “Anyone
here?”
When no one—and nothing—answered me, I took a tentative step out, doing my best to
stay in the darkness. Deserted and bathed in yellow emergency lights, the office looked
like any other office waiting room, but tonight there was something eerie about it,
as though every creature, every feared legend and boogeyman, were lurking in the darkened
corners, jaws at the ready, just waiting to attack. The silence was overwhelming,
oppressive, and the heavy beating of my heart seemed to echo in the darkness, ricocheting
off every dim wall.
I steeled myself against my nervous twitter and slipped down the main hallway, taking
the stairs to the absolute bowels of the building—and possibly of the earth.
There was a file room down there—it was a spot where paper files went to die and where
Vlad and Kale would make out when they thought no one would notice.
I pushed open the door and was greeted with the scent of mildew and general age. The
room was enormous and impossibly black; it seemed to swallow up the meager sliver
of yellow light from my flashlight. I stepped into the room, hearing the ground creak
under my feet, a drip in an overhead pipe. I was acutely aware of my breathing and
everything in my body was on high alert as I pushed the door closed behind me. I couldn’t
shut it all the way, feeling as though the click of the door and the shadowed depths
of the room would swallow me whole.
Though—or possibly since—the UDA has been around in various iterations since the medieval
times, our filing system was woefully behind and every bit of paranormal information
ever produced seemed to be housed here. Also, no one was ever able to agree on how
to create a copasetic filing system with the paper documents, stone tablets, and the
occasional indenture carved into human bone. Hence, our file room was part business
typical, part Halloween superstore.