“I don’t know what to do, either, love. Is this ... Are you sure this is the right place?”
I unfurled the paper, having swiped it after covering it in crumbs. “Number 32.” I looked around. “This has to be it.”
Du—the Chinese/American/Japanese restaurant—was, apparently, where wide-eyed Japanese anime went to mate. Life-sized schoolgirls, with melon-sized boobs pressed up to their chins, were painted in all manner of fighting poses wielding swords, along with their pigtails and knee socks. The blue Formica tabletops were covered in figurines of the same, and seated around those tables were wide-eyed, big-boobed anime knockoff people and their sailor boy counterparts.
“Are they dead?” Will whispered out of the side of his mouth.
“Hello! May I help you?”
The woman behind the counter had waist-length black hair pinched into a glossy ponytail. Her straight-angle bangs met thin eyebrows over eyes that were a dazzling, unnatural lavender; bits of brown swirled behind the colored lenses.
Her smile was wide and welcoming, and she was dressed like a 1950s diner waitress—if ’50s diner waitresses doubled as schoolgirl-style sex kittens. Will was staring and I gave him a shove.
“Um, right, then. We’re looking for ...” Will’s eyes cut to me, and I gave him a small nod—the universal sign for “don’t just gape at the manga cover girl, talk!”
“It was suggested that we, uh ...”
“We are looking for Xian Lee.”
The girl behind the counter stiffened, causing her ponytail to sway with the sharp movement. “Why?”
“Do you know him?”
“Why do you want to know?”
I leaned forward so that I was a hairsbreadth from the anime girl. “I’m from the Underworld.”
Anime girl blinked at me, and it was hard to discern which one of us was crazier.
“Do you know Dixon Andrade? Vlad LaShay?”
Her eyes widened and she stiffened almost imperceptibly, but just enough to make her long, thick ponytail bob again.
“What do you want?”
I licked my lips. “I work at the Underworld Detection Agency. Right now, my friends are dying, and it’s only going to get worse for them—and maybe for you—if you don’t help us.”
The girl stepped back. Her shoulders slumped a bit with the movement. She held my eye and studied me for a full minute before calling out something in Chinese that I vaguely feared was “Anime friends, eviscerate the nonbelievers.” But, to my relief, an older man came from the hallway. His slippered feet shuffled against the industrial tile. He waved us in and we followed through the kitchen, toward a ratty screen door. The wood was tarry with decades of cooking fat; the rusty hinges barely keeping the door on.
The old man pushed through and so did I; Will hung back in the dank kitchen, letting the screen door work its slow snap shut.
“Come on,” I hissed to Will.
Will shook his head slowly, silently mouthing the word “Mogwai.”
I opened the door again and yanked him by his shirtsleeve. We caught up to the old man, who gestured toward a door, then turned around and walked away.
“What are we supposed to do here?” I asked.
“There’s a door, I’m guessing we open it.”
Will looked at me, rubbing his jaw with his palm. “Vlad just handed you this information, didn’t he?”
I looked around the dim alley, heard the plink! of water dripping off one of the fire escapes into a greasy pool on the ground. “Yes.”
“How do you know he’s not leading us into a trap?”
I stopped, cement filling my body. “I don’t.”
Will’s eyes were wide, focused. “So what should we do?”
I swallowed hard. “We trust him.”
I sucked in a slightly nervous breath—not due to Mogwai fear, by the way—and pushed open the door. The room was large and empty, with hardwood floors. When I blinked, a woman was standing in front of me. She looked nearly identical to the anime girl, save the sexy-waitress costume and the surrounding of big-eyed followers. Even though the room was dim, I could see that her hair was black, waist length and stick straight. Her eyes narrowed and menacing.
I was about to offer a hand—a shiny, friendly “I’m Sophie Lawson, here to save the Underworld” hand—when I felt hands around my throat. Suddenly I was vaulting backward, crushed against Will, who was crushed against the wall. I kicked out and landed a blow to the woman’s gut; she doubled over and let me go. I gasped, drinking in as much air as I could while Will rushed her. He struck and she blocked; he rushed and she ducked. There was a spinning, dizzying sequence of Will-then-her and her-then-Will; and suddenly Will was pinned to the floor. The only sound in the room was the ominous cock of a gun—its barrel lined up with Will’s nose.