We walked the rest of the way up the bluff in silence. I fell behind and trailed Alex until we reached the crest. “Geez,” he muttered. “Doesn’t anyone work anymore?”
I followed his gaze to the looky-loos being herded back by the police and their ineffectual metal fencing. The crowd size had at least doubled while we’d been checking out the bodies, and a steady stream of cars was clogging the street and the mouth of the parking lot.
I opened my mouth to respond but froze dead when the girl at the very front of the crowd caught my eye. Her long, dark hair was impossibly straight and glossy, barely rustled by the wind. She stood still, her back ramrod straight, her knuckles white from her death grip on the metal top of the fence. Everything about her said she was ready to jump, to fight, that at the slightest provocation this woman would snap. Everything about her was on high alert.
“Feng,” I whispered.
Feng turned as though she’d heard me and her razor-sharp gaze split me in half. There was fire in her eyes and a determined angle to her mouth.
“Did you say something, Lawson?”
“Uh—” I stumbled. “Nah. Nothing.” I pulled open the car door and slid into the warm cab; Alex did the same. “I just think I know someone in the crowd.”
Alex dipped his key in the ignition and the car roared to life. “Demon or breather?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Nice with the lingo. She’s a breather.” I gestured toward Feng with my chin. “Right there. Up front. She’s Chinese with the long hair.”
Alex shook his head appraisingly. “She’s pretty.”
I got a weird stab of jealously but shrugged it off. “She’s an assassin.”
Alex clicked the engine off and he turned in his seat. “An assassin?”
I nodded, my eyes still on Feng, who had lost interest in me and was staring back toward the crime scene. She looked incredibly calm and statuesque among the other onlookers; most were shuffling, moving, jockeying for a better view. But Feng stood still, her eyes focused as if she could see something no one else in the crowd could.
I swallowed and faced Alex. “She hunts werewolves. Her family makes silver bullets and is responsible for slaughtering pretty much every wolf in San Francisco.”
“So she’s like a werewolf slayer?”
“Not like, is,” I said morbidly. Alex seemed supremely unaffected by the disgust I felt when talking about the Du family’s “work.” “They work out of a deli in Chinatown.”
“I wonder what she’s doing all the way out here. And, you know, here.”
I shrugged and Alex went for the ignition again and then stopped. He looked at me and the flick of the muscle in his chin made my heart sink. I knew that flick. It was the “I’m not letting this go” flick. “Why do you think a werewolf hunter would come out to a crime scene?”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest, giving Alex a hard look. “I have no idea. Maybe she did it. Maybe she wanted something else to hunt since the family business is going through a bit of a dry spell.”
“You mean because they killed all the werewolves in town?”
I didn’t say anything, but Alex still didn’t start the car, still didn’t break his gaze. “Are there any new werewolves in town, Lawson?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t processed any in I don’t know how long.”
I saw Alex’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed slowly. “How about a werewolf who isn’t new in town?”
A wire of heat snaked up the back of my neck. I stared out the windshield and focused on the line of trees edging the scene in front of me. “What are you talking about? And can we get going? I have to get back to work.” I checked my wrist bone, hoping Alex wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t wearing a watch. Or possibly hoping that he would notice and change the subject. Instead, I felt his hand on my shoulder, his fingers warm on my cool flesh. Unwillingly, I turned to face Alex, to look into those earnest cobalt eyes. Eyes that a girl could fall into.
He is an angel. . . .
“Is he back, Lawson? Is Pete Sampson back in San Francisco?”
I looked out the window, doing my best to focus on a crushed Starbuck’s cup in the parking space next to ours. I knew Alex could read minds. I also knew that he rarely did it to me, likely because the few times he did, my mind was full of him, wearing nothing but coconut oil and a cocktail umbrella. But I couldn’t afford for him to do it now.
“I’m not going to read your mind, Lawson.”
I bristled in an attempt to hide my fear. “Then how did you know what I was thinking?”
“Because I know you.”
My heart throbbed, caught between wanting to tell Alex everything and wanting to protect Sampson.
“And I guess I’m just supposed to trust your angelic promises,” I said, arms crossed in front of my chest.
Alex looked away. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
“What? What are you talking about? You did it before.” Heat rose to my cheeks, remembering his slick grin after the coconut oil thing.
“Something’s changed now. Something’s different.”