“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.”