“Since when do you lie to me?”
I jammed my hands in my pockets but didn’t answer him.
“So, where are we headed?”
“If you must know,” I said, slipping around a heap of tourists posing for pictures at Grant’s Gate, “I’m visiting a friend. And no, you can’t come.”
Alex looked almost hurt and I was surprised to feel a pang of sadness. I sighed. “Okay, you can come, but you can’t come inside. She and I need to talk.” I caught his questioning gaze. “Girl stuff.”
I had some questions to ask Feng, and if I was going to keep Sampson’s secret safe, the less people who heard, the better.
Alex just shrugged. “Sounds fair,” he said. “But do I get to know who you’re visiting? Wait.” He splayed his hands. “Let me take a guess. Can I take a guess?”
I rolled my eyes and jutted my chin in the universal sign for Get on with it.
“You’re going to visit the famous werewolf hunter.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. “How did you know that?”
He slung an arm over my shoulder. “I’m an angel. I know all sorts of things.” He pointed to a bakery. “Pineapple bun? You know there’s not actually any pineapple in them, right?”
“I don’t want a pineapple bun.”
“Well, I do want to talk to the werewolf hunter myself. She was at the crime scene, right?”
“Yeah on the crime scene, still no on the pineapple bun. Come on.”
We walked in companionable silence, huffing our way up two hills and zigzagging through tourists and pop-up sundries shops while doing our best to avoid the wilting, fetid stench of vegetables left to rot in alleyways. I stopped when I saw it and sucked in a sharp-edged sigh: Feng’s workshop.
“That’s it? They set up shop in a Chinatown delicatessen?” Alex asked, skepticism all over his face.
The Du family factory—or at least where Feng and Xian did their tracking and hammering out of silver bullets—was creatively disguised as a Chinese delicatessen. According to its peeling, fading sign, the place was called CHINESE/AMERICAN FOOD DIM SUM FREE WI-FI RESTROOM FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY.
At least some of their wares were transparent.
I shrugged. “Great location. Best dim sum in town.”
“Because that’s what everyone wants right after they meet up with their local werewolf hunters.”
Alex went to grab the handle of the door, but I put my hand on his, stopping him. “I think I should go in alone.”
“I don’t think so. It doesn’t look safe.”
I’m not exactly sure how he could surmise whether or not the place was safe as every single inch of the floor-to-ceiling windows was pasted over with sun-faded Chinese calendars from the years before I was born and curl-edged posters of pretty Asian girls hocking everything from videos to glazed crockery with cute, fuzzy kittens poking out of them.
“I know what I’m doing, Alex. And besides, I have a weapon.”
Surprise registered on Alex’s face. “You do? Are you carrying your gun? Weren’t you the one who told me that of all the weapons one of us breathers could have, a gun would be right up there with a teaspoon in terms of effectiveness?”
“I believe I said a gun would be about as effective as a ladle, but yes. And that’s why I have this.” I dug into my shoulder bag and whipped out my brand-spanking-new Big 5 knife.
I’d expected Alex’s eyes to go wide or at the very least, go slightly hooded and bedroomy (what was sexier than a chick with a knife?). I hadn’t expected him to clap a hand over his mouth and break down into near-snort-worthy guffaws.
“What’s so damn funny?”
Alex, shoulders shaking as he tried to control his torrent of laughter, said nothing. He just pointed at my knife.
“You’re really going to sit there laughing like an idiot while a woman brandishes a weapon at you?” I unsheathed the blade, hoping to scare the piss—or at least the giggles—out of him.
He just laughed harder, tears slipping down his cheeks.
“What the hell is so funny? Don’t think I won’t use this on you!”
Alex’s eyes shot down the length of the blade. “To do what? Gut me?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Maybe.”
“You know what this is for, don’t you?”
I looked down at the blade in my hand. It did suddenly seem slightly less menacing, but it was a blade nonetheless, and blades were made for gutting people.
“It’s for scaling fish,” he said.
Or for scaling fish.
“What?” I looked at the damn thing in my hand again, squinting at the tiny bass imprinted on the side. “It’s a bass knife.”
“For fish.”
So I thought it was a bass-style knife. As in, “Bass! The serial killer fish of the lakes!”
Alex took the knife out of my hand, his finger going over the portion of the blade that carved upward.