“You don’t understand. He’s not—he’s not bad. He’s one of the good guys.”
Feng picked up one of her own handmade silver bullets and spun it in her hand. “I think those two women on the trail would beg to differ.”
I sucked in a breath and clenched my teeth. “He had nothing to do with them.”
“Cuz he’s one of the good guys, huh? So, what? Werewolf vegetarian? Is that like a vampire with a soul or with a movie deal?”
“He didn’t do it,” I said again.
“Then who did?”
“It could have been anyone. Serial killer. Psycho. Jealous boyfriend, angry Justin Bieber fan, Satanic ritual—”
Feng’s voice was low, steady, and her eyes were fixed hard on mine. “Did you see those women, Pippi?”
I opened my mouth to answer Feng, but she shook her head and held up a silencing hand. “Not women,” she said. “There wasn’t enough left of them for anyone to know that they were human, let alone women.”
My saliva soured and I willed myself to think of something other than the desecrated bodies.
“Their blood was muddy. There was more of it on the ground—mixed into the dirt, ground into the grass—than there was on the corpses. One of them—it looked like she may have been blond—was missing an eye.”
My stomach bubbled and I felt myself step back as if trying to get away from Feng’s disturbing description.
“It had been ripped clean out of her head. Her eye, half her cheek.”
I bit down hard on my bottom lip, feeling the hot, metallic taste of my own blood filling my mouth.
“Tell me how something human could do something like that.”
I shook my head. “People do heinous things.” My voice was a bare, unconvinced whisper and the thought—so brief—flitted through my mind: Who am I trying to convince?
“Sometimes people do. But people don’t have the kind of strength it took to pull this kind of torture off.”
“But a gang—”
Feng’s barking laugh echoed through the room. “Tell yourself whatever you want. I’ve seen firsthand what a werewolf will do.” She looked sad for a fleeting moment, her eyes going glassy and losing their focus on me.
“But not all of them.”
“I’m not about to take any chances finding out. They’re all capable of this kind of violence. It’s what a werewolf was bred for. Sooner or later, they’ll all come to this.”
“No.” I shook my head, a sudden burst of strange confidence surging through me. “No, not this one. Maybe others but not this one. The werewolf you’re looking for has been like a father to me. His name is—”
“His name is Pete Sampson. Six foot two inches tall. Turned in 1989 by Addison Brown of San Francisco, California.” Feng licked her lips. “Since deceased. Interested in learning anything else?” Feng flashed the paper toward me and I was able to catch a few snippets of the information printed there: home address, driver’s license and license plate numbers, car and make.
I shuddered to think what else was contained on that paper.
I wet my lips. “Can I see that?”
Feng cocked her head but didn’t hand it over.
I was astonished, but did my best to keep my focus. “If you know so much about him, then you know he’s not a threat.”
Feng stood up and leaned across the table. “Look, Pippi, I don’t know if you noticed—and frankly, I don’t care whether or not you did—but we’re not in the business here of threat estimation. We do the threatening. So I don’t really care if your canine buddy there is a flesh-eating werewolf or a tutu-wearing lap dog when he’s changed. I have a contract. I have a wolf. I will finish both off.” She blinked. “And I don’t fail.”
I felt my stomach churning, the bile rising in the back of my throat, but I worked hard to keep my stance. “What do you mean, a contract?”
Feng looked at me on a sigh, doing nothing to hide her obvious annoyance. “We hunt dogs. All of them. And sometimes, someone hires us to put a certain pup on the top of our list.”
“Someone hired you to get Sampson? Who? Who would do that?”
Feng stared at me for one second longer than was comfortable before sitting back in her chair and pulling a ledger and a pencil toward her. “We’re done here,” she said without looking up. “Go away. And I’m sorry in advance for the loss of your friend.”
I opened my mouth to respond to Feng, but my head was in such a fog that all I could do was close my mouth dumbly, then let myself out of her office. I stumbled into the alley where the heat had gone oppressive and sticky in the short time I had been inside. It pressed against my chest and stole my breath, and the stench of sun-rotted vegetables was everywhere; I felt it on my skin, in my hair.
When I walked into the delicatessen, each of the anime-clad clientele whipped their heads to look at me. Alex’s eyes were narrowed and angry at first, but upon seeing mine, they went wide and concerned.