“Just a friend,” Alex said, casting a sly glance at me, and pulling out a chair for himself. “Just along for the ride.”
Note to self: Dismantle Alex, leave parts strewn about in hoarder’s graveyard, I thought as he licked his lips, enjoying Mort’s ogling far too much.
“Ah, that’s better, isn’t it?” Mort said. “Please, sit. May I get you some tea?” He jumped up before we had a chance to answer and clinked around the kitchen, gathering mugs and tea bags, then finally sitting down again.
“Now, why did you say you came here? Not that I mind.” Again the darting eyes, then the gaze that settled a bit too comfortably on me.
I cleared my throat. “Well, Mr.—Mort, I was wondering if you might have some information. Uh, Dixon—Dixon Andrade—said you knew about all sorts of things.” I raised my eyebrows, drew out the word “things.”
“Dixon?” Mort frowned, tapping one gnarled finger against his stubbled chin. “He’s running the Underworld Detection Agency now, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“Look.” Alex leaned back in his chair. “There have been some murders in San Francisco—a double homicide, and a single, two nights apart. It looks rather heinous and Ms. Lawson here”—he eyed me, and his cool-cop routine was giving me a migraine—“thought that maybe you’d have some information on the type of demon that could be responsible for the kind of destruction that we saw with this case.”
Mort bobbed his head, seeming to consider. “You didn’t have anything listed at the Agency?” he asked, slick little tongue pushing across his bottom lip.
I glanced at Alex. “We’re working on some things.”
“She also thought you might know if something new was in the area, or if the Du sisters had a new contract.”
Mort’s eyebrows went up. “The Du sisters? Feng and Xian?”
Alex glanced at me, a smug look of satisfaction in his cobalt eyes that shot a cold wave of nervousness through me.
“Something new in the area”—Does Alex know about Sampson?
The look on Alex’s face—now one eyebrow cocked, lips pursed, just slightly upturned—told me everything.
He was playing me.
I shot him a silent death glare, then did my best to look at Mort, unaffected. “Right,” I said simply.
“Now, why are you two together?” Mort asked.
I started. “Uh—excuse me?”
“You two.” Mort pointed. “Why are you together?” He blinked at Alex. “You don’t work at the Underworld.” His eyes raked over Alex and I felt the urge to gloat now that Alex had been eyeball-raped by Mort. “You can’t.”
I watched as Mort straightened his glasses, leaning toward Alex. He licked his lips again and smiled. “I never seen one ’a you before.”
“One of who?”
Mort’s eyes slid between us, murky behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He drew a circle an inch above his head and pantomimed the imaginary halo falling to the table ground. “You know.”
I felt my eyes widen. Usually, I was the one the nutters could pick out at fifty paces. They didn’t often know that I was the Vessel, but beginning in the second grade with Nancy Nottingham’s relentless taunts, people were always able to zero in on my different-ness. Not a single person—demon, dead, or dead again—had ever been able to pick up on Alex’s angelic state, fallen or otherwise. It felt good to be the “other” for once.
Mort grinned again, this time showing a row of crooked, corn-yellow teeth. “Neat.”
We were silent for a moment before Mort repeated, “So why you two?”
“Carpool lane,” I said quickly, before Alex could shrug off the angel thing and scare Mort off with his police department badge. “There was traffic and I wanted to use the carpool lane so my friend Alex came along. So, you mentioned Feng and Xian?”
“You did,” Mort said, resting his hands on the tabletop.
“Right. I was hoping you could tell me something about their current contracts. Or projects. Or”—I bit my lip—“conquests.” I looked around again and scooched to the edge of my chair, unsure if Sampson’s written-on-wolf-hide contract was lurking somewhere around here, somewhere between the crap and other crap. The idea grossed me out more than the naked Barbies did.
Mort continued grinning at me with his weird, serene smile. “Is that all you want to know about?”
My heart started to thud and I felt Alex’s eyes on me, challenging me. “For starters.”
A sliver of pink tongue darted out between Mort’s pressed lips and he stood up, walking to the edge of the kitchen and poking into a particularly hairy-looking stack of books and paperwork. “I’m sure I have some information that may be of help to you around here somewhere. You know the Du family hunts werewolves, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, pushing my chair back. “But who sets them up?”