I let the sun drench my shoulders as I walked while ChaCha trotted proudly in front of me. I was doing my best to smash the last twenty-four hours out of my brain, and I was doing it with a sundress that covered my Mort-inflicted wound and a big floppy hat.
I was trying to negotiate an earth-friendly bag full of groceries—just the staples: marshmallow pinwheels and cantaloupe—and ChaCha, who felt the incessant need to greet every vertical object with a raise of the leg, when my cell phone chirped, upsetting my entire careful balance.
“What, Nina?” I groaned, while pulling ChaCha after an errant cantaloupe.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on my way back from the grocery store. What’s wrong?” I stopped, letting the cantaloupe lob its way down Nob Hill. “Are you okay? Is Sampson okay?”
“Yes, Sophie, I’m fine and so is your friend Howard,” she stressed the name, “But your other friends popped in to see you.”
“Friends?” Something in the pit of my stomach hardened. Sans Nina, Alex, and Will, I didn’t have friends. “What friends?”
I could hear Nina move around on the other end of the phone line. “Pete and Re-Pete,” she hissed.
“Pete and Re-Pete?” I asked. Then, a shot of knowing. “You don’t mean Feng and Xian?”
“Oh, but I do.”
I stopped cold and ChaCha danced around me in what I can only assume was a yip-yapping attempt to corral my fruit. “They’re there now?”
“Yes,” Nina said loudly. And then, dropping her voice to a low, barely audible hiss, “And they’re weird. Get home. Now.”
My heart was throbbing in my throat and my dress was soaked clean through by the time I got back to my apartment. ChaCha was panting and slowing down, but true to her traitorous terrier nature, sprung back to yip-yapping life the second I opened the front door. She bolted for Feng and Xian, who stood stalwart, collective eyes narrowed at me. I dropped my groceries and lunged for my errant dog, semi-certain that Feng would level a revolver at the thing, and pop her with a silver bullet.
“That your dog?” Feng said.
“Oh!” Xian threw her arms open, the gathered puff of her baby pink sleeves hugging her ears. Today she was dressed as a trampy Strawberry Shortcake knock-off, complete with striped tights and stacked Mary Janes. “She’s so cute!” She snatched ChaCha from the floor and nuzzled the tiny pup to her face, her high-pitched pixie laugh ringing through the apartment.
“Well, this is weird,” Nina said from her perch on the couch.
“Feng, Xian! So nice to see you! Why don’t you sit down?” I gestured to our slightly puckered and mostly threadbare Ikea couch, and noticed that Nina had set out a spread for our guests. “Why don’t you help yourself to some . . .” I paused. “Oyster crackers. And since when did we have orange Crush?”
“We didn’t come to visit,” Feng said, her lips held in what I was beginning to believe was a permanent snarl. “Xian sensed something.”
Nina, Feng, and I all swung our heads to Xian, who had buried hers in ChaCha’s belly.
“Xian?”
Xian looked up and batted her giant eyelashes. Her candy-pink lips slid up into a coy smile. “I love puppies.”
“If only,” Nina muttered.
“Um, not that it’s not great to have you drop in this way, but, um—”
“What the hell are you two doing here?” Nina asked.
I shot her a scathing look that she batted away, mumbling, “The heat makes me crazy.”
“So, what are you two doing here?”
Xian went right on scratching and cooing at ChaCha as though I hadn’t spoken, but Feng pinned me with her hard brown eyes.
“The wolf.”
I swallowed hard. “Beg your pardon?”
She glared up at me. “The werewolf. Are you going to give him up or are we going to have to take him from you?”
I pointed to ChaCha. “That’s a terrier.”
“And she was a gift,” Nina said indignantly. “And now a part of the family.”
“We don’t want your dog,” Feng said, expression unchanged. “You know what we want. The dog.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest and shot my own hard stare back at Feng. “Then why did you come here?”
Feng cocked a challenging eyebrow. “Do I really have to say it?”
“I thought werewolf hunting was in your DNA and she”—I jutted my chin toward Xian, who blew a raspberry on ChaCha’s dog belly—“was some amazing tracker. Isn’t coming to me for help like cheating?”
Anger covered Feng’s face like a veil, her features going even more sharp and hard than usual. “I’m not asking you for help. I was giving you an opportunity.”
I barked a ridiculous laugh. “Really? Well, I appreciate the gesture, but I’d appreciate it more if you’d get the hell out of my house.”