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12Alchemy

The Chinese herb shop smelled like licorice and dried monkey butt The Ani to hide behind Troy Lee’s grandlass case, the shopkeeper looked older and ht possible until now It was like he’d been carved from an apple, then left on the sill to dry for a hundred years

The walls of the shop were lined, floor to ceiling, with little drawers of dark wood, each with a small bronze frame and a white card with Chinese characters written on it The old lass cases that held all manner of desiccated plant and animal bits, from whole sea horses and tiny birds, to shark parts and scorpion tails, to odd spiky bits that looked like they’d been flown in from another planet

"What’s that?" Drew asked Troy Lee froy blond hair He pointed to a wrinkled black thing

Troy Lee said so to the shopkeeper, who barked so back

"Bear penis," said Troy Lee

"Should we score some?" asked Drew

"For what?" asked Troy

"An eency," said Drew

"Sure, okay," said Troy Lee, then he said soe with the shopkeeper, after which Troy said, "How ram"

"Whoa," said Barry "That’s expensive"

"He says it’s the best dried bear penis you can buy," said Troy Lee

"Okay," said Drew "A grah Grandhed it, and placed it on the pile of herbs in the sheet of paper he had laid on the counter for Drew Grander, and the shopkeeper had been tottering around the shop for half an hour gathering the ingredients At one point when the old man was up on the top of the ladder at the far back corner of the shop, the Aniether as a human rescue net, which served only to scare the bejeezus out of the shopkeeper and set Grand, to which they all responded like dogs, paying her rapt attention and tilting their heads as if they actually had so about

Lately the Aniuys their age would be fairly convinced of their immortality, or at least oblivious of theirmurdered by a blue hooker turned va by Foo Dog’s genetic alche what they could only describe as Jesusy

"I’ extra Jesusy," said Jeff, the tall jock

"I always feel extra Jesusy," said Clint, who always did

"Yeah, extra Jesusy, bitches! Let’s go save some mother-fuckers!" Lash had shouted, which had sort of e around a table in Starbucks at the ti the attack of the cat cloud and the infored with the two homicide cops "It’s up to us," Lash added softly, sort of slinking into his hoody and putting on his shades

Now they watched as the old shopkeeper folded up Grandredients and tucked in the paper so it was as tight as a toothpick spliff, then flipped the package over and wrote some Chinese characters on the back with a carpenter’s pencil

"What’s it say?" Barry asked Troy Lee

"It says, ’vampire cat remedy’"

"No shit?"

"Yeah Then there’s a bunch of warnings about side effects"

An hour later they were sitting around the Lee kitchen table, waiting for the big twenty-quart soup pot on the stove to come to a boil

Grandma Lee rose froe of herbs Troy Lee joined her, helped her unwrap the package, and held the paper away from the burner as she scooped handfuls of herbs and aniical fuons on a de to work, Grandma?" Troy Lee asked in Cantonese

"Oh yeah We used it when I was a girl in China and some vampire cats invaded the city"