“So, a couple nights ago, we come back to find these two chicks in our squat, right? Pretty ones, not from around here. We thought they were runaways.”

That piqued my interest. “How old were they?” I asked, making the guy flinch.

“Um.” He scratched at his arms. “Fifteen? Sixteen? It was hard to tell, man. It was dark. Plus, they bolted when they saw us. We, um…followed them to the upper floors.” He must’ve seen the fury in my eyes, because he jerked back, holding up his hands. “Just to talk. Hey, they were in our room, man. Two chicks show up unannounced in your squat, you wanna know why. If they in trouble with the cops, you need some sort of insurance to keep them hidden, you know?”

I took a furtive breath to keep from incinerating this lowlife on the spot. “So what happened?”

The human blinked glazed brown eyes. “Uh, right. So, anyway, we followed them to the top floors. To talk to them.” He emphasized talk. “You know, because it was dangerous up there, all unfinished and shit. We didn’t want them stepping on a nail or falling off the edge, right? We were worried they’d get hurt.”

Right, I thought furiously. And I’m a were-newt. “You’re wasting my time,” I warned, glancing at the window as if I was bored. “And not telling me anything worthwhile. You have about five seconds to make this interesting. Four. Three.”

“Chill, man, chill. I’m getting to that part.” The guy’s face turned the color of old glue, and he leaned forward, his voice a reedy whisper. “So, we went up there, looking for those girls,” he rasped, while I contemplated how satisfying it would be to break his nose. “And we were poking around these half-finished floors. It’s like a maze, right, but we knew they couldn’t have gone far. But then, we looked up into the rafters and…” The human trembled. Shook violently, like he was in desperate need of a fix. The water glass on the table rattled, and the utensils clinked together until the guy took his arms from the table, putting them into his lap.

“And?” I prodded.

“And, I swear to God, man. There was this big, scaly thing looking back at us.”

My stomach dropped, but I fixed a grimace of contempt on my face and leaned back in the booth. “This is the info Griffin promised was reliable?” I sneered. “Some user’s drugged-out hallucination?”

“Man, it wasn’t no hallucination!” Flecks of saliva spattered the table between us at the outburst. “I swear there was this fucking huge lizard in that room. Or maybe not a lizard, but something, okay? It was big, and black, and made this hissing sound when it saw us. I even think smoke came out of its nose.”

“What did you do?”