The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

Seriously, none of these are made up.

Fried sea horse on a stick.

Fried starfish on a stick.

Fried scorpion on a stick.

And fried snake wrapped around a stick.

The philosophy at Donghuamen seemed to be: Is it really gross? Okay then, put it on a stick!

The crowd was predominantly Chinese, and mostly they weren’t eating the various stick-based foods. They were eating little buns stuffed with meat and vegetables, or pointing at pieces of fish and having it fried up in blistering-hot woks. Or chewing brightly colored glazed fruit.

It was the American, British, and Australian tourists eating the OMG-on-a-stick food.

“Huh. Those are, like, bugs,” Stefan said. “Bugs on a stick.”

“You’re not scared to try them, are you?” Mack taunted.

Stefan narrowed his eyes, shot a dirty look at Mack, but then noticed Jarrah smiling expectantly at him.

“I will if you will,” Jarrah said. She had a dazzling smile. At least Stefan looked dazzled by it.

“Yeah?”

Mack rolled his eyes. “You guys really don’t have to.”

“Starfish?” Jarrah suggested.

“Why, you scared to eat a fried snake?”

“Oh, I’ll eat a fried snake, mate,” Jarrah shot back. “The question is, are you man enough to eat a fried silkworm cocoon?”

It was a strange sort of courting ritual, Mack decided. Two crazy people sizing each other up.

“Scorpion,” Stefan said.

Jarrah high-fived him. “You’re on.”

They bought two orders of scorpion on a stick. Each stick had three small scorpions.

Stefan said, “Okay, at the same—”

Jarrah didn’t wait. She chewed one of the scorpions, and Stefan had to rush to keep up.

“The two of you are mental,” Mack said as Jarrah and Stefan laughed and crunched away with scorpion tails sticking out of their mouths.

“Oh, come on, don’t be a wimp, Mack,” Jarrah teased. “At least try a fried grasshopper. They don’t look so bad.”

Mack made a face and looked dubiously at the plastic tray loaded with fried grasshoppers. “Yeah, I don’t think so. They look a little bit too much like those . . .”

The words died in his mouth. What the grasshoppers looked like were Skirrit.

One of which, wearing a tan trench coat and a narrow-brimmed fedora that didn’t exactly hide his giant bug head, had just stepped up beside Mack.

Chapter Six

Skirrrrrriiiiiittt!” Mack yelled.