The Biggest—and Last—High of Your Life

There's a new "drug" on the streets, promising a phenomenal—and deadly— high. But this time the dealers aren't selling a substance. They're working with a creature called a "corpse light"—a creature of pure magic that gives the customer a euphoric rush ...as it drains the poor sap's life away.

Romulus was the first to see this new scourge in action. As a shapeshifter, he's a freelance agent to the Lone Star police department. His wolfish strength and sense of smell keep him useful—and keep him from being admitted into the regular force. So when Jane, a beautiful, amnesiac woman, is caught in a dangerous web with the dealers, there's no way for Romulus to be assigned to the investigation. But that won't stop him from trying to save her, and to discover how she is tied into this case....

"Watch"

I shed my shirt and unzipped my pants, letting them fall around my ankles. As I dropped to my hands and knees, I heard the girl's voice, "Likes to show off what he's got, doesn't he?" Then I changed.

I swivelled my ears and caught the troll's sharp intake of breath as he watched my body shift into wolf form.

"You're the dog I saw in the garage," he whispered.

I panted happily, my tongue lolling. Then I shifted back....

SHADOWRUN : 37

THE FOREVER DRUG

Lisa Smedman

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to John Hart and Dana Noah for sharing their memories and stories of the Maritimes, and to all of those whose enthusiasm and ideas contributed to this novel.

1

There's no mistaking the "heroin nod." I could spot the junkie two blocks away. She was coasting, floating half in and half out of consciousness, struggling to keep her chin from bobbing down on her chest like a person who's trying to resist falling asleep. Dressed the way she was, I figured she was working tonight. Tight black pants, thigh-high red leather boots, and a blouse made from hair-thin optical filament, woven in an open spider web pattern. The material pulsed softly with light, illuminating her breasts like a marquee.

Business had probably been good. The UCAS aircraft carrier Leviathan had berthed that afternoon after two months at sea, and the four-thousand-plus sailors that made up its crew were out on the streets of Halifax in force. One of them was leaning over the back of the bench where the junkie slumped, eyeing the merchandise appreciatively. The working girl's breasts were fully developed, but from her size and bone structure I guessed her age at eleven—too young for a human to have reached puberty. Selective hormone treatments will do that.

The sailor noticed me looking at the girl and gave me a threatening glare. It was clear that he'd fight any man foolish enough to try and pick up "his" girl. I ignored him, deliberately looking away from the girl.

I felt sorry for the kid, but there was nothing I could do for her. Even Lone Star's Drug Enforcement Division wouldn't bother with her. Soft drugs like heroin didn't interest them. They were concentrating on BTL right now and the rash of overdoses that had occurred in recent weeks. But not in the North End, of course. In this part of town illegal simsense chips are sold openly on street corners and in restaurants, deals going down and chipheads slotting up in full view of anyone who cared to watch.

I continued down Gottingen and turned right. I had Duffus Street all to myself, aside from a pair of ork sailors who were half swaggering, half staggering, arms wrapped around each other while they sang lewd songs. The sidewalks were never crowded in this part of town, even on a hot summer night like tonight. The North End of the city isn't the sort of place you want to be after dark. Not unless you're SINless and desperate. Or a sailor wanting to mix it up with the bad boys.

The street lighting was almost nonexistent, the buildings dull and soulless, save for a splattering of graffiti on the walls. The city had replaced the antiquated public housing in Mulgrave Park a decade ago, finally tearing down the block houses that had been built back before the turn of the millennium. The "new" buildings were just as ugly: prefab concrete-slab structures painted in the same dull shades of gray, off-yellow, or government green.

The idea behind the project had been to give those without System Identification Numbers a warm, dry place to sleep. The residents were housed in "micro suites"—sleeping rooms with dimensions about those of a medium-sized closet, stacked horizontally. These were quickly dubbed "coffins," and that's what many of them became. Rumor had it there was more than one body stashed away behind the featureless plastic door of a Mulgrave Park micro suite.

I stopped at the intersection and left my mark, splashing it across some faded gang graffiti. The North End used to be my territory, back when I worked with the Star's K9 department, a part of its Division of Patrol. I hadn't patrolled these streets since I started working as an "irregular asset" for the Tactical Division, but I still liked to take a jander through them every now and then, just to freshen up my mark and let them know I'm still keeping an eye on things. I doubted anybody here would recognize me. In the old days I never used to patrol in human form.

It had been four months since my "promotion" to the Tactical Division. Technically, I wasn't really employed by Lone Star. I was more of a free agent, kind of like a bounty hunter. I got paid a flat fee: so much per containment, depending upon the size of the para.

Paranormal animals are my specialty. That's why I was assigned to the Magical Task Force. Although the Force falls under the Tactical Division, we work closely with the Division of Paranormal Investigation. The DPI officers are the ones responsible for anything with a thaumaturgical twist to it: magically capable criminals, nosferatu gangs, toxic spirits—the works. They also handle paranormal animal control.

I kept hoping that, one day, I'd get the call to go out on a really important assignment. Like the case DPI handled two months ago when a megalodon, a gigantic "prehistoric" shark the size of a whale, took a chunk out of a frigging freighter, for spirits' sake, right there in Halifax Harbor, and then feasted on all of the nice little bite-sized lifeboats that were launched as the ship went down. If I could take down a dangerous para like that, somebody might bend the rules a little for me, maybe even let me officially join the boys and girls in blue.

But I mostly got the small stuff. Like that assignment two weeks ago. Containment of a blackberry cat, a paranormal animal someone had illegally imported from Europe as a house pet, of all things. The magically active feline used its powers of mind control to amuse itself by causing its humans to "play" with knives. An entire family in the hospital, and I wasn't allowed to ice that little furball. Not when blackberry cats had been declared threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 2054. The best I could do was chase it up a tree—then hang tough after it used its magic to render me blind. Thank the spirits for my keen sense of smell or I'd have lost it entirely.

I hate cats.

I was the only shifter among all of Lone Star's irregular assets in Halifax. Which wasn't surprising in a corporate security force noted for its speciphobia. If you took a gander at the demographics of the actual employees, you'd see the scan laid out for you. More than eighty percent of Lone Star's officers were human, with only a smattering of metahuman. The only way most of the patrol officers and detectives felt comfortable with me was when I was in human form.

It helped that my human form was attractive. I've got dark hair and a beard that's longer and lighter near the chin and mouth, giving me a whiskered appearance. My eyebrows meet in the middle and curve up at the sides, accentuating what the ladies describe as a "wolfish" grin. My ears have a slight point to them—though nowhere near as defined as an elf's ears—and are topped with a tiny tuft of hair on the tip that's so pale it can only be felt, not seen. But although I mostly use my human form in the city, it's my true form that pleases me most. Long and supple, fast and sleek, with lush, gray-brown fur and clean white teeth. The epitome of animal power.

Were I to lope about in wolf form, however, I'd stand a good chance of being picked up by the DPI as an unlawfully-at-large paranormal. By unspoken agreement with Lone Star, I'm allowed to assume animal form within the city when on assignment. Otherwise, I maintain human form. Which is a bit ironic, since legally I'm defined as an "animal" by the UCAS government.

Maybe someday, shapeshifters will be granted metahuman status. But probably not in my lifetime.

Rubber squealed on pavement and a horn blared loudly in the street. My reverie broken, I looked up. A dwarf who was jittering across Duffus had stepped into the path of a Ford Americar. The dwarf, dressed in a stained track suit, had the purposeful, focused look of a cocaine user looking for his next fix. Single-minded in his pursuit, he was oblivious to the still-blaring horn and the shouted curses of the driver as the car swerved around him and off into the night.

I could smell the dwarf from where I stood, even over the thick smog that had built up during the course of the heat wave we'd been having recently. He had the sour smell of someone who hadn't bathed in a long time. Normally, sweat has a pleasant, earthy smell. But this fellow stank of nervous fear, city grit, and, faintly, of sweet crack smoke.

The dwarf's gaze skittered up to meet mine. He assessed me in one frenzied heartbeat as not-a-dealer, and his focus slid back to the sidewalk in front of him. In another moment he'd speed-walked down the block and out of sight.

I was just about to pass the last of the housing projects when I heard gunfire. Eight or nine shots in rapid succession from a small-caliber handgun, then a pause as the magazine was changed, and a half-dozen more shots. Someone was pumping out lead as fast as possible, and cursing in a loud, panicked male voice. Someone else—either a child or a woman— was screaming. The echo behind the sounds told me they were coming from inside an enclosed space— probably the parking garage in back of the projects.

I hesitated for a moment, but the screaming decided me. I wasn't with the Patrol Division anymore, but I still felt compelled to respond. There wasn't a police patrol in sight.

I unzipped my shirt and peeled it off, then stepped out of my pants and shoes. Nobody gave me a second look as I stashed them under a parked car. In this part of town, with all of its crazies and chipheads, a naked man didn't warrant more than a glance. Hopefully, the parked car wasn't going anywhere and my clothes would still be there when I got back.

Then I dropped to my hands and knees on the grimy sidewalk and ... changed.

My body lengthened, my limbs stretched, and my bones cracked as my knee joints articulated in a different direction. Lush gray hair covered my body in a silky flow and my ears swiveled erect. Claws sprang out of my fingers and toes, which formed into blunt paw pads, my spine grew a bushy tail, and my teeth elongated and sharpened.

The screams and gunfire shifted in pitch as my hearing changed, the lower tones becoming more muted and the higher tones becoming clearer. And my sense of smell intensified. Even from here, a block away from the action, I could smell the sharp scent of gunpowder, the stink of human fear and fresh urine, and something ... well, something unusual was the best I could describe it.

I loped down the block and around the edge of the nearest building, toward the confrontation. As I entered the parking lot and started to spiral down into its underground levels, past the derelict cars and squatters' trash, I saw four figures below. Two were down and not moving—I recognized them as gangers by the tattoos on their arms—and two were on their feet. One of the latter—a teenage elf—was standing utterly still, a look of rapturous joy on her face, her head tilted to one side and her arms held out. A ball of light about the diameter of a dinner plate hovered just behind her, its cold, blue-white light framing her head like a halo. She was dressed like a street shaman, her black leather jacket covered in runic signs and her hair braided with feathers. A medicine pouch hung from a cord around her neck.

The other upright figure—a burly troll with a single horn that spiraled out of the center of his forehead like a unicorn's horn—had his back to me as I descended the final ramp of the parking garage and emerged onto the lowermost level. He was firing wildly at the ball of light. Flame spat from the heavy pistol in his hand as he pumped bullet after bullet at the thing.

Suddenly, one of his bullets caught the girl in the chest. Red blossomed on her shirt front, and she sagged at the knees. But despite the intense pain she must have been feeling from her wound, the elf girl kept smiling. She moaned once, softly, but it sounded more like the satisfaction of sexual pleasure than pain. It made me wonder if the ball of light was the physical manifestation of some emotion-controlling spell.

The troll cried out in anguish as the girl suddenly collapsed. Now the ball of light was headed toward him. After two futile clicks of the trigger—his magazine was empty—the troll hurled his pistol at the thing. His aim was good. The weapon hit the ball of light square on—and sailed harmlessly through it. Still cursing, the troll turned and ran, his patent leather military boots slipping on the scattering of diamond-sparkle window glass that covered the concrete floor.

This had all taken place in the second or two it took me to lope around the corner. As the troll scrambled past me, I made the split-second decision to let him go by. The elf girl was still alive—but wouldn't be for long. The scent of her freshly spilled blood nearly overwhelmed me. Saliva dripped from my tongue as I fought to control my instincts.

The ball of pale blue-white light floated gently toward me, as if pushed by an unseen breeze. I felt the hackles on the back of my neck rise, and growled low in my throat. I couldn't say why, but the thing filled me with a sense of dread. And I don't scare easy.

The ball of light paused, hovering, giving me a chance to shift my perceptions into astral space. I had to know what I was dealing with. The cold gray walls around me blurred to gauzy, insubstantial surfaces and the writing on them disappeared. I could see the elf girl's aura fading rapidly as she died. The ball of light bulged and elongated ...

Spirits frig me. That was no spell effect. The ball of light was alive.

The creature was huge. It had the size and shape of an octopus, with a bulbous central body and as many as twenty long, writhing tentacles. Its flesh was a mottled purple and yellow, the color of old bruises. A single black eye the size of a dinner plate irised open and shut in a weird, spiraling blink. One tentacle caressed the back of the elf girl's neck, drawing the last of her aura up through sucking pores in the tip of the tentacle.

Frig, that thing was feeding on her. Eating her alive.

The other tentacles reached out toward me, billowing as if they were stirred by an invisible current. As they drew nearer, the scent of the creature engulfed me, making me gag. It was the smell of meat rotting in the sun; of fly-speckled, over-ripe fruit; of murky, algae-slimed water.

Every instinct screamed at me to run. And the logical part of my brain was in perfect agreement. What could I do? Bite one tentacle and hope the thing didn't use its other nineteen tentacles to ice me as it had the elf girl and the two humans who lay dead on the floor behind her? Back when I was with K9, it had been my sworn duty to serve and protect. I still felt bound by that oath, especially within the bounds of my territory. But now that the elf girl's aura had gone out, there was no one left to protect.

I backed away slowly, my fur raised, growling through bared teeth. I needed to call for some backup on this one.

The thing floated closer, its tentacles writhing in a hypnotic pattern. Too late, I realized that it was backing me into a corner. I ducked to the side as a tentacle floated into the space I had just been occupying. Thank the spirits this thing moved slowly, its tentacles drifting in a lazy flow. But there were a lot of them. Too many to keep dodging for long. And there was no telling what magical hicks the creature might have up its sleeves.

I noted its position carefully, then shifted my perception out of astral space. The creature became a ball of light once more. Was its glow a little dimmer? I couldn't be certain. But those tentacles had been close. Too close. I crouched—then leaped across the gap to the next level of the parking garage. No time to waste, I thought as I ran back up the spiral to ground level. This was definitely one for the Magical Task Force to deal with. And I was willing to bet nuyen on it that I would get the assignment of tracking this para down. I'd gotten a good whiff of it, and would know its spoor anywhere.

I grinned as I hurried across the street to a public telecom booth.

2

The glowing ball of light was long gone by the time a squad from the Magical Task Force arrived. But the three bodies were still there. Aside from the elf girl— who had a large and rather obvious bullet wound in her chest—they were unmarked. Cause of death: unknown.

I hung around after the detectives who followed in the wake of the Force had finished interviewing me, watching and listening as the bodies were tagged and bagged. The two human victims were members of the Weeds, a gang of squatters who dossed down on the site of what used to be the Public Gardens. I'd recognized them by the patterns tattooed on their arms: morning glory vines and dandelions growing out of the eye sockets of grinning skulls. The pair had the usual sort of criminal records: drug-dealing, possession of stolen property, aggravated assault. Like the troll, they'd been carrying handguns. Except that they hadn't used theirs.

The elf girl was indeed a street shaman, residing on Summer Street. She'd been arrested only once, for using an unlicensed illusion spell. Otherwise, her record was clean.

As soon as the bodies were off to the morgue and the scene was magically assensed and declared clear, the procedural squabbles about which division was going to investigate the homicides began. Detectives from two divisions had come out to the scene, and now they were embroiled in a loud argument. The detective from the Division of Paranormal Investigation figured that the investigation fell under her jurisdiction, since a paranormal animal with magical capabilities was involved. The detective from Drug Enforcement insisted that it was his case, since these three deaths tied into his ongoing investigation of what had come to be known, in the past week, as the "grinning corpses."

There had been ten deaths so far, not including tonight's body count. All had been tagged as overdoses. Probably because the first two to die—a dwarf couple from Dartmouth—had been known BTL users, chipheads who'd already fried their brains with silicone dreams. And they'd been talking to friends about scoring a nova-hot new drug on the morning before their deaths.

None of the ten bodies had shown any signs of violence, and patrol officers who'd responded to the calls had described each of the corpses as "grinning"— despite the fact that this wasn't physically possible. I knew from previous conversations with forensics lab techs that the muscles of a cadaver normally go slack in death, and only begin to seize up in rigor mortis some three hours later. But for some unaccountable reason, the faces of all the "overdose" victims were frozen in an expression that could only be described as euphoric. That should have clued the patrol officers to the fact that it wasn't a BTL overdose they were dealing with. Magic was involved.

The elf girl killed by the ball of light had the same expression on her face, as had the two gangers who'd died with her in the parking garage. This time, however, the police had a credible witness: me. From the description I gave, the DPI detective concluded that the tentacled creature had used magic to suck the life from all three victims.

It looked like the DPI was going to get the case, after all.

I tagged along with the MTF squad, hitching a ride with them back to Lone Star's Halifax headquarters, a building the size of a small arcology that takes up a full city block at the corner of Gottingen and Rainnie Street. I figured it was time for me to report in to the sergeant, to see if he had another assignment for me. As I jandered down the hall, I stuck my nose into the office of Dass Mchawi, a DPI mage detective and probably the best paranormal taxonomist the division had.

I found her doing datawork. She was hunkered down over her datapad—a laptop computer with a monitor shaped like a crystal ball. The design was almost too cute—a result of the Division of Paranormal Investigation having too much imagination and too large a budget.

The laptop was responsive to voice-activated commands, but Dass was busy entering text data with a keyboard she'd plugged into it, stabbing at the keys with two fingers. Her close-cropped hair was hidden by one of the brightly colored patchwork "scrap caps" that were all the rage. She wore baggy white pants and a bright red shirt printed with stylized silhouettes of drummers whose arms moved in time with her heartbeat. Dass liked to tell people it was a magical effect, but it was actually technological; tiny sensors woven into the fabric triggered color changes in the threads, sending the drummers strobing through a series of pre-set poses.

Dass had been born and raised in the Maritimes, but had traveled extensively in search of her shamanic "heritage," picking up a lot of lore about paranormal creatures along the way. Her family had lived in Halifax for generations, back when this part of the world was still part of Canada. Her great-great-grandparents had been born in Africville, an African-Canadian settlement that was bulldozed in the last century and that now lay buried under Seaview Park. Before that .. . well, Dass really didn't know what part of Africa her ancestors had come from. West Africa was a good guess, since the slave trade had originated there. But she'd found a tradition that spoke to her in East Africa, among the Bantu peoples.

Dass had originally had another surname—now a closely kept secret known only to Lone Star's administrative personnel department. She'd taken the name Mchawi from the Swahili word for "magician." She actually spoke a little Swahili, and used that language to greet me as she looked up from her work.

"Salamu, Romulus. I hear you ran into a little trouble earlier this evening."

I leaned against the door frame. Dass was the only one at Lone Star who called me by my human name—Romulus—which my first set of foster parents had chosen after reading a myth about two boys who were suckled by wolves. The rest of the DPI detectives usually called me "Rover" or "Fido"—two nicknames I detested. Dass was also the only one who always smelled friendly. The other detectives were polite enough, but their smiles never reached their pores.

"I was hoping you might know what I ran into, Dass," I said. "I've never seen anything like it, and the DPI detective who responded didn't seem to know what it was." I described the creature for her— both its physical and astral appearance.

"Sounds like a corpselight," Dass said after a moment's thought.

"The name fits," I observed, "considering the end result."

She nodded. "Corpselights feed on sentient creatures, draining the life essence from them. They stimulate the pleasure centers of their victims' brains so the poor triggers don't have the willpower to get away— at least they die happy. But a corpselight in Halifax? They prefer desolate areas; the mana pollution in cities is too high."

"Yet I saw one here, in the city."

"Yes, you did."

That's what I like about Dass. She doesn't call my observations into question, the way the other detectives do. She takes them at face value, even when logic seems to contradict them. She also gets right to the point.

"Did you get the assignment to track and contain it?"

"Don't know yet," I said. "I'm hoping to talk to the sergeant about it. Is he busy?"

He must have heard me. "Hey, Romulus!" Sergeant Raymond shouted from down the hall. "We've got another blackberry cat for you. One was spotted aboard a pleasure boat down in the harbor. Think you're up for another chase, boy?"

I heard laughter from another office. I growled and twitched my lip, revealing my canines. I knew Raymond called me Fido behind my back, but "boy" was his obvious in-your-face insult for me, suggestive of the master-slave relationship some pet owners have with their dogs. When he was really wanting to stick it to me, he'd call me with a whistle. He also liked to crack jokes about "house-training" me.

As if I'd soil the office by leaving my mark inside. No, it was out on the front steps, where it belonged.

Dass rolled her eyes in silent sympathy and turned back to her computer.

I slunk down the hall to Raymond's office. I found the sergeant leaning back in his chair, smoking a cigarette. The smoke from it stung my nostrils.

The sergeant was big for a human, over two meters tall, with piercing blue eyes and hair that, despite his angry denials, was going gray at the temples. He wore civilian clothes—a conservative, crisply pressed business suit—but with an air of authority that suggested he was used to wearing a uniform.

With a twitch of his finger, he used telekinesis to direct one of the chips on his desk into his computer. Then he used the same spell to push a datapad toward me. Spirits forbid he should actually have to hand me something. He might accidentally touch a hand that was really a paw ...

I forced myself to listen closely to the sergeant's instructions.

"This is the report our harbor patrol officers just sent in," he said. "You can use the datapad to scan it on your way out to the site. The cat's been making a pest of itself, getting aboard boats and causing passengers and crew to jump overboard. It's currently aboard a yacht named the Party Animal." He rolled his eyes at the irony of the name. "Witnesses report that the cat was wet, as if it had fallen into the ocean itself. And there's nothing meaner than a wet cat. Except maybe a rabid dog..

He glanced up, waited for a reaction, but I didn't give him the satisfaction.

"So far," he continued, "this complaint is only at the nuisance level. But if that cat forces someone overboard who doesn't know how to swim ..."

I filled in the blank: "Homicide."

"Hardly." The sergeant looked at me as if I was an idiot. "This is a dumb animal we're talking about. It's just following its instincts. You might as well put a house cat on trial for murdering mice." His steel-blue eyes fixed me with a stare and acrid-smelling cigarette smoke puffed out of his mouth, punctuating his words. "Remember, Romulus, you're not going out there to arrest a criminal. You're doing animal containment. Now scan that report, grab the hover, and get to it. Let's cage that cat and send the little para back to Europe, where it belongs."

"Right." I stifled the growl that was forming in my throat. The "dumb animal" crack had been deliberate, as had the comment about putting paras back where they belonged. But I held my anger in check, once again. Sergeant Raymond was just looking for an excuse to send me back to the K9 patrol. I didn't want to give him one.

"How much do I get for this one?" I asked.

"Same as for the last. Two hundred and fifty nuyen on delivery."

"What about the corpselight?" I asked. "Do I get that assignment as well?"

"The what?"

"The tentacled para—the one that killed three people in the North End parking garage tonight. I can track it. I know its scent."

"So that's what it was," the sergeant said. I could see he was impressed by the fact that I'd identified it. But only for a moment. "Uh-uh. That's way out of your league, boy. Stick to what you know best: chasing cats."

He looked down at his desk, dismissing me.

I jogged down to the parking garage, using the datapad to listen to the information on the chip Raymond had given me. I reviewed the harbor patrol officers' report, watching images of wet and shivering people as they described how they'd suddenly felt an overwhelming compulsion to climb over the ship's railing and jump into the sea. Those who'd gone for a midnight swim included three deckhands from a fish boat and the pilot of a tug, but most of those picked up by the harbor patrol were passengers aboard a "booze cruiser"—a yacht chartered by a wedding party to tour the harbor at night. Even the bride had gone overboard; her long white dress now sodden, its bedraggled lace covered with a sheen of oil from the dirty harbor water. Talk about a memorable honeymoon.

That was where the blackberry cat had last been sighted: aboard the rent-a-yacht. Which, according to the report, was cruising erratically up and down the harbor, still shedding wedding celebrants. Harbor patrol was content to follow along behind and pick them up; they'd leave it to the Magical Task Force to deal with the cat.

At least I'd get to ride in the hover tonight. That was an unexpected bonus. A scaled-down version of the hovertrucks used by Lone Star's amphibious SWAT teams, the hover was about the size of a city car, with two seats and gull-wing doors. It rode on a cushion of air that would carry it smoothly over either land or sea at speeds of up to 120 klicks, even in choppy conditions that would swamp a small boat. Like the larger hovertruck, this was a people-mover; it was armored but without hard-mounted weaponry. Its object, like the humble patrol car, was to enable officers to get to the scene of a crime quickly.

The officer on duty as driver tonight was a human named Hunt. I'd met him once before, during an MTF training exercise. He was a rigger, and he'd loaded his body with as much cyberware as it could hold.

Even across the parking garage, I could smell the plastic and metal embedded in his body, and the lubricants that kept his cyberware running smoothly.

Light glinted from the chrome irises of Hunt's cybereyes as he met me in the brightly lit parking garage, and a second Adam's apple bobbed in his throat where a subvocal communications microphone had been implanted. The hand that shook mine was covered in artificial skin. It twitched slightly; a product of his implanted neural boosters and adrenaline stimulators.

Hunt was also rumored to have a "cyber skull"—a ceramic and polymer cap fused to his own natural skull. They said he'd gotten it installed after crashing a patrol car and concussing himself. If so, the surgery hadn't left any noticeable scars. The only visible reminder of that accident was a diagonal scar that creased his lip, just under his nose.

No matter how many times I saw cybernetics, I still marveled at them. Cybernetic implants were something I could never have. The regenerative properties of my body caused it to reject all foreign matter. Back when I was a kid, my third set of foster parents had taken me to a dentist, who capped a tooth I'd chipped. By the next morning the cap had been forced out of the enamel, and the tooth had grown back. That was when they'd discovered what I really was, and had packed me off to the residential school, where the headmasters had tried to make a good little human out of me by thrashing me every time I gave in to my natural instincts or refused to speak English. Lucky for them my body heals so quickly I never bruise.

I growled at the memory. My hackles still rise when I think of the place.

Hunt wore a brown leather jacket that bulged under both armpits where a pair of Ruger Thunderbolts—the heaviest pistols issued by Lone Star so far—were holstered. Unlike him, I almost never carried a gun. The weapon would only have to be left behind on the pavement when I made the change out of human form. Besides, my teeth were weapon enough.

Hunt thumbed the squealer in his palm, deactivating the hover's locks. The gull-wing doors swung up and open. I paused, tempted to mark the hover, but my training kicked in as I remembered that we were still inside the police station. Not inside—that was the golden rule.

As we climbed into the hover's bucket seats, Hunt shot me a cautionary glance.

"You're not going to try to hang your head out the window again, this time, are you?" he said in a stern voice. It was an order, not a question.

I nodded as I buckled the five-point harness across my chest. "Don't worry," I told him. "I won't." I still had vivid memories of the painful fracture I'd received when the blast of inrushing air had slammed my cheek into the window frame, during the training exercise.

"Good." He jacked into the hover's computerized controls and closed his eyes as the engine roared to life. The hover rose on a cushion of air as the balloonlike bag beneath it filled. The garage doors opened and we slid out onto the street. I could hear Hunt's cybereyes whirring softly as they switched to low-light vision. We were operating with running lights only; we wouldn't switch on the floods until we approached our destination. But we did use the flashers and the siren.

As soon as I heard that howl, I couldn't help myself. It was the call of the pack, of the hunt. I threw back my head and sang along with it, my voice rising and falling, my eyes closed. A thrill shivered down my arms and I yipped with delight.

"Do you have to do that?" Hunt shouted over the roaring engine.

"Sorry." I grinned. "I can't help it." But I kept quiet after that. I had a good working relationship with Hunt, despite the open-window incident, and I didn't want to spoil it.

We sped on through the city streets, traffic parting before us as we made our way down to the waterfront. Whatever vehicle he was operating, Hunt liked to run at full speed. They hadn't nicknamed him "boy racer" for nothing. Buildings blurred past as we turned at the Maritime Museum. Then we swooshed down a ramp and onto the ocean. Now Hunt could really open her up. The engine roared.

The sea was dark and still, reflecting the lights of Halifax. In the distance, away to the left, I could see the MacDonald Bridge, which everyone still called the "old bridge," despite the fact that the newer MacKay Bridge had been built in the last century. We turned away from it, keeping downtown on our right and the suburb of Dartmouth on our left. According to the harbor patrol officers, who were giving us radio updates, the yacht had gone aground on Georges Island, an uninhabited outcropping smack in the middle of Halifax Harbor.

It was only a moment before we saw it. Georges Island is a low hump of silt, no more than three-quarters of a kilometer in diameter and dotted with tumble-down, whitewashed buildings that looked like melted sugar cubes. An automated lighthouse crowns the center of the island, but the rest of the island is a tangle of thorny vines and scraggly trees, surrounded by the litter left by gangers who come to this desolate spot to cut loose and party. The island lies in the Halifax Harbor like the body of a floating whale, an eyesore and a haven for criminal activities.

The yacht had rammed its bow into the island's soft silt, and was keeled over slightly. The propeller was still churning up foam at the stern of the boat, and lights were blazing inside. Loud techno-Celtic music blared out into the night. A number of passengers in suits and formal dresses—members of the wedding party, presumably—were crawling along the angled deck or had jumped down into the muddy water. They milled unsteadily along the shore, looking forlornly at the harbor patrol vessel, which was too large to come in close enough to the island to pick them up. The voices of the harbor patrol officers crackled over our radio as they called in a smaller vessel to remove the passengers from the yacht, which they had illuminated with a spotlight.

Hunt circled around the yacht and brought the hover ashore next to it. We coasted smoothly up onto the island, over the litter of driftwood and other debris that lined the shore. As Hunt checked the hover's forward motion, I popped the gull-wing door next to me and unbuckled my harness. I stepped onto the rung next to the door, then jumped down onto the muddy shore.

I approached the yacht, looking for a crew member. The most likely candidate seemed to be an ork woman in a waiter's apron, her white shirt stained with food and her black bow tie hanging loose. I flashed her a smile.

"Lone Star," I said. "Magical Task Force. I understand you had a paranormal animal on board."

"Lord love us, yes," the woman exclaimed. "We had some time of it." Her Cape Breton accent was thick; when she said the word "time" it sounded more like "toyme." Her gnarled hands absently knotted her apron as she continued.

"It started when we found a cat onna boat and tried ta stop it from jumpin' up onna tables and eatin' da weddin' cake. B'fore ya know it dere were people jumpin' overboard. T'ree, maybe four went over da rail, startin' with da bride herself. We was cornin' around ta pick 'em outta da water when Skipper went nuts and put 'er full ahead and steered da boat straight for da container docks. Would'a stove in the hull, fer sure. Damn cat was dere, rubbin' at his ankles. Jim, he tried ta grab da wheel, and next thing ya know, Jim gets a funny look in his eye and he's over da rail, too. Then Skipper steers 'er instead for Georges Island, people jumpin' overboard alia time, and finally we wind up aground. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but it's been a night!"

The handful of passengers who had gathered behind her nodded and grumbled their agreement. One of them, a young elf with straw-blonde hair and a diamond stud in his nose, muttered darkly that he expected his money back. He kept trying to brush the mud from his cream-colored tuxedo. His breath stank of alcohol.

"Where is the cat now?" I asked the ork.

"Little bugger jumped off da ship when we went agroun'," she answered. Then she shrugged. "Good riddance."

"Thanks."

I strode over to the beached bow of the yacht and bent down for a closer look. Light coming through a porthole illuminated the wet mud. The beach was a mass of footprints; deep indentations where passengers and crew had jumped down from the boat were overlaid with confused prints where they'd milled about. A multitude of fresh scents—human and meta—filled my nostrils. But there was one paw print, clearly defined in the mud. I bent down and sniffed, then growled at the familiar spoor. It was the unmistakable stink of blackberry cat. Wet fur, dander, and an arrogant whiff from the scent glands in the paws. The damn thing had stopped to scratch the yacht's hull before heading inland.

My sense of smell is keener in wolf form, but I needed my human hands to manipulate the equipment I'd brought along to contain the cat. I walked back to the hover and pulled out a tranq pistol and three of the grenades the DPI's Department of Magical Research had developed since my last encounter with a blackberry cat. I lifted the bright blue, eggsized plastic ovoids from their packing case and smiled at their pungent herbal scent. This time, the little furball wasn't going to escape. I gave each grenade a vicious twist, priming it.

I chose a Size 2 containment cage, a collapsible cube of fine metal mesh. The cage was yet another product of the DPI's research labs, and was impregnated with a magical ward. Any living creature placed within the cage would be unable to pass through this magical barrier, once the door was shut.

"You got a lock on the para?" Hunt shouted over the roar of the hover's engines. His chromed eyes reflected the flickering lights of the hover's instrument panel.

When I nodded, he tossed me a commlink. "Keep in radio contact."

I fastened the holster for the tranq pistol under my arm and popped the grenades into a pocket. Then I snugged the commlink over my head. I didn't normally use one, for the same reason I didn't wear jewelry or a watch: it would fall off if I changed into wolf form.

"Good luck!" Hunt shouted. "I'll be standing by in the hover. Just radio if you need me."

I headed inland, following the faint spoor of the blackberry cat into the darkness between the ruined buildings. Every now and then I had to bend down and sniff the earth to pinpoint the scent, but generally it was fresh enough for me to follow at a walking pace, with my human-blunted sense of smell. I tracked it across the island to a dilapidated pier where a ferry used to dock, back when Georges Island was a public park.

Two silhouettes were walking along the pier. One was my target: the cat. The other was a woman— human by the size and shape of her. Probably one of the passengers from the yacht who the cat had forced to walk beside it. Was the cat going to walk her off the end of the pier, just for a laugh?

No, that didn't scan. I hadn't smelled a human scent while following the cat's trail. The cat must have just hooked up with the woman. So who was she?

As I was pondering these questions, I crept closer, whispering into my commlink that I'd spotted the target. I can move fairly quietly in human form, but I guess my excitement at spotting the cat made me clumsy. Or maybe the cat had some sort of power that cursed its enemies. In any case, the next thing I knew I'd tripped over a rusted piece of fence wire and was taking a header. I dropped the containment cage as I fell, and it hit the ground with a loud rattle.

Instantly, the cat whirled around, its reflective eyes pinpointing me as the source of the noise. As I scrambled to my feet, the cat shimmered and blurred. It was using its adaptive coloration to blend with the night, to match the black of the pier and the oily glisten of the water behind it.

Cursing, I grabbed a grenade from my pocket. I pulled the pin from it and hurled it in the direction of the pier. But my aim was off. The grenade glanced off a piling and ricocheted into the water, exploding under the surface with a dull pop. Bubbles carried the pungent herbal scent to the surface, but I knew that nowhere near enough of the drug had been released.

I ran forward, hauling the tranq pistol out of its holster. Every fiber of my body ached to change, to give chase. But I maintained human form. As I closed the distance between myself and the cat, it reappeared. For just an instant, as I thudded onto the pier, I caught a glimpse of an animal with a black back and white chest, chin, and legs. Its markings were perfectly symmetrical. It had a wide face and large golden eyes, giving it an innocent, kittenish expression. But I recognized it for the foul little creature it was. And I was only about twenty meters away now. I hauled the second grenade from my pocket, pulled the pin and ...

The cat meowed. The sound was long and drawn out, more a howl than a meow. It echoed through the night, sending a shiver of pleasure down my spine and causing the hair on the tips of my ears to quiver. Too late, I realized dimly that I should have been ready for this, should have brought ear plugs along. I felt my will drain from me, and looked at the grenade I held with slack fingers. It would be so easy to let go of it, to let it fall into the ocean. And then just chase my tail, round and round and...

Drek. I hate cats. Especially magically active ones.

Gritting my teeth, I wrestled against the compulsion that had settled over my mind like a thick fog. I jerked my arm forward, bowling the grenade at the cat. The blue egg bounced and rattled its way down the uneven boards of the pier, toward the patch of shimmering darkness that the cat had once again become. By some miracle the grenade came to a stop less than a meter from the creature's paws, then exploded with a muffled crack.

A spray of catnip flakes flew into the air like confetti. The stuff was super concentrated, grown hydroponically and flash-dried for maximum potency. Even as the cloud of it enveloped the cat, I felt the claw of control the creature had inserted into my mind slip away. The cat dropped its protective camouflage, took one giddy look around, and immediately fell squirming onto its back on the pier. It waved its paws in the air in a frenzy of delight, twisting its head this way and that as it drank in the heady scent of the drug.

I took careful aim with my tranq gun and popped it one. The dart needled into the cat's flank, and in another moment it lay still. I walked along the pier toward it, pistol still at the ready. When I was satisfied that the thing was out cold and would stay that way for the next hour or two, I went back for the containment cage, unfolded it, and stuffed the cat inside. Despite my distaste for the creature, I was careful not to hurt it. I didn't want to face charges for willfully harming an endangered species—even though I suspected that this was a hybrid, perhaps a cross with a common domestic cat. Blackberry cats are usually jet black.

Only when the animal was contained in the cage did I take a closer look at the woman on the pier. She was slender, human—and very, very attractive.

Normally I don't go for humans. Their females are too complicated, and insist upon a series of complex courtship behaviors before they let you mount them. And they mask their tantalizing female scents behind pungent flowery smells strong enough to make you sneeze. But there was something about this one that made me take a second look. And a second sniff— although I was polite and maintained my distance.

She had dark, shoulder-length hair that was just starting to streak with gray and eyes so brown they looked as if they were all pupil. Except when they caught the light. Then I could see the flecks of gold within the deeper brown.

I don't normally pay too much attention to what humans call race—most humans look pretty much alike to me—but I guessed that this woman had been sired by someone from the Middle East. Her face had a fluid grace to it, wide cheekbones tapering down to a narrow chin and full lips. Her eyebrows were perfectly arched. Faint creases marked the corners of her eyes, and a delicate frown line creased her forehead. I guessed her age as late thirties. Maybe early forties, tops.

Her hair and clothes were damp, and she smelled of salt water and diesel fuel. She wore frayed jeans and a beaded leather vest, and was barefoot. Tan lines from sandal straps marked her feet. A silver necklace with a heart-shaped pendant hung around her neck. I winced at the sight of it, imagining the blisters that would erupt on my fingers if I were to mistakenly touch it.

The woman stood casually on the pier, her brown eyes looking at me quizzically. Despite the fact that the night was cool, she wasn't shivering. She stared at me for a long moment, with eyes that seemed to search my soul. They were eyes that contained a strange mixture of innocence and experience. They had a childlike quality about them, yet also a knowing calm that suggested they had seen a whole lot of living. When she spoke, her soft voice was overlaid with an accent I didn't recognize. It was as if several different accents had been rolled into one.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm with Lone Star's Magical Task Force."

The name drew a blank. She obviously hadn't heard of the task force, even though it had been making the tridcasts a lot lately, and had been mentioned in several of President Haeffner's speeches.

She looked around. "Where am I?"

She must be from out of town. Either that or she'd become disoriented during her swim to the island.

"Georges Island," I answered. "Were you aboard the Party Animal?"

"The what?"

"The yacht," I prompted. "The one the wedding party chartered for a late-night harbor tour."

The frown line on her forehead disappeared. "Harbor?" She looked across the water at the lights of downtown. "What city is this?"

"Halifax." I peered at her, wishing I had a flashlight. My night vision is pretty good, and I didn't think I saw any bruises or other signs of a head injury, but I couldn't be certain. Perhaps she was on drugs?

I sniffed. There was no detectable scent of illegal substances. Nor were there any visible chipjacks for slotting BTL.

"What's your name?" I asked.

Her smile lit up her face. "They call me Jane."

"Who does?"

"My friends. The ones who sell the cats."

My nose twitched. I lifted the cage. "Cats like this one?"

She nodded.

"More than one cat?"

"At least a dozen."

I could hardly contain my excitement. This wasn't an isolated appearance of a paranormal animal; it was part of what sounded like an organized smuggling operation.

"Do you mind coming back to the police station to answer a few questions?" I asked. I neglected to mention that I didn't really have any authority to question her—that I wasn't a police detective. But since I had access to the station—certain areas of it, anyway—I could probably grab one of the interview rooms.

I expected a protest, or at least a polite demurral, but the woman just shrugged. "I don't mind."

I radioed back to Hunt. "Romulus here. I'm on the west side of the island, and have the para contained and ready for transport. There will also be one civilian to transport back to the station: a witness who might be able to shed some light on where another of these creatures might be located. Over."

Hunt's voice crackled back over the commlink. "Roger that," he answered. "One contained cat, one wolf, and one civilian for transport. I'll be there in two shakes. Over."

I hefted the cage in my hand. The blackberry cat only weighed about five kilos, but each of those kilos was worth fifty nuyen. If I could locate the people who were importing these animals to the UCAS,

I stood to make a fortune. Not only that, but I'd be cracking a "case"—just like a regular police officer. Sergeant Raymond would have to commend me for that.

Jane stared at the limp body of the cat. "They're very beautiful," she said in a soft voice. "It isn't right to cage a creature so regal."

I sure as drek didn't share Jane's sentiments about blackberry cats. The only good cat is a caged cat, in my opinion. And that's just what I intended to do, to each and every one of the little fiends. At two hundred and fifty nuyen a pop.

3

Once I got Jane back to the station, she went uncooperative on me. She claimed to know nothing about blackberry cats being brought into the UCAS, nor was she willing to provide any information on the "friends" who were illegally selling them. She wouldn't even give me any personal data. When I asked for her full name, address, occupation, and date and place of birth, all I got was the same answer, over and over again: "I don't know."

Exasperated, I let her cool her heels in an interview room. I was about to tell her to head on home— wherever that might be—and call it a night. But when Dass happened down the hall, I decided to go with my hunch. There was something unusual about Jane; her body language didn't quite match the timbre of her voice, or her scent. I decided to ask Dass for one more favor. She agreed, and we stepped back into the interview room.

"This is Detective Mchawi," I said. "Do you mind if she sits in on our interview?"

Jane shrugged. "I don't mind." Her eyes were locked on Dass' shirt, following the drummers as they strobed through their patterns. As Dass sat down, Jane reached across the table and stroked the fabric with a fingertip. The gesture—and the expression of awe on her face—reminded me of a child discovering something new and wonderful. It made her look quite beautiful.

"Do we have your permission to use magic?" I asked. "You have the right to refuse."

"Magic?" Something sparked behind her eyes as she glanced sharply in my direction. She seemed about to speak—and then the twinkle faded. She nodded. "You have my permission."

I nodded to Dass. She wove her fingers together in a complex pattern, spoke a few words of Swahili, and cast the spell. Then she peered intently at Jane.

I asked Jane the same questions I'd asked earlier. Once again, her answers were the same: "I don't know."

We ran through the preliminary questions—a process that took less than a minute—and I tried prompting her by recapping what she'd told me earlier. I was asking leading questions—something a good interviewer avoids—but by this time I was desperate. When I got the same non-answers, once again, I excused myself and motioned Dass out into the hallway.

"Well?" I asked.

"She's telling the truth. She has absolutely no idea who she is or where she's from." Dass stared in through the one-way glass at Jane, who waited patiently in the empty room, her hands neatly folded in her lap. No, not neatly folded. Her fingers were locked in a gesture identical to the one Dass had used to cast the detection spell that helped her differentiate truth from falsehood. Jane's gold-flecked eyes stared back into mine, as if she could see through the tinted glass and into my thoughts. I tore my eyes away.

"When I met her on Georges Island, she told me her name was Jane," I told Dass.

She laughed. "As in Jane Doe?"

"I suppose so," I said with a sigh. "Is she lying when she claims not to remember what she told me earlier, about her 'friends' who smuggle blackberry cats?"

"She's not lying. She's forgotten all about it, just like everything else."

"So she's got amnesia?" I frowned. "What would cause that?"

"Beats me," Dass said. "I'm no shrink."

She glanced at her wristwatch. I caught the hint.

"Thanks for your help, Dass," I said quickly. "But can I ask just one more favor? Would you authorize a retinal and DNA scan? Maybe that will tell us who Jane Doe is."

Dass hesitated and I could catch a whiff of irritation. Had I pushed our friendship too far? But then she nodded. "I'll clear it for you," she said.

I opened the door to the interview room and waved Jane out into the hallway. "Thanks for your cooperation," I told her. "There's just one last thing I'd like to ask for. A retinal and DNA scan. It will only take about five minutes, and won't hurt. Just a brief flash of light in the eye, and a slight prick in the arm. We don't normally request scans of witnesses, but it may help me figure out who you are."

She agreed, and we headed down the hall to the scanning lab. I gave the records clerk the little data I had on Jane, gave her last name as Doe, just for the hell of it, then used the stylus to highlight the IDENT records check.

The retinal scan only took a minute. But we had to wait twenty minutes more for the lab techs to do a watch changeover. Jane seemed to be getting progressively more nervous the longer we sat in the waiting room. I could smell a faint whiff of fear coming from her, but it was overlaid by the disinfectant that left the lab smelling like a harsh chemical interpretation of a pine forest.

When her turn came, Jane passively followed the lab tech—a dwarf in medical whites—into the testing cubicle. I tagged along, and settled into a plastic chair in one corner of the crowded room. As the dwarf prepared the syringe, Jane stared curiously at his beard, which was styled in a "pharaoh shave." His face was clean-shaven except for his chin, where a wide growth of beard was braided and bound with leather thongs into a shape reminiscent of a handle.

Jane sat quietly while the tech tightened the rubber tubing around her arm. But as soon as he swabbed her inner elbow with metallic-smelling iodine, all hell broke loose.

"No!" Jane screamed. She smashed the syringe out of the dwarf's hand, drew her knees to her chest and kicked. The lab technician was caught completely by surprise as Jane's feet connected with his chest. Bowled over backward, he crashed into the cart behind him, tipping it over and sending plastic slides and syringes skittering out into the hallway.

As other techs ran toward the cubicle, the dwarf picked himself up off the floor, eyes blazing. "What the frig's her problem?" he sputtered, his beard quivering with anger. "She consented to this test, yeah?"

I had jumped up from my seat to restrain Jane, but there was no need. She'd fallen out of her chair and lay curled up on the floor in a fetal position. Tears spilled from shut eyes and her breath came in short gasps that sounded like sobs. I waved back the techs who were trying to crowd into the cubicle, knelt down, and touched her shoulder.

"Jane?"

"No," she whispered. "Not the mask. Please don't ..." Then she jammed her fingers into her mouth and sucked on them, a look of intense agony twisting her face. She stank of fear.

I shook her slightly. "Jane?"

After a long moment, she lowered her fingers from her mouth. Her eyes opened. They were full of confusion as they met mine.

"Where—?" She gulped. "What—?"

"You're in the Lone Star police station in Halifax," I told her. "In the scanning lab. The technician is just going to draw some blood for a DNA sample."

"No, I'm friggin' well not," the dwarf said, holding his chest with one hand. "Yer Jane Doe can go skag herself."

I glared back at him. "She's mentally ill," I growled. "She's not responsible for her actions. She—" I stopped myself. What was I doing, defending this complete stranger? Yet as I looked at her tear-stained face, something tugged at my emotions. Cut off from her memories, Jane was alone in the world. Just as I had once been.

Jane suddenly rose to her feet and sat down in the chair, making an odd motion with her hands that suggested smoothing out a wide skirt. Then she placed her right arm, which was still bound by the rubber tubing, onto the counter next to her. "I am anxious to see the sphygmomanometer in operation, Herr doctor," she said to the dwarf. "Please do demonstrate your device."

I turned to look at her, startled. Although she was speaking English, Jane's voice had taken on a thick German accent. She sat erect, her chin lifted in a haughty expression. Just the way she held her body transformed her. Even though I'd known her only a short time, I could see a distinct difference. She even smelled different. More confident, less fearful. She was no longer Jane Doe. She was someone ... else.

Even the dwarf could see the change. He kept a cautious distance. "What the frig's she trying to pull now?" His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"I don't know." I picked up a syringe and showed it to Jane. "Any objections to having a blood sample taken?" I asked her.

"Proceed," she said curtly.

I offered the syringe to the dwarf. But he turned his head and raised his hands, palms out in a silent refusal. I turned toward the doorway, but the other lab techs had melted away, except for one who was cleaning up the debris from the spilled cart.

"Will you take the sample?" I asked her, holding up the syringe.

She shook her head. "No way," she said. "That woman's nuts."

I glared my frustration at the tech. When I looked back at Jane, her posture had changed again. She no longer sat with a laser-straight spine, nor did she carry her chin quite so high. She shook her head slightly and blinked, as if she'd just woken up. "Is it over?" she asked.

I sighed and set the syringe down. "It's over," I said.

The retinal scan would have to be enough.

I had the techs run the retinal scan through the databases. It drew a blank: Jane didn't have a System Identification Number, nor was there any record of her in any Lone Star database. If she had ever been arrested, it wasn't within any of Lone Star's jurisdictions. And they cover most of North America.

"All right, Jane," I said, touching her arm. "We're finished here. You can go—"

I had been about to suggest that she go home, but then I realized that Jane didn't know where "home" was. Instead I fished a card out of my pocket. It had the name and address of a shelter for the SINless, down on Barrington Street near the docks. Not the nicest part of town, but she'd be safe enough once she got inside. I scrawled my name on the back of the card.

"Here," I told Jane as I walked her out of the scanning lab, toward the police station's Rainnie Street exit. "This is a shelter where you can go and doss down. Show them this card at the door and tell them Romulus sent you. Otherwise they'll tell you the place is full."

I held the door open for her. The sun was just rising, painting the sky over the Halifax Citadel a bright pinkish orange. She followed my gaze, looking up at the 19th-century military fort—now a high-security Lone Star prison—and her face took on a look of intense sorrow. Then her eyes rose to the sunlight-dappled sky behind it, and her expression softened.

"It's beautiful," she whispered. "It feels so good to be ..."

I interrupted her thought by pressing a credstick into her hand. It had maybe ten nuyen left on it, but that was more than enough for a local call. Even though I doubted Jane could give me any more information, I didn't want to lose touch with her.

"If you remember anything more, use this to give me a call," I said. I took the business card back from her and added a telecom number to it.

She blinked, then pocketed the credstick.

I pointed in the direction of Barrington Street. "The shelter is that way. Good luck."

"Thank you, Romulus," she said. "Se'seterin."

Bright morning? The word was Sperethiel, the language of the elves. Where had she picked up that expression? From her cat-smuggling "friends"?

I yawned, and watched her go. It had been a long night. As Jane walked away, I wondered if I would see her again.

4

I took a jander down to the Public Gardens that evening. I waited until it was dark. The city's quieter then—fewer humans on the streets—and the night always feels like a much more natural time to be out and about.

The Gardens used to be a public park, up until the beginning of this century. But once simsense was developed, there wasn't any need for people to physically visit the place. Not when they could walk through it virtually and avoid unpleasant weather and encounters. In the mind, every day is a sunny day. And there aren't any gangers to mug you.

I walked between the trees along a path that was more garbage than gravel. The flower beds on either side were overgrown with weeds, the fish ponds had dried up to crusted mud, and the fountains had stopped working long ago. Gang graffiti was scrawled across the tumbled stonework walls. The Gardens had become a haven for the SINless, squatters who'd built homes for themselves in the trees out of scrap wood and metal. Firelight flickered through the cracks in the tree house walls, and loud, thumping music filled the park as boom boxes competed with one another for territory. Above the cacophony of wailing guitars and thudding bass, I could hear rough voices laughing, and occasionally a thud or splatter as garbage was dumped from one of the tree houses.

The ground was covered with litter; a foul smell of spoiled food rose to my nostrils as my feet scuffed through the plastic wrappers. Acrid smoke from the cooking fires drifted down from above, and I caught the occasional whiff of hashish or sweet crack smoke. There were also more pleasant smells, like lingering memories of the Gardens' former glory. I passed by a tangled rose bush that had probably survived only because of its tough thorns, and drank in its rich velvet scent.

I heard a faint hissing noise and spun around just in time to see a ganger sliding down a rope that hung from one of the tree houses overhead. One gloved hand clutched the rope; the other held a Streetline Special. The gun was tiny, its lightweight composite body hidden by the ganger's slim hand. It was a cheap factory knock-off, and not terribly accurate. But at this close range, the ganger probably wouldn't miss.

I stared her down as her feet touched ground, ignoring the rustling noises in the branches overhead that told me that other gangers were moving into position, closing the circle around me. I knew from police reports that they liked to use monofilament nooses: molecule-thin, weighted wires that would slice a victim's head off with one sharp yank. I fought the urge to tuck my chin defensively in against my neck—it wouldn't do any good, anyway—and concentrated on the ganger descending the rope. She would be the leader, the one who would decide whether the gang would parlay with me—or whether they would cut me up like meat and argue over the pieces later.

The gang leader was a wiry human with slanted eyes and a mop of bleach-white hair. She'd had her eyes replaced with anime-eyes, a style of cybereye modeled after a cartoon character that was popular just before the turn of the millennium. They were wide and staring, giving her a childlike appearance that didn't match her malicious smile. She was probably in her twenties, but with those eyes I couldn't think of her as anything other than a girl.

She wore a black T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out to show off her tattooed arms, which had muscles like braided wire ropes as a result of climbing up and down to her squat in the trees above. Her trousers were navy blue with a gold stripe down the side; military-issue and probably boosted from some UCAS sailor who'd made the fatal mistake of straying into the Public Gardens after dark.

I was standing near the tree that held the squat she probably dossed down in. Keeping my moves slow— and maintaining eye contact with the girl the whole time—I unzipped and splashed my mark across the tree trunk. It was a challenge that even a human could understand.

The ganger let go of the rope, took a quick step toward me, and touched the barrel of her pistol to my chest.

I smiled. "You can't kill me with that," I told her.

It was only partially true. If she shot me in the head or spine I'd die, same as anyone else. But otherwise, I'd only have to shift to wolf form to regenerate the damaged tissue and bone. A bullet to the chest would hurt like drek, and would leave me gasping and bloody on the ground. But it wouldn't kill me.

She could see I wasn't bluffing. She lowered the pistol and cocked her head to one side. Her overlarge eyes stared at me, disconcertingly childlike in her adult face.

"Wha'cha want?"

"I'm looking for a troll with a horn like a unicorn's," I said as I zipped up my pants. "He's a Weed, like you." I was guessing, of course. The troll had been wearing a long-sleeved jacket when I saw him in the parking garage.

"Why?"

"I want to catch the thing that iced his chummers," I answered.

"Are you Star?" she asked in a voice that hissed with menace.

As I considered my answer, I heard a rustle in the branches overhead and felt something threadlike brush against the tuft of hair on the tip of my left ear. I kept absolutely still, knowing that if I made a wrong move now the monofilament noose would drop around my neck in a flash. Decapitation is something I sure as drek can't regenerate from.

"I'm a bounty hunter," I said. "Lone Star pays good nuyen for taking down dangerous paranormals like the one that killed the two Weeds up in the North End garage."

"Wha'cha talkin' about?" she snorted. "Stud and the others were druggin'. That was what flatlined 'em."

I shook my head. "It was a para. I saw it."

"You was there?"

"I happened by. I heard shooting and checked it out."

"Most folks would'a run the other way," she said.

"I'm not most folks." I gave her my most wolfish grin.

She considered, then said, "Wait a minnit." She raised her gloved hand and flicked her fingers in silent gangspeak.

We waited in the bedlam that was the Public Gardens, listening to the blaring boom boxes and shouts from overhead. A police chopper passed low over the park, its prop wash thrashing the tree branches while a searchlight stabbed down at the ramshackle shelters. I heard the splat of pistol fire, and a round or two zinged off the gold star that was painted on the chopper's armored belly. I suppressed a growl; the squatters in the park were firing at a Lone Star vehicle. But now wasn't the time to make an issue of it.

The chopper moved away, its rotor noise fading into the night.

A branch overhead creaked as a heavy weight bent it, and then a burly form slid down the rope the gang leader had used. It was the troll from the parking garage. He towered over me, more than two hundred kilos of pure menace. A stubby spiral horn jutted out of the center of his broad forehead, and his lower canines curved up and over his upper lip. One of his pointed ears was torn; the other was studded with earrings made from the pull tabs of soda pop cans. The troll looked as if he were in his early thirties, but was probably barely out of his teens. Trolls only live to about fifty, and mature early.

"Hello, Stud," I greeted him, guessing that his was the name the ganger girl had used earlier.

He stared at me a moment, then his eyes slid to the girl beside him. "Never seen this frigger before in my life."

"Yes you have," I said. "Watch." I shed my shirt and unzipped my pants, letting them fall around my ankles. As I dropped to hands and knees, I heard the girl's voice: "Likes to show off what he's got, doesn't he?"

Then I changed...

I swiveled my ears and caught the troll's sharp intake of breath as he watched my body shift into wolf form.

"You're the dog I saw in the garage," he whispered.

I panted happily, my tongue lolling. Then I shifted back...

The wide-eyed ganger girl eyed my human form appreciatively as I put my clothes back on. I shot her a wink, then spoke to the troll.

"That ball of light that I saw touching the elf girl's head—"

"My girlfriend," the troll rumbled. I could tell from his ugly frown that he'd crank me if I mentioned the fact that he'd accidentally put a bullet through her chest.

"It was a paranormal animal," I continued. "A corpselight. Where'd it come from?"

"It's Halo."

"Who's Halo?"

"Not who ... what." His expression melted into a dreamy smile. "That drug is some good," he answered. "Frigs ya up somethin' fierce—leaves ya weak as a kitten for days after. But it's the best rush ever. Like a good boff. Just leaves ya wantin' more."

"Did you know it was a living creature?"

The troll shook his large head. "Not until it flat-lined Punk and Mick. That's when Alishia took a peek at it in the astral and started screamin'. When it latched onto her, I decided to cap it. She's nowhere near as chill as those two, and it would'a done her for sure."

The girl ganger shot the troll a look. "So Halo really is a para? This guy's not scammin'?"

"Guess so," the troll said.

My mind was still trying to process what I'd just learned. The tentacled horror that had killed three people in the North End parking garage was being sold on the streets as a drug. Somebody had found a way to sustain corpselights in a city environment, and was selling a new high: the deadly rush of ecstasy that a corpselight used to subdue the victims whose life essence it fed upon.

It looked as if Drug Enforcement had a claim to the case, after all.

"Where'd you score the Halo?" I asked.

That got me a look. I could see the troll debating whether or not to tell me. Ratting out your dealer is an excellent way of getting iced. But that dealer was responsible for the death of the troll's girlfriend...

"Ya gotta know a shaman or mage to use Halo," he stalled.

"How come?"

"Ya need magic ta use it."

"I don't want to use it," I reminded him. "I want to talk to the friggers who're dealing it. I want to capture one of these corpselights."

The troll paused, but I could tell by his body language that he was going to give me what I wanted. He still craved the "drug" Halo—that much was clear. But the craving was stirring up a fear that I could read in his troubled eyes as easy as I could read a marquee.

"Try the Old Burial Grounds," he said. "Ask for Wowkwis."

It was an unusual name. Mi'kmaq Indian, by the sound of it.

"Thanks," I said.

The wide-eyed girl ganger had already lost interest in me and was climbing back up on the rope. She disappeared into the tree house above.

I gave Stud a look. "It'll be payback for Alishia," I told him.

"Yeah," he muttered as he turned away. "Sure." I could see that he didn't really believe me. He figured the corpselight would ice me, too.

I bared my teeth at any gangers who might still be sitting in the branches above, then loped out of the park.

5

The Old Burial Grounds are in the oldest part of the city. They might have had a proper name once, but that's the name everyone uses now. Some of the graves go back to the late 1700s, just after Halifax was founded.

I walked along Spring Garden Road until I came to the cemetery, which is about a meter higher than the street. The burial grounds are a block square, and are surrounded by a high wrought-iron fence topped with ornate spikes. The main entrance is on Barrington, but the gate there is rusted shut. The graves are so old that nobody comes to visit them anymore, and the gate hadn't been opened in a century or more.

The cemetery is one part of the city that's always deserted at night. It had a reputation of being haunted all along, but only after the Awakening of 2011, when magic returned to the world, did those stories prove true. The ghosts that manifested in the graveyard packed a one-two punch against those who intruded on their final resting place, first paralyzing with their chilling touch and then filling their victims with a magical fear. More than one fresh corpse, dead of a heart attack or stroke, had been found in the Old Burial Grounds when dawn broke.

I climbed up and over the wrought iron fence, thanking the spirits that I wasn't allergic to iron, then leaped down inside the grounds. The huge oak trees inside the cemetery sighed and rustled overhead—a quiet contrast to the bedlam of the Public Gardens.

I walked through a grim forest of leaning headstones and larger, more ornate monuments topped with cherubs. There were also a number of slate grave markers, but their inscriptions were long gone; the outermost layers of slate had sloughed off like dead skin, centuries ago. The place seemed to have the reek of death, but it was probably just my imagination. When I took a good sniff, all I could smell was tree sap and the rich loam of well-fertilized soil.

I didn't see any sign of a drug dealer, and was starting to think Stud had given me a false lead. I couldn't see anyone else moving around in the cemetery, and there didn't seem to be any of the markers dealers leave to clue buyers in to the stashes they've left behind for them.

Then I saw the fresh flowers. They were sitting in a cut-glass vase that looked as if it had been made more than a century ago, but which was clean and filled with fresh water. The vase held a spray of pink roses and was sitting on the ground in front of a granite headstone. The flowers were still fresh; I could smell their perfume. The name chiselled into the mottled gray tombstone was no longer legible, but I could just make out the latter part of the date. Whoever was buried here had died in the 1870s.

I heard a faint click and looked up. A few meters away, a woman was seated on a bench under an oak tree, facing me. She was sitting completely still and was downwind of me, which was why I hadn't noticed her earlier. Her hands were in her lap, holding something, and she was looking down at it. I changed my position so she was silhouetted by the lights in the street behind her, trying to get a better look ...

"Jane!" I exclaimed.

She looked up. From her startled expression, I could tell she didn't recognize me. I moved into the light.

"Who are you?" she asked.

For just a moment, I thought I had the wrong woman. But it was my Jane Doe all right. I'd know those eyes anywhere.

"It's me, Romulus," I said. "Remember? We met on Georges Island and you came back to the police station with me in a hover."

"We have never met before," she said in a voice as certain as death.

"We have," I assured her. "You just don't remember. Your memory is ... damaged."

She raised the object she held in her hands: the necklace. Silver glinted at her throat as she fastened it behind her neck.

"Why are you here, Jane?" I asked.

"I came here to meet...." Her voice trailed off, uncertain.

My hackles rose. Had Jane come here to meet a Halo dealer? Was it a corpselight that had frigged up her memory? But that didn't make sense; the troll seemed to have retained all of his mental faculties after "using" Halo. And Jane didn't have the yearning, fearful look I'd seen in the troll's eyes.

"I gave you the address of the Barrington Shelter this morning?" I said to her. "Did you go there?"

"I don't know. I woke up, and ... started walking around the city. I came here to visit my daughter."

I looked around the graveyard. "Here? At night?"

She pointed at the grave with the fresh flowers. "Matilda is buried just over there."

The idea that Jane could be the mother of someone who died nearly two centuries ago sent a shiver down my spine. Then I shook off the notion. It was impossible. Jane was suffering from amnesia, and, judging from that outburst in the hospital, possibly also a multiple-personality disorder. Spirits only knew what other mental illnesses she had. She was obviously delusional if she believed that the moldering bones that lay in the ground a few meters away were those of her daughter.

Wasn't she?

Jane unfastened the necklace and held it out toward me. "Look inside the locket," she said. "There's a picture of her there."

I wasn't about to touch anything silver. "You open it for me," I said.

She frowned, but did as I said.

"Hold it out so I can see it."

She undid the necklace and held it out for me.

I bent closer. Inside the locket was a tiny two-dimensional image, rendered in brown-black tones on a flat sheet of metal. It showed a middle-aged human woman. The portrait was faded, the image ghostly, but I could still make out the woman's image. Her hair was long, tied back in a bow. Her dress had a full skirt and white lace collar. It hung to her ankles, covering most of her button-up black boots.

I wasn't sure what to say. Should I humor Jane's delusion, or challenge it? The woman in the photo did indeed resemble Jane, but was as old as she was. Jane could have picked up the locket in a pawn shop, noticed the resemblance, and bought it for that reason.

"Nice photo," I murmured in a noncommittal voice. "It looks old."

"It's a tintype," Jane said. She snapped the locket shut, then ran a finger along its tarnished surface—a gesture that made it clear this was her most treasured possession. Then she refastened the necklace at her throat.

I looked around the burial grounds. Still no sign of any dealer. There were plenty of rough types on the sidewalks outside the burial grounds, but none of them showed any sign of being about to venture inside.

Jane was beginning to spook me. Not only was she wandering around a rough port city without any knowledge of where or who she was, she was putting complete trust in total strangers—which, apparently, was what I had become to her once more. Had I been a thief, it would have been all too easy to take the necklace from her. Despite its sentimental value, she'd practically handed it to me.

Jane's vulnerability touched me. She was a grown woman, and yet ... a child. When she yawned, I could see that she was barely keeping her eyes open. If I left her here, she'd probably curl up on the bench and sleep. I didn't want her to become fodder for a malicious ghost.

"You look tired," I told her. "Come on. I've got a place where you can doss down."

She looked at me, for just a moment, with narrowed eyes. She was sizing me up, weighing my offer.

"You'll have privacy," I assured her. "I usually sleep during the day. You can sleep on the couch. You wouldn't like my bed, anyway."

She stood. "All right."

We climbed over the fence and walked back up the hill to Robie Street. I could tell that Jane was exhausted, but she kept up the pace throughout the twenty-minute walk. We at last came to a house built in the last century, a tall and narrow two-story building with a sharply peaked roof. I led Jane around the side and opened the gate that leads to the back yard. Gem and I don't bother locking it, because there's plenty behind that gate to deter burglars: forty kilos of snarling menace, trained to take down an intruder in three seconds flat.

As soon as I stepped inside the gate, Haley caught my scent. She streaked across the yard toward me, running low and strong. When she reached me she skidded to a stop, chest down and hindquarters high, and gave a sharp, playful yip. Despite the greeting, she still remembered to do her job; she kept one eye on Jane at all times, watching for any threatening moves. But I knew there wouldn't be any problems. On our walk over, I'd warned Jane about Haley. And I hadn't smelled any fear on Jane when Haley had run at us. Her body language was perfect: relaxed, confident, non-threatening. She'd be fine.

Haley's a beautiful bitch, a pure-bred German shepherd without any of the hip problems that can plague that breed. In Gem's opinion, she's "too soft" for police work. But she's produced several litters of excellent puppies, many of whom have gone on to distinguish themselves with Lone Star's K9 patrols.

I bent down and let Haley lick my face, and gave her muzzle a quick kiss in return. You couldn't call what we had love—not in the way humans used the term, anyway. I had sired a couple of litters on Haley and she was fun to romp around with. But even though she was a smart dog, being with her wore thin after a while. You could only roughhouse and play for so long. I needed the intellectual stimulation that only humans and metas could provide. Still, I hoped Haley wouldn't be jealous of Jane.

Frig. Where had that thought come from? I must have been more attracted to the human woman than I cared to admit.

I closed the gate and led the way to the garage. That's where I doss down. It isn't much, by human standards. As I flicked on the light, I looked at the garage for the first time as it must appear to a human: unfurnished, spartan, a place where an animal would sleep. The only furniture was an old couch that I sometimes curled up on, a wooden table and a single chair for those rare occasions when I eat human food, a space heater, and the pile of blankets that is my bed. There wasn't much in the way of decoration— just a few holopics that I'd tacked up on the walls, landscapes that reminded me of the forest where I'd been born.

At home, inside the privacy of the fence, I usually shift into wolf form. It's much more comfortable. But in order to communicate with Jane I'd need to stay in human form. I brushed off the chair so she could sit down. "Would you like something to eat?" I asked. "There isn't that much; I mostly eat out. But I could fix you something."

I opened a cupboard, shoving aside the cans of dog food and searching among the tins for something a human would find tasty. I wasn't having much luck.

"I'm not hungry," Jane said. "I think I'll just sleep."

She sagged onto the couch, arranging one of the cushions as a pillow. I picked up a blanket, intending to cover her with it, then realized it was thick with dog hair. It was also heavily impregnated with my scent. It smelled, quite frankly, of wet dog.

"Just a minute," I said, embarrassed. "I'll get you a blanket from the house."

A light was on in the house; Gem was still up and about. I knocked, and after a moment she came to the door. When Gem answered it, I asked to borrow a clean blanket. "Just for the night," I explained. "I've got a guest."

"Oh, really," Gem said, arching an eyebrow. "Would that be the good-looking woman I saw you bring home? You sure she's your type?"

One of the things I hate about human form is that you blush. I had hoped Gem wasn't looking out the window earlier, but I should have known better. Her senses are as keenly honed as Haley's.

Gem's an ork, and her night vision is excellent. She's short for her race, with a mop of unruly curls and wide hips that she says would make the perfect "breeding bitch." But she's never had any kids, as far as I know. Instead she devotes all of her time to her dogs—her "children."

She could sense my discomfort. Instantly, her body language changed. "Sure, Romulus," she said in a soft voice. "I'll get a blanket for you."

I waited on the back porch. In all the years I'd known Gem, I'd never entered her house. Well, not quite. There was that one time, but I'd felt awkward about it. The dogs weren't allowed inside, and I felt I was setting a precedent by entering the house, even if I was in human form. After a few uncomfortable minutes of sitting in the kitchen, I'd excused myself and gone back to the garage. Ever since that day, when Gem and I wanted to chat, we sat on the back porch.

Part of my respect for Gem comes from the fact that she's an expert dog trainer. She has a voice that commands attention like a whip crack, but she can also dish out praise, when appropriate, in a voice as pleasurable as a good belly rub. She's been training dogs for Lone Star's K9 patrols for at least ten years— longer than I've lived in Halifax. I'd heard she was involved, for a time, in some of Lone Star's experiments with training hell hounds as guard dogs. But after seeing the burns on her arms, I didn't want to ask her about that experience.

I lived rent-free in Gem's garage in return for helping her with the training. I demonstrated the moves, and the young dogs responded well to the occasional nip or growl from a "dog" so much larger and more powerful than themselves. But as I stood on the porch, waiting for Gem to get the blanket, I felt like a foolish puppy.

When she returned, I nodded a quick thanks and loped back to the garage with the blanket. Only to find Jane curled up, fast asleep, with the dog-haired blanket pulled up to her chin.

Gently, I removed it. Jane stirred only a little as I replaced it with the clean blanket. I thought I heard her murmur something in her sleep: a man's name. For just a moment, I felt a twinge of jealousy. Then I pushed that emotion aside. I squatted beside Jane and nuzzled her hand with my cheek. She looked beautiful when she was sleeping. Relaxed, at peace with herself.

The touch of my cheek on her hand was just enough to wake her up. Her eyes flew open wide, and her gold-flecked eyes bored wildly into mine.

"Please!" she whispered fiercely. "Don't let them take me..."

She blinked. Then she looked around the garage, and back at me, and seemed to realize where she was. As whatever thought had prompted her fearful outburst vanished, her face gradually relaxed.

"Don't worry," I said. "You're safe here."

She nodded, curled back into a ball, and closed her eyes. After a minute or two, her breath was slow and deep.

I stared down at Jane. Where was this urge to protect her coming from? Was this the first stirring of love that humans felt for one another? It seemed too soon, too fast; I'd only known Jane a day. I didn't even know if that was her real name.

Then I laughed at myself. What did "real" names matter? I hadn't had a name when I was born; Romulus was just a tag my first set of foster parents had given me. I still didn't have a "proper" last name. And what was identity, anyhow, to someone like me, someone who shifted between the worlds of animal and human every day?

My curiosity about Jane was growing. I knew the old adage: curiosity was what killed the cat. And cats are stupid creatures, when you get right down to it. So stupid that they're always poking their noses into other people's back yards, and getting chased up a tree for their troubles.

My curiosity wasn't going to get me into any trouble. I just wanted to know more about Jane. But where would I start searching for that first puzzle piece?

I had no idea. Unless...

No, that was ridiculous. It couldn't be true.

But there was only one way to find out.

6

It took me most of the morning to find the information I was looking for. I'd never been to the archives before, and it took a while to find what I wanted. And part way through the morning I had to leave the archives to pay another visit to the Old Burial Grounds so I could double-check the position of the grave, pacing out exactly where it lay.

But the effort paid off. There had been a Matilda buried under the headstone where Jane had left the bouquet last night. Matilda O'Reiley, born in 1798 and laid to rest in 1875 at the age of seventy-seven. The archives even had a record of the inscription placed on the grave, a verse by the poet Byron:

***

I took that hand which lay so still,

Alas! My own was full as chill...

I know not why I could not die.

***

An odd choice for an epitaph, but one that could be rationalized as a token of a mother's near-suicidal grief at the loss of a beloved daughter. It could also be taken as evidence that Jane really was more than two hundred years old.

Nobody lived that long. Except maybe elves. They were rumored to have life spans measured in centuries. But the first elves had only appeared in 2011, when magic returned to the world. The oldest elves were only in their fifties now—although some of them looked as though they were still in their early twenties, which was how the rumors about longevity got started.

Jane wasn't an elf. She didn't have pointy ears. At least, I didn't think she did. Her hair had hidden the tops of her ears, now that I thought about it. But even if she was an elf, she'd have to have been born after 2011.

What I'd uncovered in the archives had surprised me. But I still refused to believe it. Jane could have done the same legwork I had, could have looked up the old burial records and "adopted" one of the bodies of the cemetery. Even so, part of me wanted to believe her. Jane seemed so sincere, so certain. But weren't those the hallmarks of a true crazy?

And then there was that word she'd used in the scanning lab: sphygmomanometer. It had taken me a while to figure out the spelling, but when I had, the archivist had come up with an interesting detail. "Sphygmomanometer" was an old-fashioned word, the original name of a medical instrument invented in the 19th century: the blood pressure cuff. Where had Jane dug up a word like that?

I was preoccupied with these thoughts as I walked down the lane at the side of Gem's house. And I was sleepy. I didn't usually stay up until noon. But as soon as I saw the back gate hanging open, I tensed and came fully awake.

Something was wrong. The gate shouldn't have been open. Gem had gone out shopping today, but both she and I were always careful to close the gate— and Haley wouldn't have been able to open it on her own. No passerby in her right mind would ignore the red-lettered Beware Of Dog sign tacked on to the fence—and even if they did, Haley's barks would have frightened them off.

I suddenly realized that the yard was quiet.

I dropped into a low crouch and sniffed. There was an odd smell, one that made my eye itch. Kind of like medicine, but stronger. I poked just the tip of my nose inside the gate; the smell was stronger inside the back yard. Then I looked—cautiously—into the yard.

I almost yelped when I saw Haley stretched out on the ground. For a heartbeat or two, I thought she was dead. Still in a crouch, I made my way over to her on clumsy human legs and touched a hand to her chest. She was still warm, still breathing. The strange medicine smell puffed from her nostrils with each breath she exhaled.

Haley's eyelids were flickering. She let out a soft whine. I stroked her cheek as her eyes opened, and murmured to her to lie still. She looked confused, but unhurt. I was relieved by the thought that she was already recovering from the drug.

I shot a glance at the house: nothing looked unusual there. Then at the garage. My hackles rose as I saw that the door was open. I couldn't tell, with my feeble human eyes, if anyone was inside. And so I changed, only remembering to tear off my clothes at the very last moment.

The garage was empty. There was no sign of Jane. None of the furniture had been disturbed, and there were no signs of violence. Had it not been for Haley, lying drugged in the yard, I might have thought that Jane had simply woken up and wandered away. She was unlikely to have remembered where she was, and would have had no compelling reason to stay.

No, someone had taken Jane away. His smell lingered in my doss like a bad spoor: a combination of sweat-damp wool fabric and musky cologne. He'd even left his mark in my toilet. I quickly covered its stench with my own spoor.

The worst part was, I had no idea whether he was friend or foe to Jane. Nor would she know. Even if he was a total stranger to her, Jane would have gone with him willingly.

I growled at the thought. Then I went to work.

Jane's scent was easy to track. Even though we hadn't spent much time together, I knew it well. It had a certain appeal that kept it fresh in my memory.

As I ran through the yard, I barked at Haley. She was already on her feet, somewhat unsteady but looking around. I stopped to rub my muzzle reassuringly against hers, then left the yard and nudged the gate shut with my shoulder.

I followed the scent down the lane, and into Robie Street. As I loped down that busy road in full daylight, I heard more than one person shout in alarm as I bowled past them. As far as the citizens of Halifax were concerned, a large and potentially dangerous wolf—a wild animal—was on the loose. Mothers yanked their children out of my path and pedestrians parted when they saw me coming, leaving the sidewalks clear. One go-boy even dumped his motorcycle as he lost control in an intersection I was barreling through.

Several minutes after I'd started tracking Jane, I heard sirens. I threw back my head and howled as I ran. My pack! I thought. Run with me. Together we'll find Jane. Her scent was getting stronger, fresher. I was almost there.

But then I realized my mistake. The only reason a patrol car would have been heading in my direction was if someone had called in a report of a wild animal on the loose. I didn't have time to waste explaining who I was to the patrol officers. Even if they recognized me as one of Lone Star's irregular assets, they might just arrest me anyway, for loping around the city in animal form. No, I had to lose them.

A Ford Americar with gold stars emblazoned across its doors squealed around the corner, one block away. But I didn't think the police officers had spotted me yet. I ducked between two parked cars, then crawled low and fast into a store. I was sneaky and quick; no one inside the store spotted me. The blaring music inside the shop had blocked out the sound of the siren, and nobody was looking in the direction of the door when I crawled in under the display racks. But I realized a second later that the police officers had spotted me. The siren dopplered closer as the car cut across traffic and screeched into a double-park outside the store.

I thanked the spirits for my luck in choosing a clothing store to duck into. I shifted back into human form, then yanked a pair of jeans down from the rack I was hiding under. Luckily, they were too big, rather than too small. I pulled down an oversized tank top and slid it on. Then I stood up, hands in my pockets to hold up the jeans.

Car doors slammed as one police officer jumped out of the patrol car. The other officer would follow in another moment or two, after reporting in to Dispatch.

I sidled toward the door as the first uniformed officer entered. Pistol in hand, he ordered everyone inside to clear the store. Immediately. I had no problem complying. I jandered down the sidewalk, hoping nobody would notice my bare feet—or the ink stains that had splattered on the jeans when I tore off the plastic tags that would trigger the store's antishoplifting alarms. The Day-Glo orange ink felt like wet blood on my ankle and was dripping onto the sidewalk.

I spotted a hardware store and strolled inside. I boosted a length of heavy twine, stuffing it into my pocket. I felt guilty about it as I left the store, but I figured I wasn't really breaking the law. I was merely commandeering materials in the line of duty. Jane had been kidnapped, and I was the investigating officer on the scene.

Telling myself that made me feel better as I threaded the twine through the belt loops of the stolen jeans. I tied it in a knot at my navel, and the jeans stayed in place. Then I looked around.

The uniforms were getting back into their patrol car. I could imagine the puzzled frowns they must have been wearing behind their tinted helmet visors. A wolf had disappeared, apparently into thin air. I was glad the officers weren't from the Magical Task Force. They'd have realized instantly that they were dealing with a shifter and would have spotted my true form the instant they used astral sensing.

I didn't dare change back into wolf form. Instead I strolled as casually as I could over to the end of the block where I'd last smelled Jane's scent, and waited until the cops were gone and the sidewalk was relatively clear. Then I bent down as it I'd dropped something under a parked car and was looking for it. I pressed my nose to the sidewalk, closed my eyes, and took a long, deep sniff on the concrete.

Drek, but it was hard to find a scent with a human nose. My sense of smell was keener by far than an ordinary human's, but after being in wolf form, it was like trying to smell something through a nose plugged by a cold. I caught only the faintest whiff of Jane.

It was enough. I knew she'd come at least this far.

I repeated the ruse at the end of each block, sometimes having to double back and round a corner and try another direction before I caught the scent. It took a long time; I had to wait for any pedestrians who'd seen me look under a car in the previous block to pass by before taking another sniff. But the trail grew ever fresher. It eventually became so strong I knew I'd find Jane within a block or two, at most.

The scent of the man who had come for Jane was also growing stronger. I'd have to be careful.

I was standing on Terminal Road, in front of the Via Rail station, a massive rectangle of a building whose antique stonework was from a century far removed from the ultra-modern maglev trains that now departed from it. Via Rail used to be what they called a "crown corporation" in the previous century, back when there was still a country called Canada. Its claim to fame was that it linked the nation from sea to sea; you could get aboard a train in Halifax, and five days later arrive in Vancouver, on the Pacific Coast.

The trains don't run to Vancouver anymore. Not since that city was swallowed up by the Salish-Shidhe Council. Nor do they run to what used to be central Canada, which is now the Algonkian-Manitou Council, nor to Quebec, which declared itself an independent nation in 2022. These days the trains are routed south, down through Buffalo and Detroit, with service west to Winnipeg. And Via Rail is part of the Symington Corporation, which in turn is owned by Saeder-Krupp, a German megacorp.

I wondered where the man who had come for Jane was taking her. And whether I was already too late to stop him.

I entered the building, every sense on alert. The Via Rail terminal is cavernous and echoing, filled with the sounds of people talking and loudspeaker announcements of trains arriving and departing. A wave of scents washed over me: human, meta, fast food, and the pungent, burnt smell of roasted coffee. There was no way I'd be able to pick up Jane's trail inside the building—not in human form, anyway. I had to rely on sight to find her.

As I made my way into the crowd, I heard music playing up ahead. I thought it was just a passenger carrying a boom box, but then I spotted the Music Man. Despite the urgency of my search, I was caught up in his music for just a second or two.

"Music Man" was what they called him in the North End neighborhood where he lived. Nobody knew his name. He was mute—either that or he chose never to speak a word out loud. Instead he spoke through his music. He was human, dark-skinned, maybe fifty-plus years old, and scrawny for his race. His head of thinning gray hair only came to mid-chest level on me. He'd spent every nuyen he scrounged over the years on cybernetic implants of a very specific type. Hidden under his skin were a series of sensors, synthesizers, and speakers that he used to produce his music. As his hands slapped or stroked his skin, the subdermal speakers produced an incredible variety of synthesized sounds: from a rumbling mechanical grind-guitar to a high, clear flute; from the haunting cry of a whale to the tinkling of bells.

Music Man had obviously moved up in the world if he was busking at the train terminal. Via Rail charged an exorbitant licensing fee of its buskers. Music Man must have been making good nuyen these days.

I spared him a brief nod as I hurried past. He answered by running a finger in an oval along his inner arm, producing a wail reminiscent of a siren. Then he gave me a cymbal-crash wink.

I walked briskly through the terminal, searching for Jane and trying not to call attention to myself as my eyes darted back and forth. I looked for her in the lineups, at the automated booths where tickets were sold, in waiting lounges, at telecom booths, at fast-food stands, and on the maglev platforms themselves. The latter were a confusion of noise and movement, filled with flowing waves of passengers. The high-speed trains slid in and out of the station on a cushion of air, filling the high-ceilinged platform area with an eerie whistle that was too high for ordinary human ears to hear. The sound made the hair on the tips of my ears quiver, and set my teeth on edge.

I was getting a few looks from people in the station. The Via Rail security guards gave me the once-over, eyeing my bare feet and twine belt and trying to decide if I was here to cajole a few credits from passengers. It helped that the jeans and shirt were new. It made the oversize clothes look more like a fashion trend. I just hoped the guards wouldn't ask what train I was boarding and demand to see my ticket.

If I'd been carrying any credit on me, I'd have purchased a ticket for a city close by, just to look legit. But I'd left my credstick at home when I changed into wolf form. The security guards would quickly conclude that a SINless person like me was a beggar, and would hustle me out of the station pretty frigging fast.

I returned to the main lobby, feeling desperate. I couldn't see or smell Jane anywhere. Then, just when I figured she must have already boarded a train, I spotted her emerging from a single-cubicle washroom. I cursed my luck; if I'd caught up with her a few seconds earlier, I might have slipped in after her and spoken to her alone, found out what was going on.

I approached her as casually as I could, nodding and smiling when I got close. Her brown eyes glanced at me for a moment, then slid away. There hadn't been a single flicker of recognition in them. I bit down on my disappointment and strolled past her, not wanting to give myself away yet. I wanted to find out whether she was still with the man who'd drugged Haley.

She was.

He was sitting in a plastiform chair near the washroom. Tall and slender, he had shoulder-length, raven-black hair pulled back from his face with a gold hair clip, revealing the pointed ears of an elf. He was dressed in expensive clothes, like a corporate exec: a black wingtip-collar shirt under a black pinstriped suit with golden threads. The pattern matched his hair, which was streaked with metallic gold, and there was also gold on his chest: a sword-shaped tie pin. His eyes were gold too; either cybernetic implants or tinted vanity lenses. A carefully groomed mustache and beard framed his lips, which were pressed together in a firm line. I could tell from his expression and the cold look in his metallic eyes that this was a man who took everything in life seriously.

I was close enough to him now to smell his scent: the wool of his fashionable suit, the cologne he wore. I could also catch a faint trace of whatever drug he'd used on Haley coming from one of his suit pockets. I was glad he hadn't used it on Jane. I'd have been unable to follow them here if he'd carried or driven her to the station.

The elf rose to his feet with a fluid grace. He stood firm-footed on the ground in a ready stance, his narrowed eyes instinctively watching for signs of danger. He was very much the alpha male; I pictured him as the leader of his pack. I could tell he felt comfortable in his body, in tune with every sinew and muscle. And yet he didn't rely on his body alone. Despite the fact that his suit was elegantly cut, I could see a small bulge under his left arm that suggested he was carrying a holstered weapon.

I shifted my vision to the astral plane for a moment, and recognized in his aura the distinctive coloration of an adept—someone who used his innate magical abilities to hone his body into a weapon. There was a dead spot in his aura, just over his left ear. Probably a cybernetic implant of some sort. But his eyes were his own; the gold irises were indeed vanity lenses.

The elf handed Jane a small blue rectangle: a ticket. Because I was viewing it astrally, I couldn't read the destination printed on it, but I knew that blue was used for one-way trip tickets. They were going ... somewhere. And not coming back.

I switched my vision back to the physical world. Too late: Jane had already pocketed the ticket.

Jane looked around the station with a slight frown creasing her brow. "I've been here before," she said in the soft voice of someone trying to remember a fading dream. "But it was different, then. They used chalk to write down the departure times, and the trains were ... different. They ran on metal wheels, and had a rhythm. They gave off smoke..."

She blinked, as if trying to remember more.

"That was in another lifetime, Mareth'riel."

I repeated the word silently to myself: Mareth'riel. It sounded elven. Was it Jane's name? I didn't think it was just a term of endearment, but even if it was, it sounded as if the elf knew Jane well. At the very least, he knew of her delusions—of her belief that she had lived in centuries past—and was humoring them.

The elf raised his arm and consulted a wristwatch— gold, of course—then spoke again. "Only ten minutes until our train leaves, Mareth'riel. We should board it now."

As Jane followed willingly behind him, my heart pounded. How was I to stop her? More to the point, should I stop her? What if the elf was a friend or relative who had learned that Jane was in Halifax, suffering from memory loss, and had come to take her home again?

No, it didn't scan. A friend wouldn't drug Haley to get to Jane. A friend would have waited until Gem or I returned home, explained who he was, and then asked us to hold Haley while he collected Jane. The elf had obviously expected Jane to be in full command of her faculties, to put up a fight. That's why he'd brought the drug along. The fact that her loss of memory made her completely trusting was an unexpected bonus. He'd only had to drug Haley.

How had he known where to find Jane? He didn't recognize me—his penetrating gaze had already slid past me once, and he'd discounted me as a non-threat. He didn't know who I was, that it was my home he'd stolen Jane away from.

I followed Jane and the elf to the escalator that led up the maglev trains. As the stairs rose inexorably toward the platform, my mind raced. I had no idea how I was going to stop them from boarding the train—how I was going to get Jane away from the elf before the maglev's doors closed behind them.

The escalator beside us, less than a meter away, carried people coming down from the platform. They stared at me with bored or tired expressions, not really seeing me as I looked wildly about, searching for inspiration.

Then I heard the sound of Music Man at the top of the escalator. At the same time, I heard a maglev train slide into the station, and saw the elf wince at its high-pitched whine. That told me what kind of cybernetic implant was in his ear. And it gave me an idea.

Music Man still owed me one. I'd saved his hoop one night, after a group of gangers decided they liked the music that a punching bag made, and took turns using their fists and feet on his body. I'd been on patrol that night, and had used my teeth to even the score; I could still remember the satisfying sounds of their screams as I sank my fangs into their wrists and ankles. It was all I could do to rein in my instincts and not finish the friggers, then and there.

When the last of them had limped away, cursing and bloody, I'd shifted back into human form to help Music Man to his feet. And I'd given him a word of advice: if he ever needed my assistance again, he should use his synths to call for help in a high-pitched tone that only my wolf ears could hear. That was when he demonstrated his whistle at close range, much to my regret.

Now I was about to call upon his help.

As the escalator deposited Jane and the elf on the maglev platform, I waved at Music Man behind their backs. Then I put two fingers to my lips and mimed a whistle, punching my fist into my stomach at the same time.

Music Man was no fool. He caught the reference at once. The melody he was playing abruptly stopped. He jammed a finger into his navel.

I plugged my ears just in time. A high-pitched, ear-splitting whistle screamed out of Music Man's subdermal speakers. If you had the ears for it, you could hear it a kilometer away.

The humans and metas in the train station were oblivious to the sound. But the elf heard it all right. His cybernetic ear—a frequency extender—was pumping to the sound straight into his brain. He doubled over, clutching a hand to the left side of his head.

In that instant, I moved. Scooping Jane into my arms—and gritting my teeth against the whistle, which lanced painfully into my ears the instant I unplugged them—I leaped onto the smooth metal surface that separated the two escalators. We tobogganed down it in a crazy rush. I landed on my hoop at the bottom with enough force to earn me a lingering bruise, had I not been a shifter. Then I scrambled to my feet, still holding Jane in my arms.

She'd been too surprised by my sudden action to react. But the elf above wasn't. Even over Music Man's whistle I heard the sharp crack of a bullet as it glanced off the floor beside my foot: the spot where my hoop had rested a second ago. The elf might know Jane well enough to use her real name, but he certainly didn't seem to value her life. Not if he was shooting at us. Either that, or he was a frigging good shot, certain enough of his aim that he knew he wouldn't hit her. Only my speed had thrown him off.

People were screaming now. A few were even clambering over the gap between the two escalators, seeking the relative safety of having a wall of metal between themselves and the gunman. And that was lucky for me: it prevented the elf from sliding to the bottom as I had.

I ran through the terminal, zigzagging my way around the passengers who thronged the station, occasionally having to hurdle over luggage when it blocked the only clear path. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Via Rail security guards running toward me. But they were still some distance away, separated from me by thick crowds. My immediate concern was that Jane would try to squirm out of my arms. So I spoke to her as I ran, stretching the truth just a little.

"Jane, it's me, Romulus. I'm a friend; you were staying in my garage. You can't trust the elf. He was going to drug you and force you to go with him. Did you see what he did to Haley—the German shepherd? The elf was going to do that to you."

Understanding blossomed in Jane's eyes. "Galdenistal told me the dog was sleeping."

"Is that the elf's name? Where was he taking you?" I asked.

"I don't know."

Drek. We were back to that again.

I'd run through most of the station and was approaching the exit on the east side. The doors were just ahead. They opened onto a series of piers, which were jammed with containers and loading equipment. It was a perfect maze to lose pursuers in. And if I didn't lose the elf, I could always duck behind a container, change into wolf form, and then throw myself at his throat. No doubt about it, I'd have the element of surprise on my side.

Unless he too could perceive astral space. If so, he already knew my true form.

I slammed a shoulder into the doors, forcing them open. As I did, the door frame beside me erupted into splinters. An instant later, I took a bullet in the thigh.

The pain was incredible. I staggered, and Jane slid out of my arms. She landed on her feet, but then just stood and stared at the doors, which had swung shut behind me, as bullets stitched a neat line of holes across them.

"Run!" I screamed at her, clutching my thigh. Blood was flowing thick and fast, soaking the leg of my jeans. I hobbled out of the line of fire, to the side of the doors. "They're shooting at us, damn it! Run!"

Jane didn't need any more encouragement. She turned and sprinted away along the side of the building, rounding its corner and disappearing.

I let got of my leg long enough to tear off my clothes and throw them onto a nearby pile of garbage. Then I shifted. Immediately, the pain of my leg wound lessened and the smell of blood became hot and strong in my wolf nose. I swiveled my ears; from inside the station, I could hear footsteps running toward me. The door began to open. There was no time to run.

I did the only thing I could. I crouched down, leaning over so that I was hiding my leg wound and the blood that had spilled onto the asphalt. Then I pretended to scratch a flea with my good hind leg.

The elf burst out of the doors, coming out low and fast and rolling to one side. He sprang to his feet, holding his fire but still sweeping the area with the Uzi min-machine pistol he held in his left hand.

The elf's gold eyes flicked toward me, and held me in their grip just for a moment. I looked up at him with a deliberately stupid expression on my face, grinning and tongue lolling. Every muscle in my body was tense. I would either succeed in my bluff... or die.

The gold eyes looked away. He pulled something from his pocket, consulted whatever it was that was hidden in his hand, and after a moment put it away.

Then he turned and ran in the direction Jane had taken.

I cursed silently as I watched him go. Then I stood, staggering slightly from the pain of my wound. I limped off after them, silently yelping with each step.

7

By the time my regenerative powers had healed my leg wound enough for me to speed up to a run, Jane and the elf were far ahead of me. I loped along, nose to the ground, following their scents. Then at last I saw them.

Jane had run down a blind alley, a U-shaped tunnel formed by containers on either side and a cement wall at the far end. The containers were stacked three-deep on top of one another, their blue, yellow, red, and green colors reminiscent of a child's building blocks. Jane's back was against the cement wall. There was nowhere left for her to run.

The elf had his back to me. His attention was completely focused on Jane. He was shouting at her in Sperethiel, gesturing with his right hand. The Uzi was still in his left hand, but he held it in the ready position, barrel pointed at the sky.

I skidded to a stop about a hundred meters away, cautious about approaching any closer. I was directly behind the elf and he hadn't yet seen me, but I wasn't sure how good his peripheral vision was. Or whether he would notice if Jane's gaze flicked toward me. It would only take a fraction of a second for him to empty the Uzi's magazine at me. Or at Jane.

At first, Jane cowered, a confused look in her eye. Then something clicked. Her posture changed; her spine straightened and her shoulders squared. Her eyes narrowed as she clenched her jaw. I switched to astral perception and saw that even her aura was different. Then she tossed her head and shot a stream of rapid, belligerent words back at the elf. I couldn't understand a word of it, but I thought I heard two names: Xavier and Laverty.

My ears went back. Not only was Jane speaking fluently in Sperethiel, she was using a voice I'd never heard before. It was as if someone else had taken over her body and was using her vocal chords. Her voice was firm, clear, filled with authority. And angry. She was telling the elf off, no question about it. And it takes a lot of nerve to lip off to someone with an Uzi in his hand, when your back is literally against the wall. I felt a rush of pride, seeing the fire in Jane's gold-flecked eyes. Somehow it made her even more beautiful.

The elf's body tensed. Even at this distance, I could smell the anger emanating from him. Eyes narrowed, he silently lowered his submachine gun until it was pointed directly at Jane.

I ran toward the elf. If I was quick enough, I could leap up and hit him square in the back, maybe throw his aim off. But even as I closed the distance between us, I knew I would be too late. Jane was as good as dead.

That was when the bolt of glowing energy erupted from Jane's hand. Astral space exploded in a kaleidoscope of colors that looked as if a living flame shot out from the very center of Jane. The brilliant wash of orange caught the elf completely by surprise, engulfing his head. He staggered back a step, then doubled over as another flame of magical energy caught him in the gut. He took one more step, his body twisting as one foot tripped over the other. Then the Uzi clattered to the ground and the elf collapsed beside it.

I slowed to a trot and looked around with normal vision, blinking. Jane was full of surprises this morning. Not only could she speak Sperethiel; she could cast spells. With this knowledge came a sudden realization: Jane could take care of herself. The thought somehow pleased and saddened me at the same time.

I had to speak to her, ask her what was going on. And so I changed back into human form. I stood up, brushing the dust from my palms. "Mareth'riel?" I said hesitantly. "Jane?" I wasn't sure which name she'd respond to.

Jane's eyes were closed. She sagged where she stood, one hand against the concrete wall behind her. The spellcasting had drained her, sapped her strength. The steely determination I had seen a moment ago was gone.

"Jane?"

Her eyes opened. She looked at me warily, as if trying to place me in her memory. At last she whispered a question: "Romulus?"

I grinned. Then I looked back at the elf. He was still down. But he was an adept. There was no way of knowing how quickly he might recover from Jane's spell.

"Who is he?" I asked Jane.

She stared at the elf as if seeing him for the first time. "I... don't know."

"Don't you remember talking to him just a moment ago? You were speaking Sperethiel."

Jane looked lost. "I don't remember."

"Does the name Galdenistal mean anything to you?"

She shook her head.

I tried another name. "What about Xavier?"

She shrugged.

I tried again: "Laverty?"

That one got a response. Jane tensed, and for just a fraction of a second I could see her eyes narrow. Then her expression went neutral. She looked up and to the left, the classic expression of someone who is trying to remember something. Then she nodded.

"I do recognize that name," she said. "There's a prince by the name of Sean Laverty on the council of Tír Taimgire."

"How do you know him?" I asked.

She seemed puzzled. "Everybody knows him," she said. "Just like everybody knows that Dunkelzahn is the president of the UCAS."

"You're wrong about that one," I told her gently. "The dragon Dunkelzahn was assassinated nearly four years ago, back in August of 2057. Kyle Haeffner is president now."

What she said next caught me completely off guard.

"It's not 2057?" Her eyes filled with confusion. I could almost see her thoughts whirling behind them as she fought against her fear. The lost-little-girl look was back on her face. It sent a pang right through me.

"Then where ..." She swallowed, fighting for control. "Where have I been for the last four years?"

Now it was my turn to use her favorite expression: "I don't know."

Without consciously intending to, I reached up to stroke her hair. I didn't mean anything by it; it was the same comforting gesture I used to soothe Haley. Jane moved her head slightly, so that my palm brushed her cheek instead. My palm tingled as it touched her smooth skin, and I felt a warmth flush my body. I suddenly understood why humans feel uncomfortable when they're naked. There's no fur to hide what you're feeling.

"Uh, I just wanted to look at your ear," I said, making excuses. "Do you mind?"

She gave me a coy smile. "I don't mind."

Was she blushing, too? Did I really smell a heat rising in her, or was that just wishful thinking?

I drew back her soft brown hair. The ear under it was small and round: a human ear. Although ... I took a closer look. Was that a faint line of scar tissue, hidden inside the ear's top fold? As I traced a finger along it, Jane's breathing quickened. I let my hand drop.

"The elf gave you a train ticket," I said quickly. "It's in your right pocket. Can I see it?"

Jane pulled the ticket from the pocket of her jeans. It was for a one-way trip to Chicago. And not just to any train station in that city, but to the one inside the Cinanestial terminal. That could only mean one thing.

Cinanestial is the national airline of Tír Taimgire, the elven nation formed in 2035 from what used to be the state of Portland. Before establishing an air link with another country, the Tír government demands extraterritoriality for its Cinanestial terminals, making them the legal equivalent of consulates or embassies. The net effect was that the Cinanestial terminal in Chicago was part of Tír Taimgire soil. The planes that flew from it had only one destination: Tír Taimgire. That was where the elf had intended to take Jane.

I tore the ticket in half. Then I walked over to the elf. "Let's find out who your friend is."

In the elf's pockets I found a matching train ticket and some cash: neatly folded 100-and 500-nuyen bills, held by a gold money clip. Although Tír Taimgire uses the standard international currency—the nuyen—that nation prints its own money on woven hemp fiber, impressed with a holo of the Council of Princes as a foil to counterfeiters.

I stared at the faces of the princes in the holo. They were a mixed bunch: six elves, two dwarfs, an ork, the great dragon Lofwyr, and a sasquatch. In the Tir, I would be a citizen, and would have a SIN number. I could become a police officer. But unfortunately, Lone Star doesn't have any contracts in that country. The Tir's laws are enforced by its constabulary, a part of the Tír military.

Another pocket held the elf's passport. Fortunately the elves of Tír Taimgire have a love of the printed word. Every other country in the world uses passports that look like credsticks, with data imprinted electronically. But the Tír passport is a hemp-paper booklet filled with print data and holos. The one concession to modern technology is a magnetic strip embossed on the cover that contains the same information found inside the passport, but in electronic form.

The elf's full name was Galdenistal Tathem. He was not just a Tír national; he had diplomatic status. Which meant he was untouchable and not subject to the laws of the UCAS. The best Lone Star could do, no matter how heinous the crime the elf committed, was deport him. They wouldn't even be able to search his luggage before he left. Which explained how he could have a SINless person like Jane accompany him back to that nation, without any questions being asked. I dropped the passport on his chest.

There was nothing else important in the elf's pockets except a small plastic bottle of yellowish liquid that smelled of the drug he'd used on Haley. I considered using the drug on the elf, but had no idea how to administer it, or how potent it was. I didn't want to accidentally knock myself out by inhaling any of the vapor or splashing a drop of the drug on my hand.

I picked up the elf's Uzi and threw it into the air. The gun landed with a clunk on top of the containers behind us. I pitched the container of liquid up after it. The elf might find them there, but it would take some searching.

When I turned around, Jane was staring at my body. I'm used to human and meta women staring at me; I know my muscular development is pleasing to them. But it was different, seeing that look in Jane's eyes. I blushed all over again.

The elf let out a faint groan. He was waking up.

"Let's get out of here," I told Jane. I handed her the money clip of nuyen bills. "I'm going to change back into wolf form. Pretend I'm your dog." I bent down and removed the elf's belt from around his waist. "Use this as a leash. Walk me to the front of the Via Rail terminal, and hail a cab."

"Where are we going?" Jane asked.

"Across the harbor, to Dartmouth," I answered. "To Nova Scotia Hospital. There's someone there who may be able to help you."

Then I changed back into wolf form, thankful for the fur that hid my desire for Jane.

8

Nova Scotia Hospital is an old brick building, fronted with lawn and trees and sandwiched between Pleasant Street and the railway tracks that wind along the waterfront below. Over the century or more since it was built, other buildings have sprung up around it. The older ones, like the original hospital, are of red brick. Others look like tum-of-the-millennium apartment blocks. Still others are modern in the extreme: made from ferrocrete slabs and steel, their expanses of tinted glass presenting a very 21st century—but very cold—facade.

Dr. Sandra Bjornson worked in the psych wing, which was housed in one of the older brick buildings. After the taxi dropped us off there I led Jane in through the doors, tugging on the belt we were using as a leash so she'd know which way to go.

We passed through the lobby and were nearly at the end of the corridor leading to the elevators when a security guard blocked our way. He was a dwarf, with a ring through his nose and a hair net over his thick beard He was short, his face level with my own. But he was determined. I could smell it—and see it. Despite the fact that I weigh fifty kilos and have teeth that could have torn open his jugular in a heartbeat, he resolutely blocked our path, not even twitching as I panted in his face. A taser hung on his belt; his stubby-fingered right hand rested gently on its hilt. One of his eyes was cybered; I could see the eye bulge and contract slightly as he focused its lens to take a digital photograph of Jane, then of me.

"Sorry, miss," he rumbled in a deep baritone. "No pets allowed in the hospital."

Jane was quick off the mark. "He's a working dog," she told the dwarf. "I use him for patient therapy."

I gave the dwarf my best doggie grin.

The dwarf eyed the improvised collar around my neck. He wasn't buying it.

I sighed. Then I changed into human form. The belt suddenly hung loose around my neck. I slipped it over my head as I stood.

Now the dwarf was looking up at me.

"Well, frig me," he muttered. "What the hell are you?"

"A shifter," I told him.

His heavy black brows met over his eyes and he put his fists on his hips. "Like I said, no animals allowed in the hospital."

I growled softly, wanting to pick the dwarf up and shake him like a rat. I'd been awake for nearly twenty hours, had only just regenerated from a painful bullet wound, and was tired and cranky. I don't like speciphobia, especially when it's directed at me. I'd expected more from a meta; he ought to know what it felt like to be discriminated against. I looked at the name tag pinned above his shirt pocket: CRELLIN. Cretin is more like it, I thought.

"We're here to see Doctor Bjornson," I said, keeping my voice level.

"She's the head of the psych department," he told us. "She's a busy lady. You don't just barge in on her. You got an appointment?"

"Page her," I said. "Tell her Romulus is here and see what she says."

Something in my tone must have warned him I wasn't to be trifled with. Either that or—and this was the more likely scenario—he didn't want to piss Doctor Bjornson off. Sandra doesn't suffer fools lightly.

The security guard whispered something to himself; he must have had a radio implant. Then his eyes grew thoughtful as he listened to a speaker in his ear. He stepped to one side, even pressing the elevator button for us. "Go on up," he said. His voice was polite and his body language impeccable, but I could smell his suppressed anger. "But put some friggin' clothes on."

There was a laundry cart near the elevator. I grabbed a folded pair of pants from it and pulled them on. They were hospital mint-green and baggy, with a pull string—the kind worn by patients. But I wasn't worried about being mistaken for a crazy. Dr. Bjornson knew me well enough.

The elevator was as old as the building. No voice activation; just primitive plastic buttons inscribed with numbers so worn you could barely read them. The inside of the elevator was lined with the padding used when someone is moving furniture into an apartment building. I wondered if this was for the benefit of violent or self-destructive patients.

After an eternity—the old elevator was very slow, and rose with a series of sharp jerks—we stepped out onto the third floor and went down the hall to Dr. Bjornson's station.

I'd known Sandra for many years. We'd first met when I was with the K9 unit. A violent sexual offender—a mage capable not only of masking his identity with magic but also of using spells to control the actions of others—had escaped from the hospital's locked ward. I'd been brought in to track him down, since the one thing he couldn't mask was his scent. It turned out the frigger had impersonated one of the nurses, then sneaked through the underground concrete tunnels that connect the older parts of the hospital, emerging in the nurses' residence. By the time I caught up to him, he'd used his magic to turn himself into a mirror image of Dr. Bjornson and had just persuaded a young nurse to open the door of her room to him. He had a knife made from a sharpened scissors blade and some flexible rubber tubing in his pockets, and had obviously been planning something ugly to celebrate his escape.

The young nurse was Sandra's niece.

Dr. Sandra Bjornson was consulting with a nurse as I approached the doctor's station. But as soon as she saw me, she broke off the conversation and gave me a wide smile.

"Romulus!" she exclaimed. "Good ta see ya!"

Sandra is human, with a shock of short hair that can only be described as battleship gray. She has a chin that juts just enough to give her a determined look, and eyes that can bore through a foolish notion like a laser through tissue. She takes no guff, does Sandra. But she's also the most compassionate person I know: a magician who followed the healer's path.

Sandra is in her sixties and practiced "therapeutic touch"—with phenomenal results. Just by laying on hands she could quiet the churning turmoil of a schizophrenic's mind, or bring a smile to the face of a severely depressed patient. She used her body—her "healing hands" to create a bridge between the astral and physical planes, channeling healing energy into the bodies of her patients.

Sandra occasionally slipped into a Maritimer's accent, but that didn't mean she wasn't educated. She'd received her PhD in psychiatry from MIT&T and had enough diplomas to paper a wall. She greeted Jane warmly when I introduced her, then ushered us into her office.

"Office" probably isn't the right word for it. Describe it that way, and you'd expect a desk, stiff plastic chairs, and book shelves filled with medical texts. Instead Sandra's inner sanctum was bare of furniture save for a thick, soft rug and brilliantly colored Rajasthani cushions. The smell of lavender, sage, and rose oil filled the room, and the air was filled with soft, atmospheric music reminiscent of a gentle rain. One wall had a "window" that looked out onto a pristine woodland—actually a holo that could be turned to a number of different outdoor scenes. Sandra must have chosen Primeval Forest for my benefit; she knew it would bring back pleasant memories of the wood where I was born. The other walls were set with tiny niches, each one holding a statue of a deity associated with healing.

We settled onto the cushions and Sandra offered us tea that smelled of ginger and honey. She listened carefully as I explained Jane's strange loss of memory and her apparent lapses into other personalities. I didn't leave anything out; I told Sandra the entire story. I trusted her discretion.

Jane listened avidly, as if what I was relating was all new to her. When I finished, she looked to Sandra expectantly.

"Hmm," Sandra said, sipping her tea and meeting Jane's eyes with her own penetrating gaze. "You're a bit of an odd sock, Jane. It sounds like all t'ree of the general memory types are damaged. Most of your 'unconscious memory'—learned motor skills and abilities like reading and writing—is still there, but you've forgotten how to work magic, despite the fact that you're obviously a spellcaster, from what Romulus here says. Your 'semantic memory'—the ability to recall names, dates, and other factual information—is still intact. But it's four years behind the times.

"The worst part of it is, you've lost your 'episodic memory'—the ability to recall episodes and events from your life." Sandra's eyes grew compassionate. "And with it, you've lost your sense of self."

Jane pressed her lips together. It was a moment or two before she could speak. "I don't know who I am," she said softly. "I'm not... me."

"What would have caused the memory loss?" I asked.

"Well, let me see ..." Sandra took another sip of her tea, then directed her comments at Jane. She was the patient, after all. "Memory loss can be caused by diseases like Alzheimer's, by prolonged alcoholism or drug abuse, or by a severe stroke. But you look young and healthy. If this was the twentieth century, I'd be looking for scars on your scalp, wondering if a surgeon had removed part of your brain..."

I couldn't hide my look of revulsion. "You're not serious, are you, Sandra?"

"I am indeed," she said, fixing me with a grim look. "Medical experimentation on the human brain was commonplace in the previous century. Have you ever heard of a lobotomy?"

Both Jane and I shook our heads.

"It was a surgical procedure in which the frontal lobe of the brain—usually the cerebrum—was cut. At first, it was an experimental surgery done on lab animals. Then in the 1930s, a Portuguese doctor used the procedure on violent psych patients. It left them indifferent about life and with sluggish emotions. That was a success, as far as the medical community was concerned; the doctor received a Nobel Prize for his new technique.

"Later, lobotomies were used to 'cure' schizophrenia, neuroses, epilepsy, and manic depression. They were primitive surgeries; one doctor became famous for performing these operations using a gold ice pick. But they were popular. Between 1935 and 1960, tens of thousands of North Americans were lobotomized."

"And did they all lose their memories?" I asked. The story was horrifying yet fascinating, like a bad car wreck.

"No," Sandra said. "Just their ability to express emotion. But there were other surgeons who pushed this experimental brain surgery to the limit. In 1953, Dr. William Scoville operated on a patient known in the medical literature only as 'H.M.' It was a travesty of medicine. Scoville sucked out H.M.'s brain—and his memories with it."

"Sucked out his brain?" I asked, incredulous. "Literally?"

" 'Fraid so. Scoville cut open H.M.'s forehead and peeled his scalp down, then drilled two holes the size of poker chips through his skull with a hand drill the doc bought in a hardware store. He put metal spatulas into these holes and lifted the frontal lobes, then used a silver straw to suck out the hippocampus from both sides of the brain and the tissue surrounding it. Altogether he took the parahippocampal gyrus, the entorhinal and perirhinal cortexes, and the amygdala—a mass of brain the size of a fist. Scoville even left a few metal clips behind inside H.M.'s brain—so he could show other doctors where he'd cut—and then sewed his patient up again."

Jane grimaced, and touched a hand to the side of her head. No ... she was touching her ear, running a finger along the rounded top of it as if feeling for stitches. Had she really done what I suspected: used plastic surgery to remove the pointed tips of what would otherwise be eleven ears? Was she actually an elf, masquerading as a human? If so, why?

Sandra plunged on with the story of the horrifying medical experimentation of a previous century. Her anger was clear; this case really wound her crank. "After his operation, poor H.M. couldn't hold a thought for more than twenty seconds at a time. He still had the same personality as before and knew who he was, but he suffered from severe amnesia. A nurse could leave the room and return five minutes later, and H.M. would forget that he'd ever met her before."

I looked at Jane, then at Sandra. "Jane seems to be having the same problem," I said. "She keeps forgetting who I am." She also kept forgetting who the elf named Galdenistal was, but that didn't bother me nearly so much.

"From what Romulus has told me, Jane, you're able to retain a short-term memory for several hours at a time."

Jane nodded.

Sandra continued: "So it's not your hippocampus that's damaged. If it were, you wouldn't be able to form new short-term memories at all. You would only be able to hold onto a piece of information for five to fifteen minutes, maximum, and then only by continually concentrating on that data.

"No, it's the ability to form and access long-term memories that you've lost. That would suggest that the storage sites themselves are damaged. And unfortunately, memory is not localized; it's spread all over the brain."

I was still thinking about the possibility that Jane might be an elf. Like me, she might not be as human as she seemed. The fact that she was fluent in Sperethiel seemed to confirm this. And it had been an elf—one with connections to the Tír government— who had tried to kidnap her, to take her back to Tír Taimgire. The thought jogged something in my memory.

"What about laes?" I asked suddenly.

I was referring to a drug that was rumored to be in use by Tír Taimgire's Peace Force. An injection of laes was said to produce retrograde amnesia. I figured that Sandra, given her profession, would have heard about the drug, and I wondered why she hadn't mentioned it yet.

"Laes only works on memories that have been laid down immediately prior to the injection," Sandra answered. "Fifty micrograms of laes will wipe the two to twelve hours that immediately preceded the administration of the drug. Laes physically changes the potential gradients of various chemicals in the neurons, erasing those memories. It doesn't cause the type of damage Jane has.

"If a drug were involved, my guess would be colchicine. In experiments done on mice in the late 1900s, it prevented newly acquired memories from becoming permanent memories by preventing the stable molecular configurations of tubulin in the cell membrane."

"So somebody drugged Jane?" I asked.

Sandra gave a slight shrug. "Colchicine would only explain part of the problem. Something happened that wiped out memories Jane had formed years ago—many years ago, by the sound of it. And that suggests extensive damage to several parts of the brain."

"Can you use your magic to heal that damage?" I asked.

"It's not that simple," Sandra answered. "Unlike other cells in the body, neurons aren't replaced when they die. Damage to them is permanent. The connections between the neurons—the dendrites, synapses, and axons—can sometimes grow back. But if the neurons themselves are damaged, there's no way to repair them—even with magic."

Jane's lip was trembling. I slipped my hand over hers and gave it a squeeze.

"I'm sorry, my dear," Sandra said, "I don't know if I can help you."

"But the memories are still there," I said. "Jane keeps having flashbacks. Can't you magically probe her mind while she's experiencing one and find out more about her?"

"That would only let me read her conscious thoughts."

"But couldn't you use your magic to trigger those memories for her again? Maybe Jane will be able to tell us something that will help us to figure out who she is."

Sandra looked at me sharply. "There might be a way..

She set her tea down and stared at the holo window, lost in thought. "Back in the 20th century, at the height of the lobotomy craze, a Canadian surgeon named Wilder Penfield did open-brain operations on epileptics. He used electrodes to stimulate different parts of the brain, to see whether this would trigger an epileptic seizure. Instead, he got some unexpected results. The electrodes triggered fragments of memory—sometimes just a sound or a smell, but other times an entire incident from the person's past.

"Therapeutic touch—magical healing—involves the transfer of magical energy from the astral to the physical plane. That energy is, at least in part, electrical in nature. There's a form of touch—a spell—that I use to enhance mental functioning. If I narrowed its focus, and directed the energy like an electronic pulse, I might be able to duplicate the effects Penfield produced..."

Sandra gave Jane a serious look. "I'd need your permission, Jane, before I tried it. There's no danger of physical damage, but I will have no control over what memories are triggered. They could be unpleasant, or deeply personal."

"You have my permission," Jane said. "I want to know who I am. I want 'me' back."

Sandra nodded. She took a deep breath, and clasped her hands together. "Close your eyes, Jane. And try to relax."

As Jane's eyes closed, Sandra drew her hands apart slowly, as if she were drawing out an invisible something between them. I shifted my vision into astral space and saw a glowing ball of magical energy forming between her hands. The energy was a soothing blue, shot through with crackles of rich forest-green and sunlight yellow. It smelled faintly of soft moss and rain, of... life.

Sandra used her hands to shape the energy, like a potter squeezing and compressing soft clay. Then she let it hang in the air in front of her. With one hand, she spun out a thread of it by twirling her finger in an ascending spiral. Her other hand hovered a centimeter or two over Jane's head, as if she were using her palm and fingertips to feel for the right spot. When she'd found what she was looking for, Sandra directed the magical energy by means of a feather-soft touch of her forefinger.

I heard a faint snap! like the crackle of static electricity. Jane jerked as if she'd felt a mild shock. Her eyes opened, but they didn't seem to be focused on anything in the room.

Jane held out her hand. "Give me your arm, sir," she said in an authoritative voice. The timbre of her voice was low, almost as if she were trying to disguise it as a man's voice. Her fingers closed loosely around something which, even in astral space, was invisible. Her other hand was positioned as if she were holding a pen. She jabbed this into the invisible arm.

"The letting of your blood will balance the humors, sir. Venesection has a most salutary effect in many diseases and is, indeed, foremost among all general remedies. It has not been used to treat your condition before, but I am of a certainty that..."

Jane blinked. Her mouth worked but no sound came out, as if she were at a loss for words. Then her hands relaxed, as if the invisible arm and scalpel she'd been holding a moment ago had suddenly disappeared. And they had—disappeared from her conscious memory, that is.

Sandra shifted her hand and touched a finger to another point on Jane's scalp. I saw another spark of astral energy pop, just above Jane's temple. And then she was lost in another memory. This time, her voice was softer, more womanly. She spoke in rapid, fluent French.

I don't speak French, and couldn't understand what Jane was saying. But she seemed to be addressing someone: a Monsieur Pasteur. As she had before, she trailed off in mid-sentence.

Sandra moved the magical energy to a new location.

This memory seemed to begin in mid-flow.

"... a vaccination program, sponsored by the UCAS government. You would be foolish to turn it down." Jane spoke in a somewhat condescending tone of voice. "The national health department is worried about a potential outbreak of new strains of VITAS, particularly in isolated villages like Eskwader—places the earlier vaccination programs overlooked. The vaccinations will be administered free of charge . .."

I tried to catch Sandra's eye. "That would be a memory from the 21st century," I whispered. "The UCAS didn't exist before 2030."

Sandra's stem look hushed me. I was disturbing her concentration. But I could sense that we were onto something important. Jane had worked for the UCAS government at one point in her life. But then why was she SINless? She should have been on a database somewhere.

"Trigger that memory again," I urged Sandra.

She did, and when Jane started talking about VITAS I cut in, asking her name.

She twitched, as if irritated. Then she snapped an answer at me: "Mareth'riel Salvail."

"Try it again!" I said.

Sandra did, but this time Jane simply repeated the conversation she'd recited earlier, ignoring my attempts to interrupt her and not responding to any of my questions.

I didn't care. We had a name. "Try another area," I told Sandra.

Another touch, another memory...

Jane suddenly made a face, then spat onto the carpet. "Atrocious!" she bellowed. "Dr. Simmons, your Squaw Vine Compound is foul-tasting in the extreme. I have no doubt as to its efficacy, as attested to by yourself. But good God, man. Something must be done about the taste, or it shall prove more of a purgative than a tonic!"

And another memory...

Jane's hands became busy, as if she were putting something in place and holding it there. This time, she was silent and needed prompting to speak.

"What are you doing?" Sandra asked.

"What's it bloody well look like?" Jane snapped in a broad Australian accent. "I'm applying a hot pack to this patient's leg."

Her hands continued working on her invisible patient.

"Why?"

"Listen," she said. "I'm bleedin' tired of yer criticism. You've got it all wrong. You don't want to immobilize the limb of a polio patient. What's needed is a strict regimen of physical therapy and... and ..."

The fire and passion drained visibly from her face.

Sandra had been listening thoughtfully, all this time. At last she asked Jane a direct question, using her elven name. "You're a doctor, aren't you, Mareth'riel?"

Jane looked in Sandra's direction, but her eyes were unfocused, as if she were looking into the distance. And in a way, she was—but that distance was measured in years. Her expression changed.

"I am an alienist, to be precise," she said in a clipped Boston accent. "And quite a celebrated one, I might add. I challenged a number of the barbarous management practices that had preceded our more enlightened age, including the use of Dr. Rush's restraining chair, used in the management of violent lunatics. I found that there was no need to restrain them if—"

This time the memory cut off abruptly. Jane screamed, then fell over on her side. In another instant, she was reliving the same trauma that she'd experienced in the Lone Star scanning lab. Her hands tore at her face, as if trying to pull something from her head. "Not the mask!" she screamed. "Not—" Her words became distorted, as if she was trying to speak with something in her mouth. She held her hands in front of her, as if they were held by containment manacles. Then her entire body went rigid. Her face set in a grimace and her mouth opened wide.

"Dear God," Sandra whispered. She jerked her hands away from Jane's head. The magical energy she'd been sustaining shrank to a point, then exploded into fragments and was gone.

Working quickly, Sandra summoned a healing spell. Her hands caressed Jane's face and neck, washing them with a deep indigo energy. With each stroke, Jane relaxed. At last her face became utterly calm. Her head nodded, and she fell deeply asleep. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. I could only hope Jane would be all right. I reminded myself that Sandra was the best psych doctor in the country, and that eased my fears a little.

Sandra looked up at me, obviously shaken. "I didn't trigger that memory," she said. "It surfaced by itself. And what a horror it was."

"What was she talking about?" I asked. "What's an 'alienist'?"

Sandra touched a gentle finger to Jane's throat, checking her pulse. She counted silently to herself before answering my question. "It's an old term for 'psychiatrist,' one that hasn't been in use since the 19th century. The 'restraining chair' Jane was talking about was used in asylums in the 1800s. I saw a woodcut of one in an old medical text. The patient's wrists were tied to the arms of the chair, and the ankles were held in clamps at the base. A strap across the chest held the patient in place, and a wooden box that clamped tight over the head kept the patient from looking around, and prevented them from hearing anything clearly. A bucket in the seat of the chair enabled the patient to be held in that position for days on end."

I stated the obvious guess: "Jane was confined in something like that, wasn't she? That's where that last memory came from."

Sandra looked thoughtful. "Not in a restraining chair. Jane was a doctor—not a patient—when those things were in use." She gave me a steely look. "Romulus, you and I both know about the 'mask' she was referring to, now don't we?"

I knew, but I didn't want to believe it. It had to have been a mage mask that Jane was remembering. A plastic hood that wrapped tight around the face, with a mouth tube for breathing. Designed to prevent magicians from spellcasting, it had earphones that cranked out an ear-splitting ninety decibels of white noise, preventing the mage from concentrating. If worn for long periods of time, it could drive the wearer mad.

Developed for use in the prison system, the mage mask was a trademark of the nation's top security provider: Lone Star. The only way Jane would have wound up wearing one was if she'd been arrested and incarcerated by the police. By my pack.

No, that wasn't possible. If Jane had been convicted of a crime and served time for it, there should have been a record of her somewhere in the Lone Star database. The scans I'd done had turned up nothing.

Had someone else gotten hold of a mage mask—or built one on their own? The materials weren't hard to come by; it was pretty low-tech, when you got right down to it. A thought occurred to me. Perhaps Jane had been kidnapped, by abductors who realized she was a mage and could harm them with her magic. They'd kept her on ice until...

But even prolonged use of a mage mask didn't explain Jane's memory loss. She didn't show any of the signs of psychosis usually associated with misuse of that device.

And there were even more puzzling things to deal with. I looked at Sandra. "Jane wasn't born in this century, was she?"

Sandra shook her head. "If these are actual memories we triggered, Romulus, Jane's lived quite a long time. Some of her memories seem to go back nearly three centuries, to the 1700s."

"How can that be?" I asked. "How can someone live for centuries?"

"I don't know," Sandra said softly. "Magic? But that would mean that magic was present in threshold levels long before the Awakening."

We both fell silent, contemplating the woman who lay on the cushions between us. Relaxed in sleep, her face looked like that of a young girl. Only the gray in her hair and her woman's body hinted that she was at least middle-aged. Her true age was well beyond even that.

Jane was stirring. Her eyelids fluttered, and then, after a moment or two, she sat up and yawned. She looked around Sandra's office, then gave me a tentative smile.

I took that as a good sign.

"Do you remember anything that just happened— any of the memories?" I asked anxiously.

Jane looked at the holo of the forest, obviously puzzled. "Where am I?" she asked. She peered at Sandra and me. "And who ... are you?"

"Interesting," Sandra murmured. "The short-term memories seem to dissipate after Jane has slept."

My heart sank. Fat lot of good that observation did me. I couldn't very well keep Jane awake for days on end.

I sighed. We were back to square one again. I took a deep breath—and introduced myself to Jane all over again.

9

We couldn't go back to my place to doss down. The elf would have recovered from Jane's spell by now, and that was the first place he'd look for her. But we still had his nuyen. We checked into a hotel in downtown Halifax early that evening, after leaving the hospital. The fact that I insisted on paying cash and that neither Jane nor I had any ID didn't even faze the ork behind the counter. He was used to sailors checking in with their joy-boys and joy-girls, and not wanting to leave behind an electronic record that their spouses could find. He glanced pointedly down at my pajamalike hospital pants as we checked in, and gave me a knowing wink as I asked for a room with two double beds, and for a meal to be sent up. I let him keep the change from a 100-nuyen bill. That ought to be an incentive keep his trap shut if anyone came looking for us.

The room smelled of cigarette smoke, air freshener, and the scents of those who'd slept here before us. But the sheets were clean; I could smell the laundry soap on them. I peered out the window to the street below. I was probably just being paranoid. There was no sign of the elf Galdenistal—who I'd begun to call "golden boy" in my mind, due to his taste in fashion and his untouchable, diplomatic status.

I put the money clip on the table between the two beds. I'd checked: the clip had a hallmark and was indeed gold. It was probably worth more than the thick fold of bills it held. In hindsight, I probably should have taken the elf's gold hair clip, too. But that would be stealing. Taking his money had simply been appropriating assets in the line of duty.

There was a knock on the door. I thumbed the monitor button that was set into the door handle. The plastic door opaqued, then turned transparent, allowing me to look out into the hallway. Light only passed through it in one direction; the human who stood in the corridor with a tray of food was unable to see into our hotel room.

I opened the door and took the tray from the fellow. I could smell his irritation when I didn't tip him, but I wasn't about to hand him a 100-nuyen bill. Instead I thanked him and carried our supper inside. The door returned to its usual solid color.

As we ate our food, Jane sat on one of the beds, yawning between bites. The magical spells she'd cast earlier in the day and her ordeal at the hospital had left her drained. Despite her hunger, she could barely keep her eyes open. But even with dark circles under her eyes, she was beautiful. I could barely resist the urge to stroke her hair.

"You should get some sleep," I told her when she'd finished eating. Then a thought occurred to me: Jane would forget who I was if she slept. I didn't want her wandering away again. But there was an obvious solution to that problem.

I used the hotel room's telecom to print out a message: BEFORE YOU LEAVE, PLEASE WAKE ME UP. I pinned it to the door with a needle from a sewing kit I found in the bathroom.

I smiled at Jane. "That should do it."

She smiled back. "Thanks, Romulus." Then she started stripping off her jeans and vest, getting ready for bed. I caught just a glimpse of smooth skin and soft curves before I remembered that humans—that elves, I corrected myself—don't like to be stared at when they're naked.

I made a point of turning my back. I rumpled the sheets and blankets on the other bed into a wad at the center of the bed, then glanced at Jane.

"You don't mind if I change, do you?" I asked. "I always sleep in wolf form."

"I don't mind."

She was safely under the covers, now—all those tempting curves covered by a thick blanket. I dimmed the lights and closed the window blind. Then I let my hospital baggies fall to my ankles, and dropped to my hands and knees on the carpet—which smelled of stale, spilled alcohol—and shifted. I jumped onto the bed and turned around in a circle, pawing at the blankets.

"Romulus?"

I lifted my head and peered at her with rapt attention, my ears forward. My vision is even better than a meta's in low light; I could see that she'd raised herself on one elbow and that the covers had slipped down her body. The locket she wore hung down between her breasts. Her gold-flecked eyes seemed to have a pleading look. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part.

"Would you sleep beside me?" she asked. "I'd feel safer."

Would I? I bounded onto the other bed. I gave her a quick kiss, stroking her cheek with my tongue. Then I settled in beside her, my back against hers. There was a blanket between us, but I could feel the warmth of her body through it. Her scent, this close, was almost overwhelming. I was thankful that human and meta pheromones don't affect me nearly so much when I'm in a animal form.

I kept a watchful eye on the door. My protective posture seemed to soothe her; after a while Jane's breathing deepened. When I was certain she was sleeping soundly, I lowered my head and drifted off to sleep.

I woke a couple of hours later. It was only eleven o'clock at night, but I was wide awake. I lay in the darkness, watching the numbers change on the telecom's clock and trying to fall back asleep, but it was no use. Ordinarily, I would have assumed that my nocturnal instincts had just gotten the better of me. But I knew what the problem really was. My mind was too full of questions. They wouldn't let me sleep. I had to know more about the mystery woman who lay sleeping so soundly beside me.

I slid out of bed and changed back into human form. I used the telecom to print out a new note:

***

WAIT HERE FOR ME. MY NAME IS ROMULUS.

DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR FOR ANYONE ELSE.

YOU ARE IN DANGER.

***

I pinned it over my previous note. Then I pulled on my pants and jandered out of the hotel.

The police station was a twenty-minute walk away. Dass would be on duty tonight; I figured she'd be willing to run the name Mareth'riel Salvail through the databases for me. I headed straight for her office.

Dass leaped to her feet as soon as she saw me. "Romulus!" she said in a loud whisper. "Get your hoop in here. I want your help with something before Raymond sees you and sends you off to Truro to chase down the latest blackberry cat sighting."

She closed the door of her office behind me. Tonight she was wearing a loose white dress woven with a fabric that caught the light like a prism, creating tiny rainbows in the fabric. She'd painted a band of white across her cheeks, and an intricate mehndi design covered the palms of her hands.

I shook my head. The human and meta fondness for body ornamentation never fails to surprise me. When in human form I kept my hair clipped and combed, but that was about it. I didn't really care which clothes I wore; I was always losing them, anyway, when I shifted.

"What's up?" I settled into a chair. I decided to let Dass say whatever was on her mind before I asked for her help. She was obviously excited about something. I knew her well enough to know that she wouldn't hear a word I said until she'd unwound a little.

"Raymond assigned me the corpselight homicides," she said.

My ears perked up at that one.

"And guess what? Those things are being sold as a drug."

"I know."

"Oh."

Dass seemed disappointed by my lack of surprise. I could smell irritation on her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

"I've been busy with other things," I said. "The Jane Doe case."

Dass didn't bother to correct me—Jane wasn't a case, exactly. Just someone I was trying to help out. She merely gave me a knowing look and picked up a datachip from her desk. She slotted it into her printer, then waited while the machine produced a brightly colored printout that looked like a topographical map of Nova Scotia. Except that the peaks and valleys were in all the wrong places.

"Halifax isn't the only city where corpselights are killing people," she told me. "Other Lone Star detachments have been reporting similar cases. There have been 'grinning corpse' deaths or sightings of glowing balls of light in Digby, Liverpool, Shellburne, Lunenberg, Yarmouth, and Parrsboro—all along the coast. But none in Sydney, despite the fact that it's the third-largest city in the area, after Halifax and Dartmouth. You'd expect a new drug to show up there, long before a little fishing town like Parrsboro.

"Corpselights are also being reported in major cities across the bay, like Saint John, Portland, and Boston. But not in any of the smaller American towns."

She pulled the printout from the printer and showed it to me. The yellow high points on the map were all along the coast, with orange peaks over the three cities she'd mentioned—the ones on what used to be the American coast. The high points rose to a bright red peak over Nova Scotia's south shore, at a point between Digby and Yarmouth. The lows were all inland and were colored a deep blue-purple— exactly the reverse of what you'd normally expected to see on a map.

I suddenly realized what we were looking at: a map generated by geographic profiling, a data-analysis system developed back in the 1990s by a Vancouver police detective. By mapping crimes that were "linked" by modus operandi or other important similarities, then crunching the distances between these sites, the geographic profiling program highlighted the areas the perpetrators were most likely to frequent. Nine times out of ten, this area of probability turned out to include places where the criminals lived, worked, or had family or friends. Despite the fact that computers were primitive in the extreme in the last century— those were the days before the Matrix—the program helped police of the day to catch a number of serious offenders: rapists, serial killers, armed robbers.

Dass had used a modern version of geographic profiling to track down the most probable source for the corpselights. And that source was—assuming the data were correct—somewhere on Nova Scotia's south shore, a part of the world where you only needed two digits to list the population of any given town.

"That's where the corpselights are being smuggled in from?" I asked, stabbing a finger at the red area on the map.

Dass nodded. "Kitchaa—crazy, eh?"

She keyed another command into the printer. After a second or two, another map began printing.

"And here's something even crazier," she said. "Just for fun, I had the computer crunch through reports of blackberry cats—that's how I knew there was a fresh sighting in Truro—and look what it came up with."

I looked at the geographic profile in her hand. The peaks and valleys were in slightly different places on this map, but the probable location of origin was the same: Nova Scotia's south shore.

I drew the obvious conclusion: "The same people are smuggling blackberry cats and corpselights?"

"Among other things," Dass said. "I asked the Department of Records to run a scan of all reports of illegally-at-large paras on the northeast coast of North America, and eliminated any that were native to the areas where they were sighted. That didn't produce anywhere near the amount of data that there is on corpselights and blackberry cats—those two seem to be the favorites, hands down. But if you take the scattered reports of pegasus, Merlin hawks, aitvaras snakes, and cerberus hounds, you see the same pattern, all over again."

"Those paras are all native to Europe," I said.

"Right." Dass stared thoughtfully at the maps in her hand. "And that means someone is smuggling them in from Europe—by sea, obviously, since we're dealing with a distribution network based out of the south shore—and selling them as 'drugs' or as pets."

"Cerberus hounds?" I asked, incredulous. "Who the frig in their right mind would have one of those as a pet?"

"Get with the times, Rom," Dass said. "The European trids are calling the cerberus hound the 'pit bull of the'60s.'"

It took me a moment to realize she was being sarcastic.

"Spirits save us," I whispered. "I wouldn't want a cerberus hound to lick my hand. Not with a tongue that drips corrosive saliva." I couldn't think of a worse animal to choose as a house pet.

Except maybe a blackberry cat.

"So what do you need my help with?" I asked Dass. "You don't need a tracker to find this smuggling operation. You know where these creatures are coming from."

"I know approximately," Dass said. "The probable area covers more than fifty kilometers of coastline. I need your nose to narrow it down. I'm going to insist that Sergeant Raymond assign you to the MTF team that will be doing the investigation—a team I'm heading up, so I'll get to hand-pick its members. But I wanted to clear it with you, first. Especially since you're busy with... your case."

Drek. Dass had read me like a book. She'd spotted my attraction to Jane, and had realized that my protective instincts would automatically kick into overdrive.

I seized the opening Dass had given me. "That's what I need your help with, Dass. I've got a name for Jane Doe. I want you to run it through Lone Star's computers."

"Vema—I'll do it. Give me the name."

It took only a second or two to run down the name Mareth'riel Salvail. The results shouldn't have surprised me, but they did. Jane—Mareth'riel—was a citizen of Tír Taimgire. Her metatype was listed as human, not elven, and her age as forty-three. She lived in Portland, Oregon, was single and had no dependents, and was employed by a company called New Dawn Medical Research.

The face that stared out at me from the crystal-ball monitor—the holo from Mareth'riel Salvail's passport—was Jane all right. She had the same gold-flecked eyes, brown hair, and full lips. Just at the bottom of the image, down near her throat, was the silver locket she'd showed to me in the graveyard. Everything fit. Except that the woman in the holo was somehow not Jane. She had a higher tilt to her chin, a more confident look in her eye. She looked ... older, somehow.

There wasn't much more than general information—the only reason we'd been able to access that much data was because Mareth'riel had been a regular visitor to the UCAS. The purpose of her trips was listed as business—New Dawn, it seemed, was putting out feelers, looking to set up subsidiaries in the UCAS.

Mareth'riel's earliest visit to our country was in 2045 and her most recent was a trip made in July of 2057. According to the Customs and Immigration records, she left the UCAS on August 10, the day after President Dunkelzahn was assassinated. Or rather, she tried to leave. She passed through UCAS customs at the Halifax airport, and boarded a flight for Calgary—a flight that crashed during takeoff, killing everyone on board, after rioters storming the Halifax airport abandoned a truck on the runway in the path of the speeding 707.

It sounded plausible enough. In the turmoil that followed the president's assassination, all kinds of drek had hit the fan. The "death" of one Tír Taimgire national would have gone almost unnoticed. Except that Mareth'riel Salvail was still alive. Had she somehow not boarded that plane after passing through customs? If so, where had she been for the past four years?

There was something else I didn't understand. "How come this information didn't come up when I ran Jane's retinal scans yesterday?" I asked.

"I don't know," Dass said. "It should have—Lone Star's databases are linked with Customs and Immigration's." She scrolled through the file for a moment in silence, then stabbed a finger at the monitor. "Kumbe!" she said. "Here's the reason. There are no retinal scans of Mareth'riel Salvail in this file. The field for them is blank."

"Huh?" I said. "How can that be? They're a required part of every passport."

Dass shrugged. "They must have been deleted."

"Could we try something?" I asked. "Blow up that image of Mareth'riel Salvail so that her eye fills the monitor, and call up a visual of the retinal scans I did on Jane yesterday. Maybe we can do a manual check on whether the two match."

"Labda," Dass said. "It might work." She entered the request. Then she gave a low whistle as the data materialized inside the crystal-ball monitor of her computer.

"A kigeni—that's strange," she said.

"What?"

I leaned closer and scanned the data myself. Suddenly, Jane had a criminal record. And another name.

The retinal scans that I'd subjected Jane to yesterday now were linked to the file of a woman named Margaret Hersey, a thirty-eight-year-old resident of Sydney, Nova Scotia. According to the report, Hersey was a busker who earned a living by performing illusionary magic on street corners, trying to cajole a few nuyen out of the tourist trade. Because she was SIN-less and because this was the first time she'd run afoul of the law, there was no other personal information available. The arresting officers had to go with the information she gave them.

Hersey had been arrested in Charlottetown earlier this year—on March 16, 2061 to be precise—and charged with unlicensed use of a manipulation spell. She'd cooled her heels in that city's jail until her trial, then been sentenced to three months detention, to be served in Lone Star's maximum-security penal institution in the Halifax Citadel. It was a heavy sentence for a first offense, but perfectly in line with President Haeffner's new "zero tolerance" policy on unlicensed spellcasting. All mages are sent to the Citadel now, no matter how minor their crimes.

Hersey had served out her sentence and been released from prison on July 23—just two days before I found her on Georges Island, all memory of her past erased. Or so someone wanted me to believe.

"This is crazy," I said. The office door was closed, but even so I was whispering. "When I had Records run Jane's retinal scans yesterday, this file didn't exist. But according to what we see on the monitor, the first of the data in this file was entered at the time of Hersey's arrest, nearly six months ago."

Dass nodded absently, still staring at the monitor.

"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble to link your Jane Doe with this other identity," Dass whispered back. "And they've managed to deck into the Lone Star databases to do it."

We both knew how improbable that was. Lone Star's databases are protected by some of the toughest intrusion countermeasures in the Matrix. The console cowboys of the Division of Matrix Security are authorized to use deadly force: the black IC they've created can fry a decker's brains in a nanosecond flat.

Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. But those countermeasures are frigging lethal, just the same. You have to want something awfully bad to try to crack Lone Star's system. Decking your way in to plant a false arrest record for someone was something you only did if covering up that someone's identity was very, very important.

And they'd done more than just one run against government databanks. They hadn't just planted the false arrest record—which had to have been done yesterday, after I ran Jane's scans and came up with null data. They also deleted Mareth'riel Salvail's retinal scans in the Customs and Immigration databases some time before yesterday.

Which meant that someone had anticipated Jane being picked up by Lone Star, and scans being done. That someone had at first figured that it was best if Jane remained anonymous—then had changed their mind and given her a false arrest record instead.

They were obviously counting on Jane not being able to remember what her real name was. But they decided—belatedly—to cover their hoops.

I thought back to the expression on Jane's face when she'd looked up at the Halifax Citadel, the huge, star-shaped 19th-century fortress that had been turned into a maximum-security prison. If she'd been incarcerated there, that would explain her traumatic memories of being forced to wear a mage mask. And that wouldn't have been the worst of it. From what I'd heard from members of Lone Star's Division of Penology, the mage mask was only the beginning. Mages incarcerated in the Citadel were subject to a number of measures designed to keep them from using their spells to make an escape. Drugs, simsense feeds, doses of stims that overload the nervous system, electroshock, and—although this was entering the realm of rumor—experimental neurosurgery.

Which was chillingly reminiscent of the stories Sandra had told of the experimental surgeries performed on mental patients in the 1900s.

I'd known about Lone Star's penal methods all along, but I'd never given them much thought before. These were penalties handed out to the bad guys. Criminals deserved whatever they got. But Jane was innocent.

Wasn't she?

I wasn't sure what was worse: the thought that Jane was an innocent woman who had been subjected to such treatment by an organization I belonged to— by members of my own pack—or that she was a criminal. And that led to another question.

If Jane had been arrested, convicted of a crime, and served time, where were the original records? And why go to the bother of erasing them and substituting different ones?

The questions were leading me round and round, like a pup chasing its own tail.

I asked Dass for her opinion. She thought about it for several long minutes. When she spoke, her words were careful.

"Here's one for the conspiracy theorists," she said. "What if Mareth'riel Salvail never passed through UCAS customs? What if she was deliberately 'disappeared' during the riots, then kept on ice for the past four years and subjected to treatments that erased her memory? Whoever did that would have to have the power to convince Customs and Immigration to fake her exit record. They would also need to be able to keep her out of circulation for four years and to erase both her memories and her magical abilities. I can only think of one corporation with the power and resources to do all that..."

"No way." I shook my head. What Dass was hinting at was treasonous. "Lone Star doesn't arrest and imprison people without due process," I growled. "We're not some sort of third-world, secret police force."

Dass just stared at me, a worried expression on her face. And that made me worried. If she was seriously suggesting that it was possible for Lone Star to...

I tried to reject the idea, but in a crazy way it almost made sense. Mareth'riel Salvail was obviously an important person—important enough for the government of Tír Taimgire to send someone with diplomatic immunity to fetch her home again. But I just couldn't believe that Lone Star would do what Dass was suggesting.

I suddenly needed some air.

"I've got to get out, Dass. I've got to think."

"Take your time, Rom," she said softly. "But stay in touch, all right?"

I nodded as I fumbled for the door handle. I all but ran down the corridor, then down the front steps onto the sidewalk. I didn't even howl when I heard a squad car leaving the station. Instead I tore off my pants, changed into wolf form, and loped off into the night.

10

Jane was gone when I returned to the hotel room. This time, there were signs of a struggle. Fresh signs. Gun smoke was still drifting in the hallway from the weapon that had been used to blow holes around the lock in our hotel room door, and juice was still trickling down the bureau and onto the carpet from a glass that had been overturned.

I charged through the hotel room, using my sense of smell to piece together what had gone down. Jane had probably been sleeping on the bed, since her scent was freshest there. She hadn't opened the door; my note was still pinned to it and I didn't smell any fresh scent from Jane on it or on the carpet near the door. Nor did I see or smell any blood, for which I was thankful.

I concentrated on the spoor of the intruders.

There had been three of them: one woman, two men, all human. Except for one of the males, whose sweat didn't smell right. It wasn't meta—no, that wasn't it either. Instead he smelled mostly human, but with a whiff of something animal as a background note. Not a full shifter—but maybe one of his parents had been a shifter.

All three scents had a sharp tang to them, as if the intruders had stepped in salt water recently. There was also a faint odor of animals. The latter wasn't fresh—it was more as though the animal smell had impregnated the intruder's clothes, over a period of several weeks.

They had come down the hallway from the direction of the staircase, and had left the same way. With Jane—although the fact that her scent had gaps in it suggested that they were half carrying her, half dragging her along.

Correction: the intruders were leaving the same way. As I raced down the corridor, nose to the carpet, I could hear gunfire in the lobby below. They must have been mixing it up with the hotel's security staff.

I ran to the door at the top of the stairs and lost precious moments when I was forced to shift back into human form to work the handle. I leaped down the three fights of stairs, opened the door at the bottom, and changed into wolf form just before leaving the staircase. No sense in presenting more of a target than I had to.

The lobby was empty this time of night, save for the two security guards, who were out on the sidewalk by now, taking pot shots at a car across the street. As I streaked across the lobby, staying low so as not to draw friendly fire, I got a good look at the car. My heart sank. It was a taxi—exactly like hundreds of others in the city, with nothing to distinguish it.

As the car screeched away into the night, leaving an acrid cloud of burned rubber, I tried in vain to see whether Jane was inside. But I was too low to the ground in my wolf form, and everyone inside the vehicle had ducked down.

I skidded to a halt halfway across the lobby, claws scraping on the slate floor. Then I ran the other way, looking for a side exit. Again I lost time as I changed into human form to open doors. By the time I was out in the alley at the side of the hotel, the taxi was nowhere in sight. Even the sound of its engine was lost among the other rumbles of late-night traffic.

I snapped at the air in frustration. Then I forced myself to think. The hotel security guards would have called Lone Star by now, to report an incident that would have looked to them like a corporate extraction. They would also probably report the taxi as a stolen vehicle; they may even have gotten its license number. If a Lone Star patrol car had spotted the taxi...

I listened, but didn't hear any sirens.

Then I thought about it some more. The kidnappers had smelled of salt water. And the smell was fresh. They'd gotten their feet wet recently. That probably meant that they'd come to Halifax by boat. Assuming they planned to escape the same way, that meant they were headed for the harbor. And not just any part of the harbor; in order to have been forced to get their feet wet, they must have run a small boat in close to shore and waded in from it.

The waterfront of Halifax was heavily industrialized, every meter of it taken up with container piers, railway sidings, military dockyards, and passenger ferry wharves. There was only one place close to the hotel where a small boat could pull in to Halifax, unnoticed by the harbor patrol: Point Pleasant Park.

The park is only a datachip-sized fragment of what it used to be. The high-rise towers and condominiums of the Pleasant Housing Corp crowd the trails that used to be lined by trees, and much of the waterfront access has also been privatized. The only public access areas are the southwestern corner of the park, where the city has preserved the old gun emplacements from a war that happened some time in the previous century, and the picnic areas and boat-launch ramps on the other side of the park, just south of the containment piers. The latter would be where the kidnappers were headed.

I had no choice but to head for the park on foot. The kidnappers had taken the elf's nuyen—the money clip had disappeared from the bedside table—and there was no way a naked human would be able to persuade a cabbie to pick him up, let alone give him a free ride. So I raced in the direction of the park, running as hard as I could.

I can run pretty fast, so I stood a good chance of catching up to the kidnappers before they made the switch from the cab to their boat, especially if they kept the taxi to legal speeds, so as not to attract attention. But it was a long run. By the time I got to Point Pleasant Park, I was panting heavily. My tongue was so heavy it felt like it was hanging down to my paws.

I took a short cut along a cobblestone path that led through the condominiums, heading for the beach. Hopefully, if any of the Pleasant Housing Corp security patrols saw me, they'd assume I was somebody's dog, out for a run. I made a mental note to wear a collar, in future, so I could pass as a dog more easily.

I slowed to a lope as I approached the beach. Then I wagged my tail in delight when I saw that my guess had been right. The taxi was parked near the picnic tables, its lights off but its engine still ticking. A few meters off shore, a speed boat bobbed on the tide as it drifted in toward the sandy beach. Its engine idled softly and foam bubbled at its stem, as if it had just been brought back in to shore. I could smell its exhaust.

Four dark figures—one of them being yanked along by the arm—were wading out to the boat. The smaller two figures climbed aboard, hauling themselves up and over the side, while the larger figure held a woman who strained against his grip, kicking up splashes in the shallow water as she was dragged out to the boat. Then she twisted so that her face was illuminated by the lights of the condominiums behind me. I recognized her at once.

Jane!

Without meaning to, I yipped in excitement. Heads turned as the kidnappers looked at me. And I got a good look at them.

The female kidnapper was small and wiry, with short hair that was slicked back against her head as if it were wet. She was flat-chested and boyish-looking; the only way I recognized her as female was from her scent.

The men also had dark hair, and features that looked Native American. One—the fellow who held Jane's arm—was large and blubbery, but moved as if he had a lot of muscle underneath those layers of fat. On his face was a scar that looked like a large puncture mark through his cheek. The other man—the one who'd already climbed into the boat—was small and fierce-looking, and grinning nervously. He seemed younger than the other two, more twitchy. Behind him stood a human male with buzz-cut hair and cybereyes that reflected the light like a cat's. His pale white arms were covered in dark tattoos. He stood hunched over the helm of the speed boat, wires snaking up from its console to datajacks under his ear. He would be the group's rigger, then.

I chose the large male in the water as my target. I ran across the sand and charged into the ocean, my feet kicking up salt spray as I leaped over the low waves. If I could just take the big guy down, Jane would have a chance to run. This time, at least, she'd recognized her abductors for what they were. Unlike golden boy, they hadn't tried to pretend they were her friends. I just hoped they wouldn't shoot her in the back when she bolted on them.

I hit the big fellow square in the chest and sank my teeth into his shoulder. As I'd hoped, his hands dropped from Jane's arm and he staggered backward. I tasted blood as I worried his shoulder with my teeth, and bit even deeper. The blood tasted good. Kind of blubbery, but rich and sweet. It had been a long time since . ..

I heard the snick of cyberware just in time to let go and get clear. Long spikes erupted from his fingertips, each connected to the other with rubberized webbing in between. Pain lanced through my side as he raked me with the tips of the razor-sharp spikes, tearing open my flesh. My blood dripped into the water, where it mingled with his in the prop wash. A wave splashed against my side, adding the sting of salt to my wound.

I leaped out of the way of the large fellow, who lashed out at me with his spike-web hands. The razor-sharp implants hissed through the air, grazing the hairs on my ear tufts. The fellow's shoulder was a dark wet patch of blood, but it didn't seem to be slowing him down any.

Jane, meanwhile, had made a run for it.

"Frig!" the woman shouted. "Forget him, Shark! Go after Jane. Get her in the boat!"

My ears swiveled round. Jane? Had she just said

"Jane"? How did she know her name?

I had other things to worry about. The big fellow dove forward into the knee-deep water and swam with smooth, powerful strokes after Jane. The webbing between his fingers made him as fast as a fish.

The boat roared after him, cutting me off from the action. The little man and the woman stood in the stem, pistols in their hands. Angry gouts of red flame spat out of their weapons, and bullets tunneled into the water beside me with wet thuds.

Drek! I was out of my depth—literally. My leap at the big guy had carried me out far enough that my wolf legs no longer touched bottom. Forced to swim on the surface, I was an easy target. I could survive a wound or two if they didn't hit any vital spots—the gash in my side had already stopped throbbing and would begin knitting together soon. But at this distance, if the pair in the stem knew where to aim, they could easily deliver a killing shot that would sever my spine.

I changed into human form and dove under the water, jerking my body to the left once I was submerged. They'd expect me to keep swimming along the shore; instead I swam away from the beach, into colder, deeper water. Only when my lungs were ready to burst did I surface and take a quick look around.

The kidnappers who'd been shooting at me a moment ago were leaning over the edge of the speed boat, hauling a struggling Jane on board. As soon as they'd tossed her onto the deck, where she lay gasping like a netted fish, the big guy surged up and into the boat himself. The motor of the boat was throbbing now, pulsing with power. A spotlight sprang to life on the bow, and its beam began skimming over the water. I dove just before it reached me.

Too late. Jane's abductors must have had eyes like cats, to pick me out in the darkness. Guns cracked and bullets churned into the water all around me. I swam until my ears were ringing and my lungs about to burst...

I surfaced just in time to see the back of the speed boat kicking up a skew of spray as it turned a tight circle and roared out into the harbor. I treaded water, watching it go. There was no way I could rescue Jane now. Lone Star's harbor patrol vessels could catch up to that boat—but I could hardly call for their backup. Not if Dass' crazy ideas were true and Lone Star really had been the ones to lock Jane up and throw away the key to her memories and her sense of self.

No, Jane was gone. I'd lost her. All I could do was watch the running lights of the speed boat as it roared off into the night.

11

Ever heard of the expression "hide in plain sight"? Dass was a big believer in it.

There was no way a police officer could succeed in going undercover as a local on Nova Scotia's south shore. The tiny communities that dot the rocky coast between Digby and Yarmouth are towns of perhaps a few dozen families each, where everybody knows everybody else. Gossip travels faster over the back fields than data flows through the Matrix.

Fortunately, the area is popular with tourists. Most come for the scenery along the old highway, which winds back and forth along the coast, following the rolling hills past clumps of wind-blown spruce, blueberry fields, and whitewashed houses with steep black roofs. The coastline ranges from high slate cliffs to low, mud-flat beaches tucked into the coves where the rivers flow out into the sea. But no matter what the terrain, it's almost always foggy. Even in summer patches of fog hang over the ocean until midday, when the sun finally burns them off.

Tourists come to this area for its natural beauty and to see a slice of the 20th century. The towns here haven't changed much since the 1900s; people still rely on lobster fishing to get by. Along this stretch of the coast, lobster is the poor person's lunch.

Dass was playing up the role of gawky tourist, the big-city person asking a lot of dumb questions. I was pretending to be her dog. I don't know which of us drew more stares: Dass, with her brightly patterned African dress and magical fetishes; or me, obviously pure wolf but as well-behaved and docile as a lap dog. On top of everything else, we didn't speak French—and this part of the coast was mainly Acadian. The locals could speak English, but did so only grudgingly.

Good thing we weren't relying on questioning the locals to get us where we wanted to be. Instead of doing standard police legwork, we were doing nose-work. Or rather, I was. While Dass played tourist, snapping pictures of the picturesque churches, I kept my nose to the ground, searching for even the faintest whiff of a para. It was the only way I was going to find Jane.

Somehow, she was connected with the smugglers. When we'd first met, that night on the pier on Georges Island, she'd said that her friends called her Jane. Her blackberry-cat-smuggling friends, who presumably were also in the business of importing corpselights. I now was certain that those "friends" were the ones who'd abducted her from the hotel. When we found the base of the paranormal animal smuggling ring, we'd find them—and Jane.

Dass and I had been meandering up and down the coast for three days, stopping every kilometer or so for Dass to sit and "meditate" in the sunshine while I took a run. What Dass was actually doing was using astral projection to check out any boats that went by. She would sink into a trance, then skip her astral body across the water like a stone, entering the lobster boats and scallop draggers and checking the holds for any signs of paranimals. I'd given her a good description of Jane's four kidnappers, so she searched the bridges and crew quarters of each of the boats for them. Meanwhile I stood guard over Dass's body, keeping one eye on it while I sniffed along the shore for any familiar scents.

So far we'd come up empty. But as soon as we found what we were looking for, Lone Star would send a team from the Magical Task Force to make a raid.

On the third afternoon after Jane's kidnapping we stopped in Short Beach, a town so small it didn't even appear on the map. It was pretty much a ghost town; we'd been told that the only inhabitant was a local named "Crazy John," a hermit who was said never to venture out of the scrap-metal house he'd built for himself in the hills behind the town.

Short Beach consisted of an abandoned fish-processing plant, a couple of derelict lobster boats beached along the shore, four unoccupied houses with broken windows and roof tiles torn away by winter gales, and a government wharf made of concrete rather than wood—a necessity in these parts, where gales blow up on a regular basis. At the end of the wharf closest to the shore was a chain link fence with a rusted No Trespassing sign hanging on its locked gate. The sign was so old it had department of fisheries and oceans, Canada printed on the bottom of it. Canada had ceased to exist as a separate nation thirty years ago, back when the UCAS was formed, which indicated how long it had been since the wharf was in use. The chain link fence looked equally old—full of holes and ready to fall over at any moment.

A rusted-out freighter was tied up alongside the pier—although "tied up" was a bit of a misnomer, since it wasn't going to be sailing anywhere, ever again. Barnacles crusted its hull, and dried clumps of seaweed on its decks indicated that they were probably awash at high tide.

When the locals said "high tide" in these parts, they meant it. The tides along this stretch of the coast were infamous. The difference between low and high tide in the Bay of Fundy could be close to ten meters— the height of a three-story building.

The ship had obviously been sitting here for many years, gradually taking on water. It had probably been cheaper to just abandon it here than to tow it out to sea and set the explosive charges that would properly rupture its hull, allowing it to sink.

The derelict freighter was probably empty of anything but seaweed, salt water, and sludge, but Dass decided to give it a gander while I checked out the fish-processing plant. She settled into a lotus position on the windswept grass. Then she closed her eyes, and began to hum softly.

I shifted my perception to astral space and watched as she left her body. Dass's aura flowed out of her body and coalesced into a shimmering, ghostly double of herself. It "walked" through the fence and down the wharf, its feet hovering several centimeters above the concrete.

Although I can perceive the astral plane, I can't separate my consciousness from my body and jander around in it like a mage or a shaman can. It must be an incredible feeling; the closest thing I could imagine were the dreams where I was flying. Dass could do that in real life.

Time for me to get busy. Nose to the ground, I checked the abandoned fish-packing plant, sniffing for familiar scents. The building hadn't been used for decades, but it still smelled faintly of fish guts. And nothing else. Not a whiff of the kidnappers or a para of any kind.

I took a quick lope past Dass to make sure she was all right, then sniffed around the empty houses. I paused, once or twice, to leave my mark on top of the spoor of a dog that had passed this way a few days ago. The dog had been excited about something; it had stopped to dig at a corner of the house, in a place where the wall and foundation had crumbled away, leaving a small hole. I put my nose to the hole and sniffed...

Blackberry cat!

The scent was as faint as the dog's—maybe three days old. But there was no mistaking that stench. My guess was that the cat had been frightened by the dog and had sought out the nearest cover. When the dog eventually become bored and wandered away, the cat had emerged from the hole and headed off inland. I followed the scent for several hundred meters, over the crest of one hill and then down the next, through a clump of hackmatack pines, then over the next hill. The trail eventually crossed over a fresher scent; the blackberry cat had been this way recently, a few hours ago at most. My ears perked up as I followed the fresher trail. Then I noticed a shadow looming over me. I looked up and saw...

Frig—what the hell was that?

It looked like a gigantic wedge of forest-green metal about six stories tall, with its tapered tip set on a concrete base. Made from a framework of I-beams covered with panels of steel about the size of a sheet of plywood, it was roughly eight meters wide at the base and nearly double that width at the top. The metal walls were perforated with porthole windows and were set with doors made from hatches taken from a ship. A railing of wrought-iron grating ringed the top of the structure, and a gutter pipe ran down one side to a boxlike device. Beside a door in the lowermost level of the wedge, a boiler let out a steady stream of smoke that smelled like half-burned methane.

A human fiddled with the boiler, peering at gauges and adjusting valves and muttering to himself. He moved slowly, and looked as ancient as the bedrock on which the structure was built. He was tall, skinny, and bald, with a thin white stubble of beard. He wore nothing but a pair of dark green fleece pants that were more hole than fabric, and had skin as brown, weathered, and wrinkled as old leather. He looked about as ancient as a human could be and still be alive—I guessed his age at eighty-plus. Maybe even ninety-plus. He even smelled old. I was amazed that someone so elderly and frail was out here on his own, living alone in the woods.

I circled close to the structure, taking a better look. The ground around the base reeked of cat. And then I spotted it: indolently sunning itself in one of the porthole windows near the top of the tower. I could tell from its aura that it was no ordinary cat.

No doubt about it, the old man had to be Crazy John. No sane person would live in a six-story, inverted-wedge tower made from scrap metal and keep a blackberry cat as a pet.

I didn't want to tackle this on my own. For all I knew, the tower held other paranimals. It might even be the base of the smuggling operation. I slunk off through the pines, then bolted back to where I'd left Dass.

She had emerged from her trance and was stretching, working the kinks out of her muscles. I doubted she'd found anything; I could smell her frustration. I changed into human form so I could speak to her.

"I spotted a blackberry cat, Dass. In a tower, just inland."

Dass broke into a grin. "That's good, because the freighter was a waste of time. The hull was full of sea water. Let's check out the tower, instead. I'll give it a quick scan in astral, then we'll go there in person."

I was pretty keyed up, and it was hard to just stand around and wait while Dass went into another trance. I used the time to put my clothes back on. I was glad when Dass came back to her physical body after just a minute or two.

"There's nothing there but the old man and the blackberry cat," Dass said. "No other paras, and no smugglers. And no Jane Doe."

My heart sank. I hadn't really expected to find Jane so easily—but I could always hope.

"Let's go bag the cat," I said.

We walked back to the wedge-shaped tower, not bothering to keep out of sight, playing the part of curious tourists. When we got close enough, Dass pulled out her camera and took a snapshot. She even waved me into the picture, giving me an excuse to get close to the tower. And to the old man.

He looked at me suspiciously, eyes narrowed. "Who the frig are you?" He spoke English fluently, without a hint of an Acadian accent.

I held out my hand. "My name's Romulus. The girlfriend and I are down from Halifax on vacation." I looked up at the tower. "Did you build this? It's fantastic!"

The old man nodded as he shook my hand. His grip was weak and his hand trembled. But I could see that he had been wiry and strong, decades ago.

"Sure did," he said. "It's my wizard's tower. It took me twenty years to build and I'm going to live in it for another twenty—maybe another century." He grinned, then added as an afterthought: "And my name's John."

Dass approached. Her arched eyebrow told me she shared my opinion. The frail old man would be lucky to live out another year, let alone twenty.

"Wizard's tower?" I asked. "Did you use magic to build it?"

"Wish I could have," he said. "But I don't know a single spell. Folks around here just call it a 'wizard's tower,' since it looks so strange."

He wasn't a spellcaster then. I hadn't thought so when I'd taken a look at his aura earlier.

"It took me a full year just to work out the design," John continued in a quavering voice. "The walls are three-millimeter plate steel, and they're designed with a negative slope so no rain hits the surfaces. The interior of the south-facing wall is lined with copper tubing that acts as a gigantic solar heater. The foundation is concrete, poured over wired rebar. The roof collects water, which runs through that pipe on the side down to a water turbine that provides hydroelectric power, and this boiler is a methane cooker. Each of the floors rests on stringers lined with chunks of old automobile tires. The rubber acts as a vibration and heat insulator, so that cold doesn't transfer into the core of the building. There's also a fiberglass vapor barrier that—"

Dass interrupted by glancing up at the porthole window. "Is that your cat?" she asked. "She's sure a pretty one."

John grinned. "You could say that I'm her human." He laughed, but after a moment the laugh turned into a rattling cough. It was a full minute before he could talk again. He coughed so hard he nearly collapsed, and I wondered if I should lope back to the car for the medkit. But eventually John regained his breath.

I kept an eye on the cat in the window, hoping it wouldn't wake up. I didn't want the little fiend spotting us, and trying any of its tricks.

"How long has your cat 'owned' you?" Dass asked sweetly.

I couldn't hide my disgust. I knew it was a popular joke among owners of house cats, but the joke still turned my stomach. I had to glance away so the old man wouldn't see the expression on my face.

"About a year," John said. "The Mi'kmaqs gave her to me."

That made my ears perk up. I turned back to the old guy and gave him a foolish-tourist grin. "Mi'kmaq Indians?" I asked. "I didn't know there were any living around here. I thought this area was all Acadian."

"They come and go."

"By boat?" I asked.

Maybe my voice had been a little too eager. The old guy's eyes narrowed. I could smell a whiff of nervousness coming from him.

The silence stretched out between us until Dass broke it. She'd been peering in the open door on the tower's ground floor.

"What's in the tank?" she asked.

"Gribble grubs."

"What?" I wondered if I'd heard John correctly. Was the old man making up nonsense words now?

John walked to the door on unsteady legs and waved us inside with an age-mottled hand.

"Come and see," he said with a grin.

The main floor of the tower turned out to be one large room with bare metal walls and a concrete floor. At the center of the room was a huge glass-sided aquarium, filled with what smelled like sea water. A tube ran into one side of the tank, from a pump on the floor, and another tube ran out the other side. Smaller pumps directed the water flow inside the tank. At the center of the tank, bolted to the bottom of it, was a large piece of wood, one side of which looked vaguely like a face.

"Look closer," John said with a grin. He bent to the pump and pushed a button. The pump started up with a hum, and the water level slowly began to rise in the tank.

Peering into the water, I could see tiny wormlike creatures the size of grains of rice, floating on the surface of the water.

"Gribble grubs," John said, tapping the side of the tank. "They eat wood. They nibble away at wooden pilings, and as the tide goes up and down you're left with a piling that looks like a spindle. I sculpt with 'em—make portraits."

The nervousness I'd smelled on John earlier was gone. Now he was all enthusiasm as he explained, in his high, wheezy voice, the intricacies of keeping the water flow just so, in order to keep the gribble grubs nibbling away at a specific spot. I could see that, if we let him, he'd prattle on for hours about the pumps, tubes, and filters. He seemed more interested in the mechanics of the project than he did in his "art."

"Your cat," Dass prompted. "Did you know she was magical?"

"Oh, sure," John said with a dismissive wave. "That's why I wanted her for my wizard's tower."

"Wasn't she expensive?" Dass asked.

"She was a gift," he answered. "I helped the Mi'kmaqs fix their bilge pump and—"

He shut his mouth, as if he'd said something he shouldn't have. But he was too late. I'd caught the gesture Dass had made behind her back as she cast her spell. Even now, she was probing his mind, listening in on the words he was speaking only in his head.

Her lips twitched in the faintest of smiles, and I knew she'd learned something important.

John shook his head, as if dizzy. His face paled.

"Frig," he said. "I feel funny. Are you a wizard or something?"

I had to change the subject. Fast. I looked around for something to comment on. "Who's the gribble grub portrait of?" I asked.

"Huh?" He was still shaking his head. "Oh, that's Jane."

My hackles rose. Was it just coincidence that he'd chosen that name? It was one of the most common on the planet. What were the odds that it was my Jane he was talking about?

Pretty good, considering that this fellow also had a blackberry cat that had been given to him by Mi'kmaq Indians.

"Who is Jane?" I asked.

His expression softened. "A doctor," he said. "I met her six years ago, when she came here to give me the tests. She reminded me of my daughter. When she walked through the door my knees went weak. I thought my daughter had come back from the dead." The wistful tone in his voice told me that he'd loved his daughter very much.

"That's the trouble with living so long," he added bitterly. "Everyone you care about dies before you."

"What tests was the doctor performing?" Dass asked.

"Medical tests. She was curious about me, because I'm so healthy for my age, and was trying to figure out why I'd lived so long. I'm ninety-nine years old, can you believe it?"

I couldn't. But that didn't matter. My mind was still reeling at the fact that he knew Jane.

"Have you seen her since?" I blurted.

He was silent for a moment, and I wondered if he'd answer. I looked at Dass and raised my eyebrows, silently asking if her mind-probing spell was still active. She nodded.

"I never thought I'd see Jane again," John said at last. "But after she came back, I decided to start sculpting her."

"When was that?" I held my breath.

"Two days ago."

"And ..." I kept my voice as neutral as I could. "And where is she now?"

"I don't know."

I shot a look at Dass. She nodded, confirming that the old guy really didn't know. Then she scratched her ear—the signal we'd agreed to previously that meant we needed to debrief.

I was standing behind John, where he couldn't see me. I jerked a thumb at the ceiling and made a clawing motion with my hand, silently asking if we were still going after the blackberry cat.

Dass gave a slight shake of the head.

I grinned. Obviously we were going after something more important. Which meant that Dass had a lead on the folks who were smuggling the paras. I was at least one step closer to Jane.

I pretended to glance at Dass's watch.

"Frig!" I said. "Would you look at the time? We'd better get going, honey, if we're going to make it to Yarmouth before the antique store closes."

It was as good an excuse as any. Taking my lead,

Dass started babbling about grandfather clocks and antique rocking chairs. We beat a hasty retreat back to the car, leaving the old guy with his wizard's tower, his mind-controlling cat, and his sculpture of a woman who reminded him of the daughter he'd lost, years ago.

12

The abandoned freighter was our target, after all. When Dass had used magic to eavesdrop on Crazy John's thoughts, she picked up a mental image of a large, watertight chamber in the hold of the ship, kept dry and livable by a series of battery-operated heaters, lights, air filters, ventilation systems—and bilge pumps, which John had helped to repair.

The smugglers had allowed sea water to fill the rest of the ship's hull, which was then sealed and fitted with UV lights and water-circulating systems. The water wouldn't stop an astral intruder from getting into the freighter, but it would slow them down and make it uncomfortable for them. Most mages would do what Dass had done—assume that the entire hull was filled with water, and turn back.

The freighter was a holding pen, a temporary storage for exotic paras that were smuggled to the UCAS coast by ship, then delivered up and down the coast by smaller boats. Which explained the distribution pattern on the geographic profiling map. The smugglers were delivering to coastal cities on the mainland of Nova Scotia—the areas that south shore locals would be most familiar with—and to major UCAS cities across the bay.

We weren't sure whether any of the smugglers were on board the freighter, or whether the animal holding pens in its hull were empty or full—or whether Jane was on board. Dass's mind probe spell only picks up what a person is thinking about at the time, and we couldn't very well ask Crazy John to think about something that we weren't supposed to know about.

Instead we had to resort to an old-fashioned police procedure: the stakeout.

Fortunately, we didn't have to do it in person. Lone Star's Division of Paranormal Investigation has a number of magically active personnel who are capable of entering astral space. While Dass and I sat in the Yarmouth offices of Lone Star's Department of Shore and Water Patrol, waiting for the call, these mages maintained a twenty-four-hour astral surveillance of the derelict freighter in Short Beach while their physical bodies lay on beds in Lone Star's Halifax headquarters.

They liaised regularly with Dass, who also took a rotation on astral surveillance. Meanwhile the rest of us cooled our heels and waited. There were five of us on Dass's hand-picked team: myself, three combat mages attached to the Division of Paranormal Investigation, and Hunt, the officer who'd piloted the hover out to Georges Island on the night I'd met Jane. Dass had requested Hunt specifically; he was the best rigger the Magical Task Force had, and we'd need his skills to chase down the smugglers.

The combat mages—two males and a female, all human—were edgy at having to wait, but I could see that they were used to working together and were a tight unit. They spent the down time playing endless rounds of Randomizer, a fast-paced poker game that used cards that randomly changed their suit and numeric value according to a pre-set pattern. By memorizing the pattern of each of the fifty-two cards, you could predict the suit and value that was coming up next. If you didn't get a headache first.

I watched their game for an hour or two, and when I thought I had the gist of it, I asked if I could sit in. I lost fifty-three nuyen on the first hand and twenty-seven nuyen on the second. It was an expensive lesson in not trying to beat experts at their own game.

I didn't mind losing the money nearly so much, though, as the comment I overheard one of the males make when I left the game. Something about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. I'd heard the joke dozens of times before, but never with the same sarcastic inflection that was placed on the word "dog."

I got my revenge by chewing up the handle of his taser baton. Then I realized what a stupid move that had been, and cajoled Hunt into helping me swap the damaged baton for one from the equipment room.

After that I mostly hung out with Hunt and watched the trid in the off-duty lounge. I had to get my mind away from endlessly speculating where Jane was somehow, and mindless trid seemed the best way. Hunt and I argued at first over what to watch: he liked the high-speed VTOL races on one of the sports channels, and I preferred the nature shows. We eventually compromised on a medical special report that talked about the cybernetic augmentation of guard dogs. That show got the rapt attention of both of us.

Although the combat mages lounged about in civilian clothes inside the Yarmouth DSWP offices, they came with all the trimmings. When the call came, they would suit up in armored pants and jackets with magical task force stenciled across the back in bold yellow letters, and helmets with low-light vision enhancers built into the visors. Although they were armed with Uzi III submachine guns with laser sights, taser batons, and tranq guns, they had an even greater arsenal of spells. They could use these to take down criminals in any number of different ways: by paralyzing their muscles; by overstimulating their nervous systems until they were unable to differentiate horizontal from vertical, let alone aim their guns; by manipulating their emotions until they collapsed in fear and despair; by weaving a web of confusion around them until they were unable to tell friend from foe; or by simply blasting them with a bolt of magical energy, as Jane had done to the elf Galdenistal.

I hadn't forgotten the golden boy. I also used the time we spent waiting to do a bit of digging in an effort to find out more about him. Dass obliged me by authorizing some time on the Lone Star computers. I wasn't able to get much more on Galdenistal Tathem, but what I did find out was interesting. His father was Lord Shen Tathem, head of the Information Secretariat, the government body in charge of internal security for Tír Taimgire. Galdenistal himself was a paladin, a noble who had formally sworn allegiance to a member of elven royalty: Sean Laverty, a member of the Council of Princes of Tír Taimgire.

None of which told me why Galdenistal had come to the UCAS to kidnap Jane. When they were arguing on the container pier, golden boy and Jane had mentioned Laverty's name several times. But I still had no idea what her connection was to Laverty. And without a decker to crack the Tír government's formidable databases, I wasn't going to get much more.

We waited a total of two days before the stakeout produced any results. The call came late at night, when I was napping on a pile of blankets in the corner of the off-duty lounge. I woke up to hear Dass speaking excitedly into her cell phone. As usual, the combat mages were playing Randomizer. But they were suited up and ready to rock in less time than it took me to shift into human form and pull on my clothes.

We scrambled into a Surfstar Marine Seacop, a high-powered patrol boat. It was a hydrofoil with jet turbines, capable of cruising comfortably at 200 klicks. The boat rode on blades that caused it to lift out of the water in much the same way that an airplane's wings provide lift: the greater the speed, the greater the lift. And it maneuvered like a hot damn, turning sharply while remaining perfectly level, without any of the roll experienced by an ordinary boat.

Hunt would be piloting the hydrofoil through his vehicle control rig—plugged into the Seacop via datajack and "feeling" every wave and current. He was already jacked in when we climbed into the closed cabin of the boat. "Buckle up!" he shouted over the roar of the jet turbines. "It's going to be a rough ride."

Then he winked a chromed eye at me. "Hey, Romulus! This beats chasing cats, eh?"

I grinned back at him.

He was right about the rough ride. Although it was a clear night with only patches of fog, a wind was blowing up and the sea was choppy. An ordinary boat would have plowed its way through the waves, but the hydrofoil had too much speed, too much lift. It "porpoised" from one crest to the next, skipping across the tops of the waves with a series of bone-jarring crashes and stomach-churning leaps.

Had there been a siren going I would have been howling by now. I wished I could have hung my head out a porthole to feel the harsh wind and salt spray on my face. I loved every minute of the ride. But Dass, who was sitting in the front seat next to Hunt, was having a tough time of it. I didn't think it was possible for skin as dark as hers to look green, but somehow Dass managed it. I hoped she wasn't going to be sick. In the closed confines of the hydrofoil and with my keen sense of smell, that would have been difficult to take.

Dass swallowed hard, then turned her seat to brief us as we made the run out to Short Beach. "Surveillance has spotted a boat approaching the freighter," she shouted as she hung tightly onto her restraining straps. "It's disguised as a lobster boat, with a capstan and lobster traps on the deck, but it has a gasoline engine. All of the lobster boats around here use diesel, so the mage on astral surveillance went in for a closer look. He spotted paranormals on board: four Merlin hawks in cages hidden among the lobster traps, under tarps on the deck."

Dass paused to fight down her nausea. "The Merlin hawk is an endangered species," she cautioned the team. "We've been instructed not to allow any harm to come to them, if at all possible. Kufahamu— understood?"

The three combat mages glanced sidelong at each other. They understood that this was an order, but it was clear to me that they weren't going to put themselves in danger for the sake of mere animals. I growled softly to myself.

Dass gulped as the hydrofoil launched itself off another wave. I wondered if the ride would be better or worse for her if she were to leave her body and enter the astral plane. Probably better: I'd heard that while the consciousness is jandering about in astral space, the physical body is almost comatose. But Dass had a briefing to give, so she soldiered on between hard swallows.

"There are three individuals on board the boat," she continued. "Two males, one female, all armed with submachine guns. There's also an assault cannon mounted on a firmpoint that's hidden inside the cabin.

"We're going to intercept the smugglers as they're offloading their contraband onto the derelict freighter. That's when they'll be the most vulnerable. They'll be busy with the cages, and we can approach from a direction that won't allow them to use the assault cannon. Lim, McKenzie, and I will concentrate on the three smugglers, disabling them with spells. Once they're down, Berthiaume and Romulus will board the freighter and perform a sweep for other smugglers."

The combat mage named Berthiaume—the larger of the two males, the one who'd made the "dog" crack earlier—gave me a look that told me exactly what he thought of going in with an unarmored partner who didn't even carry a handgun, let alone cast spells. But he was too professional and well disciplined to protest.

"Once the smugglers are under arrest, Romulus's job will be to sniff out any paras on board so we can prepare them for containment," Dass continued. "If the lobster boat makes a break for it, we'll pursue it in the Seacop and call in backup as necessary.

"Swalima? Any questions?"

We shook our heads.

As we neared Short Beach, Hunt launched the Sea-cop's drone. The high-speed surveillance drone looked like a flying manta ray as it whizzed off into the night. Its low-light and thermographic video cameras would keep a bead on the smugglers, giving Hunt an eye in the sky as he piloted the hydrofoil in. He was plugged into the drone's sensors directly, getting a datafeed through his jack even as he piloted the boat. But there was also a small monitor screen beside the helm. Dass kept an eye on this, and gave us a running update as we approached the freighter.

"The lobster boat is tying up over freighter's aft deck," she said in a tense voice. "The tide is high and the deck of freighter is slightly awash. A hatch over rear cargo hold is opening—it looks like that's their entry point. There are two persons inside—too far away for details. The smugglers are getting ready to lower the contraband through hatch. We should be there in less than a min—"

Dass leaned against her restraining straps, trying to get closer to the monitor.

At the same time, Hunt tensed. "Drek! Who the frig is that?" he said.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Someone else has crashed the smugglers's party," Dass said quickly. "On a jetski, no less. He's armed and is mixing it up with the smugglers. The two in the hold are down and—uh-oh. The lobster boat has untied and is leaving. Who the frig is that guy?"

I was as baffled as Dass. Was this an attack by a rival smuggling operation? Just how much did a Merlin hawk sell for?

"Get on the radio," Dass told Hunt. "Upesi—be quick! Find out if Drug Enforcement has anyone in the area. Officially or unofficially."

Now that was an unwelcome possibility. The attacker on a jetski could be an irregular asset from Drug

Enforcement who'd heard there might be corpselights on board the freighter and hoped to make a drug bust. The DED paid its stringers by the amount of drug seized, just as the DPI paid per paranormal animal contained. Seizing a shipment of corpselights—the "drug" Halo—would net an irregular asset a credstick full of nuyen. Assuming he lived to make the seizure.

By using an irregular asset as their front man, the DED could deny intentionally getting in the way of our arrest. And at the same time, they could frig up the DPI's bust and make us look bad—payback for stealing a potentially high-profile case away from them.

The fellow on the jetski could be friend or foe. There was no way to tell. But either way, he wouldn't be happy to see us.

Hunt whispered into his subdermal microphone, then shook his head. "He's not DED."

"Right," Dass said. "Slight change of plans. We'll drop Berthiaume and Romulus on board the freighter to deal with the intruder and keep the hatch open, then we'll pursue the smugglers."

Dass turned to me. "We'll be back as soon as we can, Rom."

I nodded. "Don't worry," I told her. "I'm getting the easy job." I thought of the assault cannon on the smugglers's boat. I had faith in Hunt's ability to out-maneuver the lobster boat; with the hydrofoil's speed and ability to make tight turns, it would run rings around a conventional boat. But there was always the chance of a lucky shot. While the hydrofoil had enough armor to stop a machine gun bullet, a round from an assault cannon would punch a hole the size of a window in it, sending it to the bottom pretty quickly.

"Good luck, Dass," I added.

Then we were at the freighter. The smugglers's boat had already sped away—we saw red and green running lights heading rapidly up the coast through the fog. Then these blinked out.

The hydrofoil skidded to a stop as Hunt suddenly cut the jet turbines and threw the blades into a turn, allowing them to dig deep into the waves and build up water resistance. His aim was dead on—the open hatch of the freighter was right beside us as we coasted to a stop. Hunt flooded the area with light and aimed a camera that was mounted on the side of the hydrofoil down into the cargo well. A closed-circuit video monitor sprang to life, showing a roomsized space whose floor was maybe three meters below deck level. Water was slopping in over the edges of the open hatch, and had filled this space to a depth of a few centimeters. Two bodies floated facedown, in the water, trailing streams of red. The only way out of the space was through a large hatch on one wall, currently dogged shut.

The jetski had been abandoned up on the water-covered deck; the waves nudged it against the hydrofoil with dull thumps. The fellow who'd ridden it to the freighter was nowhere to be seen. But it was a safe bet that, since he wasn't floating in the water beside the corpses of the two smugglers he'd shot, he was somewhere behind that hatch.

It took only a second or two to take all of this in via the video monitor. While we were doing this, I pulled off my clothes so they wouldn't impede me when I shifted. Berthiaume flicked a glance my way, half rolled his eyes, then returned his focus to the monitor.

"Ready?" Hunt shouted.

"Ready!" Berthiaume and I answered at once.

Berthiaume snapped his visor down and pulled out a spell fetish.

Hunt opened the door.

Berthiaume's posture told me that he'd muscle me out of the way if I tried to go first. I normally would have challenged him with a growl and exposed teeth, but there wasn't time. Instead I stepped aside, shivering slightly as the night wind whipped fog into the hydrofoil's open door.

Berthiaume leaped down into the open space below the freighter's cargo hatch, landing with a splash beside the bodies, and immediately began casting a spell. I had switched to astral vision and saw it spreading out from him like an expanding aura, tendrils of magical energy fingering their way in through the cracks around the closed hatch to whatever lay beyond it. I guessed that he was using magic to get a sense of whether any threats lay inside the ship.

"Clear!" he yelled back up at the hydrofoil.

I jumped.

I landed with a splash beside Berthiaume as he undogged the hatch. He waved me to the side and I crouched low, making the shift into wolf form. Even though a ship is a tough place for a wolf to get around in—too many handles and ladders—I wanted my sense of smell as an early warning system. I could always switch back to human form if I had to.

In wolf form, the water level was at my knees, soaking my fur. It wasn't rising, though, even though more water was slopping down into the cargo well all the time. I heard a faint gurgling noise, and guessed that pumps were clearing water from the area.

I paused just long enough to sniff at the blood from the two dead bodies—both were male, and both had Native American features. The blood smelled hot and fresh, and my mouth filled with saliva. I licked my lips and sniffed again.... Then I tore myself away and followed Berthiaume inside, leaving the hatch open behind me.

Leaving it undogged was a gamble; if the pumps cut off, the cargo well would fill with water, which would flood down into the ship itself. Judging by the watertight hatch, the smugglers probably kept the cargo well filled with water when they weren't loading or offloading contraband, as a barrier to astral intrusion. But leaving the hatch open was the only way we'd be able to bring in astral backup quickly—the only form of backup we were likely to get with Dass and the others in the hydrofoil busy chasing down the smugglers. And if the water started flooding in, we'd know it was time to turn back.

We were in a wide corridor that led toward the stem. Doors on either side of the corridor had been welded shut. They were rusted solid, slimed with seaweed, and obviously hadn't been opened in decades. Halogen lights in the ceiling provided a brilliant glare.

Outside, I heard the receding roar of jet turbines as the hydrofoil set off in pursuit of the smugglers's boat. Then all was quiet, save for the churning of the waves and the sound of the wind outside—and the creak of Berthiaume's armored jacket as he crept down the corridor, Uzi in one hand and his spell fetish in the other.

I sniffed.

The air, which was being circulated into the corridor from somewhere else in the vessel, was full of scents. I could smell grassy manure—probably the droppings of a pegasus—and a dry reptilian scent that was probably snake. I also caught the unmistakable stench of cat urine and the wild musk of a paranormal dog of some kind. The last one made me stop and leave my mark, just on general principle.

But all of these scents were old. I didn't think any of these animals had been on board for weeks.

There were fresh scents, however. Those of the two men who lay dead in the cargo well—and one that was all too familiar: the elf Galdenistal Tathem.

So that was who had shot his way past the smugglers and into the freighter. But why? Did that mean Jane was on board? Was golden boy once again trying to take her back home to the Tir? But I couldn't smell Jane's scent anywhere.

The corridor we were following came to a T-junction. Berthiaume peered in both directions, then motioned for me to wait. I couldn't see his face behind the visor of his helmet, but I guessed that he was radioing back to the hydrofoil, filling Dass in on our progress. I wondered how she was doing. Seasick still, at the very least. But hopefully all right.

The corridor we had come to was short, with a door at either end. Both were open, but just a crack. We couldn't see what lay beyond them. I put my nose to the floor of the intersection and sniffed: Golden boy had gone left—but then he'd doubled back again and headed in the opposite direction, to the right. There was also a scent I didn't recognize—human male—to the left. Probably a smuggler, somewhere behind the door at the end of the corridor.

I changed back into human form and shifted my vision away from astral space.

"Let's go this way," I whispered, jerking my head to the right. "There's a—"

Berthiaume shook his head before I could warn him that there was another smuggler on board and jerked a thumb authoritatively to the left.

I growled my frustration. The elf had already gone that way and come back again. Which meant that, if Jane was on the freighter, she wasn't in that direction. The elf wouldn't still be searching for her otherwise.

"We go right," I whispered angrily.

The helmet visor turned my way; Berthiaume was probably glaring at me. But then he turned his back, dismissing me. He didn't even ask me whether I'd smelled anything. His detection spell was still active, and I guess he wanted to rely on that, rather than on my sense of smell. Well, frig him.

Standard operating procedure would have been to stay together, since I didn't have a commlink. But as an irregular asset, I was used to working on my own. And I didn't like the smell of Berthiaume. Whenever I was around, his scent became faintly hostile.

I crept down the corridor and paused near the open door to smell what lay beyond it. Golden boy's scent was strong, but not so overpowering as to indicate that he was right behind the door. I opened the door wider—and cursed softly when I saw a ladder leading down to another door, about six meters down. I'd have to descend the ladder in human form, and I'd be vulnerable all the way down. The only way to do it was fast.

I gripped the ladder with my hands, and braced my feet lightly on either side. Then I slid, barely braking my fall. When I hit bottom I crouched, then changed in one swift motion. Then I shouldered open the bottom door, and leaped into the space beyond. If there was anyone on the other side of that door, they probably weren't expecting a wolf.

I laid my ears back when I saw what I'd jumped into. I was inside a large hold that was filled with dozens of glowing balls of light: corpselights. I tensed, and the fur on my back rose. But then I realized I couldn't smell them. They were here in the physical world, but somehow ... not here.

Then I realized that the balls of light weren't moving, and saw that they were inside cages made of woven wicker. Each was just big enough to hold the glowing ball that was the corpselight's "body" in the physical world.

I shifted to astral vision and confirmed my suspicions. The wicker was infused with a silver glow that was the astral imprint of the magical ward that held the corpselight firmly inside the cage. Somehow, the corpselights's tentacles were compressed inside that tiny space; the wards must have been powerful. All I could see of the corpselights themselves were their gigantic, weirdly irising eyes, staring malevolently out at me.

Each cage had a thread of magical energy snaking away from it; these magical threads passed out through the bulkheads of the ship as if the metal wasn't even there. Each thread was a link to astral space, to the energy that was sustaining the ward. It was also a link to the mage who had cast the ward in the first place.

Only a mage or a shaman could remove the wards on the cages. Which explained why the "drug" Halo was sold only to magically active users. Presumably, the cages could also be re-warded, trapping the corpse-light inside the cage again once the user had gotten a fix. But I pitied the spell chucker who had to try this while a corpselight was trying to suck the life essence out of them. They'd be dead meat—just like the "overdoses" Lone Star had been finding all over Halifax and other Maritime cities.

Golden boy's scent was fresh and strong. Even from where I crouched, I could tell it led across the hold to a door like the one I'd just come through. Galdenistal must have gone through that door, and recently, too.

I heard a clang then, from up above. Whirling around, I peered back up the ladder behind me. Someone had shut the door at the top of it. I could hear the sound of metal bolts sliding into place, as someone dogged the door shut.

Drek! I shifted into human form and climbed the ladder as quickly as I could. But I was too late—the door was shut. And there was no way to open it from this side.

I banged on the cold metal, even though I knew it was useless. "Berthiaume!" I shouted. "Open the frigging door!"

But the scent I smelled, lingering in the air, was that of an unfamiliar human. It had to have been a smuggler who'd locked me into the hold.

There was nothing to do but wait for Berthiaume to take the smuggler down; when he'd made the bust, the combat mage would come to free me.

Assuming that he hadn't been taken down himself— or been locked into another hold.

I climbed back down the ladder. Picking my way carefully between the cages filled with corpselights, I tried the door at the opposite end of the hold, only to find that it had been welded shut. Frustrated, I began searching the hold for another way out.

That was when three things happened, almost at once.

The lights went out.

Someone shot me.

And the threads of magical energy that had been sustaining the wards on the cages disappeared, releasing the corpselights from their cages.

13

The shot blazed out in the darkened hold, an angry gout of red fire. The smell of gunpowder filled my nostrils as a hot streak of pain tore across my hip. It stung worse than any wound I'd ever had before, as if the bullet that had torn the shallow crease in my flank were made of molten metal. I could feel the skin blistering around the wound and knew in an instant what had happened: I'd been shot with a silver bullet.

This was one wound I wouldn't regenerate from. It would be with me for weeks—assuming I lived that long. If another silver bullet found its mark, I'd be dead.

I threw myself to one side, dropping and shifting into wolf form as I did. I already knew who my adversary was—his scent was strong, even over the gunpowder. The elf Galdenistal must have been in the hold the whole time. Somehow he'd managed to stay hidden, and had lain in wait until I made the mistake of approaching too close to his hiding place. Now he was trying to kill me. If I'd been in wolf form, I suppose I would have smelled him sooner.

Another shot filled the hold with a crash of noise. The bullet smacked into a metal pipe beside my head with a heavy thunk, shattering as it struck. A tiny splinter of silver ricocheted into my ear with a hot sting that felt as if a thousand wasps had concentrated their venom, all in one needle-thin spot. I choked back a whimper. Had I still been in human form, that shot would have taken me through the heart.

The hold was dimly illuminated by the corpse-lights, which cast flickering shadows on the walls. Their foul stench was overpowering, now that they were escaping from their cages. The smugglers must have decided to abandon the corpselights because of the raid, like drug dealers tossing aside their stash during a bust. Whoever had warded the cages must have negated the magic that was holding the corpselights inside, so that the police couldn't track the threads of magical energy that led back to the mage in astral space.

Galdenistal was still invisible—I couldn't even see his shadow. But despite the rotten-meat reek of the corpselights, my sense of smell told me where the elf was, and I used my astral perception to pinpoint him. On the astral plane, his body appeared as it did in the physical world, down to the wetsuit he was wearing and the pistol in his hand.

I sprang at him, teeth bared. I aimed for his wrist, intending to clamp my teeth around it and shake the gun out of his hand. But he was too quick for me. He moved with the speed and grace of a martial artist, flowing with my attack. My teeth brushed against the spongy fabric of his wetsuit, and I tasted rubber. Then I was hurtling past him, the momentum of my leap carrying me into the wall.

I spun around and saw Galdenistal raising his pistol. But he wasn't aiming it at me. I was still using astral vision, and so I saw the danger that lay just behind him. The hold was rapidly filling with floating corpselights, their tentacles writhing as they fought to get past one another. One was closer than the rest; the tip of one of its tentacles was mere centimeters from the back of the elf's head.

Without astral perception, all Galdenistal would see when he looked at a corpselight was the glowing ball of light that was its eye. The tentacles were invisible to him. He fired at what he could see—the ball of light—and his bullet passed harmlessly through it. At the same instant, the tentacle connected with the back of his neck.

Galdenistal's eyes opened wide, his pupils dilating behind the gold lenses he wore. His mouth opened and his body drooped. Sagging at the knees, he fought to keep suddenly limp fingers wrapped around his pistol. Amazingly, he managed to shake off some of the corpselight's druglike effects enough to lash out with his hand. It was probably just luck, but when the elf's pistol struck it, the tentacle withdrew slightly. For just a second, Galdenistal was free. But then another corpselight fastened a tentacle to the back of his neck. The gun slid from Galdenistal's hand.

I dodged the tentacles that were snaking out toward me. The corpselights were bursting out of their cages and expanding like obscene balloons, and in another minute or so the hold would be so thick with them that there would be no escape. For the moment there was a clear space, low to the floor, that I could dash across if I were quick enough. If I could get to the door that I'd used to enter the hold, I could hole up behind it and wait in the shaft for another member of the Magical Task Force to find me. But I had to move quickly...

Galdenistal gave a shuddering groan and fought to keep his eyes open. I couldn't help but glance at him in horrified fascination. The elf knew he was about to die; I could see the awareness in his eyes. But the sloppy grin on his face told me his physical body was enjoying every moment of it and craving more.

"Tell..." He was struggling to get the words out. "TeU Mareth'riel that I..."

His eyes rolled back in his head. The whisper stopped.

That decided me. I had no interest in saving the life of someone who'd just tried to kill me, but I wanted to hear what Galdenistal had to say. Perhaps he could tell me things about Jane that might help me to rescue her from the smugglers, to give her back her memories.

All I had to do was fight off a creature that had a death grip on the back of the elf's neck, then drag the elf's hoop out through a cargo hold crowded with thrashing, life-sucking tentacles.

There was one slight chance. Bullets didn't seem to hurt a corpselight. Nor did a thrown weapon—back in the parking garage, when the troll had heaved his pistol at the thing, the weapon had passed right through the glowing ball of light without any effect. But when Galdenistal lashed out at the tentacle with his pistol, it had withdrawn. The corpselight had felt that blow. That meant that it had manifested at least in part on the physical plane—and that close-combat attacks which conveyed the attacker's force of will were effective against it.

All of this flashed through my mind in a heartbeat as I launched myself at the corpselight. I nearly gagged as my teeth sank into the tentacle at the back of Galdenistal's neck. It tasted like I'd taken a bite of putrid, oozing garbage. A piece of it tore off in my mouth, gagging me. I opened my jaws and shook my head to get it out of my mouth, cursing the fact that I couldn't spit in dog form.

My attack had been enough. The tentacle withdrew, snaking back toward the creature's bulbous body. I turned to Galdenistal, expecting him to get up. But he lay utterly limp on the cold metal floor. His eyes were open but he seemed unable to move.

I looked around. In a few seconds more, the corpselights would fill the hold entirely. The only thing that was saving my hoop at this point was the fact that the corpselights seemed sluggish; they must have gone without "food" for some time. They seemed to be fighting each other, tangling their tentacles together as each tried to prevent the others from being the first to reach the two juicy morsels that were trapped in the hold with them: us.

There was only one thing I could do. I shifted back into human form and heaved Galdenistal over my shoulder. Then I ran for the door, using my astral vision to spot the tentacles that were reaching out for me. Fortunately, they moved slowly, still sluggish.

But there was one thing I hadn't counted on: the corpselights's magical abilities. I should have known better, given my experience in containing paras. I was almost to the door when one of the wicker cages suddenly shifted into my path. There was no reason for it to have moved; the corpselights must have used psychokinetic energy to toss it against my shins. I tripped, landing in a heap on top of Galdenistal. The elf groaned as his head bounced off the metal floor.

A tentacle reached out for me. I rolled, dragging Galdenistal on top of me. The tentacle connected with the back of the elf's neck, instead. The corpselight drew itself closer as it fed, pulses flowing up the tentacle toward its bulbous body. Galdenistal sighed in my ear as a wave of pleasure washed over him, then slid in a limp heap to one side.

Hoping the thing hadn't killed the elf, I shifted into wolf form. For the second time, I sank my teeth into a tentacle, gagging at its foul taste. The thing released its grip on the elf and floated lazily back. Then the corpselight turned so that its eye was staring at me. It irised open and shut, as if focusing. Then another tentacle—an undamaged one—drifted out toward me.

There was no time to shift back into human form. Grabbing Galdenistal by the scruff of his wetsuit, I lunged backward, dragging him toward the door that was behind me. I fumbled my way back over the lip of metal at the bottom of the door, then wrenched my head sideways to drag the elf over it. But I could only pull him so far. His legs were still in the cargo hold, blocking the door. And the tip of the tentacle was only a meter away now, and headed straight for me.

I needed hands to drag Galdenistal inside the shaft, to close the door. Even as I shifted back into human form, I knew I'd never be able to do both in time.

Then Galdenistal moved. I don't know how he did it, but somehow he summoned up the strength to draw his legs into the shaft. I pulled the door shut, trapping the tip of the tentacle between it and the metal frame of the door. For a moment, there was a rubbery resistance—the door wouldn't close. Then the tentacle seemed to turn into mist. The door clanged shut as the corpselight stopped manifesting in physical space.

Panting, I sank to my knees beside Galdenistal. The shaft was in utter darkness; only by using astral vision could I see the elf. His aura had changed; it was a deep, throbbing purple at the back of his neck, and an angry red over the spot where he'd banged his head when I tripped over the cage. His eyes were unfocused and searching; it was clear that he did not have the ability to perceive astral space and couldn't see in the dark. But his senses were keen enough for him to locate me by the sound of my breathing. He turned his face toward me.

He was too drained to do anything else. His brush with the corpselight had left him as weak as a kitten, and drawing his legs in over the threshold of the door had almost been too much for him. I could see the frustration in his eyes; he was a physical adept, used to being in complete control of his body. The loss of his strength was an ego-crushing blow.

I curled my fingers under the neck of his wetsuit and lifted him slightly. His head lolled back like a newborn human's. His belly was exposed to me— had he been a wolf, this submissive posture would have been the ultimate humiliation. I stared down at him, keenly aware of the painful gash his silver bullet had torn in my side.

"What was it you wanted to tell Ja—Mareth'riel?" I asked.

His lips moved. I bent closer to hear what he was whispering. He was speaking Sperethiel, but I recognized one of the words: morkhan, an insulting name for humans or metas who like to frig with animals. I didn't think that was what he'd wanted to say to Jane. At least, I hoped not.

I let go of his wetsuit. His head bounced against the floor with a slight splash. When I heard the sound I had a flash of panic, thinking that the wound in my side had bled enough to soak the floor. But then I smelled salt and realized that sea water was seeping in. I could feel cold splashes dripping down on my bare human skin. I glanced up and saw a trickle of water running under a crack in the door frame above. In astral vision, the tiny organisms living inside the water gave each drop a bright, diamondlike glow.

The drops of water were beautiful, but their implication made my heart sink. Was the corridor above already flooded? I was certain our team would eventually find a way to pump the water out if it was. But would the air in here last that long? When the lights had gone out, the ventilation systems had also shut down. Already the air in this shaft smelled stale.

Then I heard a clanging noise up above—the sound of metal banging against metal. Someone was trying to force the door open. It had to be Berthiaume or another member of the Magical Task Force—the smugglers would have simply unlocked the door. Whoever it was, it sounded as if they were having a tough time of it. I just hoped they'd get the door open before the flood of water into the corridor above forced them back.

I looked down at Galdenistal. "The corridors above us are filling up with water," I told him. "With luck, my backup will open the door before the corridor is completely flooded. When he does, ice-cold ocean water is going to rush in. Even if you find the strength to climb the ladder, you'll never be able to wade out against the current. The only way you're getting out of here alive is if I carry you. And the only way I'm doing that is if I start hearing some answers I like."

The elf gave a slight, painful nod. I didn't smell any fear on him—he was one tough frigger, and hadn't been scared by my threats. Which worried me a little, but as long as the answers made sense, I'd be happy.

"Who... are you?" he asked.

"Just a shadowrunner," I lied. No sense telling him I was with Lone Star. As a foreign national with diplomatic immunity, he'd expect kid-glove treatment from the police—he'd realize that my threats to let him die in this hole were just a bluff. But he'd certainly believe that a runner would abandon him here to die.

"What's your interest in Mareth'riel?" I asked.

"We were... close," he said.

Close? What the frig did that mean? I suppressed a soft growl of jealousy. Then I caught myself. Whatever golden boy had been to Jane, he'd pissed her off at some point and they weren't on good terms any longer. That had been an angry argument I'd overheard at the train station—not just a lover's spat. Golden boy had threatened Jane with this Uzi, and she had blasted him with a spell.

"Why were you trying to take her back to Tír Taimgire?" I asked.

"The Council of Princess wants ... to talk ... to her," Galdenistal said slowly. Each word was an effort; he still wasn't up to much more than a whisper.

I didn't know much about international politics— nor did I particularly care. But obviously Jane was connected to some powerful people in the Hr, if the council wanted to speak to her. I remembered the name she and golden boy had used at the train station, when they were speaking Sperethiel—the name of a man who I knew only by his picture on the nuyen bill that had been in Galdenistal's pocket. I decided to try and convince the elf that I knew more about politics and the corporate world then I really did, and tossed in a name from Jane's past as well.

"What does Laverty want to talk to her about?" I asked. "Is it the New Dawn Corporation?"

Galdenistal's eyes widened. My question had hit a nerve.

"He wanted to find out... whether the rumors are true. If New Dawn really is... doing illegal drug testing ... in the UCAS. Before the Council voted on whether... to sell... its shares."

I thought that one over as the elf closed his eyes, catching his breath. Drug testing? Was that what Jane's visits to the UCAS had been about? It was no big surprise that the Tír government owned a chunk of the New Dawn Corporation, the company that Mareth'riel Salvail had worked for until her "death" in 2057. When Tír Taimgire was first founded, it had nationalized a number of the corporations headquartered within its borders, and had purchased controlling interests in several more. If a company had done something that was illegal—particularly within the borders of a powerful first-world nation like the UCAS—Hr Taimgire would want to distance itself from that company by dumping its shares. But the transgression against foreign nationals would have to be pretty frigging obscene.

What had Jane been involved in?

I thought back to the memory that Dass's magical probing had caused Jane to re-experience. Jane had spoken as though she were part of a government-sponsored program of vaccinations against VITAS, yet I doubted that the UCAS had ever conducted such a program. The memory that Jane had re-lived— of talking people into accepting the vaccinations— must have been a memory of a lie she had told them.

The thought of Jane lying to people who trusted her as their doctor deeply disturbed me.

It must have disturbed other people, too. Was that why Lone Star had arrested Jane and kept her on ice for four years—to find out what the New Dawn Corporation was really up to on UCAS soil?

I thought back to my conversation with Crazy John. He'd said that Jane first came to visit him because she was interested in finding out why he'd lived so long. And that gave me an idea. If I was right, Jane was lying in order to help the people of Ekwader, the town where New Dawn had done its drug testing—wherever that town was. Given the ramifications of what she was testing, it was no wonder the corp wanted to conduct the drug trials in secret.

I took a shot in the dark, trying to prompt more information out of Galdenistal. "New Dawn was testing a drug that would expand the human life span. But what's so bad about that? A lot of people would ice their own mother if it meant getting a free shot of a treatment like Leonization."

The treatment I'd mentioned—named Leonization after Ponce de Leon, seeker of the mythical fountain of youth—had been developed in the early 2050s. It had a limited effectiveness, and cost a whopping two million nuyen for the initial treatment. And if the poor friggers who scraped together that much credit didn't come up with the additional 100,000 nuyen twice yearly for each of the "maintenance sessions," they could look forward to the sudden and spontaneous degeneration of every cell in their bodies. Even so, Leonization was the first thing on everyone's wish list of things they'd buy when they won the lottery. And those who were wealthy enough to actually purchase Leonization had made millions for Universal Omnitech, the biotech firm that had developed the drug.

Then a thought struck me. Everybody knows that elves have longer lifespans than humans. Some lab doing metabolic studies once estimated that the average elf could expect to live up to 125 years. Dwarfs were a close second in the longevity department. Bottom of the pile were trolls and orks, who could only count on living to see their fiftieth and fortieth birthdays, respectively.

Nobody had thought to include shifters in any of those studies. I had already lived longer than a pure wolf could expect to; my mother and siblings were undoubtedly all dead by now. In a way, I understood how Crazy John felt about outliving his daughter.

How would humans and metas react if shifters turned out to have life spans longer than their own? They were already incredibly jealous of our ability to regenerate...

I nodded to myself. Maybe the Council of Princes that ran Tír Taimgire didn't like the idea of a drug that would allow everybody else to live as long as elves did.

I nudged golden boy's shoulder. "Well?" I prompted.

"The drug that... New Dawn was testing... accelerated aging," Galdenistal whispered.

"Huh?" That one stopped me cold. The elves were trying to shorten the life spans of other races? I couldn't see any profit in that. How could a corporation make money on a drug that nobody would buy? Except maybe, the Tír Taimgire government. They might buy such a drug. New Dawn Medical Research may have been developing the drug as a biological weapon.

I could almost believe it. There had been rumors, back in '54, of a molecular biologist who'd fled Tír Taimgire because he refused to help develop a bioweapon containing a version of the HMHW virus that affected only humans. It was supposedly a bogus story, dreamed up by the biologist to prevent his extradition to the Tír on seventeen murder charges after his arrest by Lone Star. But even though it was almost immediately discredited, the story stirred up enough political tensions that the Hr's Peace Force was put on alert. If New Dawn really did have a drug that could prematurely age humans, the Council of Princes would want to be sure it was kept under wraps.

Which would explain why they'd sent Galdenistal after Jane just days after she was released from prison. They would want to find out what she had told Lone Star—what the UCAS government already knew.

I doubted whether she'd be able to tell them. Except for brief flashes, Jane didn't remember anything, anymore. If she was involved in the testing of a bioweapon, she'd have no memory of it—and no guilt.

"Did Jane know what effect the drug would have?" I asked. It was a slim hope. Jane—Mereth'riel—was a medical researcher at New Dawn. She'd probably been involved in the development of the drug itself. But I didn't want to believe it.

Neither, it seemed, did the elf.

Galdenistal closed his eyes. "I hope not," he sighed.

I listened for a moment to the clanking up above, wondering how long it would be before my backup got the door open. I needed more time, more information. But what to ask next? Then it struck me: Jane had mentioned another name, when she was talking to Galdenistal in Sperethiel...

"What about Xavier?" I asked.

Golden boy's eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. I could see that he wouldn't want to answer this one. But I persevered. "Who—"

The loud wrench of metal bolts breaking came from up above. A crack of light shone through the frame of the door above and I heard the steady ca-thump of a jack being cranked. Water sheeted down the walls as a woman's voice called out from above.

"Romulus? You down there?" It sounded like the female combat mage. That meant the hydrofoil was back. I wondered if they'd caught the smugglers and if Dass was all right.

"I'm here!" I shouted back.

"Hang tough. We'll have you out in five."

Cold ocean water began to rise around my feet. Galdenistal shivered; if he wasn't lifted out of the water soon he'd be hypothermic. I could see in his eyes that he knew this. I didn't think he wanted to die.

"Answer me," I said. I decided to stretch the bluff as far as I could. "And make it good, or I'm out of here. I know Mareth'riel was involved with Xavier. I want to know how."

His answer surprised me. It turned out that Xavier wasn't a "who." It was a "what."

"The Xavier Foundation ... collected ... spike babies," Galdenistal answered. His teeth were chattering, which was a good sign. He hadn't gone hypothermic yet. But he was close. "Mareth'riel helped ... Laverty to ... study ... why they had expressed ... before the... Awakening."

I decided not to betray my ignorance by asking what a spike baby was or how a baby could "express." Instead I just asked: "Why?"

"Research into ... magic spikes ... early examples of ... activation of ... stopwatch complex. Mareth'riel..."

I heard a wrench of metal above us as the door was finally forced open. Ice-cold seawater crashed down onto my back, sending a shiver through to my bones. A flashlight beam spiked down into the shaft as the female combat mage peered down at me, her visor flipped up to reveal her face.

"Romulus!" she shouted. "Let's go. The corridor is filling up." Then the flashlight beam caught Galdenistal's face. It was white as death, and his gold-streaked hair floated around him. He was shivering so violently now that his entire body was rigid.

"Who the frig is that?" the mage above us asked.

I knew there was no way Lone Star could arrest the elf, even though he'd shot and killed two of the smugglers. The Tír government would be all over Lone Star if we even tried to charge him with murder.

"He's a civilian," I shouted back. "And he's injured."

I heard the mage using her commlink. Then she climbed into the shaft. "I know some healing spells," she said. "I'll get him stabilized and ready for transport."

I sighed softly as she climbed down the ladder. That was it for asking Galdenistal any questions. I'd have to figure out what the frig he'd been talking about on my own.

"I guess you're out of here," I whispered to him. But then I touched the wound on my side and added in a low growl, "But if we cross paths again and you try to frig with me a second time, you'll be no more than a memory."

The elf's eyes were closed. I wasn't sure whether he'd heard me or not.

14

"Four days standard pay as an auxiliary?" I asked incredulously. "Is that it? Aren't you at least going to credit me for the two days we spent on standby in Yarmouth during the stakeout?"

Sergeant Raymond stared impassively at the bright orange credstick in my hand that payroll had issued me. He raised a cigarette to his mouth and sucked smoke deep into his lungs. Then he blew a stream of blue smoke up toward my nostrils. I wrinkled my nose at the noxious odor and wondered how anyone could enjoy breathing it in. Especially when they knew that the tobacco drug was a fatal one. Humans were so perverse, sometimes...

The sergeant's cold blue eyes bored into mine. "Sticking around in Yarmouth was your choice," he said.

"Detective Mchawi approved me as a member of the team," I countered. "The other members of the Magical Task Force were paid for those two days."

"They're cops. You're a—"

"A what?" I growled. "Dumb animal?" I usually don't bare my teeth at the sergeant, but he was really getting under my fur this time. Maybe it had something to do with what Lone Star had done to Jane—they'd frigged her over as thoroughly as the residential school had done to me, and it was stirring up old memories. Or maybe I was starting to lose respect for the alphas of my pack. Maybe I didn't want to be a cop, after all...

Raymond ignored my outburst. "You're an irregular asset. You only get paid for the work you do— you're not paid to loaf around and scratch fleas."

I could feel my ears straining to flatten against my head in anger—which of course they wouldn't do, not in human form. I don't like slurs against my personal hygiene. I keep my beard groomed and my bedding clean...

A voice called mockingly from down the hall: "What's he want now, a biscuit?" Laughter followed.

That did it. I didn't even bother to ask the sergeant if there were any more assignments. I stormed out of Raymond's office. I'd expected a commendation for confronting the corpselights in the hold of the freighter and saving the life of an important Tír national, and I hadn't even gotten a pat on the head for my troubles.

There had been no sign of the corpselights, of course, by the time the Magical Task Force entered the cargo hold. Just empty wicker cages. The corpselights must have fled into astral space, gone back to their native domain. I suspected that, even if the corpselights had still been in the hold, I wouldn't have been paid for their containment. The combat mages would have gotten all the credit.

Nor was I pleased with the fact that Galdenistal had disappeared as completely as the corpselights. It turned out that the elf had taken out a platinum contract with DocWagon before coming to the UCAS. After we were rescued from the hold of the freighter, an ambulance that was waiting up top whisked him away to a private clinic in Halifax. And that was the last anyone saw of him. Even Dass had been denied permission to question the elf.

I slunk down the corridors of the police station, looking for Dass. At least things were going right for her. She'd been flying pretty high for the past two days, ever since the bust. She'd stopped the souped-up lobster boat and arrested the smugglers without any harm coming to the four Merlin hawks. She'd even managed to arrest the shaman who'd caged the hawks, by assensing the area for his astral signature and tracking him down.

The Lone Star public relations people had given Dass and the three combat mages all of the credit for finding the freighter, which tridcasters were referring to as "the ark." Normally, I would have just told myself that they left me out of it because they didn't want to compromise my value as an irregular asset— they wouldn't have allowed trid of an undercover cop, either. But they could have given me a mention, at least—that wouldn't have compromised me. Was it that Lone Star didn't want to admit to having a shifter on the force, even as an irregular asset?

With all of the hype surrounding this latest success of the Magical Task Force, Dass had been pretty busy. My only chance to talk to her had been when she took my statement about what went down on board the freighter. I had impressed upon her the need to ask the smugglers about Jane. But I didn't know yet if she'd had the chance to follow through.

The delays were driving me crazy—all that time spent staking out the freighter and taking down the bad guys, and I was still no closer to finding Jane. I thought I'd been hot on her scent, but it had turned out to be a dead end. Unless the smugglers we'd arrested had told Dass what they'd done with her...

I finally located Dass. She was coming out of the corridor that led to the sending room—a specialized area of the police station used for ritual magic. I've never seen the place myself—it's off limits to anyone but DPI members, and even cops from other divisions aren't allowed past the magical and mundane security systems that guard that part of the police station. I hear the room is filled with hermetic circles studded with precious gems, and fetishes that date back several centuries, and all kinds of weird drek...

Dass looked tired but pumped as the door clicked shut behind her—she was enjoying every minute of this investigation. She was in an animated conversation with two male detectives—presumably also from DPI, since they had been in the sending room with Dass. I'd never seen them before, but one sounded like he was from Boston and the other one spoke with a thick French accent. The investigation into paranormal animal smuggling was obviously expanding, if detectives from other jurisdictions were getting involved. From their body language, I could tell they were deferring to Dass in the investigation. She was clearly moving up in the hierarchy of the Lone Star pack.

I thought I saw a flash of irritation cross Dass's face as she spotted me in the corridor. But her greeting seemed warm enough and she smelled friendly.

"Salamu, Rom. How's it going?"

Except that she didn't wait for my answer. Only when I caught her arm did she pause.

"What about the smugglers?" I hissed. "Did they tell you anything about Jane?"

Dass glanced at her fellow mage detectives, who had stopped to wait for her. "Go on ahead," she called to them. "I'll catch up with you at the evidence room."

She seemed reluctant as she watched them leave, but she answered my question.

"Sorry, Rom," she said. "The smugglers didn't say anything about her."

"Did you mind probe them?" I asked. "What did they think about when you asked them about Jane?"

"I was using a mind probe, yes. But all I got were brief flashes of a small coastal village. I could see it clearly, but I didn't recognize it. There was no landmark—nothing to make it stand out from the thousands of other towns that dot the coast."

I let out a small growl of frustration. Dass was my friend—pretty much the only one I had at Lone Star—and yet I sensed that she hadn't made much of an effort. She was too distracted by her case, by the recognition she was receiving.

"Where do the smugglers live?" I asked. "What address did they give as their place of residence?"

"You know I can't give you that information, Rom. It's part of an ongoing DPI investigation. Ndivyo ilivyo—that's how it is. You're not part of ..." Then she stopped. Whatever she'd been about to say, she thought better of it. She pulled her arm away from my hand.

"Sorry, Rom," she said firmly. "Omba radhi."

I winced. I felt like a puppy who'd just been smacked across the nose.

"Dass," I said slowly. "Is it because Lone Star doesn't want Jane back in circulation after what they did to her? Is that why you won't give me anything that will help me find her?"

Dass's dark eyes stared at me for what felt like a full minute. Then her voice dropped.

"I don't want to get involved with that, Rom," she said quietly. "I don't know what is going on there— and I don't care to know. I have to focus all of my attention on the smuggling investigation right now."

She sighed. "But I can tell you this much. The smugglers listed an apartment in the North End as their place of residence. We've already checked it out, and we didn't turn up anything there that would help you find Jane."

"Give me more, Dass," I urged. "I want to find her."

"Why, Rom? Why not just let her go?"

I couldn't answer that. The reasons were all snarled up, like a tangle of fur. Jane had been frigged over and needed help—and if the data we'd scanned on her under the name Mareth'riel was correct, she didn't have any next of kin to take care of her. Meanwhile, people kept kidnapping her: first Galdenistal, then the smugglers. The only one who'd tried to stand in their way was me. And I'd failed. Spirits only knew where the frig the smugglers had taken Jane, what they were doing to her ...

I couldn't sort out my natural instincts to guard and protect Jane from my physical attraction to her. And I was still dealing with the fact that Lone Star— the people I regarded as my pack—had been the ones to damage Jane's mind. I somehow felt that it was my obligation to make up for that, to put things right.

I just stared at Dass. "I can't let it go," I said at last. "I have to help her."

"You could be getting into some deep drek, Rom," Dass cautioned. "I wouldn't want to see Lone Star lose its finest tracker—to see you get hurt. But I can tell you're going to keep trying to track her down, no matter what. You might as well not do it blindly. I'll give you what I've got."

I gave her a wolfish grin. "Thanks, Dass."

She nodded. Then she motioned for me to follow her. Only when we were safely inside her office did she give me the rest of what she had.

The smugglers turned out to come from a long line of criminals—families that had been in the drug-running business for decades. One of them—the fellow with the webbed razor implants who I'd tangled with earlier—had a great-great-great grandfather who'd been a rumrunner during the Prohibition era, back in the early days of the last century.

They were all Mi'kmaq Indians, and went by names from that tribe's mythology. The big, blubbery guy with the cyberware was Kluskapewit—Mi'kmaq for "shark." The skinny male was Wowkwis—"Fox Boy." He was the one the Weeds had said sold Halo in the Old Burial Grounds in Halifax. The woman would only give us the English translation of her name: Otter.

I wondered, given the animal names, if any of them were shifters. The big guy's scent had smelled slightly off-human, as if there had been a shifter somewhere in his family tree. But Dass surely would have mentioned any paras in the group. After thinking about the webbed implants that "Shark" had, I decided they were probably just shifter wannabes.

There had been no sign of the rigger who'd driven the speedboat on the night Jane had been kidnapped. He hadn't been on board the lobster boat on the night we made the bust, and Dass had turned up no sign of him at the apartment the shifters had rented. According to what Dass had been able to piece together from her interviews with the smugglers, he'd only been hired help.

And that was all Dass was able to give me. None of it told me why the smugglers had been so keen on kidnapping Jane. She didn't seem to have any connection with them. I wondered if they might have been selling the "drug" Halo to the New Dawn Corporation. It didn't seem likely, though.

I wasn't sure where to go next. I don't have many connections with the city's shadowrunners—as an irregular asset for Lone Star, I work the other side of the street. But I put out the word to the few contacts I had to keep an eye out for anybody matching the description of the rigger who'd been working with the smugglers: the white guy with the tattoos.

Then I went home. Dawn was breaking, and I was exhausted. I romped with Haley for a while in the yard, working out my frustrations. At one point I bowled her over and snapped my teeth too close to her throat, making her whimper. I spent several minutes consoling her, using gentle licks to wash away her fears—and feeling guilty, once again, for having chosen Jane over her. Haley didn't appeal to me any more, except, of course, when she was in heat. Jane had engaged me on a deeper level. On a human level.

I changed back into human form, then curled up on my couch under the blanket that Jane had slept under during her all-too-brief visit to my garage. I pressed it to my nose and drank in Jane's scent, then drifted off into a dream in which I was chasing a woman along a foggy shoreline—a woman who turned to mist the moment I caught up to her.

15

Nearly a week after the Magical Task Force raided the freighter, I finally heard back from one of my contacts—the one I'd posted a message for, asking if he could dig up information on "spike babies" and New Dawn Medical Research. The return message was sent to Gem's telecom—the number I use as my home telecom address. Gem had printed it out for me and slipped it under the door of the garage. It was brief and to the point: meet me at the binary at 2100. d.f.

That was it. No return address—no routing codes of any kind, for that matter—and no mention of what my contact had found. But he was good, the best. He'd have some answers for me.

I jandered on down to the meeting place just before the appointed hour. The Binary is a bar, one of the quietest in Halifax. Instead of music it has soft white noise that reduces all other sounds to a whisper, and its patrons hardly ever speak to each other. Not in the real world, anyhow.

Located on University Avenue just down from the Technical University of Nova Scotia, the bar caters to decker wannabes—the university students who attend TUNS. They sit in the bar, day after night, fiberoptic cables plugged into their datajacks, surfing the Matrix on some of the hottest decks NovaTech ever produced.

The bouncer at the front door of the Binary gave me the once-over, pointedly noting my lack of data-jacks. He was a cybergeek—a scrawny-looking fellow with a stringy ponytail and mismatched clothes that smelled of old sweat—but with a body that was fitted with some of the most lethal-looking cyberware on the market. His arms were cybered from the elbow down, with retractable spurs in the elbows. A pistol was mounted on each of his oversized forearms on a gyromount, which would allow him to swivel and shoot them with a mere thought.

I nodded to him as I stepped inside, but privately scoffed at the bar's security overkill. The cybered-up bouncer was tough, but he'd be totally useless in dealing with the real threat to the patrons and staff of the Binary: black IC, whispering at the speed of light up through the fiber-optic cables the patrons used to jack into the Matrix.

The inside of the bar was filled with baglike chairs made of foam that molded to the contours of the body. The patrons—university students wearing the latest nouveau pauvre fashions and glow-in-the-dark tribal body paint—drooped into these chairs, loose-boned, eyes staring, lost in the world of the Matrix.

That was how I'd be meeting my contact—in the Matrix. The Binary was a place for icon-to-icon meetings, not face to face.

I looked around for a free cyberdeck. I needed one with an electrode net interface, since my regenerative powers didn't allow me to have a datajack. The only deck available was built into a telecom set whose monitor screen was set to a news channel. I slotted my credstick into the box at the side of the telecom. The tridcast disappeared from the monitor, and was replaced by the face of a metallic-skinned android— a digital rendition of the program that served as the Binary's bartender. It asked if I wanted a drink in a voice that sounded like it was being reverbed through a tin can.

"Sure," I said. "Why not?"

The Binary makes money not only by charging for Matrix access, but also by selling "smart drinks"— herbal concoctions that supposedly boost the brain's processing power. Normally I wouldn't touch the stuff—on the two other occasions that I've been to the Binary, I came strictly for the Matrix access. But it had been a hot walk over to the bar and I was thirsty. I stabbed the icon under a greenish-looking cocktail glass with the name Neural Nectar. Then I was prompted to select a size: single or nought.

"Which one's smaller?" I asked.

Tinny laughter echoed from the monitor, as if my question was the dumbest thing the bartending program had heard in weeks.

"Never mind," I growled. I touched my finger to the "single" icon.

Within a minute, the drink was at my table: a soupy green liquid in a frosted shot glass. It smelled like grass and algae, and had a bitter aftertaste. And it had the punch of a half-dozen cups of coffee. Within a few seconds of downing the drink, it felt as if the tufts of hair on the tips of my ears were vibrating.

I set the empty glass down and fitted the trode net over my head. I waited the minute and thirty-eight seconds it took for the clock to hit precisely 21:00 hours—nine p.m. in the real world—then entered one of the private chat rooms that were the Binary's stepping-stone to the Matrix. I didn't need to bother actually surfing the Matrix; I knew my contact would find me.

My body tensed and I involuntarily bared my teeth as I found myself in the chat room I liked the least: the Roller Coaster. Logically, I knew I wasn't really moving, but my stomach lurched and my pulse sped up as the virtual roller coaster I was riding plunged down an impossibly steep track into what appeared to be a bottomless pit, then rocketed through a series of turns, corkscrews, and hills, turning the landscape around me into a blur. Everything seemed real, from the rumble and squeal of the metal wheels on the track to the smell of cotton candy that filled the air. The worst part was, you couldn't close your eyes. The sensations were being fed directly into the brain, via the electrode net that was snugged over my temples.

Finally, with one heart-freezing jolt, the roller coaster left the tracks altogether and sailed into a star-speckled black void. That was when my contact appeared in the seat beside me.

His Matrix persona was an ink-black skeleton wearing a loose black suit and a tall top hat. The skeleton's eyeballs were yellow and bloodshot, and a noose made from frayed white rope hung around his neck like a tie. He blended with the backdrop of the chat room, a shadow against the darkened sky.

"Good to see you again, Romulus," he said in a voice like velvet dust.

"Good to see you, too. How's Chester doing?"

"Just fine." He turned and grinned at me, baring teeth as shiny and black as piano keys. "Thanks to you."

My contact went by the name of Dark Father— when he was in the Matrix. In the real world he was a wealthy Toronto businessman and philanthropist, a prominent campaigner for metahuman rights in the UCAS. He'd come to Halifax in person a few months ago, searching for his estranged son. Lone Star hadn't made any headway in tracking the boy down—the fact that Dark Father's son was a ghoul hadn't exactly motivated them—and I'd been assigned to the case. I'd found the son—Chester—in record time, despite the fact that the piece of clothing from which I'd sampled the boy's scent hadn't been worn by him in years.

Sometimes you just get lucky—and wind up with one of the world's hottest deckers owing you one, as a result. I'd figured that if anyone could track down the data on spike babies, it was Dark Father. And I was right.

"What did you find?" I asked. "What's a 'spike baby'?"

Dark Father answered my question with one of his own: "Are you familiar with the theory that there are cycles of magic?"

"Sure," I said. "But just what I've seen on the tabloid trid shows—about how the level of magic in the world rises and falls over the millennia, and that the peak that resulted in the Awakening of 2011 was just one of a series of high points. And something about the last time magic reached threshold levels was maybe 5000 B.C., with a seven-thousand-year trough when magic didn't work."

"They're talking about the ambient mana count," Dark Father said. "But some people think there may have been highly localized mana spikes during those trough years. Not necessarily high enough to allow for spellcasting—although some of our 'legends' seem to indicate that magically active individuals may have been able to cast spells, in certain specific locations. But certainly high enough for the genes linked to the elven metatype to express themselves."

"So you're saying elves were being born before the Awakening?" I asked. It made me wonder if there had been shifters in earlier centuries, as well—if the legends of werewolves might be true. "What about other metatypes? And paras?"

"It's possible some paranimals might have been born in the areas where mana spikes occurred," Dark Father said. "But my sources say elves would have been the only metatype that appeared pre-Awakening. Remember that when the Awakening started producing 'unexplained genetic expression,' elves were the first metatype to appear."

"And dwarfs," I prompted.

"Yes, although I haven't heard anything to suggest that there were dwarven 'spike babies.' And the magic certainly wasn't high enough for other metatypes to appear. Even after the Awakening, the mana level was still rising. It took another ten years before 'goblinization' began—before orks and trolls began to appear."

"And ghouls?" I asked. "Were they after that?"

"Ghouls aren't a metatype," he corrected me. "We're a result of a virus: the Krieger strain of the HMHW virus, to be specific."

He sighed. "Maybe if we'd also had a genetic reason for our appearance, rather than being linked with a disease, people might have treated us like people, instead of like monsters ..."

He stared off into the star-filled sky for a moment, a pained expression on his skeletal face. I could feel for him. Dark Father was a ghoul—one who could pass for human, just as I could pass. But ghouls were even more reviled than shifters were. Shifters ate raw meat, but at least we didn't feed on our own. Ghouls were cannibals, and ate the flesh of the dead.

"So how come only some of us are born metas and paras?" I asked. "Why are there still humans?"

Dark Father turned his yellowed eyes back to meet my own. "It's in the DNA," he said. "And it's recessive. Just as some people are redheads or are left-handed, only some are metas—those that have the DNA coding for it. There is a magically triggered 'loci' on one of their chromosomes that doesn't express until the mana level has reached a certain threshold. When the level of magic does become high enough, these genes activate and begin producing enzymes that cause specific changes in the body. Two human parents living in a high-mana area suddenly produce a child with pointed ears and strangely colored eyes and hair: an elf. Or two wolves produce a cub capable of shifting into human form.

"Depending upon the superstitions of the era, the offspring is either worshipped or reviled. It may be honored as a child of the gods, or feared as the spawn of the devil."

"Which would explain why Jane bobbed her ears," I muttered to myself.

I shook my head, glad that wolves had no such prejudices. My mother had enough intelligence to be puzzled by my strange shape, but I'd still had the same scent, and still was her cub, even if I suddenly turned soft and hairless and pink, with hands instead of paws. She'd suckled me just the same, along with her other cubs.

I wondered how Jane's parents had reacted to their "changeling" child. What century had she been born in? Given her magical abilities, she was lucky not to have been burned at the stake as a witch.

"Is it possible for an elf born in another century— a spike baby—to still be alive today?" I asked.

"Possibly," Dark Father said. "There was a brief burst of chatter in the shadow community around that very question several years ago, back in 2054.I managed to find some data uploaded by the person who'd been in the thick of the discussion: a genetic researcher who went by the tag of Doc. She was the one who coined one of the terms you asked me to dig up information on: the 'stopwatch complex.'

"In her years spent researching the elven genome, Doc discovered a gene complex on a specific chromosome that arrests the natural decay of biological systems. She named it the 'stopwatch complex' because it seems to literally stop the clock—to halt the aging process. According to Doc, the complex was present in all metatypes but was only fully developed in elves. And it required high levels of mana to activate."

He paused to let me think that one over. "So it's possible for an elf to be ... immortal," I said slowly.

"It would appear so. But remember that this is all just conjecture. You can't believe everything you hear on the Matrix, especially in the shadow files." His eyes bored into mine. "Or can you?"

It was clear that he wanted to hear all about Jane—about the spike baby I'd uncovered. But my mind was on other things. As Mareth'riel Salvail, an employee of New Dawn Medical Research, Jane had been doing research into longevity. I'd learned that much from Crazy John. Could she have been the "Doc" who'd posted the information on the stopwatch complex to the Matrix shadow files seven years ago? If she'd compromised New Dawn's research, she must have really slotted the corporation off. She'd have needed good reason to take that risk—maybe she'd done it in retaliation for being tricked into testing a drug that accelerated aging. Which made her one of the good guys, after all.

"What were you able to find out about New Dawn Medical Research?" I asked.

"The usual corporate gloss, which you've probably already got," Dark Father said. "The New Dawn Corporation is based in Portland and has three major divisions: New Dawn Biotechnologies, which produces vat-grown and cloned body tissue; New Dawn Pharmaceuticals; and New Dawn Medical Research, which specializes in synthetic hormone and enzyme treatments."

"Any specifics on their research?" I asked.

Dark Father nodded. "I guessed, given the two pieces of data you asked for, that New Dawn might be trying to produce a longevity treatment. I couldn't crack the databanks of the New Dawn Corporation— they aren't even on the Matrix. And I wasn't able to uncover the names of all of the shareholders of the corporation—the corp is really secretive about who its principals are, for some reason. But I could download research data compiled by a company New Dawn later acquired: Geron, a California biotech company that was heavily into anti-aging research in the late 1900s.

"The theories of why the body ages haven't changed much since the turn of the millennium—the period in which Geron's researchers made their greatest strides. We seem to be genetically coded to die. Living cells divide a set number of times, then become senescent. This happens because each cellular division shortens the cell's telomeres—chunks of DNA that separate gene-bearing chromosomes from one another, in order to ensure faithful genetic reproduction during cellular division. Eventually the telomeres become too short to do their job. The cell is unable to divide and reproduce itself, and the body dies.

"Just before the turn of the millennium, the Geron Corporation announced that its researchers had isolated a chemical which, when added to human cells in the lab, stopped them from aging. The company's stock jumped forty percent overnight. But Geron hadn't succeeded in producing an immortality drug. They were missing one key ingredient in the formula: magic."

"A company doing similar research today would have succeeded," I guessed.

"And if they did, they could name their own price for the treatments," Dark Father added.

The thought was mind-blowing. A drug that would allow you to live forever, barring death by accident or injury. The people wealthy enough to afford it would become immortals—gods even.

"Has New Dawn's stock taken any steep rises lately?" I asked.

Dark Father shook his skeletal head. "Quite the contrary. Their stock has fallen to an all-time low. The government of Tír Taimgire has just sold its share of the corporation—a whopping twenty-five percent interest. And you'll never guess who the buyer was."

He was right. I couldn't guess. Most days I barely had a credstick to my name. I didn't exactly follow the business tridcasts.

"Who?" I asked.

"The dragon Lofwyr. Or rather, one of the shell companies held by Saeder-Krupp Corporation's North American biotech divisions."

"But Lofwyr is on the Tír Taimgire Council of Princes," I said. "You mean he was selling the Hr's quarter-share of New Dawn to himself?"

"Technically, no," Dark Father said. "Lofwyr abstained from the vote. But when the Council eventually traced through the tangle of holding companies behind the buyer, that little technicality didn't make much difference. Tír Taimgire's council meetings have been even more strained than usual this past week."

The pieces were starting to fall into place now. It looked as though the Tír government had learned of Jane's sudden appearance in Halifax, nearly four years after her "death" in the plane crash of 2057. Fearful that the UCAS had learned of New Dawn's illegal drug tests on UCAS soil, they'd dumped their shares of the New Dawn Corporation. And the buyer was ... Lofwyr.

I let my paranoia run wild for a moment. Had the great wyrm somehow frigged with the formula of the drug so that it had the opposite effect from what its developers intended—causing it to accelerate aging, instead of prolonging life? Everybody knew how devious dragons could be—and I wasn't being speciphobic when I said that. It would be just like Lofwyr to push New Dawn to the brink of an international scandal, then contain the damage once he'd gotten what he wanted: shares in a corporation that would soon be the most lucrative on the planet, if the drug it had developed really did convey immortality.

If I was right, this was a plot that was measured in years, maybe even in decades. Which was exactly how dragons operated. And meanwhile the poor friggers who had been "vaccinated" with an age-acceleration drug had been racing toward an early death—and an innocent woman had been stripped of her memories and sense of self in a Lone Star jail.

Dark Father had been watching me while I thought all this through. His yellowed eyeballs stared at me, never blinking. They had a knowing look—he'd obviously already figured all of this out for himself. Except for the part about Jane.

"Thanks," I said. "You've put a lot of the pieces together for me."

Dark Father tipped his hat. "Any time."

He waited expectantly.

"Maybe when this is over, I'll tell you the whole story," I added.

He bared glossy black teeth. "I look forward to hearing it."

Then he pushed back the bar in front of us—the one that, on a real roller coaster, would be holding us in our seats. "Goodbye," he said—and was gone.

The roller coaster was suddenly back on the tracks. A subsonic rumble filled my ears and the wooden framework of the coaster track flashed past in a blur. The smart drink the Binary had served was sitting heavy in my stomach; I didn't want to linger here a nanosecond longer than I had to. Grabbing the brake on the roller coaster that served as the chat room's exit icon, I slammed myself back into the real world. I heard the ear-piercing squeal of metal sliding on metal as the "brakes" of the coaster caught.

I blinked, re-orienting myself to the real world. Then I pulled the trode rig from my head and ejected my credstick from the telecom. The monitor screen was still playing its newscast. I was just about to stand up and leave when my breath caught in my throat. I'd caught a glimpse of the rigger I was looking for—the one who'd been driving the speed boat on the night Jane was kidnapped. Not in the bar—on the trid.

The newscast was originating from Prince Edward Island, an island to the north of Nova Scotia that at one time had been Canada's smallest province. P.E.I. was in the news again—big time. I watched, fascinated, as the story unfolded.

A few months ago, a group of ultra-radical Native activists on the island had issued a statement to the press, declaring the former Canadian province the sovereign nation of Abegweit—the original Native name for the island, which loosely translated as "land cradled on the waves." They actually believed they had a shot at becoming part of the Native American Nations, and threatened a magical assault on the same scale as the Great Ghost Dance of 2017 if their demands weren't recognized. They based their claim to sovereignty on the fact that Dunkelzahn—the dragon who'd purchased the bulk of the island's real estate, back in the '50s—had, in the will that was discovered after his assassination in 2057, left the island "to the people of the UCAS." The Natives figures that meant them.

The rest of the UCAS had pretty much laughed them off at the time. But now the radicals had everyone's attention. They'd gone and blown up Confederation Bridge, for frig's sake.

Back when it first opened to traffic in 1998, Confederation Bridge had been pretty big news. It was the first "land link" to Prince Edward Island, replacing the ferries. Nearly thirteen kilometers long, the bridge offered a crossing time of under ten minutes— a pretty big deal when you considered the half-day it used to take to get from the island to the mainland by ferry, and the delays that could occur when the winter gales blew up and the ferries stopped running for days at a time. The old-timers that the tridcasters were interviewing could still recall the fanfare that had taken place when the bridge first opened. And now they were shaking their heads in disbelief at its destruction.

The tridcast kept showing the aftermath of the explosion over and over again—a crumpled ruin of broken concrete and twisted metal girders. They also kept replaying shots of the tremendous flash of magical energy that had been picked up by the bridge's surveillance cameras. And front and center in the shots that followed, straddling a motorcycle that had narrowly missed plunging over the twisted ruin at the center of the bridge, was the rigger who'd been driving the speedboat on the night Jane was kidnapped.

He'd obviously managed to disappear before the trid snoops got there with their cameras—the total footage of him lasted no more than a second or two before he wheeled his motorcycle around and headed back to safety. As the bike departed, I saw a woman on the back of it, her arms around the rigger's waist. She looked elderly and frail, with long white hair and wrinkled skin. And Native—like the rest of the smugglers.

The rigger and his passenger had been crossing to the mainland, coming from Prince Edward Island. They had been on the bridge, just outside the zone of the explosion, seconds before it occurred. Coincidence? I didn't think so.

I turned up the volume and listened to the voiceover that was accompanying the trideo images. It was the usual yada yada of uninformed speculation and background stories that had only tenuous connections with the blast. But one word jumped out at me: Eskwader.

The trids were re-airing a story the news station had recorded years ago. Long before the Native radicals announced their intention to declare Prince Edward Island the sovereign nation of Abegweit, there had been a grass-roots movement to return towns throughout the Maritimes to their original Native names. One of those names was Eskwader—Mi'kmaq for "the fishing place." Or as it was properly known: Murray Harbor, Prince Edward Island.

So that was where Jane had done the phony vaccinations, back when she was posing as a doctor with the UCAS Department of Health. I had a sudden flash of inspiration. When Dass's magic had jogged that memory, Jane had used the Mi'kmaq name for the town, even though it's still known by its Anglo name of Murray Harbor—the name that appears on the maps. The smugglers who had tried to kidnap Jane were all Mi'kmaq; maybe they had family members or friends in that town. Perhaps they'd kidnapped Jane to take her back there, so the villagers of Murray Harbor could take their revenge.

The fact that the rigger was jandering around on Prince Edward Island seemed to confirm this. I wondered if he'd delivered Jane there while the smugglers continued taking care of biz, smuggling in their latest shipment of paras.

I knew where to look for Jane, now: in Eskwader. I just hoped she'd still be alive when I found her.

16

The UCAS military came down hard on Prince Edward Island after the destruction of the Confederation Bridge. Not only was it a terrorist act—it was also a flagrant and violent use of unlicensed magic. Even though it had been four years since a magical attack had taken the life of UCAS President Dunkelzahn, the destruction of the Confederation Bridge opened old wounds, brought back old memories. It made a mockery of President Haeffner's "law and order" promises, and could not be ignored. In a dramatic show of strength, UCAS airborne troops were sent in by attack helicopter to secure Charlottetown, and local teams from the Magical Task force began astral sweeps, looking for the Native terrorists who had triggered the magical spells that destroyed the bridge.

The explosion had taken place while I was on-line at the Binary in Halifax. It only took me twenty minutes to get to Truro by high-speed train, but I spent another three hours busing it from there to the coast. The passenger ferries at Caribou had shut down for the night—even if they had been running, security in the wake of the bombing would have been intense. Instead I headed for Pictou, a fishing town that lies just across the strait from Prince Edward Island.

I knew a shifter there—a woman by the name of Lucie who had briefly attended the same residential school that I had. She'd been a shy, timid girl. We'd become friends after I bit one of the boys who had been bullying her. I'd gotten a strapping from the headmaster as a result, for shifting into animal form; I still had scars from the braided silver wire he'd used on my back. But just standing by and watching the older kids reduce Lucie to tears would have been worse.

Lucie and I had kept in touch sporadically over the years since her family had pulled her from the school. She'd been one of the more fortunate ones; she'd gotten out early.

As a baby, Lucie had been taken in by an Acadian family that had been amazed to find a "human" infant swimming alongside their fish boat in the open ocean. They'd allowed the government to enroll her in the residential school only reluctantly, and had forced the school to return her to her home after some of the abuses began to surface.

Lucie's family not only didn't mind having an adopted daughter who was a shifter—they welcomed it. Lucie used her seal form to locate the dwindling schools of cod, helping her new guardians to become a true rarity in the Maritimes: a wealthy fishing family. Her parents had even tried to legally adopt her, but of course the UCAS didn't allow it.

Lucie had her own boat now: a converted fish boat that she used both as a place of residence and for her whale-watching tour business. I knew she wouldn't be happy about being rousted out of bed at two in the morning, especially at the height of the tourist season. But tourism was going to take a nose dive in the wake of the bombing; my offer to rent her boat might be the last one she'd see for the next few weeks.

It took me a while to find Lucie's live-aboard. All I had was the name: Selkie. I didn't even know which wharf it was tied up at. When I at last found the boat, the door to the cabin was locked up tight and there was no answer to my knocks. Then I realized where Lucie must be: like me, she liked to sleep in animal form. Of all of the kids at the school, she'd been the most uncomfortable with sleeping indoors in a human bed.

Shifting into wolf form, I picked up her scent and followed it along the waterfront. From time to time an interesting smell distracted me—the musky odor of a rotting fish or the sharp tang of a seabird. But I stuck to my purpose. I found Lucie curled up on the rocks beside the public quay, her whiskered nose tucked under her flippers. Her muzzle was black, the only dark spot on a seal pelt such a perfect, glossy white it practically glowed against the gray rocks. Her fur was covered in sea spray, but thanks to her blubber she didn't feel the cold. Her clothes lay beside her in a heap. I shifted into human form and shook Lucie awake gently.

"Lucie? It's me, Romulus. From the residential school."

I didn't really need to tell her who I was. As soon as she opened her large round eyes she looked me over with her astral vision. Even though we hadn't seen each other in years, she recognized me by my wolf form.

She immediately shifted into human form so we could talk. She was a large woman, maybe one hundred and thirty-five kilos, with wide-webbed hands and a body made smooth by a uniform layer of fat. The hair on her head was long, glossy, and white, and the rest of her body was also covered by a downy-fine layer of white hair. Her eyes were all pupil, dark and wet.

"Bon soir, Romulus. How is za police business?" Lucie had a thick Acadian accent; she hadn't been at the residential school long enough to have it erased.

We swapped small talk for a minute or two before I got to the point.

"I want to rent your boat, Lucie. I need to get to Prince Edward Island. Tonight. I just need a ride over—I'm not sure when I'm coming back, so you don't need to wait for me. In fact, it would be better if you didn't hang around."

"Quoi?" Lucie's broad forehead wrinkled as she raised her pale eyebrows. Her already wide eyes got even bigger. "You are not involved with za bridge t'ing, are you, Romulus?"

"No," I reassured her. "But it's frigged me up. There's someone on the island who needs my help, and now I can't get to her because of the trouble with the bridge."

I pulled a credstick from my pocket. It held the pay I'd received for the freighter raid, minus a few expenses—every nuyen I had. I held it out to Lucie. "I've got about five hundred nuyen on this," I said. "You can transfer whatever you need to cover your fuel expenses and your time."

Lucie gave my a shy smile. "Zat is all right, Romulus," she said. "If you are helping someone, you will need zat credit. I will donate my time, moi. Just buy me a bite to eat some time, and we will call it square."

"Sushi?" I asked.

Lucie's eyes lit up. Raw fish was her favorite food. "Bon!"

The crossing to Murray Harbor didn't take long— it's only about a fifty-klick run across the strait. As the Selkie cut through the choppy seas, I listened to the tridcasts on Lucie's satellite-dish telecom. The UCAS military was about to impose a curfew in Charlottetown, starting that evening. The Magical Task Force had already made some arrests—it sounded like our division was rounding up anyone who was even part Mi'kmaq Indian. In retaliation, the radicals had used a ball of magical fire to set fire to Green Gables House, the historic Cavendish home that was the setting for the Anne of Green Gables novel. By doing so, they'd brought the uprising onto the world stage; so popular was P.E.I. with Japanese tourists that the Japanese prime minister had expressed his country's "greatest sympathies and condolences for the UCAS's terrible loss."

There was no mention of Murray Harbor on any of the tridcasts. But no news was good news, as far as I was concerned.

Despite the fact that Prince Edward Island was formerly a Canadian province unto itself, it's not much more than a fly-speck on the map. Charlottetown, the only "city," has a population that has stagnated at the thirty thousand mark since the turn of the millennium.

The island is long and flat, with gently rolling hills. It lies low in the water like a canoe, the highest point barely one hundred and fifty meters above sea level. Its forests were felled centuries ago, and the early settlers divided up its muddy red soil into a patchwork of family farms. This was pretty much the state of things until just after the turn of the millennium, when the VITAS epidemic wiped out one-third of the island's population.

Agribusiness seized the opportunity and moved in, buying up farms at bargain-basement prices. By the 2020s, eighty per cent of the island was owned by a single corporation: Universal Foods.

Three decades of mismanagement by Universal

Foods had rendered the land all but worthless. Overirrigation and heavy fertilizer use depleted the soil, and the widespread use of a single strain of genetically altered, frost-tolerant potato that could be grown year-round brought on a blight. When profits declined, Universal Foods moved on.

Then Dunkelzahn bought up the ravaged properties, promising to restore the island to its former pastoral beauty.

Dunkelzahn built an estate there in the early 2050s. Suddenly, P.E.I. was in all the tridcasts as the media tried to figure out why the dragon had chosen what appeared to be a magically insignificant place. Rumor had it that the estate's gardens and mansion had been laid out by a master of feng shui, the ancient Chinese art of geomancy.

For a while, the island's tourist industry really got a boost as mages from around the world came to search for the "ley lines" that supposedly converged on the estate. But after the estate was turned into a public park in 2057, per the instructions in Dunkelzahn's will, the mystery surrounding the place dissipated. Pilgrims to the park went home disappointed after they discovered that mana levels weren't peaking there—or anywhere else on P.E.I.

Lucie turned her boat into the long, narrow bay that gave Murray Harbor its name. We pulled up to the wharf just as the sky was beginning to lighten.

The eastern horizon was a brilliant salmon pink, and it brought to mind the rhyme we'd learned as kids: "Red sky at morning, sailors take warning." I wondered if the hot spell we'd been having lately was finally going to break. If it was, we'd be in for some weather. I was glad I wasn't a sailor.

There isn't much to Murray Harbor. It's got a hundred or so wood-frame houses, a handful of fresh seafood shops that cater to the tourist trade, and the usual collection of family-owned general stores and boat-repair businesses. I didn't see any sign of the UCAS military—just sleepy-eyed fishers setting out before sunrise in their draggers. The largest of these fishing boats were fully automated, with everything from engine to capstan operated via vehicle jacks by a single rigger. But most were old-fashioned: conventional fish boats that took a crew of four or more to operate. Some even had wooden hulls. The smell of fish, hot diesel fumes, and rusting metal hung in the air over the wharf like a thick fog.

I waved goodbye to Lucie and jandered up the sloping ramp that led up to the town itself. I didn't dare shift into wolf form; even at this early hour there were people on the streets, and I didn't want anyone calling the local Lone Star detachment to say a para was on the loose, especially when tensions on the island were already high.

I walked back and forth through town, inhaling deeply and trying to pick up Jane's scent with my blunted human senses. It didn't take me long to cover the entire town. By then the sun was up and people were sitting on their porches, drinking their coffee. I could smell its pungent odor, along with the other smells of breakfast: frying bacon and fish, toast, and the sweet smell of homemade jam.

But not a whiff of Jane. I was beginning to wonder if maybe I'd jumped to conclusions and followed a false logic trail.

Then I saw the child with the face of an old man.

He was walking toward the town's elementary school behind a group of children who looked about six to eight years old. The other children were skipping and laughing as they tagged each other, but this boy was not included in their game. He was slower than the rest, moving with a painful shuffle. I didn't realize why, at first. Having just spent time with Lucie, I didn't think anything of the boy's snow-white hair. But when he glanced back over his shoulder I saw his wrinkled face and age-spotted skin, and the white whiskers on his chin. He looked like a man in his seventies as he trudged along in an oversized sweater with holes at the elbows and faded blue jeans.

I stepped downwind of the boy and sniffed. He smelled like a man in his seventies. And his Native features tagged him as Mi'kmaq. I stared at him in horrified fascination, realizing that his physical debilitation was the result of the drug testing that Jane had conducted in this town, several years ago. The full impact of what had been done here struck me then. The New Dawn Corporation had been testing the drug on children. On infants.

I could only pray that Jane hadn't known what she'd been part of. And I thanked the spirits for her memory loss. The people of Murray Harbor might tell her what she had done, but Jane would forget all about it the next morning when she awoke. Her short-term memory loss suddenly seemed like a blessing, instead of a curse.

As the wizened-looking boy trudged into the school yard, he was met with jeers. He jerked to a stop and looked around uncertainly. At first I thought the other kids were teasing him about his appearance. But as I got closer, I heard what they were saying.

"Dirty Indian!"

"My dad said ya couldn't trust anyone who come from away."

"Bridge-burner!"

They were just children, repeating what they'd heard over breakfast that morning. But it was ugly. My hackles rose.

When one of them picked up a stone and threw it at the prematurely aged boy, I lost it entirely. "Leave him alone!" I shouted.

I was halfway into wolf form, my shirt tearing, before I realized what I was doing. By the time I'd shifted back into fully human form, the children in the school yard were a screaming, tangled knot as they fought to get into the safety of the building.

Frig. Talk about blowing your cover.

"Thanks, mister," a tiny voice whispered beside me.

I looked down to see the boy staring up at me with his old man's face. I rested a hand reassuringly on his shoulder. "That's all right," I said.

"How come you got pointy ears?" the boy asked. If I'd had any doubts about his true age, his candid question would have erased them. Only children are that blunt.

"I'm a shifter," I answered.

"What kind?"

"Wolf."

"Oh." The boy thought that one over. "My uncle has pointy ears too. He lives with gran and me. He's a dwarf." He sized me up a moment more before adding, "His beard is longer than yours."

Chuckling, I stroked my beard. Then I froze and sniffed my hand. After touching the boy's shoulder, my palm had picked up a scent that was faint, but unmistakable. I bent lower and pressed my nose against the sweater the boy was wearing. It smelled of wood smoke, wool, tobacco, and fried fish. And of something else that made the breath catch in my throat.

Jane had worn this sweater. Her scent was faint, as if the sweater had barely touched her skin before she'd taken it off again. But the scent was fresh.

"Is that your uncle's sweater?" I asked as I drew away. "It looks too big for you."

The boy nodded.

"Where do you live?" I asked the boy. "I'd like to meet your uncle."

I heard a commotion from inside the elementary school: excited children's voices and the lower voice of an adult. I decided I'd better get the frig out of here, before the local police picked me up on a charge of uttering threats, or child molestation, or some other crazy thing.

The boy didn't seem to be keen on sticking around, either. I guided him around the corner and up the street. But he wasn't going anywhere fast. His hands were gnarled, the knuckles knobbed and twisted with arthritis. I suspected his feet were the same.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Kloqoej," he said. "That's my Indian name. It means 'old man star.' You know—like a comet, with a beard. But they call me Paul at school."

"Would you like me to carry you, Kloqoej?" I asked.

He gave me a measuring look. He'd obviously been warned against trusting strangers. But I'd just saved him from a nasty situation, and it was clear that walking home again wasn't going to be easy for him. I watched him decide he could trust me.

"All right," he said. "I live down by the beach."

I boosted the boy onto my back and walked in the direction he indicated. His home turned out to be a small cottage at the end of a stretch of red sand on the outskirts of town. It wasn't far from the beach; the smell of salt water and seaweed hung in the air, together with the smell of wood smoke. The house itself was painted white, with a red door at the front that was open a crack. Wood smoke curled from a chimney that was starting to lean as its mortar crumbled, and the roof tiles were patched in several places with smears of black tar. A large, rickety-looking porch that jutted out of one side of the house had a railing that was studded with sea shells, feathers, and animal bones.

As I got closer, I noticed a design on the front door of the cottage: a circle with lines inside it that formed an eight-pointed star, with a spiraled knot at the center of the star. It was vaguely reminiscent of the hermetic circles that Dass used in her spellcasting, but with Native overtones. Then I recognized the design: it was patterned after a dream catcher, a fad from the last century. Back in the days before the Awakening, people had hung dream catchers in their homes, believing that they prevented nightmares by somehow "catching" the bad dreams. It was totally bogus, of course. Magic had yet to arise in the world, and all the dream catchers caught was dust.

As I approached the house with Kloqoej on my shoulders, the breeze coming off the ocean shifted, carrying the smell of dog to me. As soon as it saw me, a male rottweiler that had been sunning itself on the beach leaped to its feet and charged. I'd been expecting him; I'd smelled his mark on several of the bushes beside the gravel driveway, and could tell from the tinge of anxiety in the spoor that he was a timid dog, all show. I met the rottweiler growl for growl, bristling and adopting a dominant stance, making sure Kloqoej remained high on my shoulders. As soon as the dog was close enough to catch the overtones of wolf in my scent, he skidded to a stop. With a soft whine he lowered his head to the ground in a gesture of submission.

The wind also carried the smell of a meta: a dwarf male. I spotted him at the side of the house, near a battered-looking pickup truck that was parked next to a messy-looking wood pile. He had a high forehead and a black beard that hung halfway down his chest, braided like a pony tail. I thought, at first glance, that his hair had been styled in dreadlocks, but then I realized the "dreads" were actually sleek black feathers that had been woven into his hair. He wore a red flannel shirt, jeans, and heavy work boots. His prominent cheekbones and dark brown eyes pegged him as Native.

The dwarf had been tucking chunks of firewood into the crook of his short but powerfully muscled arm. When he heard the rottweiler barking and saw me dominate it, he dropped the wood, a surprised expression on his face. Without a word he turned and entered the house. As I set Kloqoej down on the ground, I heard low voices inside: the dwarf's and a woman's. Since neither one seemed about to come out and greet me, I strode to the front door.

I knocked, and the voices fell silent. The smell of aromatic tobacco smoke wafted out through the open door. I glanced behind me at Kloqoej, but he just shrugged. The door began to swing open as I knocked a second time.

"Hello?" I called out. "Your nephew had a bit of trouble at the school yard, so I helped him get home. I just wanted to let you know he was all ri—"

The sight of the woman in the rocking chair stopped me cold. Even though I'd only caught a one-second glimpse of her on the trid, I recognized her at once as the passenger on the back of the rigger's motorcycle; she'd been riding with him last night, when the Confederation Bridge was destroyed. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise as I considered the impossibility of the coincidence: of all of the people in Murray Harbor, I had befriended her grandson. If I hadn't been in human form, my ears would have been flat against my scalp by now. I took a step into the dimly lit room to get a better look.

I wasn't the only one suffering from the shock of recognition. I know it sounds impossible, but I could see it in the old woman's eyes that she recognized me, too. She sat impassively in a rocking chair, smoking a clay pipe. Despite the fact that the day was warm, she wore a heavy blue wool coat. Its sleeves, hem, and wide collar were trimmed with red fabric that was finished with ornate white embroidery. The floor boards under her chair creaked as she rocked slowly back and forth. Her eyes stared at me, nearly lost in a face that was a sea of wrinkles.

The room was so full of clutter that I didn't see the dwarf, at first. The bookcase he was standing next to was as tall as he was, and had blocked my view of him as I came in through the door. But now I could see the miniature crossbow that was mounted on his forearm, and the silver point on the bolt it held. The tip was aimed directly at my chest. Just looking at it made the crease the elf's silver bullet had torn in my side begin to ache.

"Nikani-kjijitekewinu said you would come," the dwarf said. "She is a great puoin; she can see ten days into tomorrow."

I wondered if the old woman could also see into the astral plane—if she had spotted my true form. I trembled with the urge to shift into wolf form, to hurl myself at the dwarf's throat. I knew it would be suicidal, but sometimes your animal instincts just overwhelm you. I was glad this wasn't one of those times.

"Sorry," I told the dwarf. "You've got the wrong man. Whoever you were expecting, I'm not him." I began easing back out the door.

The old woman fixed me with a look. "You came for Jane," she said. "Now that you are here, you must stay."

I froze. I glanced at the woman and then at the dwarf. The silver-headed arrow was a good argument to stick around.

"You know her," I said at last. "Her scent is on the sweater Kloqoej is wearing."

The old woman rocked forward in her chair. "Jane did us a great wrong. She hurt our children."

"Someone hurt her, too."

"Yes," the old woman said. "They stole her keskamzit, her power. But you can help her to get it back. And then she can heal our children."

"Where is Jane?" I asked. I didn't smell her scent anywhere; I was certain she wasn't here in the cottage with us. But my hopes were rising that I'd see her soon. They were speaking of Jane in the present tense. That meant she was still alive.

The woman waved away my question with the hand that held her pipe. Then she returned its stem to her mouth and sucked on it. She sat smoking for a full minute, her eyes staring off into space. My frustration rose with each wordless puff of smoke. I stifled a growl in my throat and forced myself to wait for her answer. But instead she began to inhale deeper and deeper, almost hyperventilating on the tobacco smoke.

I shot a look at the dwarf. "What's she doing?"

"Her power rises in her as she smokes," he said. "Wait."

Something happened to the old woman then. The hand holding the pipe dropped into her lap, and her eyes rolled back in her head. She started to tremble and I could smell sweat breaking out on her body. Her body gave one final, violent convulsion and then she slumped back in her chair, as if she'd lost consciousness. The chair rocked gently back and forth, creaking softly.

"What's wrong with her?" I asked.

"Wait," was all the dwarf would say.

After a moment, the old woman opened her eyes. In that same instant, I could hear the sound of a helicopter, off in the distance.

"Soldiers are coming to arrest me, Pelig," she told the dwarf. She pointed the stem of her pipe at me. "Take him to the teomul. He will show this wolf how to free his skite'kmuj."

"But what about Jane?" I shouted impatiently. "Where is she?"

The dwarf—Pelig—stepped forward and prodded me with the crossbow bolt. Its silver tip poked into my skin, stinging like a slap of iodine as my skin began to blister from its pinprick.

"Let's go," he said grimly. "We haven't got much time."

17

We drove up island along the back roads in the pickup truck. The vehicle must have been as ancient as the old woman. With the back bumper held on by wire, I could see the pavement blurring past under my feet through a hole in the floor, and every time I hit the brakes I heard a loud, grinding noise.

The dwarf Pelig made me drive. He sat next to me on the broad bench seat, on a cushion that raised him high enough to look over the dashboard. The crossbow with its silver-headed bolt was still cocked and mounted on his arm, but he no longer pointed it at me. He had other ways of keeping me in line. When I tried to make a dash for it after we stopped at an intersection, I felt a tickle in the back of my skull, like the beginning of a headache. Suddenly, my arms and legs were acting on their own accord, following the dwarf's will instead of my own. I realized then that Pelig was a shaman—that he was using some sort of control spell on me. It was a nightmarish feeling, one that reminded me of the recurring dreams I used to have of being unable to shift, my body trapped permanently in human form. And it made me angry. Not only was the spell an invasion of my very being, it was illegal.

After that, I didn't even think about doing anything but driving the truck in whatever direction Pelig wanted.

And then there was the thing in the back of the truck. It smelled of bird, but with overtones that told me it was a para of some sort. It sat quietly inside a cage, a tarp completely covering it. The first time the truck hit a pothole, I heard a brief rustle of feathers— and then suddenly we were driving along in utter silence. All of the noises I'd heard a moment ago— the whine of tires on asphalt, the roar of the truck's engine, the rattle of its rusted body—disappeared. When I asked Pelig what was happening, I could feel my vocal chords vibrating but no sound came out. Nor could I hear him yelling at me—until the silence ended as abruptly as it had begun.

"—more friggin careful!" Pelig shouted.

I avoided the potholes after that. But it was hard to do. The massive trucks and harvesters that had been used back when the island was one big agribusiness had chewed up the roads, and in some places there were more potholes than pavement.

The second time I hit a pothole, the reaction from the thing in the back was even worse. A wave of fear swept over me. My heart was suddenly racing, and sweat poured down my sides. My insides turned to liquid and it was all I could do not to leave a mark inside the truck. The only thing that kept me going— that gave me the strength to keep the truck on the road—was the realization that Pelig was suffering, too. I could smell the sharp tang of his fear, and saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped the grab-bar on the dashboard. The feathers that had been woven into his hair seemed to be standing straight up on end.

I almost leaped out of the truck at that point, but then the smell of his sweat changed as he brought his emotions under control. Slowly, my own fear began to ebb. And as it did, I realized that the dwarf was pointing the crossbow at my chest once more.

"Don't do that again," he gritted.

"Sorry," I said—and meant it. "What is that thing in the cage?"

"A gloaming owl," Pelig answered. "It broke its wing. I sheltered it until it was healed. I'm going to release it tonight."

We drove in silence—along the smoothest part of the road—for some time after that. Eventually, we heard the sound of helicopter rotors overhead.

Pelig craned his neck to look out the window as a helicopter passed over us. I leaned forward and glanced up through the bug-splattered windshield of the truck. It was an attack helicopter, its black belly emblazoned with the corporate star and the Magical Task Force initials. It was coming from Murray Harbor. I guess the old woman had been right about Lone Star coming to arrest her.

I caught Pelig's eye. "The old woman back at the cottage—was she involved in the bombing of the bridge? Is that why the task force arrested her?"

"She directed the magical energy," he said, pride glowing in his eyes. "She is a powerful shaman—the best we have."

"She's a criminal," I said. I didn't want to antagonize Pelig, but I thought somebody should impress upon him the seriousness of the situation. "She's going to spend the rest of her life in jail as a result of what she's done. She'll serve her sentence in the Halifax Citadel, where they send all magically active prisoners. They ..." I thought of Jane and fought down a momentary flash of guilt. "They won't treat her well. She's an old woman; she'll probably die there."

I tried to tell myself she deserved it. Thousands of people used Confederation Bridge every day; it was a miracle nobody had died. And even if a zero death toll had been their intention, the Natives were still guilty of disrupting the lives of thousands of people, thanks to their insurrection.

Pelig just stared out the window at the fields, most of which were overgrown with weeds. His jaw worked, as if he were trying to conquer a strong emotion. Then he turned and glared at me. "Even if Nikanikjijitekewinu dies in jail, it will be worth it," he said. "She believes in Abegweit."

"There isn't going to be an 'Abegweit,'" I told him. "Prince Edward Island is only a small part of the UCAS, but President Haeffner won't stand for its secession. The Magical Task Force is one of Lone Star's top divisions, with unlimited resources to throw around. They won't stop until every last one of the rebels is behind bars. No matter how good your shamans are, in any mana-on-mana contest our combat mages are going to come out on top."

Pelig gave me a sharp look. I noticed that the crossbow was again pointed at my chest. "You're with Lone Star, aren't you?" he asked in a low voice.

I swallowed. There was no use in lying; my careless comment had already given me away. I could smell his anger.

"I work for them sometimes, as a sort of auxiliary," I answered carefully, my eyes on the crossbow bolt's silver tip. "But only with the Halifax City precinct."

"You led the police to Nikani-kjijitekewinu," he said accusingly.

I tensed, trying to think of a bluff. "I—"

To my amazement, Pelig lowered the crossbow. "It doesn't matter," he muttered. "She knew you were coming, and that they would follow. But no matter how good your mages are, they can't stop what's coming," the dwarf said. He stared out the window, his gaze fixed on the flat blue sky, dreaming of a nation that would never be.

I didn't bother trying to correct his misconception. It's impossible to argue with a fanatic. And besides, I've never understood the human and meta obsession with ownership of land. Political boundaries, legal title to properties, resource rights—all of it was too abstract for me. I suppose it was kind of like marking your territory. But humans and metas tended to do their marking with land mines, chemical defoliants, and bombs—and what frigging good was the land after that?

I tried asking Pelig about Jane, but he refused to answer any of my questions. I guess I'd pissed him off with my comments about the radicals. He was obviously heavily involved in the plot to "liberate" P.E.I. I took a good whiff of his scent, memorizing it; maybe the local DPI detachment would hire me to track him down, after I'd found Jane. I finally switched on the radio, just to break the monotony of the drive.

We continued for a couple of hundred klicks, taking gravel roads that zigzagged across the center of the island, avoiding the main highway. We headed west for more than three hours and didn't see much traffic—and for good reason. According to the radio, things were getting tense. Tourists were being evacuated from the island and local residents had been asked to remain in their homes and avoid traveling unless absolutely necessary. Native rebels in Charlottetown had occupied Province House, the centuries-old building where the confederation of Canada was hammered out, and were using satellite uplinks to broadcast the Abegweit manifesto. The UCAS military had been ordered to hold back, out of respect for the historic building, while the MTF went in astrally.

But the combat mages had run into some powerful wards. For the moment, things were at a standoff.

Far though we were from the action, I could somehow sense the tension that was building. The air had a still, hot quality to it. I couldn't put my paw on it, exactly. All I could say for certain was that the dust that was swirling in through the open windows of the truck didn't smell right.

As we rounded a bend I saw what looked like a traffic jam up ahead, at a place where the secondary road we'd been following met up again with the main island highway. A huge black shape was straddling the highway at the intersection, and cars had come to a halt in both directions on the paved road. I recognized the vehicle blocking the highway as a Lone Star hovertruck, a larger version of the hovercraft that Hunt and I had taken to Georges Island. I didn't see any police outside the hover—that meant the officers were doing a spot check and were searching the stopped cars astrally.

Pelig's vicelike fingers clamped around my wrist.

"Pull over," he said. "Now!"

I took my foot off the gas, letting the truck slow down. But I didn't stop. It was my sworn duty to turn criminals over to the police ...

"If you want to see Jane, do as you're told."

I braked—carefully, so as not to disturb the owl in the back—then glared at the dwarf. Except that suddenly, he wasn't there. Realizing that he must have used magic to make himself invisible, I switched to astral vision. Pelig had climbed out the open window of the truck and was standing on the pavement. Raising himself on his tiptoes, he peered back through the window, the crossbow bolt pointed at me.

"Keep going," he said tersely. "You'll make it through the roadblock; you're a police officer."

"Only an irregular asset," I protested. "I'm SINless. They won't—"

"Drive to the estate," he hissed, ignoring me. "Find Muirico. I'll meet you there. And I'll make sure Jane gets there."

"Who?" I sputtered. "Meet me where?"

The eyes disappeared. I leaned over to look out the passenger window and saw Pelig hunkered down, keeping the truck between himself and the police as he ran off through the tall grass. I opened my mouth to shout after him, then saw a movement on the highway, behind one of the cars that had stopped at the roadblock. I was still using astral vision, and so I could see the shimmering body of the police officer who walked right through one of the stopped vehicles as if it wasn't there, heading straight for the truck. Magical energy glowed in a ball around her hand as she readied some sort of detection spell.

I knew I was hooped; in another second the officer would spot my true form and know I was a shifter.

I wasn't sure what to do. My instincts told me to trust Lone Star. An officer in uniform was one of the good guys, a member of my pack. I started to open the driver's door, intending to get out and speak to the officer. But then I realized I had no way of explaining my presence here during a national crisis, or the fact that I was driving a truck that belonged to one of the rebels—a truck with a potentially dangerous paranimal in a cage in the back. There would be questions, delays ...

I hunkered down below the level of the dash and frantically began stripping off my clothes. Buttons popped as I wrenched off my shirt. I stuffed my clothes under the seat of the truck, kicked off my shoes, and shifted into wolf form. Then I shoved the cushion the dwarf had been using over to the driver's side of the seat.

The astral form of the cop appeared next to the truck. I leaped up onto the passenger side of the seat and whined loudly—some animals are sensitive to an astral presence, even if they can't actually see it. My movement rocked the truck slightly. The driver's door swung open, passing through the ghostly form of the cop. I continued whining and flattened my ears, all the while looking around as if I were puzzled.

The cop stared at me for a second. She could probably tell by my aura that I wasn't a normal "dog." She'd be able to tell I was a para of some sort. But I was hoping that, if I continued to play submissive and dumb, she'd focus her attentions on the mystery of where the truck's driver had gone.

The cop directed the magical energy that had been building around her hand at the place where the driver would sit. The glow circled briefly over the steering wheel, then settled on the seat cushion. I panted anxiously for a moment, but the cop made the assumption I'd hoped she would. Seeing the open door and nothing more than a large, wolfish "dog" inside the cab of the truck, she looked over her shoulder at the field behind her.

Of course she was looking in the wrong direction— the dwarf had gone out the passenger window and was long gone. While her back was turned, I pawed at the emergency brake, releasing it. With a loud creak, the truck began to roll forward, down the slight incline in the road ahead. Right toward a very large pothole.

Startled by the sudden movement of the truck, the cop took a step back. At that same moment, one wheel hit the pothole. I heard a flutter of wings in the back—and then fear washed over me.

I didn't try to fight it, this time. Yipping loudly, I leaped out the door of the truck. I hit the grass running, whining loudly as I bolted away from the pickup.

I ran until I was well beyond the magical circle of fear that the gloaming owl was projecting. I only looked back when I heard the crash of the truck hitting one of the stopped cars. In an instant, people began leaping from their vehicles and scrambling away, screaming in fear.

The crash must have knocked the cage over on its side, springing the latch. The owl burst out of the cage, blinking and blinded by daylight, and flapped up onto the roof of the pickup. At the same instant everything went quiet. The screams, the low rumble of the hovertruck's idling engines, the shouts of the police who had leaped out of the hovertruck to capture the owl—all stopped.

Panting with the aftereffects of the owl's magical fear, I loped away from the roadblock. In all of the confusion, nobody thought to stop what appeared to be just a frightened dog, bereft of its master. As I ran, I struggled with guilt over the incident I'd just caused. Even though I was only an irregular asset, I considered myself to be an officer of the law. I wasn't sure exactly what the charges would be in this case, but I was certain I'd just committed an illegal act. For the first time in my life, I understood what it felt like to be a criminal.

I shook it off. No time for remorse. Jane was somewhere on this island, and I had to find her. I thought about circling back and trying to pick up the dwarf's scent, but the police were all over the area around the roadblock. So far they'd tagged me as just an animal, but I didn't want to push my luck.

When I was a kilometer or two away from the roadblock I sat down by the side of the road, scratched at an itch on my side, and thought. The dwarf had ordered me to drive to the "estate." There was only one place he could have been referring to: the sprawling mansion and landscaped grounds that the dragon Dunkelzahn had created on Prince Edward Island's northernmost tip.

That was where the dwarf would be headed. And he'd promised to take Jane there, as well. Did I dare take the risk that he would live up to his promise? He may have just been toying with my emotions, using them to force me to do what he wanted me to.

But then I thought over what the old woman had said, back at the cottage. The Mi'kmaqs wanted me to help Jane "find her power"—her magic, I assumed— so that she could use it to cure their children. I wasn't clear on how they expected me to restore Jane's magic to her, but it was a pretty safe bet that the process involved the two of us being brought together. Which meant that the dwarf would bring her to Dunkelzahn's estate, after all.

Assuming he wasn't picked up by the police on the way.

I decided to risk it. The estate was only about forty klicks up the road. I was tired—I hadn't slept all day— but that was an easy run in wolf form. I found the road again, and began loping toward Dragon Park.

18

By the time I reached the estate, I was panting heavily. A wind was blowing off the ocean, but the air still had a hot, heavy quality to it. Despite the humid sea breeze, my fur felt alive with static electricity. Off in the distance, a strange sound rose and fell, rose and fell, like a soft howl.

I sniffed the air, trying to figure out what was wrong. I smelled dry grass, the sweet aroma of wild-flowers, the sharp salt tang of the ocean. I also smelled the hot stink of exhaust. A car had come this way recently.

The entrance to the estate was a long, paved drive, ochre red in color and made from sand taken from the bluffs of the north cape. At the entrance to the park, a yellow metal bar had been lowered across the road. A sign hung on it, announcing that the park was closed, despite the holiday. It assured visitors that the closure was temporary.

The estate took up the entire north cape of the island, and even though it had been a private enclave, there were no fences. The dragon had relied exclusively upon magical security when he lived here, and now that his mansion was vacant and this was a public park, there was no need to keep anyone out, anymore. The bar across the road was only a token effort, a tool for ushering tourists out of the park at night.

I could see several tire tracks in the grass where vehicles had pulled off the road to circle around the closed gate. I sniffed at the crushed stalks of grass, and at the drops of oil that had brushed onto them as cars passed. The grass still had a sharp smell, and the oil was fresh. Whoever had driven around that barrier had done so today. I walked up to the gate, left my mark on it, then walked back to ponder the marks in the grass from a distance, trying to get an idea of how many vehicles had passed this way. At least three—possibly as many as six.

As I sat on my haunches, wondering if one of those vehicles had been driven by Muirico—whoever he or she was—the hair on the back of my neck rose. I had the distinct feeling I was being watched. But when I whipped around, expecting to see someone, there was nobody there. Just a stunted evergreen whose moving branches had looked like waving arms in my peripheral vision.

I switched to astral perception just to make sure, but didn't see anything unusual. The tree and the grasses below it glowed with normal, healthy auras. There was no one watching me from astral space.

I turned around and looked in the direction of the gate. The sign that hung from it was blank, its printed words without meaning on the astral plane. All I could "read" was its emotional content: a faint sense of regret that glowed a soft violet.

Then I sensed something right beside me—a presence. This time, it wasn't just my imagination. Someone ran past me, moving fast. It was a young elf girl, maybe six years old, with wide cheekbones and dark hair. She wore a long burgundy dress with a ruffled white collar and clunky, square-toed boots with large gold buckles. A close-fitting white cap that hugged the back of her head was slipping free as she ran, revealing her pointed ears.

The girl's face looked strangely familiar to me, but I couldn't place her. Nor did I recognize the style of clothing she was wearing—I guess because I don't watch much trid and don't keep up with the ever-changing kaleidoscope of fashion.

And then it hit me. The girl looked like Jane. I could see in those childlike features the beautiful woman she would become.

The elf girl ran up to the gate, stopped, and then reached out to touch it. Her hand passed through the yellow metal bar as if it wasn't there. Laughing, she skipped forward so that the bar passed through her body at chest height. Then she spun around, throwing her arms out in a childlike, carefree gesture.

I shifted my vision for a heartbeat back to the physical world, and the girl disappeared. The driveway leading into the park was empty. The sign attached to the gate swung gently back and forth, but that was probably just the wind.

I shifted back to astral perception, and the girl appeared once more. She had passed through the gate in my direction, and now was standing with her back to me, passing her hand back and forth through the sign.

I had to know if it was really Jane. I reared up onto my hind legs, shifting into human form as I rose. "Jane!"

Perhaps I said it too urgently. Or perhaps it was the fact that I had forgotten, once again, that I was naked. The girl spun around, shrieked, and took a step back. Then she vanished.

I rushed forward, my hands extended like a blind person's. Had I accidentally allowed my focus to slip away from the astral plane? No—I could still see the auras surrounding the trees on either side of the drive, and the small hot glow that was a mouse scurrying through the grass. I was still perceiving the world through astral vision.

"Mareth'riel?" I said, using a calmer voice this time.

Nothing. No reply. The elf girl was gone.

I ducked under the gate and began walking up the drive, the pavement warm against my bare feet. I searched the fields on either side of the road, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elf girl again. I'd obviously frightened her off; she had ceased her astral projection as soon as I'd shouted. Had it really been Jane, projecting an idealized image of herself as a young girl wearing clothes that had been popular in the century in which she was born? Had she sought me out in astral form, projecting the image of a helpless child, because she needed my help?

Despite the questions that were whirling through my mind, I couldn't help but notice the beauty of the park as I walked further into it. In contrast to the rest of the island, with its depleted soil and weed-covered fields, Dragon Park is a garden of Eden. The fields on either side of me had an ethereal beauty that somehow managed to look cultivated and wild at the same time. The wind whispered over different types of grasses—some green, some a pale yellow, some bent with seed and others with broad, stiff blades. They had been planted to form patterns on the land— long, sweeping lines that bent and rustled with the wind, spiraling around brilliant red and yellow and indigo punctuations of wildflowers. Some of the lines ran arrow-straight, drawing the eye to a tree or a boulder; others meandered in complex patterns like a maze. I let my eye follow one pattern, trying to find the end of the complex line. Then I froze. The elf girl was walking along that line.

She hovered just above the grass, her toes lightly touching the bent stalks as she tiptoed across them. She held her arms out as if she were walking along a log at the beach; every now and then her foot would slip and her arms would waver as she caught her balance.

The line of paler grass that the girl was following led to a patch of waist-high poppies with brilliant orange flowers. At the moment, the girl had her back to me. I jogged out into the field and stood among the poppies, adopting a non-threatening posture and waiting for her to come to me. The flowers tickled my bare skin as they brushed back and forth in the wind.

The girl rounded a bend in the line and stopped abruptly. She stared at me for a long moment, teetering back and forth. Then she asked me a question in a language that sounded like music.

"I don't understand you," I said. "I don't speak Sperethiel."

Then I pointed a finger at her in a universal gesture. "Are you Mareth'riel?"

She smiled. "Sielle," she answered.

Frig. I'd been hoping for a simple "yes"—which was one of the few words of Sperethiel I understood. I had no idea what she'd just said—or even if she'd answered my question.

Behind me, I heard the sputter of small engines and smelled fresh exhaust. Was it the dwarf, arriving at the estate with Jane? I turned and saw a pair of Euroglyde scooters—the kind they rent to tourists— bouncing across the grass as they made their way around the park gate. I didn't recognize the people riding them.

I instinctively crouched, lowering myself to hands and knees in readiness for a shift. If I needed to attack, I wanted to be in wolf form. But within seconds, I had pegged the scooter riders as a non-threat. The riders were obviously tourists—a pair of ork males, dressed in clothes that must have been expensive, judging by the way they fit their bulky bodies. One of the orks had a minicam strapped around his forehead and was shooting trid of the estate. The other had a bouquet of cut flowers strapped to the back of his scooter seat. They were roses: I could tell from their scent.

The pair stared at me as they rode past—probably wondering why the frig a naked man was staring at them from a patch of poppies. One of them arched an eyebrow, then threw me a wink.

I'd only shifted my attention away from the elf girl for a moment. When I turned back to where she'd been, she was gone. I cursed the tourists for their bloody-mindedness at coming to the park during a national emergency. I noticed I was sweating—I could smell my own nervousness. The disappearing elf girl was really getting to me.

Shifting into wolf form, I loped after the scooters, intending to vent my frustration at them for causing me to lose sight of Jane with a few choice barks. When I caught up to them, I saw that the two orks had pulled their scooters up to the edge of a tiny bay that was almost circular in shape, with only a narrow exit to the sea. At least half a dozen cars—all of them with license plates from elsewhere in the UCAS—were also pulled up at the parking lot that fronted the beach. A number of people of various metatypes— only one of them human—were standing quietly on the shore, gazing down into the water with expressions of regret on their faces.

Specks of color floated on the water, nudged in and out by the waves as they lapped against the shore. Flowers. As I watched, one of the orks who'd ridden past me on a scooter lifted the armful of white roses that had been strapped on the back of his bike. He walked out along the beach until the waves were lapping at his designer loafers, and tossed the roses into the sea. Then he started to cry. His companion moved forward to comfort him by putting a burly arm across the crying ork's shoulders.

That was when I realized the significance of this tiny bay—and realized what holiday the sign on the gate had been referring to. I quickly counted off the days of the month in my head. It fit. Today was August 9—four years to the day since Dunkelzahn was assassinated. Claiming to be Dunkelzahn's "home," Prince Edward Island had declared August 9 a local day of mourning.

I recognized the beach from the tridcast documentaries that had been filmed on the estate, back when Dunkelzahn had first purchased this property. The original name of the bay had been Seacow Pond—a name given to it in the days before the walrus was extinct, when the bay had been filled with bleached bones of these animals. According to the tridcasts that had been filmed while the estate was being built, the bay also held the petrified bones of a great dragon—one of Dunkelzahn's ancestors. Together with the supposed ley lines that converged upon the estate—a rumor probably inspired by the patterned grass plantings—it was said to be the reason why Dunkelzahn had chosen this remote but beautiful spot as the setting for one of his homes.

After Dunkelzahn had disappeared in a magical explosion, there had been no body over which to mourn. That was when the rumors had taken a new twist: "Dragon Bone Bay" not only held the bones of one of Dunkelzahn's ancestors—it held the bones of the great dragon Dunkelzahn himself.

It was all nonsense, of course. But the pull of the legend of the dragon who had overcome the odds to become the first meta president of the UCAS was strong enough to draw fanatics out to this lonely spot in the middle of a national crisis.

I spotted the elf girl again, at the end of the line of mourners. She was looking at them quizzically, as if she didn't understand what they were so unhappy about. I barked, trying to draw her attention. Everyone on the beach turned and stared at me—except the elf girl. She ran up the beach as fast as her legs could go, then sprinted away along the road that led deeper into the estate.

This time I wasn't going to let her out of my sight. I charged after her, running as fast as I could. But she was quicker. Her legs weren't moving any faster than my own—I should have caught up to her by now. But she was an astral projection, not a physical being. I knew from questioning Dass about astral travel that an astral body could move at speeds of thousands of kilometers per hour, if the person projecting it wanted it to. But I didn't give up hope. There was a chance that a memory might fall into place, that Jane might suddenly remember who I was and stop to talk to me. I kept running, my tongue lolling as I panted.

My pursuit was taking me toward the sprawling mansion that Dunkelzahn had built. It was a huge place, built to dragon scale. It resembled a series of gigantic octagonal blocks, made from metal that had been buffed to a mirror finish and set with windows cut in trapezoid shapes. Above these were a series of ornamental white arches that looked like domes that had been hollowed out and then cut in half. Stark black girders projected from the edges of these halfdomes—perfect roosting places for a dragon.

The mansion had lain empty in the years since Dunkelzahn's death. After the dragon's will had been read, the Draco Foundation had packed up the furnishings, along with the works of art, magical foci, and personal effects, and had shipped these items to those named in the will. Now the mansion's doors were locked and its temperature-control windows set to a frosted glaze that prevented curious tourists from seeing inside.

Surrounding the mansion was a forest of windmills, their sleek white bodies thrusting out of the ground like the stems of plants. The vanes of the mills flashed in the sun as they turned, emitting an eerie whirring noise that rose and fell like a soft howl with the changes in wind speed.

So that was the weird noise I'd heard earlier. Nothing too mysterious about that. But the air still felt highly charged, unstable and dense. Something was happening here—or was about to happen.

Behind the mansion, the north cape jutted out into the ocean in a long, narrow point. Here, two ocean currents met, scouring the red sandstone bluffs into fantastic shapes and punching tunnels through the narrowest part of the point. I could hear the rumble of waves, and could smell the seaweed that was being churned against the pebble beach below.

Jane was running straight for the edge.

No! I tried to yell, but the sound came out as a mournful howl. As I watched in horror, Jane plunged off the point of the cape, her arms flailing as she fell.

A few moments later I skidded to a stop on the very edge of the cliff. It was a crazy thing to do; the sandstone was soft and crumbling, and one of my paws slipped over the edge. I stumbled backward and sank to my haunches, panting so hard I thought my chest was going to burst.

I at last looked over the edge, my heart filled with dread as I imagined Jane sprawled on the beach below—and my head telling my heart that it wasn't possible for an astral body to be damaged by a fall. An astral projection could fly if it wanted to, for frig's sake.

The head won the bet. I saw a tiny speck, far out on the ocean, running gracefully across the wave tops. Jane.

Well, that was it. I couldn't follow her there.

Dejected, I turned and began walking back toward the empty mansion. Maybe I could find a caretaker or park interpreter who could tell me who or what Muirico was.

I hadn't been paying much attention to where I was running when I was chasing Jane, and so I decided to follow one of the paths back. But instead of leading to the mansion it wound into a copse of stunted evergreen trees. It was an eerie place: the trees had been twisted into weird shapes by the constant push of the wind, and the path circled back on itself time after time, like the scribble of a demented child. The further I followed it, the more lost and frustrated I became.

I was so keyed up after chasing Jane that I thought I heard a whisper, coming from behind one of the trees. I spun around and barked at it—only to find it was just the wind, rustling the needles on the branches.

Or was it? What was that I had just seen, ducking behind a boulder? I stopped and sniffed, my hackles raised and my feet braced to leap. But all I could smell was tree sap and earth.

Freshly turned earth.

I leaped back in alarm as something bulged up out of the ground, right in front of my paws. Dirt, root, and loam reared up in a living heap, forming itself into the shape of a tiny humanoid with earth-brown skin and eyes that glistened like dew drops. Evergreen needles grew from the creature's scalp, cheeks, and chin, giving it hair and a beard, and ropy filaments of root covered its forearms and hands. I could smell the sap pulsing through these veins and the crisp pine scent of the creature's needle hair.

I tensed, teeth bared, and growled softly at the thing. My entire body quivered as I prepared to hurl myself at the creature that had startled me. It was obviously a nature spirit of some sort, probably a forest spirit. And nature spirits were dangerous friggers— they could twist your mind into a confused knot, paralyze you with fear, cause terrible accidents to occur, or engulf you with earth and smother you. I crouched, ready to fight for my life.

In a blindingly fast motion, the nature spirit tore a branch out of one of his arms and held it over his head as if he were going to strike me with it. Then he grinned at me with teeth that were chips of milky white quartz.

"Hello, Romulus," he said. "I'm Muirico. Want to play fetch?"

19

The forest spirit was serious. He did want me to fetch something: Jane.

"We need your nose, shifter," it said. "You're the only one who can find Mareth'riel inside the Jewel of Memory."

I shook my head. Find Jane inside the what? I shifted into human form. I squatted, keeping myself at eye level with Muirico.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

The nature spirit jammed the stick back into his arm. Root and soil wrapped around it, enclosing it like flesh around bone. Muirico raised one evergreen-needle eyebrow and cocked his head. "Dunkelzahn's jewel." His voice was faintly irritated, as if I'd failed to recognize some famous cultural icon. "It stores memories."

"Whose memories?" I asked.

"Everyone's. From all time. Like a library. Pieces and pages. But they're all mixed together, like leaves in a windstorm. Even a dragon has trouble finding the right one."

I was having trouble following what Muirico was saying. Dunkelzahn had amassed a great magical treasure trove over his long life, and obviously this Jewel of Memory was one of those treasures. I was willing to believe it was somehow capable of storing memory, like some kind of magical database, but I found it impossible to believe it held the memories of everyone who'd ever lived. The forest spirit must have been exaggerating.

"Are you telling me that Jane's missing memories are inside a magical jewel?" I asked. "Did someone use this thing to steal those memories from her? Is that how her mind became damaged?"

"No, no, no, no, no!" Muirico pressed his hands together in a frustrated gesture, cracking his twig knuckles. "Everyone loses memories sometimes. Every time you forget where you put something—that's a memory gone from your head. But the jewel never forgets. Your memories are always there. All of them. Even the ones that are still in your head."

I shivered. I wasn't sure if I liked that idea. If the Jewel of Memory really did work as Muirico described, that meant that everything I'd ever thought, ever felt, was recorded on it. It was like suddenly learning that a thief had taken your diary—the one in which you'd confided your most intimate fantasies and fears—and that there was nothing you could do to prevent him from reading it.

"Can someone take his memories back from the jewel?" I asked.

"Take?" Muirico shook his head. "No. The jewel cannot be broken. The memories are always there. But a memory can be re-remembered. If it's your own, it will stick, like mud to a foot. That's what you must do for Mareth'riel. Take her for a walk through her memories. Use your nose to find them for her."

I still had no idea how I was supposed to do that. Maybe I was supposed to use my tracking abilities to locate the jewel, which Jane would then use like a drug to repair her mind.

"Where is this jewel?"

Muirico pointed one twig finger toward the west. I peered through an opening in the trees and saw the vast expanse of the Atlantic ocean, there beyond the bluffs. Clouds were forming out on the horizon; it looked as though the strange hot weather was finally going to break.

"The jewel is in Germany," Muirico said.

"Germany!" I gasped. "That's thousands of kilometers away. How am I supposed to—"

"Dunkelzahn gave it to Lofwyr. In his will." Muirico continued, oblivious to my outburst. He ran a hand lovingly over the trunk of a tree. "I was given this grove, and Lofwyr was given the Jewel of Memory. He took it to Germany."

Lofwyr. The great dragon was the CEO of Saeder-Krupp, one of the largest and most powerful corporations on the planet. And now he was also the major shareholder of the New Dawn Corporation. He was the frigger whose scheming had gotten Jane into this mess.

"You want me to find this thing inside a dragon's lair?" It was impossible to keep the skepticism out of my voice. "You might as well ask me to shove my neck in a leg-hold trap—one made of silver. Saeder-Krupp has its own private army and billions of nuyen to spend on magical security. Wherever the jewel is, it will be protected by magical wards and barriers—not to mention the magically active people on Saeder-Krupp's payroll. The corporation has got mages, paranormal guard animals, elemental spirits..."

"None of them can stop you from visiting your own memories," Muirico said. "You have been to the jewel many times already—you just didn't realize it."

"Huh?"

The forest spirit flashed his quartz-white teeth.

"Have you ever forgotten something, then suddenly re-remembered it? That was the jewel."

"So how come I can't do that all the time?" I asked. "Why do some memories disappear forever?"

"Recent memories are right at the surface of the jewel. They're the easy ones. The older memories take you deeper inside, and take more work. Sometimes you don't try hard enough or you use the wrong senses. And some memories are better left forgotten."

He had that one right.

"So let me get this straight," I said. "I follow my memories into the jewel, then track down Jane's ... track down Mareth'riel's memories and lead her to them."

"That's right," Muirico nodded eagerly.

"But there's one part I don't get. How do I find Mareth'riel? Or how does she find me?"

"She's already there," Muirico said. "You'll see her astral form. And she'll see yours."

I shook my head. Frig. For a moment there, the spirit had me going. But there was one major flaw in his little scenario.

"Muirico," I said, "there's something you should know. I can see into the astral plane, but I can't project astrally."

"Yes, you can," he said. "I can grant you that power for a brief time. But you have to learn to let go of your fears."

I blinked. Was it possible? Projecting an astral form was something only mages and shamans did. I'd never had the Dumas test, but I didn't think I was magically active, over and above the usual shifter abilities of regeneration and astral sight. But what if I was? What if I could astrally project? That would put me right up in the same league as Lone Star's combat mages. If I could track on the astral plane, I'd really be able to impress Sergeant Raymond. Maybe Lone Star would give me a shot at...

I stopped myself. Who was I kidding? I'd never be anything more than an animal to cops like Sergeant Raymond and the Lone Star brass. Unless the UCAS suddenly started handing out SIN numbers to paranormals overnight, I'd always be an irregular asset, little better than a shadowrunner. Lone Star might give me tougher assignments, but I'd still be on paranormal animal containment, stuck tracking animals instead of arresting criminals.

I stopped myself. Animals. I'd used the word as if I were describing some sort of inferior being. I realized then that when I thought of criminals, I thought of humans or metas. They were the big prizes, and not because of the crimes they committed—a para could just as easily kill, wound, or steal—but because of what they were. Human. Meta. More important then mere animals.

Frig. I was an animal. I might look human, but that was just a mask I wore. The real me was pure wolf. And that was what made me special. Whether or not Lone Star ever accepted me as a police officer, I was the only one, according to Muirico, who could find Jane's memories for her. Not even a human cop could do that.

"All right," I said. "Show me what to do."

Muirico patted the ground. "Lie down. Relax. Then close your eyes and listen to my voice."

"Do I have to stay in human form?"

"Whatever makes you most comfortable."

"Right." I placed my palms on the ground and shifted into wolf form. Just as I did, I heard the sound of distant thunder. I looked up at the sky, and saw thunderheads in the distance and the faint crackle of lightning. Strange—the thunderclouds were forming not just in the east, out over the Atlantic, but also toward the north, south, and west. Tall pillars of white cloud ringed the horizon in every direction, almost as if they were converging on the island.

Muirico followed my gaze and nodded. "Storm coming," he said. "We haven't much time."

I shivered. That was the same thing the dwarf had said. I hoped the thunder wouldn't jolt me out of whatever trance was necessary to astrally project.

I turned around in a circle, then lay down. I lowered my chin onto my paws and tucked my tail in tight to my body. When Muirico asked if I was ready, I har-ruffed my yes.

I don't recall exactly what Muirico said to me. I just remember that his voice was low and deep, strong as an oak and gentle as the caress of a newly budded leaf. Then suddenly I was outside my body.

I nearly jumped back into it. I was staring down at myself, looking at my wolf body lying on the ground among the trees from a height of two or three meters. It was terrifying. I thought maybe I'd died and become a ghost. I heard a whine come from my own mouth—from the wolf on the ground below me— and saw a shiver pass through the wolf's body. But I didn't feel it.

But that wasn't the worst of it. I could see and hear and feel, but something else was missing. Something I'd taken for granted all of my life.

My sense of smell was gone.

The earth beneath my nose, the sap in the trees, the scents of the animals and birds and insects that inhabited the grove, the smell of the salt water, the faint scent in the air that meant it was going to rain—all of it was gone. The air was empty. Dead. It conveyed no messages and had no texture. It was a canvas that had been scrubbed so clean it wasn't even white anymore. Just blank.

Somehow, Muirico managed to calm me down. I saw the little forest spirit squat beside my wolf body and stroke the back of my neck with his twig hand. "Don't worry," he said. "Your nose still works. Some things in the astral plane don't translate as objects, textures, or sounds. They'll come to you as smells. Just give it a try."

I took a tentative sniff. My physical body continued to lie still, but in the astral my head jerked to the side as I caught a familiar smell. Jane's astral form had passed this way. I could smell her scent. No ... I could smell her memory.

"Good." Muirico was looking up at my astral form. "Now follow that scent. Find Mareth'riel. Lead her to what she has lost."

My nose swung around to the scent like a compass needle. Without consciously thinking about it, I found myself loping along, nostrils quivering as I drank in Jane's scent. I was completely focused on it, hyper alert. I could feel the legs of my astral body running below me, but I couldn't feel the ground under my paws. And then I realized I'd run right over the edge of the bluffs, and was loping across the ocean.

My body tensed. But then I realized I wasn't falling, and suddenly it seemed as natural a breathing to be running through the air. With a mere thought I sped up, running faster and faster and faster until the ocean below me became a blur and the wind whipping across my fur became a steady roar. Prince Edward Island diminished until it was no more than a low hump on the horizon behind me, and soon I couldn't see land at all. I ran over large ocean swells, past an oil tanker that was plowing a foaming white wake through the sea, past a surfacing whale whose enormous body glowed with a deep blue light and a spray of hot yellow breath. I let my tongue loll, my mouth widen in a grin and my eyes open with wonder. I was already approaching the other side of the Atlantic; it was night here, but I could see the dull brown glow of land looming on the horizon. I ran toward it, still following Jane's scent.

Somehow I had climbed to a height of a kilometer or more. I flashed over cities filled with tiny glowing specks—-the auras of the people who lived in them. Europe seemed to be one big city—a thick sprawl of people, with only scattered areas of wilderness. I passed over rivers so polluted they no longer glowed with life, over zones of heavy industry. I was glad then that I couldn't smell anything but Jane.

It may sound funny, but the smell of her memory exactly matched her physical scent. A touch of sweat, a hint of musk, and that warm smell that you drink in when you press your nose to the hair of someone you love.

It hadn't occurred to me until that moment to name the emotion I felt for Jane. It hadn't seemed right to call it that before. I knew I desired her physically— my human body had betrayed me every time I was close to her. But where had this emotion come from? I'd mated with human and meta women before, but I'd always managed to keep my emotions separate. I hadn't allowed myself to become vulnerable. But Jane had brought out something in me. Some strange sort of doglike loyalty that was causing me to lay myself at her feet as if I were her pet.

The thought frightened me.

Suddenly, the trail went cold. I'd lost Jane's scent.

I skidded to a halt in the air, and found myself over an enormous arcology. As tall as a mountain, it dominated the city that surrounded it, a gleaming monolith of black glass, massive ferrocrete pillars, and jutting terraces. On the uppermost level of the building— the peak of the mountain—stood a gigantic monitor screen. Three horizontal bars of color were projected on it: black, red, and orange. A symbol of some sort was superimposed on them in glowing blue. I couldn't make out the symbol in the astral plane, but I could read the emotions that it projected: pride, purpose, power.

I knew where I was. The Saeder-Krupp arcology in Essen. Lofwyr's corporate headquarters.

I whined in frustration. Jane's scent was gone. I'd lost her.

Somewhere behind me, in another world, I heard Muirico whisper in my ear.

"Memories." His voice was as faint as a breath of air. "Follow them in."

I paused to think. What memory should I choose? Something nostalgic from my childhood, like the smell of my mother's fur and the taste of her milk? Romping with my litter mates in the forest?

Or should I try to remember Jane? The smell of her was what I remembered most—and how lost she'd looked on the night we met. Her dark hair streaked with gray, the faint creases at the corners of her deep brown eyes, the fluid grace of her body. And the way she'd smiled at me in the darkened hotel room, when I curled up next to her on the bed.

I looked around. I was still in the same spot. None of these memories was taking me anywhere. I didn't see any jewel.

Then I thought about what Muirico had said. About how people accessed the Jewel of Memory each time they "re-remembered" something they'd forgotten. By remembering something, I could get inside it. The further back the memory, the deeper into the jewel I'd go.

I'd been on the wrong track. The memories of my mother and siblings went way back, but it was still inside my head. I needed something I had forgotten .. .

Something flashed through my mind. A partial image. The smell of fear. A buzzing noise. Hands. Laughter. The sharp pinch of something nipping my skin. A whining noise: me. The smell of blood. The smell of my bowels voiding.

No! I didn't want to go there!

My astral body was panting, its heart racing. My ears were back, my fur raised ...

My fur ...

The memory came back in one overwhelming rush.

They'd shaved me. Made me stand in front of the whole school, up on the gymnasium stage. I'd been so frightened I couldn't remember how to shift back into human form, how to do what they wanted. What they kept shouting at me to do. While the other children laughed, the teachers had held down my wolf body, scraped my skin bare with their electric razors. Scraped away my pride, my dignity, my luxurious wolf's pelt. Reduced me to a quivering, furless creature—a caricature of a hairless human. Then the headmaster held me up, my ungainly wolf body dangling from his large hands, and told the entire school what a bad boy I'd been, to shift into wolf form. He told them he'd continue to hold me there, in front of everyone, until I shifted back into my proper shape. Into a proper little human boy.

I threw back my head and howled my anguish. No!

I didn't want to remember that! I leaped to my feet and tried to run away.

I crashed into something smooth and hard. A glassy, reddish-yellow wall that curved up and over me, its faceted top forming a roof over my head.

I froze, realizing what I'd done. I was inside the Jewel of Memory.

I felt a familiar presence: Jane. Her scent washed over me. I turned and saw the elf girl who'd run past me on Dunkelzahn's estate. I nuzzled her hand with my nose, drinking in her scent and seeking comfort. But she didn't stroke me. Instead she looked at me with eyes filled with fear and confusion.

"Help me," she whispered. "I can't find ..."

Suddenly a host of moving shadows closed in on us. It was like being at the center of a huge crowd of people and animals, all pushing and shoving, forcing flashes of this memory, of that emotion, into your mind. I was buffeted by the confusion, by the swirls of thought. Images flashed through my mind. I was a human/fish/troll/cat/eagle. I was swimming/ being chased/shooting a gun/stretching my wings in flight/programming a cyberterminal. The confusion of images and experiences was almost overwhelming. In another second Jane and I would be swept away...

"Grab hold of my fur, Mareth'riel!" Somehow, even though I was in wolf form, I was able to make myself understood.

I felt the slim hand of a child knot into the fur at the back of my neck.

I closed my eyes.

I took a deep sniff.

There! A flash of something that smelled like Jane. I followed it, tugging the elf girl behind me. A memory streaked past my nose like a running cat. I jerked forward, snapped my jaws shut around it, then tossed it back over my shoulder at Jane.

I got just a taste of it—a faint glimmer of a thought that wasn't my own. The memory felt smooth and soft in my mind. It had the milky smell of human infant. It was the memory of holding a baby—a girl whose eyes were as brown as my own. Of suckling her at my breast, feeling her teeth worry my nipple, and marveling at the clutch of her tiny hands. Of tracing a finger over the soft round tip of her human ear, so like my own, now that I'd had it bobbed so I could pass as human...

Attached to it was a tangle of other memories— every thought Jane had ever had about her daughter Matilda, including the memory of her daughter's death. Matilda had been old, wrinkled, with gray hair and failing eyesight. She had walked with a cane until she collapsed from the stroke that finally killed her. Jane had buried her in the Halifax cemetery, a young woman standing over the grave of her elderly daughter.

Jane had been forced to pose as Matilda's granddaughter—just one of the personas she'd adopted to make her way in the world. In her long lifetime she'd posed as a man so she could attend medical school, had cultivated various accents, had changed her appearance and identity in a million different ways. As she stood over her daughter's grave, feeling the rain patter down on her bonnet, she'd sworn then that she'd never have another child—that she'd do whatever she could to prevent anyone else from experiencing the grief of watching someone they know grow old and die ...

I shook my head, clearing the memories that stuck to it like cobwebs. I pressed on through the whirlwind, following Jane's scent to the next cluster of memories.

And the next...

I let Jane pluck them out of the whirlwind herself. As she did, I felt the hand that gripped my fur changing, growing larger. When I sneaked a look behind me I saw that Jane's astral form had changed. She looked as she did in the physical world—a mature woman. Except that there was one vital difference. Her eyes had lost the confusion they'd held when I first met her. With each memory she grabbed, the look in her eyes became stronger, more confident. More knowing.

Soon the only place I could smell Jane's scent was on her own body. She'd gathered all of her memories. They still existed within the Jewel of Memory, were still etched within its multi-faceted depths—but now they were also back where they belonged. Inside Jane's head.

Jane crouched beside me and wrapped her arms around my neck. As she hugged me close, I nearly drowned in her scent.

"Thank you," she whispered, her breath warm against my hear. "And goodbye."

Suddenly her arms were no longer around my neck. Just as she had at the estate, Jane had disappeared.

Instinct took over. I ran after her scent, barking at her to stay. I chased her back across Europe, back across the Atlantic, back to the island that hung low in the water, a canoe just waiting to be swamped by the huge waves that were crashing upon its shores.

I woke up in my body, weak and trembling. Lightning stabbed down out of a cloudy night sky, so close I could smell the hot ozone in its wake. The boom of thunder followed almost immediately. The skies opened up, and a heavy smash of rain suddenly poured down onto the earth. In seconds my fur was soaked through.

I lurched to my feet. Muirico was gone. And so was Jane. I threw back my head and howled, my emotions in perfect resonance with the turbulence of the storm.

20

The storm was unlike any I'd ever seen before. Magic must have been driving it. The clouds boiled and churned overhead, forming incredible patterns against the sky. I could see faces, eyes, thrashing limbs inside the clouds. I wondered if they were the physical manifestations of elementals or powerful nature spirits. Most of the clouds were white or gray, but others— the thunderheads that thrust up through the rest like mushroom clouds—had a reddish tinge. Multicolored lightning flashed below the thunderheads, arcing down to the ground in explosions of sparks. The bolts were vibrant neon blue, sizzling yellow, cherry red, and a luminous green. A number of them were striking the windmills near the estate, shattering the vanes and sending fragments spinning down onto the ground. The smell of ozone and burnt plastic and metal hung heavy in the air.

I plodded out of Muirico's grove and wound my way wearily between the windmills, too exhausted to run, despite the danger of a possible lightning strike. My paws tingled from the electricity in the ground, and I prayed that one of the damaged windmills wouldn't topple over onto me. All the while I fought the wind, which was roaring with hurricane force, whipping back my fur. I had to lean heavily into it to make any headway at all.

Rain came down in soaking sheets, so thick it was impossible to see more than a few dozen meters ahead. It passed over the island in waves, first icy cold, then blood-warm, bouncing back off the ground in a stinging spray. I felt a heavy patter against my back as hail began to fall. There was something else, mixed with it, that turned the ground slippery beneath my paws. I smelled an oily, fishy odor, and when I glanced down I saw that the ground was covered in tiny silver fish. Most had been pulverized by their fall from the heavens, but some were still wriggling, flashing silver against the ground.

I wasn't sure how long I'd been jandering around in astral space. Germany was thousands of kilometers away—I'd probably been out of my body for a couple of hours or more. The skies were dark enough that it could have been early evening—or maybe it was just the thick cloud cover. I hadn't eaten in some time and felt incredibly drained; it was all I could do to put one paw in front of the other. I was so exhausted that even my whiskers drooped.

I wasn't sure where I was going. Just operating on instinct, I guess. I knew I couldn't sit out in the storm, that I had to take cover. So I headed for the nearest place of refuge: Dunkelzahn's mansion.

If I'd been thinking clearly, I would have realized that the building would be locked up—and probably also magically warded against trespassers. I would have sought out some other shelter instead. But I just plodded along until the mansion loomed over me, then followed the wall to the nearest door.

A scooter was parked outside it. The engine was still warm; I could smell the hot oil, even over the wet-grass-and-mud smell of the rainstorm. But the rain had washed the driver's scent away. It must have been one of the rental scooters the orks had ridden into the park. I guessed that they'd been caught in the storm and decided to wait it out somewhere dry. I wondered how they'd managed to get inside.

The door was human-sized—and unlocked. It wasn't even closed. All I had to do was paw at it, and it swung open. That set off warning sirens in my head, but I was too tired to listen to them. All I could feel was relief at the fact that I was finally out of the storm.

I found myself in a high-ceilinged room so large my claws produced click-click echoes as I padded across the marble-tiled floor. The room was filled with a cloyingly sweet odor that made my nostrils itch: sandalwood incense. A large chunk of it smoldered in the mouth of a dragon-shaped crystal pedestal at the center of the room, smoke rising from the nostrils of the dragon. It had probably been left burning by the mansion's caretakers. The storm must have frightened them into leaving the door unlocked.

Chandeliers tinkled overhead as lightning shattered another of the windmills outside, making the ground tremble. The flash of neon-blue lightning must have sent a surge of electricity through the mansion's electrical systems. The walls on either side of me suddenly flared in a crackle of brilliant static as the floor-to-ceiling monitors that were mounted on them flashed on, then off again.

I hunkered down, instinctively reacting to the flash of light. That brought my nose close enough to the floor to smell something other than the incense. A scent I recognized in a heartbeat: Jane's.

It was fresh—Jane has passed this way only minutes ago. My ears swung forward and my tail began to wag. Jane was here. She'd come to the estate to meet me, just as the dwarf had promised.

I followed her scent into a corridor and down a plush carpet whose nap was still dented from the heavy furniture that used to stand on it, then up a double-wide staircase whose walls had blank spots where paintings used to hang. The corridors were dark; the emergency lighting was flickering on and off, obviously a casualty of the storm. But I only needed my nose to find the way.

The trail led up a second flight of stairs, then down another hallway to a door that was fitted with a sophisticated maglock with a retinal scanner and microphone for voice-recognition activation. A light beside the scanner was blinking green. I heard a faint creak and realized the door was open—but was swinging shut, a whisker-thin distance away from closing. I hurled myself at it, striking the door with both paws. I forced myself through, pushing against the mechanisms that were trying to close the door, then heard it close behind me with a click.

I found myself in utter darkness, in a room that felt even larger than the one with the wall-sized monitors. I could hear breathing and could smell Jane's distinctive scent: she was no more than a few meters away. I broke into a wide grin. At last, the long trail had come to an end. My tail began wagging furiously in anticipation of seeing her again. I switched to astral vision so I could see her...

The air exploded into a million sparkling motes of light. Something had surrounded me—an amorphous spirit whose brilliant aura filled my astral vision, blinding me. I felt my paws leave the ground as I was lifted into the air, and I began to tumble nose over tail like a leaf in a whirlwind. I began to pant— and suddenly my lungs were filled with a noxious odor. It smelled like harsh chemicals, as if I'd been locked in a tiny room in which a dozen different kinds of toxic cleaning solutions had been dumped.

The smell seared through my sensitive wolf nostrils like a rush of super-heated air, burning out my sinuses, nearly exploding my lungs. At the same time I was being spun through the air so quickly my ears were ringing. I was on the verge of passing out...

"Vata, stop!"

At the sound of Jane's voice, I suddenly lurched to a stop. I hung upside down in mid-air, my ears and tail drooping. The world was still spinning around me, but I could breathe again. The horrible, noxious odor was gone.

A halogen flashlight clicked on, blinding me with blue-white light. I shut my eyes against its glare.

"It's all right, Vata," I heard Jane say. "He's not an intruder. Put him down. Gently."

I floated to the ground as the invisible spirit that had attacked me—probably an air elemental—released me from its grip. I scrambled to my feet, then shifted into human form. Jane swung the flashlight beam away from me, then widened and muted the beam so that it dimly illuminated the room. It was octagonal in shape, with a high ceiling—one of the half-arches that capped the mansion.

I stood. Jane was no more than a meter or two away. Despite my exhaustion and the buffeting I'd just taken, I smiled at her. She was just as beautiful as I remembered. Her hair was soaked from the rain and had been lashed by the wind; I could smell her damp scent coming from it. Wet strands of hair framed her high cheekbones and sensuous lips. The rain had soaked the plain gray T-shirt she wore, revealing the curves of her body. The silver locket hung between her breasts, gleaming softly. The light from the flashlight she held—dimmed to a yellow glow with the brightness of a candle—gave her body a soft, warm look.

I took a step forward ...

"Stop! Don't come any closer!"

I jerked to a halt, startled by the tone of her voice. And then I realized that this was Jane... but not Jane. Her voice had lost its hesitant, muted tones, and her body language was no longer cautious and defensive. She stood confidently, strength and purpose blazing in her eyes, even though they had dark circles under them that suggested she was nearly as tired as I was. Every nuance of her stance, every gesture, suggested that this was a woman who could take care of herself. She no longer needed me. I slumped with the realization. Had I been in wolf form, my tail would have been between my legs.

Jane pointed the flashlight beam at the floor. "You were about to step on the circle."

I looked down and saw a complicated pattern of grooves in the floor, inlaid with metal. They formed a complicated Celtic knotwork pattern—a meter-wide band that formed a circle nearly ten meters in diameter. I recognized the metal instantly by its distinctive brownish tarnish: silver. I recoiled, drawing my bare foot back.

"Thanks," I said. "Stepping on that would have caused a nasty burn."

Her perfectly arched brows drew together in a slight frown, almost as if warning me against the silver hadn't been what she'd intended. I was still dizzy from the elemental's attack, but I was together enough to figure out what the pattern on the floor was: a hermetic circle, used for spellcasting. Which raised yet another question in my weary mind ...

"What are you doing here, Jane? Did Pelig bring you?"

"Pelig?" She laughed. "He's too busy directing the storm to take anyone anywhere. I came here on my own, to use the circle."

Pelig was directing the storm? I'd guessed right: the hurricane outside had been stirred up by magic. Was this the attack on the same scale as the Great Ghost Dance that the Mi'kmaq rebels had been hinting at?

I felt a stab of worry for the Lone Star riggers who'd been sent to the island during the state of emergency. If any of them had been caught by the storm while piloting their choppers, they'd have been smashed like bugs. I thought of Hunt: how he'd pilot any vehicle anywhere—even into the teeth of a hurricane. I hoped he was safely back in Halifax.

"And don't call me Jane," she added. "That was just an alias I used. Call me Mareth'riel."

I nodded. The name Jane didn't seem to fit her now. She wasn't my Jane Doe anymore.

"How did you get in?" I asked her. "The locks ... and that elemental ..." I switched briefly to astral vision and looked around the room but didn't see the spirit anywhere. It must have been patrolling elsewhere on the estate.

Mareth'riel shrugged. "I used to be an—associate— of Dunkelzahn's."

She said it as if no further explanation were necessary. I could only assume that she had been a regular visitor here, that the locks had been programmed to accept her. It seemed that even the spirits that guarded the estate knew and obeyed her, for frig's sake.

She must have traveled in some pretty exclusive circles, if she was that close a friend of a former president of the UCAS.

Thunder boomed outside, so loud that a bolt must have struck the mansion. The floor under my bare feet trembled.

Mareth'riel fixed me with a look. "You'd better leave, Romulus. The storm is about to break, and once it does people are going to come looking for me. They'll already know that I've got my memories back—that I've become a player again. I was threatening to jump ship before my arrest, and now they'll assume that's what I'll do. They'll use every weapon at their disposal to bring me back into the fold and keep me quiet about my research."

She gestured at the floor. "I'll be safe enough here, inside the circle. Once the storm has broken, I'll activate the circle's magic, and that will provide a barrier for me. But it won't protect you. They'll brush you aside like a fly, if they find you in their way."

"What people?" I asked. "Who will brush me away?"

She didn't answer. Instead she swung her flashlight beam over the circle, as if inspecting it for flaws.

"Jane." I growled my frustration. "Mareth'riel. I followed you around all this time, trying to help and protect you, and now ... you're just going to pat me on the head and tell me to run on home?"

She looked up with a wistful smile. "I remember what you did for me, Romulus. How could I forget? You were a true milessaratish to me. You did what nobody else could have. And for that, I suppose I owe you an explanation. There's no need to keep any secrets from you. Especially after we were so ... intimate ... inside the crystal. And especially not now, considering what I'm about to do."

She gestured at the floor. "This circle was created so that Dunkelzahn could keep in touch with certain ... colleagues ... who were all doing research into longevity. The dragon contacted us from time to time, and after we had shared our results with him, would offer suggestions that helped to guide our work and spur it forward. And that research must continue."

"But Dunkelzahn is dead," I said.

"Yes," Mareth'riel said. "His assassination was a true pity, for it sounded as though he was on the verge of making a great breakthrough. He'd been attempting to duplicate in other species the immunity to aging that dragons display—I'd been helping to monitor some of his test subjects before my incarceration. But the gene therapy Dunkelzahn developed was flawed. It allowed humans to look years younger than they really were, and to remain healthy and active well into their eighties and nineties, but it delayed the onset of the aging process only slightly. The individuals who were administered the treatments still grew old and will eventually die."

"Like Crazy John?" I asked. When she looked at me blankly, I prompted her: "The old guy who built the 'wizard's tower' near Short Beach. Was he one of Dunkelzahn's test subjects?"

Mareth'riel nodded. "One of the failures. It was a mistake to test the process on adults. Dunkelzahn was the one who came up with the idea of working with newborns, and disguising the gene therapy experiments as a vaccination program. He was going to initiate his own UCAS-funded 'vaccination' program last year. He thought that, if the therapy were administered early enough in life, the normal human and meta life span could be doubled, or even tripled...

"Tell me," she said eagerly. "Did the program ever get under way? I don't remember hearing anything about it, while I was in prison. I was..." She winced. "I wasn't able to watch the trids."

"Uh ... I don't follow human medicine," I said apologetically. "And I don't know much about vaccinations. The puppies I sired all got their rabies shots but ..." I stopped, annoyed at myself for blushing. What did I care, now, if Mareth'riel knew I had mated with Haley?

Mareth'riel wasn't even listening to my excuses. She wanted information.

"The newborn vaccination program would have started after October 31," she continued. "The date was critical—the mana levels had to be just right. Magic played a critical part in the activation of the enzyme. The ambient mana would have been high enough, after that date."

"Oh." Something clicked. The date had jogged a memory. "I remember hearing something about a free vaccination when Dunkelzahn's will was broadcast," I said. "Some sort of immunization that was supposed to be administered by the World Health Organization. A vaccine for kids born after October 31, 2060. I remember it because October 31 is my birthday—or at least, it's the birthday my first set of foster parents gave me. When I heard the tridcast, I wondered how the doctors would know when a shifter baby was born. Our parents don't exactly fill out birth certificates for us."

I shrugged. "In any case, the formula for the vaccine never made it to the World Health Organization offices. The Draco Foundation office where it was being held until its release was destroyed in a Humanis Policlub attack. The triggers who did it said they didn't want their children being tainted by 'dragon blood' and turned into mutants."

Mareth'riel's eyes widened. "That's not possible," she said. "There's no way the policlub could have known the vaccine was based on compounds found in dragon blood. Dunkelzahn didn't even tell me that—I found it out on my own, after I became suspicious that the drug might create a new form of metatype."

"Maybe the policlub made a lucky guess?" I suggested.

"No." She said it with utter conviction. "The destruction of Dunkelzahn's 'vaccine' formula had to have been orchestrated by someone other than Humanis Policlub. Someone with a vested interest in suppressing all longevity research, other than their own. Someone who wouldn't have approved of me sharing with Dunkelzahn the research they had funded."

"The people you talked about earlier?" I guessed. "The ones who are coming for you? Who are they?"

Mareth'riel looked at me for a long, silent moment before answering. "The Illuminates of the New Dawn."

"New Dawn?" I was confused. "Isn't that the corporation you worked for?"

She blinked, as if surprised that I knew. "The New Dawn Corporation is just one of their holdings. It was set up in the 2030s, just after Tír Taimgire formed, as a toehold in that nation. The group behind it—the Illuminates—is a hermetic order of extremely powerful mages, based in the UCAS. They were the ones who provided the funding for Rozilyn Hernandez's run at the presidency in 2057.

"They also provided the funding for my research, and helped set up the drug trials in the UCAS. There was just one condition: that if the enzyme I was developing really did produce immortality, they would be the only ones to receive it."

She paused to let that sink in. I'd heard of Hernandez—after the last presidential election, who hadn't? She was a hermetic mage who'd run under the banner of the New Century Party, a slightly left-of-center party that had campaigned under a promise to use magic and technology to turn the UCAS into a utopia. Their campaign platform had included full rights for all metas, including shifters. The irony had been that none of us had SIN numbers, so we couldn't vote for them. Hernandez had a lot of popular support among metas and other magically active people until Dunkelzahn entered the race and stole her thunder. After he came into the picture her numbers dropped drastically.

I wondered what a presidential candidate would do with immortality. I supposed she'd keep building her power base, running in election after election, until she was eventually victorious. And then ... maybe change the rules so that the president governed for life?

Which showed how much I knew about politics.

"You pissed the Illuminates off somehow?" I prompted.

Mareth'riel nodded. "Like Dunkelzahn, I wanted immortality to be available to everybody." Her eyes blazed. "Free of charge."

"This drug—this enzyme you created," I said slowly. "Does it work? Can it really grant someone immortality?"

I tried to think how my life would change if I could live forever—barring accidental death or a fatal disease, of course. I already had an inkling of what it would be like: my regenerative powers gave me a limited form of immortality. But even though I could heal from most wounds and injuries, I'd eventually grow old and die.

I tried to imagine a world in which no one would ever grow old. I supposed that it just might produce the utopia the New Century Party had promised. I'd already seen that the older people got, the less they cared about the environment, about the way the world was going. They knew they only had thirty years, twenty years, ten years left. Why bother trying to make the world a better place if they wouldn't be there to enjoy it? But if they were going to be around for centuries to come, they'd have to deal with the long-term messes their short-term indulgences were creating.

And imagine the wisdom they'd acquire. I thought of Mareth'riel, building up medical knowledge over the centuries, pushing the envelope of medical research. And what I'd learned over the course of my own life, short though it had been compared to Mareth'riel's. The older I got, the more I knew about the way the world worked, about my own area of expertise: paranormal animal control.

Longevity was knowledge, and knowledge was power.

And the Illuminates of the New Dawn wanted it all to themselves.

"Something went wrong with my research," Mareth'riel said. "The enzyme I was testing had ... unfortunate results. It had an effect I hadn't foreseen."

Her eyes became sad. "Those poor children. If I'd only had a chance to—"

"It wasn't your fault," I told her. "Someone tampered with your research. They frigged up the enzyme deliberately."

Mareth'riel's widened eyes asked a silent question.

"The dragon Lofwyr," I answered. "He did it to discredit New Dawn, then snapped up the Tír government's quarter-share of the corporation."

"Ah." Mareth'riel's lips pressed together in a grim line. I could see anger building like a thunderhead behind her eyes. "Of course," she said quietly. "He's as bad as the Illuminates. They wanted to use my research as a means to power, and Lofwyr wanted it as a means to profit. None of them cared about the people my research was supposed to benefit."

She thought a moment more. "So that's why Galdenistal wanted me to come back to Tír Taimgire and talk to Laverty. So I could convince the council not to sell out to the dragon." She shook her head ruefully. "And I thought it was so Laverty and I could have it out, once and for all."

"Sean Laverty?" I asked. "Was he one of Dunkelzahn's 'colleagues' as well?"

"No—at least, I doubt it," Mareth'riel said. "Laverty was pursuing a similar line of research, but he wasn't interested in extending the life span of others, like Dunkelzahn was. He just wanted to know the source of his own longevity. He was fascinated with ... certain elves."

I filled in the blank: "Spike babies. Laverty was using the Xavier Foundation to study them."

Mareth'riel raised her eyebrows.

"Galdenistal told me," I added.

The eyebrows raised even further. "I'm impressed," Mareth'riel said softly. "Galdenistal is a tough nut to crack."

I stood a little straighter at that one. I was pretty pleased with that accomplishment, myself. It had been the equivalent of dominating the toughest alpha male in the pack.

"The Xavier Foundation, however, is history," Mareth'riel said. "Laverty closed the orphanage in the early 1920s. He and I went our separate ways after that. I left on bad terms—I guess you could say he fired me, after I had the audacity to suggest that what we'd learned through our studies at the Xavier Foundation should be shared with other researchers.

"We also disagreed over the pace at which the research should proceed. Laverty wanted to delay further research until the level of mana had risen to the point where magic was active in the world. He believed in a strictly magical approach—even at that early point in the technological revolution, he was concerned about what he called the 'dehumanizing aspects' of technology.

"I took the opposite view: the 20th century was a time of miraculous innovation and I was a firm believer in technology. I didn't think magic would ever build to the levels Laverty predicted."

She smiled. "Needless to say, after the Awakening,

I had a change of heart. Now I know that any solution to the immortality question will rely upon both magic and technology."

"You still haven't answered my question," I said. "Is there an immortality drug?"

"Not yet," she answered. "But I do know what went wrong—what caused the children in the drug trials to start aging at an accelerated rate. I was just about to correct the flaw in the enzyme when I was arrested."

She sighed. "Four years is a long time for those children to have waited for a cure—too long. I can't., make them young again, but I think I can stop them from aging further. I owe them at least that much."

"If you go back to Eskwader, won't the Illuminates find you?" I asked. "I thought you said they wanted to keep your research under wraps."

Jane gave me a strange smile. "I won't be so valuable to them, after I use this." She traced the beam of her flashlight over the hermetic circle on the floor. "Dunkelzahn set it up as a sort of... amplifier... for a spell that allowed him to link minds with those who reported to him. He had us help construct it, so it would bear our astral signatures. Normally the spell is limited to line of sight, but by using this circle and astral projection I can create a long-distance link for the spell.

"I'm going to use it to reveal the full details of my work to others who are involved in longevity research," she continued. "I'm not sure how many of them I'll be able to reach before the spell drains me. But even if it's only one or two, that will be enough. The Illuminates—or Lofwyr, if he gets to me first— won't be the only ones with the ability to produce my enzyme."

She paused and cocked her head, as if listening for the storm. The room had grown quieter while we were talking; the thunder seemed to be retreating. Mareth'riel nodded, and held up a cautionary hand.

"I can't force you to leave," she said. "Although I wish you would. If you do stay, don't break the circle. Whatever happens, I can take care of myself."

I nodded, then hung my head. "I know."

Mareth'riel leaned across the circle and kissed me on the lips. "Sielle, Romulus," she whispered. "Imo herme, od imo raeint sa. Be well, and be true to yourself."

I looked up, startled. My breath was caught somewhere between my lips and my lungs, and my lips themselves were on fire. I felt a warm flush spreading up through my body.

Embarrassed, I shifted to wolf form.

By the time I remembered how to breathe again, Jane was seated, cross-legged, in the center of the circle. She set the flashlight down beside her, then turned it off. I switched to astral vision just in time to see the circle begin to glow. In that same moment I heard the whir of machinery working overhead. The half-arch roof slid back, revealing a clear night sky that was bright with moonlight.

Suddenly, the air grew stiflingly hot. The heat was coming off the silver, which had lost its tarnish and was beginning to melt. Already rivulets of it were starting to run through the grooves in the floor.

A dome of vaporized silver formed over the circle, enclosing Mareth'riel within it. Its fumes filled my nostrils, stinging even worse than the noxious vapor the air elemental had attacked me with. Holding my breath, I retreated for the door. I shifted briefly into human form to open it—thank frig it wasn't locked from this side—and staggered out into the hallway.

As my breathing eased, I held the door open, taking one last look back at Jane. Her eyes were closed and her hands were raised to her head, fingertips touching her temples and palms out. A thread of magical energy beamed out from the center of each palm like a laser, piercing the walls that surrounded her. As she drew her hands away from her head, crackles of magical energy arced between her fingertips and her temples. I saw her lips moving at an impossible speed, as if she were silently dictating something to the person at the other end of the spell. The circles under her eyes darkened and her shoulders slumped slightly. Then her hands began to shake...

That was when someone—or something—took control of my body. I felt my legs take a step back as my arm swung the door open wide. I stood, stiff as a butler, and held the door open for a man who walked silently down the hallway, toward the room where Mareth'riel was working her magic.

My hackles rose as he passed. He was impeccably groomed, wearing a high-collared, crisply tailored suit. His stride spoke of power, dominance—he had utter confidence in himself. I couldn't see his face clearly, even though the room was filled with moonlight that flooded in through the open ceiling. It looked human, but with a hint of something ... other. His scent was only vaguely human, overlaid with a pungent, leathery tang. When I looked at him with astral vision, his human face seemed to elongate into a lizardlike snout, his eyes to compress into slitted pupils. His aura glowed brightly, pulsing with magical power.

I strained against the spell that held me rigid. Although my body was utterly motionless, my mind was racing. Who was this person? How had he surprised me so utterly? A sheen of sweat broke out on my body as I fought against the spell. I might as well have been a fly, caught in a web made of sticky steel. All I could do was whine softly.

The intruder paused, just inside the room, and waved a hand. The gesture was casual, almost dismissive. But it had an instantaneous effect. The dome of silver energy surrounding Mareth'riel suddenly turned into a sea of static, as if a million imperfections had fragmented it. Then it collapsed in on itself. The molten silver within the pattern on the floor continued to swirl and sputter, but there were gaps in the flow. The circle had been broken.

Mareth'riel started as the astral barrier broke around her. She stared at her hands, as if trying to understand where the magic had gone. Then she looked up at the man who stood just outside the circle. Her face, already wan from the drain of the spell, became ever paler. Her eyes widened in recognition and her mouth dropped open.

"Lofwyr," she whispered.

The man in front of her—a dragon in human form—bowed slightly. "The very same," he said, a slightly mocking tone in his voice.

I whined as I fought against the spell that held me rigid. The hand that held the door open trembled with the strain, and my vision began to darken as I panted. The sum total of all of my effort was that my fingers twitched once, then relaxed again.

Mareth'riel rose to her feet. She was shaky, exhausted. But defiant.

"You're too late," she told the dragon. "The others know all about... my work. My research isn't a secret any more. The corporation you went to such pains to ... acquire ... isn't the only one with the formula for my enzyme."

Lofwyr gave a slight shrug, as if this were an inconsequential detail—a trivial matter that could easily be set right. I growled softly as he feigned brushing some lint off his lapel.

A crease of worry formed on Mareth'riel's forehead. But she persevered, her posture still defiant. "No matter what you do, the research will continue to be shared," she told the dragon. "Longevity— perhaps even immortality—will one day be available to everyone. Dunkelzahn's dream will be realized."

Lofwyr chuckled. "Is that what you think Dunkelzahn wanted?" he said. He shook his head as if saddened and bemused. "For someone who has lived as long as you have, Mareth'riel, that is a naive notion. Dunkelzahn didn't want to serve humanity. No, it was quite the other way around. You were playing into his hands, helping him to create a new race of servitors. The elves, you see, had become too independent, and the drakes, well... they have their limitations."

"I don't believe you," Mareth'riel said. "Dunkelzahn wouldn't..."

But I could see it in her eyes that she did. Or at least, that she was starting to question what she had once believed.

Lofwyr extended a hand. "Come, Mareth'riel.

You're a valuable asset. It's time you got back to work." He cocked his head. "For the good of humanity, of course."

Mareth'riel cringed, drawing back. But in that same instant—in the space of a heartbeat—Lofwyr changed. His body elongated, grew scales and a whiplike tail. His arms and legs lengthened and curved talons grew from his fingertips. Leathery wings appeared, folded against a massive back. The lizard smell became almost overwhelming—hot and stuffy in the small space that Lofwyr's bulk now filled. One gigantic, slitted eye peered at Mareth'riel, fixing her in its malevolent gaze.

Lofwyr reached across the hermetic circle. Mareth'riel began gesturing as if she was trying to cast a spell, but there was no time to complete it. The dragon's hand closed around her waist and yanked her from the floor. Then the dragon squatted down on its haunches and its wings ruffled as it prepared to spring upward through the open ceiling.

The spell that was holding my body rigid suddenly dissipated. Mareth'riel moaned in terror and her body went as rigid as mine had been, a second ago.

"No!" I shouted. In that same instant, I shifted into wolf form. Adrenaline surged through me, washing away my weariness. I leaped into the room and sank my teeth into the dragon's tail.

I have only hazy memories of what happened after that. I felt my teeth break the dragon's skin, and tasted strange, metallic blood on my tongue. Then the tail lashed to one side, flicking me off like a flea and sending me tumbling across the room.

I howled as the molten silver of the circle splashed onto my skin. It burned with a fire that seemed to consume me to the bone; the spots that had been splashed felt as if they'd been seared to raw flesh. I could smell my own burning fur and the liquid seeping from my raw and blistered skin. I staggered to my feet, then collapsed back down onto my belly on a clear spot on the floor.

My face had been splashed by the molten silver and my left eyelid was blistered shut. Through my one good eye, I looked up through the open ceiling— and saw the silhouette of the dragon, winging its way through the moonlit sky. Its forelegs were drawn up tight against its massive chest; I couldn't tell if it still held Mareth'riel in its claws or not.

Either way, she was gone. I didn't see her anywhere in the room.

I lay my chin back on the floor and allowed exhaustion to claim me.

21

The doctor stared down at me, his face covered with a surgical mask and his hair covered by a paper cap. In one hand he held a syringe filled with a pale greenish liquid. His other hand rested lightly on my shoulder.

"Welcome back, Romulus," he said. "You've been out for a long time. What's the last thing you remember?"

I looked around the room. I was in a medical clinic with bare white walls and a curtain pulled around the bed. I could smell a faint whiff of something herbal—probably the drug in the syringe—as well as the odors of various disinfectants and the starch in the sheets on my bed. I was in human form, lying on a hospital bed under covers that were held a few centimeters over my bare skin by aluminum bars, shaped like a tent frame. Restraints held my wrists and ankles, and a strap was across my chest. The restraints were self-adjusting; even if I'd shifted to wolf form I wouldn't have been able to slip them.

My wrists and ankles were chafed, as if I'd been straining at the straps. The one on my right wrist looked as if it had been chewed. The inside of my right arm had a series of tiny red puncture marks.

The doctor saw me looking at the restraints.

"Sorry about that, Romulus," he said. "Even though you were in a coma, you were scratching at your burns. We had to restrain you so you wouldn't tear the synthskin off."

Burns? So that was what hurt so bad. The left side of my face felt funny, rubbery, as if plastic wrap had been stretched across the skin. It ached and itched at the same time. A number of other spots on my chest, side and thigh must have also been burned. I could feel sharp twinges every time I tried to move, could feel the pull of the artificial skin that had been used to patch my burns. The edges itched something fierce, like gigantic mosquito bites.

"I... don't remember being burned," I said. "What happened to me? Where am I?"

The doctor leaned closer. His eyes were gold above the mask. He wore a baggy white hospital uniform and smelled of expensive cologne. "What is the last thing you remember, Romulus?"

"I..." The memory was hazy, like a halfremembered dream. "I was in an underground parking garage. There was an elf girl, and ... and a glowing ball of light. No wait. It was a paranormal animal of some sort. It looked like an octopus, with tentacles. It was killing the elf..

"What day was that?" the doctor asked. "Do you remember?"

I had to think about that one. I'd been on my way to the police station, to see if Sergeant Raymond had any assignments for me, and had taken a jander through the North End. The streets had been crawling with UCAS sailors ...

"It was the day the Leviathan docked," I answered. "July 25."

"What time of day was it?"

"I don't know. It was just getting dark. Early evening, maybe?"

The doctor smiled. "That's good, Romulus. Very good. The ball of light burned you. It hit you with some sort of magical attack that put you into a coma. That's why you wound up in the clinic." He laid the syringe on a stainless steel table beside the bed. "You seem to be on the mend, now. I think we can discharge you."

"Uh ..." I hated to ask the question, but I had to know. "Who's paying for this?"

The paper mask shifted slightly; the elf must have been smiling. "Lone Star," he said. "You were injured in the line of duty. The corporation is picking up the tab."

He lifted a paper cup from the table where he'd placed the syringe. As he held it to my lips I smelled a bitter odor. "It's a mild painkiller," he told me. "It will help you to relax while I change the dressings on your burns. Then you can leave the clinic. I'll have one of the nurses call you a cab."

He tipped the cup, and a sharp-tasting liquid wet my lips. The hand that held the cup was right under my nose; the doctor's scent seemed vaguely familiar—an elf's scent. I looked up into his gold-irised eyes as I swallowed the sedative, wondering if I'd awakened from my coma once before, if that was where I'd seen him bef—

The sedative must have knocked me out. The next thing I knew, I was lying face-down on a sidewalk that smelled of city grime and hundreds of different scents—all of the people who had walked on it that day. I lifted myself to my hands and knees and looked myself over. I was dressed in clothes I didn't recognize: a baggy, generic track suit. I was pretty shaky and had no idea how I'd gotten here from the clinic. Had I tried to walk and then passed out? My vision kept blurring in and out. Only by squinting hard could I make out the street names of the intersection next to me: Barrington and Rector, down by the docks. My tongue felt thick and I wasn't able to concentrate. Were these the after-effects of the tentacled creature's attack?

A thought came to me: Dass would know. She was probably the best paranormal taxonomist the Division of Paranormal Investigation had. She'd be able to tell me what that tentacled creature was and what it had done to me. I lay back down on the sidewalk, resting my uninjured cheek against the cool cement.

I'm not sure how long it was afterward that a squad car pulled up next to me. The two officers hassled me at first, but once I convinced them that I was an irregular asset, working with Lone Star, they agreed to give me a lift back to the station. The ride helped to clear my head. The heat wave we'd been having seemed to have broken; the city's air was cool and clean. I hung my head out the window, letting the night air whip through my hair.

By the time I reached Dass's office I was feeling closer to normal again. Not one hundred percent— but better. Dass was on the phone to someone— probably another mage detective, judging by the thaumaturgical shop talk—but she motioned me to sit down and abruptly cut her conversation short. When she turned to me, her scent held faint overtones of relief—and worry.

"Rom!" she said. "Where the frig have you been all week? The smuggling ring is busting wide open—we found the European connection. The Coast Guard responded to a distress call from a container ship that was caught in the hurricane, and when the rescue teams went in to pick up survivors from the sinking ship, they found it crawling with a dozen blackberry cats. The cats were being smuggled to the UCAS in a container, and escaped when it shifted and burst open during the storm. They forced the Coast Guard officers to take them to shore, made them run the patrol vessel aground, and for the past two days we've been getting cat sightings up and down the coast. Raymond wanted you to track them, and nearly turned purple when your landlady said she didn't know where you were."

I cringed. When you're an irregular asset, you're on call all the time. I'd never failed to respond to a call before—even ones that involve cats, which I loathe. A multiple containment like the one Dass described would have been worth big nuyen to me. Not only had I missed an opportunity to earn some serious cred, I'd also blown a chance to impress my superiors, and now I could tell I was in deep drek.

"But the sergeant must have known I was in the clinic," I said. "He'd have been the one who authorized the expense."

"Clinic?" Dass looked me over more closely, peering at the artificial skin that covered the bare spot in my beard where I'd been burned. "A medical clinic? Is that why you look so banged up? Where were you this past week—off chasing down leads in your Jane Doe case? Did she turn out to be linked with the smugglers, after all?"

"My what?" This was getting more confusing by the minute. I had no idea what Dass was talking about. "Who's Jane Doe? And who are these smugglers you keep mentioning?"

I smelled nervous sweat breaking out under Dass's arms. She was looking at me strangely. Her eyes lingered briefly on the inside of my right arm, on the needle puncture marks, and she frowned. Then she got up and shut the door to her office.

"What's the last thing you remember, Rom?" Her eyes held a worried look.

"Funny," I said. "That's the same question the doctor asked me."

I told Dass about the glowing ball of light in the parking garage. Partway through the story, she stopped me. "That's the last thing you remember? That was two and a half weeks ago, Rom. You've got an eighteen-day gap in your memory."

"I know," I said. "I was in a coma. At the clinic, after the ball of light burned me—"

"The corpselight didn't burn you," Dass said in a grim voice. "And you weren't in a coma for eighteen days. Nine days ago, you participated in a raid on a boat carrying endangered paranormals. I was there with you. Two days after that, you were here at the station, asking if my interviews with the smugglers had turned up any more information on your Jane Doe.

"That was the last time I saw you: on August 4. And now you turn up with your memories wiped— just like Jane Doe."

I wet my lips. This wasn't sounding good.

Dass pointed at my arm. "It looks as though someone used laes on you. Massive doses. Did you get a good look at this 'doctor'?"

"Uh ... I'd recognize his cologne," I said. "And his scent: he was an elf. But he was wearing a surgical mask and cap. All I could see were his eyes."

"Where was the clinic?"

"I don't know. One minute I was inside, and the next I was kissing pavement."

"Frig," Dass said. "That doesn't give us anything to go on."

I had a queasy feeling in my gut. It felt as if somebody had tipped the world on a crazy angle when I wasn't looking. I gripped the sides of the chair I was sitting on.

"Dass," I said slowly. "You'd better tell me what's going on. How many memories did they wipe? What am I missing?"

Twenty minutes later, I still wasn't feeling very enlightened. All Dass could tell me was that eighteen days ago I'd gone out on a routine containment of a blackberry cat—and come back with a woman who didn't know who she was or where she was from. We'd run some retinal scans on her, and these linked with those of Margaret Hersey, a woman who'd just been released from prison after serving a three-month sentence in the Citadel for unlicensed use of a manipulation spell. But the Hersey match was bogus, a fabrication. I'd apparently dug up what I thought was the real name of Jane Doe: Mareth'riel Salvail, an elf who was a Tír Taimgire national. But there'd been no scans with that data. And according to Lone Star's databases, Salvail had died in a plane crash in 2057. Even so, I'd insisted that she was still alive, that Salvail was Jane Doe. I'd jandered off to find her...

Only to turn up with a big hole in my memory a week later.

I'd been violated. Mind-raped. I must have stumbled across some serious drek. I was probably lucky not to have wound up dead.

"There's something else, Rom," Dass said. "Earlier today, the Harbor Patrol found a floater who matched the general description of your Jane Doe: elven metatype, apparent age mid-thirties to mid-forties, dark hair and eyes, medium build. Looks like she jumped from the old bridge, judging by her injuries."

I sat up. "Her ears... were they ..."

Dass looked at me expectantly. "What?"

I'd gone blank. Whatever question I'd been about to ask was gone. "I don't know."

Dass shrugged, then continued: "The floater's DNA scans didn't match any in the Lone Star databases— even Hersey's. The body had been in the water too long for retinal scans to be done—which was the only way we'd have been able to link her with any certainty to your Jane Doe. She had no dental work— perfect teeth, if you can believe it—and no identifying scars or marks. But Ident did find one thing. They passed it over to DPI to see if our detection spells could pull up any information on it."

Dass reached into her drawer and pulled out a clear plastic evidence bag. From it she pulled a silver locket on a chain. I reached out and touched it—then jerked my fingers back as the metal burned blisters on my fingertips.

"Kusikitika—sorry," Dass said. "That was stupid of me. Let me do it."

I sucked on my fingers while Dass opened the locket. What had I been thinking? I'd reached out to touch the locket as if it were the most natural thing in the world, all the while knowing that it was silver. That blackout had left me really frigged up. I wasn't thinking straight any more.

Dass-slipped the silver locket back into its evidence bag so I could hold it. She stared at me expectantly while I looked at it. "Do you recognize it?" she asked. "It looks like the one your Jane Doe was wearing, but I didn't get a good enough look at hers, that night she was here at the station."

I peered down through the clear plastic at a tintype—how did I know that word?—of a woman in a long dark dress. Her eyes looked hauntingly familiar. They were black in the monochrome image, but somehow I imagined them to be a dark brown, with tiny flecks of gold. I looked at the locket using my astral vision. It was tinged with a trace of sadness and loss ...

I handed the locket back to Dass. "Sorry," I said. "Never seen it before."

"Do you want to try to ID the body?" Dass asked.

I shook my head. "No point. I can't remember what this Jane Doe you're talking about looked like. I wouldn't recognize her if she walked up to me on the street, let alone after she'd been in the water for several days. And there's no way for me to get my memories of her back, especially if they were wiped by laes. The damage that drug does is forever."

Dass sighed. "Well, if the locket did belong to your Jane Doe, she's dead. I guess that closes your case."

"I guess it does," I said.

And that was just fine with me. I had no intention of putting my hoop on the line for some woman I couldn't even remember. I wasn't even curious about her. Curiosity can be a bad thing in this business— that's why they say it kills cats. Besides, I had biz to attend to. There were blackberry cats to contain—and I had an angry sergeant to mollify.

I got to my feet. "I guess I'd better ask Sergeant Raymond for the latest blackberry cat sightings," I told Dass. "Unless there's anything better for me." I raised my eyebrows hopefully.

Dass thought for a moment. "There almost was," she said. "A representative from the New Century Party came by yesterday and filed a missing persons report. One of their campaign workers disappeared two days ago, during a trip to Prince Edward Island. She'd been vacationing there and was trapped on the island during the uprising. The last time they heard from her was on the night of the hurricane. They're worried that the rebels may have kidnapped her as a political gesture. They wanted help in finding her, and asked for you specifically. They're willing to pay all of your expenses. But Sergeant Raymond told them you only handled local cases, and then only for Lone Star—that you weren't interested in freelance work."

I frowned. Hurricane? Rebels? I had a lot to catch up on. I was tempted by the offer of freelance work, and flattered that my reputation had caused a prestigious political organization to ask for my services. And I was a little miffed at the sergeant for making my decisions for me. But I hated politics even more than I did cats. And Sergeant Raymond was right: P.E.I. was outside of my jurisdiction.

"I'm not interested," I told Dass. "I have duties here to attend to."

Then I grinned. "And besides, chasing those little furballs is going to be a lot more fun."

About the Author

Lisa Smedman is the author of the Shadowrun® novels The Lucifer Deck, Blood Sport, and Psychotrope. She has also had a number of short science fiction and fantasy stories published in various magazines and anthologies, and in 1993 was a finalist in the Writers of the Future contest. Formerly a newspaper reporter and magazine editor, she now works as a freelance game designer and fiction writer. Lisa was one of the founders of Adventures Unlimited magazine. She has designed a number of adventures and written short fiction for TSR's Ravenloft and Dark Sun lines, and has designed gaming products for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Cyberpunk, Immortal, Shatterzone, and Millennium's End.

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