fingertip. "I know you're the man for the job."
"Okay," I said. "Let me see. You start visiting the Tartarus Club, maybe thinking you'll get hooked up with some rich widower, maybe just to kid yourself you still got a life. Instead you get hooked on the gaming tables—blackjack's my guess. Am I right so far?"
Sniffling, she nodded.
"So, you run yourself deep into debt. You go to the management, flash them your legs, maybe a little more. They decline your offers and make you one of their own. 'Just try this hat on for size,' they tell you. 'We got ourselves a little game going back here. Big Iapetos thinks you just might be a swan.' 'Can I think about it?' you say. 'Sure,' they say. And again, when you ask if you can keep the hat while you chew it over, they say, 'Sure.' Because they know you won't dare get rid of it, for fear of what they'll do to you. And you won't dare try it on. You'll just stare at it and stare at it until you run back to them screaming to get it over with. Am I still on the eight ball here?"
Her eyes had glazed a little and she looked ready to cry again. I felt bad, like I was rubbing her nose in it, but if I was going to help her . . .
Was I going to help her? Sweet mother of mercy!
"Am I right?" I repeated.
"Huh? Oh, yes. On the button."
"So, tell me where you found the dog."
She drew the back of her hand across her mouth, sat up and stared into at the rain. "At the pound," she said. "I picked the one that looked most like a wolf—German shepherd it said on the cage. I told the superintendent I was going to give it a good home, then I brought it here."
"Did you know what would happen when you put the hat on it?"
"No. I was guessing. Luckily for me I guessed right."
"Not so lucky for the German shepherd."
"The hat turned him into a wereman."
"Most dangerous werebeast of all. So it's said."
"I did it in the alley that runs down the side of your office. Once the transformation was complete, it was easy enough to herd the wretched creature into your doorway and . . . and . . ."
"And shoot it in cold blood at point-blank range."
She buried her face in her hands. "It was just a dog," she sobbed.
"Not a werewolf at all," I mused, "but a wereman. An Alsatian in a lycanthropia hat. Now I've seen it all. All you need to tell me now is why."
"I told you, I was desperate. If I go back to the Titans they'll turn me into something horrible and I'll never get back in one piece. If I try to run they'll track me down and kill me anyway. You don't know what those Titans are like."
I stopped rubbing her shoulders for a moment. An old scar on the back of my hand throbbed suddenly. Remember me, it seemed to be saying.
"Oh yes," I muttered, "oh yes I do."
"You do?" she looked at me curiously.
"Another story," I said. "Another time. You were telling me why you shot the dog."
"So you could get me put away," she said. Then she added, "Could you rub my shoulders again? It feels kind of nice."
Dumbstruck, I obliged.
"You?" I said when I could speak again. "The woman who framed her own husband to avoid the clink . . . and now you're framing yourself!"
"It was the hat that gave me the idea. I sat there staring at it, just like you said, when the idea came to me. If I could commit what looked like a murder on the doorstep of someone I could trust, I could get myself into safe custody before the Titans even got a sniff of what was going on. Nobody can touch you once they put you in Wulan Pen, not even the Titans. But only a murder would guarantee me a life sentence. I could never kill anyone, not for real, and that's when I thought up the trick with the dog."
"And when the dead body turned back into what looked like a wolf, everyone would assume you'd killed a shapeshifter. Even me. Making it, in the eyes of the law, first degree murder."
"I really thought you'd believe the blackmail story," she said sulkily. "The whole thing would have worked if you hadn't been so damned keen on