me. They had complaints about an obnoxious homeless man fitting my description—”
“How the heck could you know that?” I asked.
“I heard the man behind the front desk talking to the guards as they ushered me out. Never underestimate a werewolf’s hearing,” Wulf said. “And… I think someone is stirring up more trouble for me.”
I had started to put Wulf’s picture next to ‘paranoid’ in the dictionary, but damned if two police officers didn’t come out of the hospital entrance, look around, fix on us, and quickly start heading in our direction.
“Harassment for being obnoxious, even for being homeless, is natural,” Wulf said, clenching his fists, “but persecution for nothing—that is the work of my enemies.”
“O-okay,” I said. “Philip, can you call them off—”
“They’re not on your detail, and they don’t look like they’ll listen,” Philip said. Abruptly he took off his sunglasses and extended them to Wulf. “Take these.”
Wulf’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why would you give me your—”
“Your eyes are starting to show, my friend,” Philip said.
Wulf took the glasses slowly, staring at them. They were thick and heavy, with odd bulges and two earpieces. “These are Oakley Thumps,” he said.
“They’ll still cover your eyes,” Philip countered.
My jaw dropped, and I looked back up at Philip; he looked sincere. I liked him, almost instinctively, but I couldn’t figure him out: one minute he was wanting to take Cinnamon off the streets just for being furry, the next he was giving away two-hundred-dollar MP3 sunglasses to a crazy paranoid werewolf. What was up with that?
Wulf started to hand them back. “I can’t accept—”
“Take them and go,” Philip said. “They’re almost on us.”
Wulf looked over at the cops and snarled; when they saw the expression on his face, they drew their batons and started running towards us, shouting.
“Later,” he said. “I will contact you through the Rogue!”
And at that he whirled and ran off. One cop chased after him, while his older, more obese partner stomped up to us, wheezing. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“No,” I snapped. “He’s my friend. He came to see me in the hospital.”
The cop’s eyes widened, and he looked over at the running pair.
Wulf ran straight out into traffic, dodging one car, then another; at the double yellow line he leapt straight up and over a passing semi like an agent out of the Matrix. The other cop stopped midstream, in the midst of squealing tires and blaring horns, as Wulf leapt from streetlight to rooftop and disappeared into a canopy of red October leaves.
“Quite a friend,” the first cop said, still gasping for breath.
“You’re telling me,” I said, reaching up to hold Philip’s hand as it squeezed my shoulder. “You’re telling me.”
25. HORROR AT THE DOGSHOW
Tuesday morning they let me out of the hospital at last, but I was not yet on my own, or even on my own two feet; I was stuck in my wheelchair, at least for a few more days. Philip insisted that I have some protection until I was walking again, and reluctantly I agreed to stay at the Consulate and suffer through Savannah’s mothering—a peace-offering, from me to her. She said nothing about my reaction to her fangs, but at twilight she pushed my wheelchair through the Consulate’s garden… and we talked. Our little conversation wasn’t enough to heal any old wounds, but at least it patched them up for a while. Then we talked—I talked—about my meltdown, and after listening for a long time, Savannah said some soft but bracing things. They weren’t enough to put the attack behind me, but at least I could put it away for a while.
Savannah agreed with Philip that I should do Wulf’s tattoo, but she was insistent that I not try it before I was out of the wheelchair. For once, I had no argument; no matter how badly Wulf wanted the tattoo, I wasn’t ready to get back in the saddle yet. Besides, the full moon wasn’t until Saturday, and I couldn’t imagine trying to do a tattoo sitting in a wheelchair.
But then night fell, on Tuesday the thirty-first of October: Halloween. And wheelchair or no wheelchair, escort or no, I was not going to miss the last hurrah of The Masquerade.
The Masquerade was a mammoth dance club and live music venue on the other side of North Avenue from City Hall East. It was huge, divided into three levels—Heaven, a live music venue; Purgatory, a traditional bar; and Hell—a goth/industrial/techno dance club that had taken the title