carelessly, but somehow he managed to look neat and well dressed anyway. He held a battered violin case in one hand and a dark blue Western-cut jacket in the other.
When he was nearly at the front, he turned around once, taking in the people in a single glance. Then he looked over at Anna, and his face broke into a singularly sweet smile-a smile she'd seen an echo of on Charles's face. With that smile she could see past the superficial differences to the underlying similarities, a matter of bone and movement rather than feature-by-feature likeness.
He sat next to Charles and brought with him the crisp scent of snow over leather. His smile widened, and he started to say something, but stopped when a wave of silence swept through the crowd from the back to the front.
The minister, bedecked in old-fashioned clerical robes, walked slowly up the central aisle, an ancient-looking Bible resting in the crook of his left arm. By the time he reached the front, the room was silent.
His obvious age told her that he wasn't a werewolf, but he had a presence that made his "Welcome and thank you for coming to pay your respects to our friend" sound ceremonial. He set the Bible on the podium with obvious care for graying leather. He gently opened the heavily embossed cover and set aside a bookmark.
He read from the fifteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. And the last verse he spoke without looking down. " 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?' "
He paused, letting his eyes trail over the room, much as Charles had, then said simply, "Shortly after we moved back here, Carter Wallace came to my house at two in the morning to hold my wife's hand when our retriever had her first litter of puppies. He wouldn't charge me because he said if he charged for cuddling pretty women, he'd be a gigolo and not a vet."
He stepped away from the pulpit and sat on the thronelike wooden chair on the right-hand side. There was the sound of shuffling and the creaking of wood, then an old woman stood up. A man with bright chestnut hair escorted her down the aisle, a hand under her elbow. As they walked by her pew, Anna could smell the wolf in him.
It took the old woman a few minutes to make it all the way to the top of the stairs to the pulpit. She was so small that she had to stand on a footstool, the werewolf behind her with his hands on her waist to steady her.
"Carter came to our store when he was eight years old," she said in a breathy, frail voice. "He gave me fifteen cents. When I asked him what it was for, he told me that a few days before, he and Hammond Markham had been in, and Hammond had stolen a candy bar. I asked him why it was he and not Hammond who was bringing the money. He told me that Hammond didn't know he was bringing me the money." She laughed and wiped a tear from her eye. "He assured me that it was Hammond 's money, though, stolen from his piggy bank just that morning."
The werewolf who had escorted her raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it. Then he lifted her into his arms, despite her protests, and carried her back to where they'd been sitting. Husband and wife, not the grandson and grandmother they appeared to be.
Anna shivered, suddenly fiercely glad that Charles was a wolf like her and not human.
Other people stood up and told more stories or read verses from the Bible. There were tears. The dead man, Carter Wallace-or rather Dr. Carter Wallace, since he evidently was the town's vet-had been loved by these people.
Charles stretched his feet out in front of him and bowed his head. Beside him, Samuel played absently with the violin case, rubbing at a worn spot on the leather.
She wondered how many funerals they'd been to, how many friends and relatives they'd buried. She'd cursed her ageless, regenerative body before-when it had made it darned hard to commit suicide. But the tension in Charles's shoulders, Samuel's fidgeting, and Bran's closed-down stillness told her that there were other things that made virtual immortality a curse.
She wondered if Charles had had a wife before. A human wife who aged as he did not. What would it be like when