Dead and Gone Page 0,23

so."

Mel, wearing the slacks and sports shirt he wore daily at the auto parts place, got out of his car and walked over. I noticed that he was carefully not looking at Calvin, though Jason was still standing right beside the panther's pickup. "It's true, then," Mel said.

Jason said, "She's dead, Mel."

Mel patted Jason's shoulder in the awkward way men have when they have to comfort other men. "Come on, Jason. You don't need to be around here. Let's go to your house. We'll have a drink, buddy."

Jason nodded, looking dazed. "Okay, let's go." After Jason left for home with Mel following right behind, I climbed back in my own vehicle and fished the newspapers for the past few days from the backseat. I often picked them up from the driveway when I came out to go to work, tossed them in the back, and tried to read at least the front page within a reasonable length of time. What with Sam leaving and my business with the bar, I hadn't caught a glimpse of the news since the weres went public.

I arranged the papers in order and began to read.

The public reaction had ranged from the panicked to the calm. Many people claimed they'd had a suspicion that the world contained more than humans and vampires. The vampires themselves were 100 percent behind their furry brethren, at least in public. In my experience, the two major supernatural groups had had a very bumpy relationship. The shifters and Weres mocked the vampires, and the vampires jeered right back. But it looked like the supernaturals had agreed to present a united front, at least for a while.

The reactions of governments varied wildly. I think the U.S. policy had been formed by werewolves in place within the system, because it was overwhelmingly favorable. There was a huge tendency to accept the weres as if they were completely human, to keep their rights as Americans exactly on a par with their previous status when no one knew they were two-natured. The vampires couldn't be too pleased about that, because they hadn't yet obtained full rights and privileges under the law. Legal marriage and inheritance of property were still forbidden in a few states, and vampires were barred from owning certain businesses. The human casino lobby had been successful in banning the vamps from direct ownership of gambling establishments, which I still couldn't understand, and though vampires could be police officers and firefighters, vampire doctors were not accepted in any field that included treating patients with open wounds. Vampires weren't allowed in competition sports, either. That I could understand; they were too strong. But there were already lots of athletes whose ancestry included full- and part-weres, because sports were a natural bent for them. The military ranks, too, were filled with men and women whose grandparents had bayed under the full moon. There were even some full-blooded Weres in the armed services, though it was a very tricky occupation for people who had to find somewhere private to be three nights a month.

The sports pages were full of pictures of some part- and whole-weres who'd become famous. A running back for the New England Patriots, a fielder for the Cardinals, a marathon runner ... they'd all confessed to being wereanimals of one kind or another. An Olympic champion swimmer had just discovered that his dad was a wereseal, and the number-one ranked women's tennis player in Britain had gone on record as saying that her mother was a wereleopard. The sports world hadn't been in such a tumult since the last drug scandal. Did these athletes' heritage give them an unfair advantage over other players? Should their trophies be taken away from them? Should their records be allowed to stand? Another day, I might enjoy debating this with someone, but right now I just didn't care.

I began to see an overall picture. The outing of the two-natured was a much different revelation than the vampires' announcement. The vampires had been completely off the human grid, except in legend and lore. They'd lived apart. Since they could subsist on the Japanese synthetic blood, they had presented themselves as absolutely nonthreatening. But wereanimals had been living among us all the time, integrated into our society yet maintaining their secret lives and alliances. Sometimes even their children (those who weren't firstborn and therefore not weres) didn't know what their parents were, especially if they were not wolves.

"I feel betrayed," one woman was quoted as saying. "My granddad