other end of the conversation. He listened to Anna, let her voice remind him that he hadn't driven her away, hadn't hurt her irreparably. Not yet.
"Right now?" A pause. "Sure. We're glad to be of assistance. Can you give me the address? No. Not necessary. There's Wi-Fi here so I have the Internet. Just wait for me to find a sheet of paper." She pulled something else off the table next to the bed - her purse, he thought from the sound of it. Charles looked away from the mirror.
"Okay. Have pen and paper. Shoot."
He couldn't go out and perform for the feds. Not like this. He would hurt someone, someone who didn't deserve it.
Use me, said Brother Wolf. If I stay with Anna, it will be safe for everyone. I will not harm any of the people. I will keep her safe from them.
Which "them"? Charles asked.
FBI, killers, the dead. All of them and any of them. She will be safe - and so will the others. I will not hurt them unless I have to. Can you say the same?
Charles almost smiled at the thought that Brother Wolf would be less dangerous than he, but at the moment it seemed to be true enough. Without another look in the mirror, he let the change take him: he would trust the wolf to keep her safe.
"HOW LONG WILL it take you to get here?" Leslie Fisher's voice was cool and professional, but her question had just a hint of urgency.
A young woman was missing from her condo, though she hadn't been gone long. Luckily, the policeman who'd gone to check it out had been briefed on their serial killer and thought it was a close enough match to the way other people had been taken to call in the FBI.
There was something wrong with Charles. It had been nagging at Anna since she woke, but she'd already answered the phone. It didn't feel urgent, just not good - so she decided to take care of the truly urgent matter first to get it out of the way. If it was their serial killer, they had a chance of getting to the girl before anything happened.
"How far is the apartment from the hotel we were at" - it was two in the morning - "yesterday morning?" Charles hadn't been in bed beside her, though she knew he was in the condo. She could feel him.
"Ten-or fifteen-minute walk. Something like that. The victim's apartment isn't too far from the Commons." Then Fisher clearly remembered that Anna and Charles weren't from Boston. "The Boston Common. The big park a couple of blocks from the hotel."
After a day of sightseeing, Anna could have told Fisher how big the Common was and approximately how many people were buried in it and all about the ducks that inspired a famous children's book.
Their condo was less than a five-minute run from the hotel, and she and Charles could always take a taxi if the place they needed to get to was too far.
"Less than fifteen minutes, then," Anna told her.
"Good," said Fisher. "We'd appreciate anything you can do. Assuming this is our UNSUB, based on previous cases, she's still alive and will be for a few more days."
"We'll do our best."
Anna hung up the phone and began dragging on her clothes. "Charles? Did you hear? There's a girl missing. Is Lizzie Beauclaire one of our werewolves? I don't remember her name from the Olde Towne Pack roster."
Not that I know of. It wasn't Charles who answered.
Anna paused, one foot off the ground as she'd been shoving it into a pant leg. Brother Wolf padded out of the bathroom, all three hundred pounds of fox-red fur, fangs, and claws. There were bigger werewolves, but not many. Her own wolf was closer to the two-hundred-pound mark - so was Bran's, for that matter.
"Well," she said slowly. The wrongness in their bond was fading, leaving behind the cool, thoughtful presence that was Brother Wolf. "I suppose it'll help save time if one of us is already wolf when we get there."
Charles is worried that he will do something bad, Brother Wolf told her. We decided that it would be best if I take point tonight. Brother Wolf had gotten better about speaking to her in words rather than images. She got the distinct impression that he looked upon it as baby talk, but it amused him anyway.
She resumed dressing while she considered his words. Of all the wolves she'd