fine. Cats...cats don't like us. And they don't adjust, ever." She grinned at Leslie. "Just like Cantrip agents, I expect."
"Heuter is just one man," Leslie pointed out. "Hard to judge all of Cantrip by one man."
"I don't know about that," Anna said. "Who else would join an agency like Cantrip except for people who are afraid of the dark?"
"People who need jobs?" Leslie suggested dryly. "Cantrip takes a lot of Quantico graduates who don't get on with the FBI. As a job, Cantrip is less time-consuming than the FBI or Homeland Security, and it pays better than most police departments. It's less dangerous, too - because they don't actually do anything but collect information."
"Not yet," Anna said affably. "My father says that government unchecked is like a snowball; you can always count on it getting bigger and gathering more power." She walked a few paces. "Heuter was going to shoot someone in the morgue. If he could have gotten the shot off before it became obvious Charles wasn't going to hurt anyone, he'd have shot Charles. If you hadn't been there, he would have done it. I thought at the time he was going to go for the witch, but I've changed my mind. Cantrip carries weapons loaded with silver bullets."
"Mine is, too," admitted Leslie, sounding sheepish.
"Good for you," Anna told her. "You didn't even think about drawing, though."
"I don't know why not. I really should have."
"Charles did what you wanted to," Anna suggested. "Got the witch's hands off that poor boy. She was preparing to feed off him, and Charles stopped it."
"Feed?"
"Suck up the residual magic the killers left behind."
"Mmm," agreed Anna. "But you and I are not witches."
Leslie stared out in the harbor for a moment, then smiled. "I suppose that was it. I wanted to smack her, and your Charles did it for me."
There was a monument up ahead that looked something like the Washington Monument in miniature - or, since they were in Boston, like the Bunker Hill Monument. It was a tall, sea-battered, narrow-sided rectangle that lifted to the sky and ended in a point. On the ocean side of the path were some wharfs with a few people fishing from them.
"Still, Heuter..." Anna said. "You know Senator Heuter's views on werewolves, right? He's one of the proponents of that bill to include us as an endangered species."
Leslie frowned. "Endangered species?"
"And therefore not citizens," Anna said. "I don't suppose it would be of as much interest to you as it is to us werewolves. He also wants to RFID tag us as if we were pets who might go astray."
"RFID?"
"That one hasn't made it into a bill yet," Anna said. "But it's been in a couple of his speeches."
"That wouldn't be constitutional," said Leslie.
"It would if we were an endangered species." Anna looked at Brother Wolf. "I'd like to see someone try to put a radio control collar on Charles. It might be fun to watch on YouTube."
He gave her a look.
Anna raised the hand that wasn't holding the leash. "I'm not saying I'd do it. I'd just pay money to watch someone try."
Leslie gave her a thoughtful look as she stopped. "I thought that you were mismatched when I first met you two. But you aren't, are you?"
"No," Anna agreed. "I'm the only one who knows when he's teasing."
"If you say so," said Leslie, amused.
Anna looked around. "Is this where Jacob was found?"
"Over here."
Between the sidewalk and the sea stood a two-rail decorative pipe fence that the salt water had colored green and rust. Beyond that, a short rocky shoreline edged in green sea grasses gave way to a bit of water and a wall of worn wooden poles stuck side by side like soldiers keeping the waves off the land. Leslie pointed to a small patch of dirt between the wharf wall and the wooden poles.
Jacob would have been sheltered a little from the weather. Anna bent down a little closer than she needed to when she unclipped Charles's leash, and she breathed in his familiar scent to comfort herself. He waited until she stood up before he hopped over the fence and down to the strip of land below. Anna made no attempt to follow.
Leslie gave her a searching glance. "He can scent things better in wolf form than you can in human?"
"Yes. But he's also better at this than I am." Anna didn't feel a bit defensive about it. He'd taught her a lot, but..."He has