had been torn open, postmortem she thought, and the innards feasted on, as was the way of predators. The rich organ meat would always be devoured first.
What was strange, however, was that the man's skull had been stripped of flesh. His dead eyes stared from lidless sockets, and his clenched teeth gleamed like pearls in the lipless jaw. His tongue had been torn out and—Garrett presumed—devoured. In her experience, that did not seem very like a wolf.
"Are you learning anything?" Jack asked, as she probed delicately in yet another wound with the forceps and a rod.
"Yes," she said. The end of the glass rod caught and scratched on something at the bottom of the wound. "May I have a scalpel, please?"
He gave it to her, and with a few slices and scrapes she laid the red bone bare. The marrow showed in the break. She thought of a sawn soup bone.
A little work with the forceps, and she tugged the imbedded object free and held it up, ivory-yellow on the conical surface and whiter on the shell-shaped, concave break. "Do ghosts chip teeth?" she asked.
* * *
Later, when Jack and Abby Irene had returned and joined Sebastien and Phoebe in the café, Sebastien heard their story related in hushed tones. "Jack," he said. "The giant-killer."
He glanced up, trying to catch Jack's eye, but Jack's attention was firmly fixed on his hands. Even Phoebe's hand on his shoulder didn't rouse him, although he winced when she squeezed.
"So it would appear." Phoebe said. "Jack? Are you with us?"
"Not a bit of it." He shook his head, though, and grinned brightly. "I was just contemplating our options. Renault said you were a national hero, Monsieur Gosselin—"
Sebastien stuck his tongue out, feeling it slide cool and bloodless between dry lips. "Don't do that in public," Abby Irene said, from her bench beside the fire. Her dog lay along her knee, chin on his paws, ears up, eyes shining. "Unless you eat first."
"Explain?"
A mirror would benefit him not. The dead cast no shadows; nor did they reflect. It was Jack who said, "Your tongue is the color of chalk, Mr. Nast. Are you certain you're not hungry?"
"I'm fine," Sebastien said, knowing he lied. He could last another day. Perhaps two. "So we're hunting monsters, then?"
"If you'd seen the dead man you wouldn't be so facile," Jack said. But of course he would, and of course Jack knew it. They'd seen any number of dead men between them. Sebastien steepled his fingers and waited. "Yes, damn you. We're hunting monsters. And I haven't the barest idea how."
"I do," said Abby Irene, and at the tone of her voice Mike picked up his head. "But it will have to wait for nightfall. First we have to catch a werewolf."
"There aren't werewolves," Sebastian said. "They're dead. Long dead."
"And yet, they eat people," Jack said, but when Sebastien stared at him he sat back and folded his arms over his chest.
"The ghost wolves could be a coincidence. I swear they meant to warn me, not to threaten."
Abby Irene smiled. And when she did, Sebastien loved her, that brittle mortality and all its mad, fragile bravery. "Which is fortunate," she said. "Because catching ghosts is easy, and that, I have practice of."
* * *
The snow broke after lunch, and the party returned to their rooms. Only Phoebe had slept, and she insufficiently, so Sebastien was left to his knitting.
He was to rouse the others at moonrise, but when he went to awaken Jack he found him sitting up in bed, his arms wrapped around knees drawn up under the bedclothes and a pinched expression above his eyes.
"You're not worried about a little monster."
"I'm worried about you."
Sebastien put his hand over Jack's interlaced ones, knowing his hands were warm from sitting beside the fire. "Because of David?"
"Because you're starving yourself, and you can't hide it."
"A little hunger won't hurt me," Sebastien said. "I need you all strong, and I'm not about to go running off to clubs unless I must."
"Hah. By now, you know, I'm capable of estimating if I'm strong enough. I don't need you to daddy me, Monsieur Gosselin."
"Of course you don't. I just—"
Jack stiffened, shuddered. Sebastien was already leaning in, drawn by the enticing heat of blood, when he recollected himself and jerked back.
"Jack! What have you—"
Jack silently held up a glistening pin. A smear of red dulled the tip.
Sebastien's teeth sharped, his mouth flooding with anticoagulant saliva.
"Just a prick," he said, and while Sebastien sat frozen he