"That's kind of hard to say," he told her, shrugging. "Time's funny," he added, after a while. "You know?"

"Sure." She brought down her rock with a clang. Tiny chips flicked off, joined a pile of the same between her feet.

She knew very little about Dzo, other than that she trusted him.

She knew his name was pronounced like "Joe," except not really, that was just the closest her Anglo tongue could get to the sound.

She also knew that he was not human.

Instead he was some kind of animal spirit, the incarnation of the musquash. He was immortal and he could travel between one place and another, even into locked and hidden places, as long as there was some water there. He could swim through water in a way that she could not, in some kind of mystical fashion where all water was one. She didn't claim to understand it at all, but she had relied on this ability often.

More important than all that, he was a friend. He'd been Powell's only friend for decades before Chey came along, following the werewolf as he migrated north, away from human habitation. Unlike every human being on the planet, Dzo had nothing to fear from a werewolf. When Chey had become a lycanthrope herself he had saved her life a few times-and helped her find her way when she needed it the most.

"Okay. Maybe let's try something easier. Where were you born?"

Dzo grinned. His teeth were big and brown and she would have preferred if he'd kept his mouth closed. "I'm not sure if I was. If I really think back, really, really far back-I used to live somewhere up there." He pointed north. "Good people up there. They worked hard but they laughed a lot, too. And there was always music. They didn't look like you two."

The rocks slammed together with a resonant sound. Like the world's most primitive drum band. "Were they Indians? I mean, Inuit?" she asked.

He had to think about that for a while. "No," he said. "Before they came along. I think they were, you know. Whatchamacallems."

Chey squinted as she tried to remember her social studies classes from grade school. Because she wasn't paying attention she missed as her rocks came together and one of them skidded off the top of the other, flying off into some bushes. Sighing, she reached for another. "Before the Inuit there were just the Paleo-Indians," she said. Which would make him at least six thousand years old. "You're telling me you used to live with the Paleo-Indians?"

He shook his head. "Nah. Before them. What did they have before them?" He turned to look at Powell, who was sucking on a bleeding thumb. "Remember, we talked about this once? The first people up here. The first ones who could talk."

Powell pressed his lips together as if stifling a laugh. He glanced at Chey and rolled his eyes. "Nowadays we would call them Neanderthals."

Eventually they had three decent axes. Dzo's was the best, the blade thin and tapering to a slick edge. The stone he'd used was flecked with mica and streaked with darker stone. It looked like a real tool when he'd lashed it firmly to a handle as thick as his thumb. Chey's ax looked more like a rock tied to a twig. She was at least pleased to see that Powell hadn't done much better than she had.

The next step was to take down some trees. Chey was enough of a twenty-first-century eco-liberal to feel real guilt at chopping down any growing thing, but she knew they needed the wood if they were going to build themselves a house. She picked a thin sapling that was kind of dead on one side, figuring she could put it out of its misery. Then she took a good stance, brought her ax up like a baseball bat, and brought it swinging down toward the tree's trunk in a perfect arc.

The head of her ax collided with the tree trunk-and tore out of its lashings. It spun away from her and bounced off another tree before crashing into a pile of dead leaves. She was left holding a broken stick.

She looked around quickly to see if Powell had seen that. He was facing away from her, so maybe he hadn't. He was smashing away at his own tree, a big old larch so thick he wouldn't have been able to get his fingers around the trunk. So far he'd managed to make a tiny dent in the bark.

Forcing herself not to curse or even sigh, she went to find the ax head so she could re-lash it to her stick.

By nightfall they had, between the three of them, brought down two trees and started to strip off the branches. Dzo assured them that wasn't a bad showing for stone ax work, and that they could be proud of themselves.

Powell muttered something under his breath that didn't sound as if he was very pleased with himself.

The work had been hard. Chey's muscles were tight and sore. She hadn't got as tired as she'd expected, though she had built up a pretty nasty sweat. She stripped off her clothes-both men had seen her naked plenty of times before, so she didn't bother with modesty-and ran down to the lake to jump in and wash herself off. The water was frigid and she started shivering instantly, but it felt so good that she didn't care.

She ducked her head under and scrubbed out her hair, then surfaced and started swimming slow circles around the water, just stretching out her muscles, letting the soreness and stiffness of the day ease away. Eventually even her supernaturally tough body started to get really chilled, so she swam back to shore. The bottom was jagged with small rocks and she picked her way carefully along toward a place where the shore didn't look too muddy.

A noise from up on the eroded bank startled her and she spun around, splashing. It had sounded like someone stepping on a twig.

Her first reaction was to cover her breasts with her arms. She looked up at the shore but couldn't see anyone there-it was a jutting outcrop of mud that leaned over the water, an eroded bank thickly overgrown with small evergreens. "Powell?" she called. "Is that you?"

There was no reply, but she saw branches up there moving, as if someone were stepping back into the shadows.

"Did you want to come swimming with me? Or maybe you're just being a gentleman and bringing me my clothes," she said, laughing. Still there was no reply. She stared into the clump of trees, trying desperately to see him up there, but it was getting dark. The last blue light of the day was lying in great ragged sheets on the water and she could already see stars overhead.

Was Powell spying on her? Was he watching her, too embarrassed to say anything?

She looked straight into the trees, as if she could see him plainly, and lowered her arms, exposing her breasts. Then she took a long stride toward the water's edge, straight toward him. As she came closer the water got shallower and she could feel water streaming from her hips and belly. If he wanted a good look, she would give him one.

It was a dangerous game she was playing, she knew. Feeling very wicked, she reached up and laced her fingers behind her neck, then slowly, sinuously, arched her back.

From the tree line came the smallest of sounds. The noise of someone delicately adjusting their weight.

Like a wolf, she pounced, leaping up the side of the muddy bank, grabbing wildly at tree branches to haul herself up. She would pounce on him, she thought, laughing, pin him down to the ground and-and then-she would tickle him, yeah, until he begged for mercy.

But when she rushed into the little stand of trees, her eyes flashing, there was nobody there. She reached down and patted the ground and found that it was still slightly warm, as if someone had been crouching there for a while, but there was no other sign of anybody having been there.

"Lousy jerk," she said, mock-pouting.

She found her clothes where she'd left them, in a heap near the camp, and put them on hurriedly. Dzo had a pretty good fire going by the time she arrived, made out of the branches they'd stripped off their two paltry logs. Powell was crouched on the far side of the blaze, roasting a squirrel on a long stick. Dzo had some roots and berries mashed up in a cooking pot-where he'd got that she had no clue, maybe he'd had it the whole time hidden away in the bulk of his heavy furs-and was making his own nasty dinner, since he was a vegetarian.

She walked up to the fire and let it steam the water out of her damp hair. "Come clean," she said to Powell. "Did I catch you peeping back there, or what?"

"What are you on about?" he asked.

"Back by the water. Was that you in the trees?"

He frowned and shook his head. "I've been right here the whole time. With Dzo."

Dzo looked up from his cookery and nodded. "I saw him catch that varmint. It was gross, the way he snapped its neck."

"It was humane," Powell insisted.

Neither of them seemed very concerned that she'd seen someone down by the water. Then again, she told herself, she hadn't seen anyone either. She'd just heard something. It could very well have been an animal. She blushed a little to think she'd just given Bambi a free show.

Embarrassed now herself, she reached across the fire and grabbed the squirrel off Powell's stick. "You're going to burn that," she said, and tore off a piece of meat, still a little bloody, to shove it in her mouth.

In Toronto there was a very exclusive club, a little place above a bookshop. The club did not advertise. It had no sign out front and no one watching its door. To get in you had to possess a key that fit into the lock of a cheap metal fire door with cracked gray paint.

The rooms beyond that door were sumptuously appointed in dark, polished wood and green leather. Gathered around roaring fires were massive armchairs where members of the club could doze all day if they wished, or smoke cigars, or drink single malts carried to them on silver platters by servants dressed in livery. For those who didn't drink, coffee or bottled water were cheerfully provided. No music played and no newspapers were allowed inside. There were certainly no televisions permitted anywhere on the premises.

Beyond the open common rooms out front there were a few private rooms, small, cozy spaces containing little more than a table and a few chairs. There was a bedroom for anyone who'd had a few too many tumblers of whisky. And that was all.

The club's dues were fifty thousand dollars a year. Most of that money went to a private security firm, which routinely swept for listening devices and subjected every member and employee to a rigorous background check. The hushed conversations taking place around the roaring fires were of the kind that were not meant for too many ears. The club provided seamless, invisible discretion of a kind the twenty-first century was all too short of.

In one of the private rooms at the back of the club, a man named Preston Holness sat waiting to have just such a conversation.

Holness worked, technically, for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the governmental organization responsible for identifying and neutralizing threats at home and abroad. He was what was called, in his line of work, an undeclared asset. This status meant he could operate with a certain degree of latitude that more public figures did not enjoy.

Enjoy was probably the wrong word. Holness did not sleep well at night. He did things, for a living, that the Canadian government tended to deplore and condemn in public. Should he be caught doing them he would be disavowed, the government denying all knowledge of his activities. He would probably go to jail for the rest of his life. He was expected to take this in his stride, but in fact it had given him ulcers.

And this meeting might just give him a coronary, he thought. He did not expect it to go well. He had prepared for it carefully. He'd had a manicure and a haircut, and he had dressed in his best Armani suit and silk Hermes tie. His shoes, which could not be seen under the table, were worth more than a thousand dollars.

Holness liked to dress well. It was a passion, one that made him feel good about himself and gave him a certain amount of confidence in an uneasy world. Still, when he heard a knock at the door, he jumped in his seat.

The door opened silently and a young man stepped through. He was perhaps half of Holness's age, with whitish blond hair and a pair of wire-framed glasses with rectangular lenses. His suit was made of silk. Holness didn't recognize the cut, but he knew quality haberdashery when he saw it. The young man looked like a very sharp, very tough lawyer, which he probably was.

"Hello," the young man said. "My name is Demetrios."

It was not his real name, of course. "Demetrios" was a code name used by a certain oil company that did business with the Canadian government. A lot of business. The company pumped billions of dollars and thousands of jobs into the Canadian economy every year. That meant the government wanted to keep this young man happy, no matter what the cost.

Things were already off on the wrong foot.

Demetrios's company had bought up a parcel of land in the Arctic, beneath which lay one of the largest oil deposits in the Western hemisphere. Before they could start exploiting the deposit, however, the lycanthropes had moved in. Now work crews couldn't be sent in to drill, because the lycanthropes would just kill and eat them. The CSIS had been given the task of removing the lycanthropes, and in this they had failed. If Demetrios wanted someone to blame for that failure, it was Holness's head on the chopping block.

Holness guided Demetrios to a seat on the far side of the table before sitting back down. "I'd really like to apologize on behalf of-"

"Robert Fenech fucked up," Demetrios said.

"Fenech is dead." Holness frowned in mock compassion. "He will be missed. He was a true patriot, and an excellent operative."

"He was a pathetic little boy, who thought he was James Bond." Demetrios folded his arms in front of him. "You should never have sent him on this mission. We asked for something very simple. There was one lycanthrope you needed to kill."

"Not an easy task, under any conditions," Holness said. "And given the lycanthrope's location-the country up there in the Northwest Territories is notoriously treacherous, even in good weather ..." He gave Demetrios a little smile and spread his hands in resignation.

"You could have sent in troops to do the job properly. Instead you sent in a subcontractor and a civilian. The civilian was infected by the lycanthrope. Now there are two of them for us to worry about."

Holness couldn't deny that. He could only try to explain himself. "It was felt, at the time, that sending in troops would be too great a risk. Public opinion is already so divided about the wars in the Middle East. If we sent in our boys and some of them got killed-well, the prime minister is going to have a hard enough time getting re-elected already. He doesn't need that kind of bad press."

Demetrios fumed in silence for a minute. Then he leaned forward and spoke very slowly and very carefully, as if he thought Holness might have trouble understanding him. "We like Canada."

Holness smiled. "We aim to please," he said.

Demetrios shook his head. "We like Canada because we like doing business with civilized people. We would very much like to keep our business here. But I can assure you there are other oil deposits, in Venezuela, in Iraq, in Indonesia. Places we could learn to love, if only because there are no lycanthropes there. Now, if we have to resort to moving our business out of this country a significant part of your nation's gross domestic product will evaporate overnight. So it seems you and I have a mutual problem. So far I haven't heard of any possible solutions."

Holness fought down the urge to adjust his tie. He had one card left to play. "I have someone in the field right now," he said.

Demetrios didn't smile. He didn't look like the kind of man who ever did. But his posture changed, he relaxed a fraction of a degree, and he nodded in such a way as to suggest he was willing to listen.

"Let me tell you about a man named Varkanin." He reached down into his briefcase to take out the blue-skinned Russian's dossier. "I think you'll be pleased."

Demetrios leaned forward to see the photograph stapled to the front of the file folder. Holness couldn't help but notice the way the younger man's suit draped as he moved.

"Do you mind my asking?" Holness said. "Is that Dolce and Gabbana?"

Demetrios plucked at his own sleeve. "Savile Row. I have them made custom."

"It's ... gorgeous," Holness said. "If this all works out, maybe you'll give me the name of your tailor."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," Demetrios told him.

The temperature started to drop even before they'd finished their paltry dinner. The air got crisp and thin and suddenly Chey was hugging herself, pulling her parka closer around her. It was the first time in a while she remembered being truly cold.

It got dark in the little camp, too, even with the fire's embers popping and flickering merrily away. Exhausted by the day's labors, Dzo curled up near the ashes and pulled his wooden mask down over his face. In a moment he was snoring, a discordant rhythm of wheezes and grunts that made Chey laugh.

She was tired, herself, but there was no point in going to sleep now. In a few hours the moon would rise. She never liked going to sleep as a human and waking up naked and sore in a snowbank-if she was going to transform into a wolf, she preferred to be prepared. So she rose stiffly from her place by the fire and brushed off the seat of her pants, thinking she would have an easier time staying awake if she was at least standing up. Powell was staring into the coals, toying with a splinter of wood in his hands, tearing off fibrous chunks of it and throwing them into the dying light. Chey cleared her throat until he looked up, then gestured with a nod of her head toward a nearby copse of trees.

"You don't need to let me know that you're going off to heed the call of nature," he said.

She sighed dramatically. "I'm taking a walk," she told him. "I'd like your company, if you don't mind."

He muttered in frustration, but eventually he got up and followed her. They headed into the near-perfect darkness of the trees, lit only sporadically by a ray of starlight that managed to wind its way down through the sparse branches of the pines. "I wanted to tell you about something that happened earlier. I guess I was too embarrassed to say it in front of Dzo," she said, her voice startlingly loud in the otherwise flawless silence. She grabbed a branch of a birch tree and pulled at it until the entire tree swayed, then sighed again before telling him about how she'd thought she was being watched when she took her bath.

"You're probably right," he said, when she'd finished. She could just see the white plume of his breath streaming out away from him with each word. "Just an animal. I haven't seen any trace of people in this area. If I had, we would already be moving again."

"I know. I just figured it was the kind of thing I should share."

She could barely make out his silhouette nodding in agreement. "That's good. Good thinking." He took a step closer to her and without warning he was touching her face. She started to flinch away and she felt him tense up. It could have ended there.

Instead she forced herself to relax, then leaned into his touch.

His fingers traced the curve of her cheek. Brushed her temple. They were quite warm, which was nice in the cold night. Very nice.

"You were giving me a show, hmm?" he asked.

"What?"

"In the water. When you thought I was watching you."

"It felt like the right thing to do at the time." She reached up and took his hand off her face. But she held onto it, inside her own. His hand was rough with work and very large, the fingers thick and square at the tips. She couldn't remember ever holding it before. "Now I'm not ... sure."

"You're not?" he asked. "You've been acting so strangely," he said. "Are you alright? It's just-"

"I'm attracted to you," she told him. "Lord knows I have plenty of reasons not to be." She felt her face harden in bitterness. "You made me what I am today. You killed my father. You hurt me, and gave me your curse in the process. I wouldn't be here right now, having this conversation, if you hadn't fucked up my life so badly."

"That was my wolf, not me."

"And sometimes I can believe in the difference."

He dropped his head. "When we're just human again. After we find the cure-"

"What exactly would that change, even if it was possible? We'll still be us. Just all the time. I like you, Powell. That's the hardest part of this. I think if I could hate your guts, really detest you, it would be a lot easier to let you touch me. Things would be less complicated. As it is I keep second-guessing myself."

He pulled his hand away from hers. "Don't," he said.

She was confused. "Huh?" she asked. Her breath came out in a broad pale cloud as her question crystallized in the air before her.

"Don't toy with me," he told her. He sounded a little angry, she thought. "If you want to be with me in ... that way, then fine. You know I have no objections."

She pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. In that way? No objections? Sometimes she forgot how old he really was, and how old-fashioned. What a prude he could be.