"I'd rather die."

"Then perhaps you've decided on goblin," her mother said.

"Have I mentioned that it's not like a costume party? I don't know who I want to be. The whole thing's permanent, you know. The last thing I want is to despise myself for choosing to be someone I shouldn't be."

"Permanency's better than trickery. You're going to have to live your consequences," her parents said in unison.

Yvette called several candystripers and demanded that they show her mother and father out. Yvette pretended that her parents would've apologized if she'd given them enough time. But she knew it was pretense. She invented people inside her head because it was better than being let down, continuously, by everyone she'd ever met.

The flat sterility of the halls and walls had greater echoes of life than Yvette did. Every breath was drudgery. She shambled to her room. The mood music played one of the Berlioz symphonies about getting hanged then some mopey darkwave ballad that Yvette kind of liked. She thought she'd smashed the machine. For now it was okay, but she'd imagine smashing the stupid thing again if she had to, in dreams or reality or somewhere in between, whatever it took to scrabble together a half-pretty sense of place . . .

Yvette resolved to stay inst.i.tutionalized, as long as it took. Anything to prevent herself from eating people.

What was there to do?

Tired, always sleepy, Yvette went back to bed. Dr. Rothgate came in the night and took her to his office again. He had trouble walking, his shuffling gait making double-footfall patters in the hallway. He'd lost the distinctive goggles of his last visit and seemed to be having problems with his vision.

"I'm here to warn you."

"You sound like everyone else."

"You haven't been out of the Inst.i.tute's walls for quite some time. Things have gotten eerie and ridiculous out there. Don't fool yourself into thinking that days are still their normal lengths or that maps lead people where they're going . . . "

A gooey dollop of blood was clinging to Dr. Rothgate's forehead. She still couldn't tell which way he'd gone. She wanted to clarify or crystallize her decision but wasn't sure how knowing Dr. Rothgate's choice would help. Yvette still hated both her options.

"You're summing it up perfectly. I want to be a person who rescues people when they're lost in those dark nights you described. I want to bring them a warm blanket and a candle, maybe a backup snack if they've been foolish enough to get lost without one. When the world goes creepy, everyone needs comfort and snacks."

"Wait. What do you want?" Dr. Rothgate asked, his face gnashing and sliding sideways like he'd become a demon or something far worse than a vampire or goblin.

Yvette didn't see any pruning shears anywhere. She decided she was awake, not having another nightmare.

"I want to be a giving and n.o.ble werewolf who wanders late nights when the walls between the worlds are thin. I'll have a large framepack with lots of helpful supplies like: needle-nosed pliers, bandages, protein shakes, safety pins, extra batteries. You know, I could walk the night and have a ready array of supplies to give fellow travelers: new, accurate maps, clean, dry socks, small musical instruments, aspirin . . . "

Dr. Rothgate interrupted, talking into an indestructible tape recorder, "I'm afraid the patient is not responding to treatment. Her politics are the politics of madness."

Dr. Willis appeared from nowhere, head lolling from side-to-side like a weary jack-in-the-box. Dr. Willis shouted, "This isn't about getting to do whatever you want. Life is a brutal, complicated, and messy adventure . . . "

"Right! And I want to a be a considerate and helpful werewolf . . . "

Now Yvette was of the opinion that she was dreaming after all. She used her hands to stop her chin from trembling.

"It's understandable that you identify with victims. It was very hard for us to turn our backs on the Hippocratic oath and learn to stalk the humans. We were forced to choose a side. There is no such thing as a werewolf . . . " Dr. Rothgate began. He grabbed his partner's hand and raised their arms in a victory salute.

"But maybe there is! And maybe they don't want darkness or souls. Maybe werewolves exist and they don't eat people at all."

Saliva oozed from Dr. Willis's bottom lip and his lips were swelling. Dr. Rothgate shouted how Yvette would be sorry if she let her malarkey continue, how the monsters of the world were going to cause her never-ending torment if she didn't surrender her malarkey.

With his green, liver-spotted forearms bulging and raised high in the air, Dr. Rothgate tore out into the hall so fast he could've been a punctured balloon and Dr. Willis snuck his pale, manicured fingers into the breast pocket of his pinstriped suit and, deftly, whipped out a syringe and poked Yvette's arm.

She hoped this meant she'd wake up.

As she blacked out, she thought of how his pointy fangs were too big for his mouth. Dr. Willis had always enunciated well. Now he would be in trouble.

It hurt for Yvette to come to. She was down in the bas.e.m.e.nt, where the strangest experiments had occurred. This was the room with the sensory deprivation tank and the orgone box.

"We have ways of making you talk," Dr. Willis said.

"I thought you didn't believe in confrontation."

"No, our new tactics are all about confrontation. We've done a 180-degree turn. Now we hurt people for fun. It's delightful and I'm willing to remove pieces of you to change your mind," Dr. Willis said, picking up a scalpel.

"I haven't signed my permission slip," Yvette said, realizing she was bound to the operating table by some sort of nylon harness.

"It's a symbolic technicality," Dr. Willis said, waving the scalpel as if conducting an atonal overture.

Yvette set her jaw, her every fiber wanting to flee. Instead, she remembered what she'd learned about granules of serenity and whispered, "We've known each other a long time. How's about you untie me from this bed and give me twenty minutes alone with the form and I fill it out?"

"I will find my partner and consult with him," Dr. Willis said as he locked the door on his way out. Whatever he'd injected into her was having its effect. The room darkened and Larissa appeared in another visitation or dream.

"Yvette, may I call you Evie? I've always contracted your name in my mind."

"No. Are you here to rescue me or are you just pretending to be nice?"

"I'm your stupid hallucination. I can babble with you-but I don't think I can interact with the material world, it'd spoil the illusion and I'd vanish."

"Okay. That's not worth the risks. Tell me about your mom."

"Freud's a joke. Remember that scene in Blade Runner? Scope out Jung if you want real insight into consciousness."

"No, I just want to understand you."

"And biography's a good place to start? My mom turned into a goblin. Never met my dad. It sucked. I swore it'd never happen to me. End of story."

"Listen, please. I think you're special, Larissa. And I believe in you, but you only got close. I think there's another way out-one that's tailored to me."

"I'm not here to mislead you, you know. Everyone else has lost it. You need to cling to something or the world mutates into nothing but mischief and swerving alleys. Make your call, Evie. Maybe I was wrong to bail . . . "

Yvette realized that the drugs were rearranging her thoughts so severely that she might be seeing things that weren't there.

Drs. Willis and Rothgate charged back into the bas.e.m.e.nt. Dr. Willis' face was covered with blood-flecked saliva and Dr. Rothgate's hair had turned ghostly white, but both were in better moods than when they'd left.

"We, silly little girl who doesn't know what she wants, have brought you your permission slip," Dr. Willis said, grabbing a lab coat off a wall hook and using it to wipe the bubbly blood from his cheeks and chin.

"But we don't want you to be a baby about this. You draw a fancy-schmancy, stylized G or V and you're gone within twenty-four hours. Vampires are snappy dressers and good with money. Goblins make great demo tapes for reality TV shows and leave riotous messages on your voicemail but have a tendency to become pear-shaped at middle age," Dr. Rothgate said.

"Is it really that tough a choice? You've gone over and over it. Once you accept the change, you'll love it like a new fetish, like psychic incisions have implanted an iguana under your skin. Sure, it'll make you do things you don't want, like controlling your eye and muscle movements even when you think you're too tired to drink blood or slurp souls and would rather put your feet up, read from your antiquarian library, maybe puff a cigar-but, eventually, you'll learn to pretend it's a form of symbiosis, even though you'll know deep down inside that it's really a parasite." By now, Dr. Willis had managed to get the blood off his face, except for a small spot on his neck.

Yvette fought the nylon straps. Why were these two going on and on about this? She didn't want anything that either of their species were offering.

Dr. Rothgate tried a different angle, pulling up a chair and speaking slowly, "We've made our decisions. And, yep, we both eat people, even nice ones like that Timothy you used to dream about, but the rest of the world has crept right over the shadowy brink . . . "

" . . . everyone knows who you are now, Yvette. And they know that you've been here forever. You're famous, on the news twice a day, revered just like their precious, dead Larissa . . . " Dr. Willis said, joining in.

Yvette interrupted them with a quick but loud shriek.

"Have we all inhaled a truckload of ether? Is that it? Let's stop monkeying around. You both idolize her. You have her paintings on your office walls and carry around indestructible ca.s.sette recorders because she was braver than you'll ever be. I've figured out my middle path, something that keeps me alive and keeps me from turning out like you-but let's not fool ourselves, okay? A truly brave person is willing to die for what they believe in, even if n.o.body's looking. So here's the gig: I read your musty edition of Malleus Maleficarum and it has a ton about werewolves. So that's what I'm going with. I'm going to be a helpful werewolf, even if it kills me."

Both doctors began to beat her, pelting her with various objects from the room. Eventually they used the orgone box, but the sensory deprivation tank proved too heavy, even with grunting.

Yvette lost consciousness or fell through another layer cake of dreams and alternate realities, one or the other. She wasn't sleeping or dreaming or awake and her body hurt like she'd been beaten with a roomful of heavy objects. It took her twenty minutes to figure out who she was and where she was.

Much to her surprise, Yvette was on the floor of her room and still alive. The vase by the bed overflowed with pink carnations. They smelled like a ballerina's smile.

Yvette grimaced and decided that she didn't believe a word the doctors had said. The lights flickered and she screamed with all the pain her battered body was able to muster. The doctors were the ones who were full of malarkey, inmates in their own asylum, pervy lunatic fringers who demanded certainty because they vanished if they stopped claiming that they had everything sorted out and clearly defined . . . paranoia proven true, every st.i.tch of inner peace unraveled . . .

Lumpy, swollen bruises coated her flesh. It was extraordinary that she could even rise from the bed, a painful challenge to crane her neck far enough backward to see the furry tuft in the rinky-d.i.n.k inst.i.tutional mirror. The tail she'd dreamed of was starting to form beneath the cl.u.s.tered bruises at the base of her spine.

Yvette thought she was mutating into what she wanted to be and it was enough to help her forget ninety percent of the heartache she'd been through. She wondered how hard it would be to get stainless steel whiskers implanted.

Lost and startled, the wolf coming to life under her skin, Yvette stumbled through the gothic hallways, finally finding metal double doors and exiting through them. She didn't recognize the foggy and rain-slicked street. She had never been to this place before.

For the first time in a long time, she wanted a cigarette or two.

With grit and maybe blood in her mouth, she discovered a backpack on her shoulders and opened it. Several pairs of recently-sharpened pruning shears tumbled to the cobblestones. Eventually, she might take a moment to pack the bundle of supplies that she'd planned on preparing. At least she was a werewolf and not a vampire or a goblin.

Crawling deeper into the night, Yvette wanted to growl and make further use of her new teeth. She sniffed delicacies in the air and hoped she would never have to sleep again.

When she wasn't gnawing people, prying their skulls open and drowning in the sustenance of their frail, futile and thwarted memories, she might attempt to help the endangered. Maybe, someday, she could spare someone as innocent as Timothy.

But for now, Yvette was too famished. If she had understood how hungry the transformation would make her, her choice wouldn't have ever mattered. She was too ravenous to waste time wishing there had ever been another way.

THE PACK AND THE PICK-UP ARTIST.

MIKE BROTHERTON.

Prime had barely taken two steps into the dark club before one of his students accosted him.

"Sage just struck out twice," the excited guy said. "He said he's going back in."

"Cool." Sage was Prime's co-instructor at the weekend boot camp. Guys would fly into San Francisco and plunk down three thousand dollars for pick-up instruction and supervised nighttime field work. Out sarging in the evenings, the students were supposed to be the ones approaching the sets while the instructors gave advice and debriefed. Still, it was normal for the guys to want to see their instructors demonstrate their prowess, which normally wasn't a problem.

Apparently tonight it was, for Sage.

Prime looked beyond the student to a hot babe, a seven, no, seven-and-a-half, standing with a couple of guys further into the Den. He smiled and waved in the direction of HB7.5 and pushed past his student.

She smiled and half raised her hand, a little uncertain. It was a standard trick to force a show of interest. She thought she knew him, or that he at least knew her, and didn't want to look like she didn't remember.

Still smiling, Prime eased through the clumps of people, lightly touched her shoulder, and settled in next to her. "Hey, how's it going?"

The guys she was with turned toward him, expressions blank.

The girl still had a half smile on her face and gave an unsurprising response. "It's going okay. What about you?"

The guys turned away to talk to each other, a.s.suming that she knew him, just like they were supposed to.

He wasn't particularly interested in HB7.5, but it was better to be in set than not, and it would build his social proof while he checked out how Sage was doing.

Prime's partner got laid like a rock star, but beyond that similarity, he was not at all like Prime. Sage peac.o.c.ked, wearing outrageous fancy clothes and even make-up (always accompanied by the perfect cologne), while Prime threw on the same jeans, leather jacket, and cowboy boots night after night. Sage worked and taught pick-up using a very mechanical system and was a great believer in the concept of "fake it till you make it" while Prime often improvised his pick-ups, and believed that if you made yourself into a quality guy the women would follow naturally. To top it off, Sage was a sushi-eating vegaquarian to Prime's carnivorous ways.

HB7.5 was prattling on in response to a question he'd asked her about whether it was infidelity for a girlfriend to make out with a girl, and normally he would have cut her off, but he had just spotted Sage.

His partner, sporting a white suit and hat tonight, was approaching a large group, a mixed seven set, lounging around a fireplace at back. From a technical point of view, Sage looked good at first. He went right in and engaged the whole group, drawing everyone's attention. Nice body language, good kino, touching three of the group within the first fifteen seconds. Still it was all for naught. Prime saw that the attempt was doomed, as the group's body language shifted to lock him out.

Engaging a group of seven people all at once in a noisy club was not an easy thing to do, but a task well within Sage's capabilities. Sometimes failure wasn't your fault-you engaged particular individuals or sets who were not open to being approached by strangers-but this was rare. Almost everyone liked to talk with the coolest guy in the place, the life of the party. Almost everyone.

The girl he had just met continued to jabber on like they were old friends, allowing Prime to take a closer look at the set. Three men, four women, all attractive, both older and younger than him. He paired off the couples based on their seating arrangement and body language. The single girl in the group, well, she was breathtaking when he focused on her. Perfect cheekbones, beautiful smile, and huge eyes. Superhot babe, an eleven on the ten-point scale. SHB11 possessed a raw s.e.xuality dancing in her model-quality features.

SHB11 was worth the risk of failure.

Failure was only certain when you didn't try.

As Sage was patting one of the guy's shoulders on the way out and trying to make his failure to hook the set inconspicuous to observers, Prime was telling HB7.5 that he'd needed to go say hi to a friend and was making his own departure.

As Prime made his own approach he pa.s.sed by Sage. He smiled at his friend and gave him a quick high-five.

"Impossible set, man," said Sage.

"Nothing's impossible," said Prime.

"Then show me how it's done, Professor Prime."

Prime just grinned at him and moved toward the fireplace.

He didn't bother to open the set properly, the way Sage had done. Prime just bulled his way through to the fireplace and said, "Excuse me," as he squeezed in to sit down on the bricks between SHB11 and one of her friends. "This fire looks awesome."

It wasn't exactly textbook. As an approach, he deserved points for placing himself next to his target, but that was about it. He had no doubt that Sage had tried three variations on textbook approaches and had failed with all of them, so why not?

"Chilly out there tonight," he said, leaning back toward the fire.

There was an awkward moment as they evaluated him. He'd just invaded their s.p.a.ce with a barely plausible excuse and they were trying to figure out if they were cool with that or not.

Prime gave them the moment, soaking in the heat. It was a little chilly outside tonight, that was the truth, and he felt no shame in taking the seat he had now.

He was a bold man who broke the rules and rarely felt fear, but at that moment, suddenly and surprisingly, despite the heat, the hairs on the back of his neck rose up. He felt . . . vulnerable.

That was odd. He'd set aside his approach anxiety years ago and just didn't give a c.r.a.p anymore how anyone received him.

There was something different about this group.