All this was fine as far as it went, but a lot of the paper records that modern man carried around with him from birth, were missing from Mr. Fitzroy's life. Not the important things, Celluci admitted, shoving his shirttails down behind the waistband of his pants, but enough of the little things that it set off warning bells.

He couldn't dig any deeper, not without having his initial less than ethical investigations come to light, but he could lay his findings before Vicki. She used to be a cop. She'd know what the holes in Fitzroy's background meant.

Organized crime. The police didn't run into it often in Canada, but the pattern fit.

Celluci grinned. Vicki would demand an immediate explanation. He hoped he'd be there to hear Fitzroy try and talk his way out of it.

2:15. Family obligations would keep him in Scarborough until five at the earliest and even at that his sisters would squawk. He shuddered. Two hours of eating burned hamburgers, surrounded by a horde of shrieking nieces and nephews, listening to his brothers-in-law discussing the rising crime statistics and criticizing the police; what a way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

"Okay, so if the gun part ofRod and Gun Club refers to the rifle range and stuff," Peter, having convinced Rose that he should have a chance to drive, pulled carefully out of the parking lot, "what's the rod mean?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," Vicki admitted, smoothing the directions out on her knee. The napkin had a few grease stains on it, but the map was actually quite legible. "Maybe they teach fly-tying or something."

"Fly-tying?" Rose repeated.

"That'd take one real small la.s.so, there, pardner," Peter added, turning north.

Vicki spent the next few blocks explaining what she knew about tying bits of feathers to hooks. As explanations went, it was sketchy. Neither, when asked, did she have any idea why theoretically mature adults would want to stand thigh deep in an ice cold stream being eaten alive by insects so that they could, if lucky, eat something that didn't even look like food when cooked but rather stared up at them off the plate in its full fishy entirety. She was, however, willing to allow that it took all types.

Although Peter drove as meticulously as Rose, he was more easily distracted - any number of bright or moving things pulled his attention from the road.

So once again the wer are inside statistical norms,Vicki thought, squinting through the glare on the windshield,and we see why teenage girls have fewer accidents than teenage boys. "Red light, Peter."

"I see it."

It took Vicki a moment to realize they weren't slowing. "Peter. ..."His eyes were wide and his canines showed. His right leg pumped desperately at the floor. "The brakes, they aren't catching."

"s.h.i.t!"

And then they were in the intersection.

Vicki heard the squeal of tires. The world slowed. She turned, could see the truck, too close already to read the license plate, and knew they didn't have a hope in h.e.l.l of not being hit. She screamed at Peter to hit the gas and the car lurched forward. The grille of the truck filled the window and then, with an almost delicate precision, it began to push through the rear pa.s.senger door. Bits of broken gla.s.s danced in the air, refracting the sunlight into a million sharp-edged rainbows.

The world returned to normal speed as the two vehicles spun together across the intersection, tortured metal and rubber shrieking, until the back of the BMW slammed into a light pole and the truck bounced free.

Vicki straightened. Covering her face to protect it had kept her gla.s.ses where they belonged.

Thankfully,she pushed them up her nose, then reached over and turned off the ignition. For the first sudden instant of silence, her heart was the only sound she could hear, booming in her ears like an entire percussion section, then, from a distance, as though the volume were slowing being turned up, came voices, horns, and, farther away still, sirens. She ignored it all.

Peter had his head down on the steering wheel, pillowed on his folded arms. Vicki unsnapped her seat belt and gripped his shoulder lightly.

"Peter?"

The lower half of his face dripped blood but, as far as she could tell, it came from his nose.

"The brakes," he panted. "They - they didn't work."

"I know." She tightened her grip slightly. He was beginning to tremble and although he deserved it, although they all deserved it, this was not the time for hysterics. "Are you all right?"

He blinked, glanced down the length of his body, then back at her. "I think so."

"Good. Take off your seat belt and see if your door will open." Her tone was an echo of the one Nadine had used that morning and Peter responded to it without questions. Giving thanks for learned behaviors, Vicki pulled herself up on her knees and leaned over into the back to check on Rose.

The rear pa.s.senger side door had buckled, but essentially held. The inner covering and twisted pieces of the actual mechanisms it contained spread across three quarters of the seat which now tilted crazily up toward the roof. The rear window had blown out. The side window had blown in. Most of the gla.s.s had crumbled into a million tiny pieces, but here and there sizable shards had been driven into the upholstery.

A triangular blade about eight inches long trembled just above Rose's fetal curl, its point buried deep in the door lining. Gla.s.s glittered in her pale hair like ice in a snow field and her arms and legs were covered with a number of superficial cuts.

Vicki reached over and yanked the gla.s.s dagger free. A 1976 BMW didn't have plastic-coated safety gla.s.s.

"Rose?"

She slowly uncurled. "Is it over?"

"It's over."

"Am I alive?"

"You're alive." Although she wouldn't have been had she been sitting on the other side of the car."Peter. ..."

"Is fine."

"I want to howl."

"Later," Vicki promised. "Right now, unlock your door so Peter can get it open."

While Peter helped his sister from the back, Vicki clambered over the gearshift and out the driver's door, dragging her bag behind her, and throwing it up on her shoulder the moment she was clear, its familiar weight a rea.s.surance in the chaos. A small crowd had gathered and more cars were stopping.

One of them, she was pleased to note, belonged to the London Police and other sirens could be heard coming closer.

With the twins comforting each other and essentially unharmed, Vicki made her way around the car to check on the driver of the truck. Blood ran down one side of his face from a cut over his left eye and the right side of his neck was marked by a angry red friction burn from the shoulder strap of his seat belt.

"Jesus Christ, lady," he moaned as she stopped beside him. "Just look at my truck." Although the ma.s.sive b.u.mper had absorbed most of the impact, the grille had been driven back into the radiator.

"Man, I didn't even have fifty klicks on this things yet. My wife is going to have my a.s.s." He reached down and lightly touched the one whole headlight. "Quartz-halogen. Seventy-nine bucks a pop."

"Is everyone all right here?"

Vicki knew what she'd see before she turned; she'dused that exact tone too many times herself. The London police constable was an older man, gray hair, regulation mustache, regulation neutral expression.

His younger partner was with the twins, and the two uniforms from the second car were taking charge of traffic and crowd control. She could hear Peter beginning to babble about the brake failure and decided to let him be for the moment. A little bit of hysteria would only help convince the police they were telling the truth. People who were too calm were often perceived as having something to hide."As far as I can tell," she said, "we're all fine."

His brows rose. "And you are?"

"Oh. Sorry. Vicki Nelson. I was a detective with the Metro Toronto Police until my eyes went." It didn't even hurt to say it anymore. Maybe she was in shock. "I was in the BMW." She dug out her ID and pa.s.sed it over.

"You were driving?"

"No, Peter was."

"It's your car?"

"No, a friend's. He lent it to us for the day. When Peter tried to stop for the light, the brakes had gone.

We couldn't stop." She waved a hand at the truck. "He didn't have a chance of missing us."

"Right out in front of me," the driver of the truck agreed, swiping at the blood on his cheek. "Not even fifty klicks on this baby. And the whole front end'll have to be repainted." He sighed deeply, his belly rising and falling. "The wife is going to have my a.s.s."

"They were working earlier?"

"We stopped just down the road without any ..." The world slid a little sideways. "... trouble."

"I think you'd better sit down." The constable's hand was around her elbow.

"I'm fine," Vicki protested.

He smiled slightly. "You've got a purple lump the size of a goose egg on your temple. Offhand, I'd say you're not quite fine."

She touched her temple lightly and brilliant white stars shot inward from her fingertips. All of a sudden, it hurt. A lot. Her whole body hurt. And she had no memory of how or when it had happened. "I'm getting too old for this s.h.i.t," she muttered, letting the constable lead her to the side of the road.

"Tell me about it." He lowered her gently to the curb. "You just sit there for a minute. We'll have the ambulance people take a look at you."

Everything appeared to be about six inches beside where it should be. "I think," she said slowly. "That might not be a bad idea. The ownership, insurance, everything, is in the glove compartment."

He nodded and headed for the car. Vicki stopped keeping track of things for a while.

When the ambulance attendants suggested she go to the hospital, she didn't put up much of a fight, only pulled Dr. Dixon's phone number from the depths of her bag, asked that he be called immediately, and insisted on Rose and Peter coming with her. The police, who had soon recognized the family resemblance between the twins and one of their own people, overruled the protests of the attendants and helped all three of them into the back of the ambulance.

"We're not charging you with anything," the older constable told her, handing up the tow truck driver's card, "but we will be checking with the mechanics about those brakes. This is the garage he's taking the car to."

Vicki nodded carefully and stowed the card in her bag.

As the ambulance pulled away, the tow truck driver looked down at the wreck of the BMW and shook his head. "Good thing they weren't driving domestic."

"Storm. Storm!"

Storm gave Cloud one last frenzied lick and looked up at Dr. Dixon. "Go into the kitchen and get me a gla.s.s of water,please." Vicki made a motion to rise out of her chair, but the old man waved her back.

"No, I want Storm to go. Run the water good and cold. If there's ice in the freezer, you'd better use it."

Nails clicking against the hardwood, Storm left the room. The sound continued down the hall and then stopped. Vicki a.s.sumed he'd changed. Cloud, her fur stuck up in damp spikes from Storm's tongue, shook herself briskly then lay her head down on her front paws and closed her eyes.

Dr. Dixon sighed. "She's getting too close," he said softly to Vicki, "and her twin's beginning to sense it."

Vicki frowned. "She's getting too close to what?"

"Her first heat. I imagine he'll be sent away as soon as this trouble's over. I only hope it isn't too late."

"Too late?" Vicki echoed, remembering Nadine had spoken of Cloud's first heat on Sat.u.r.day morning.

"Usually it happens in late September, early October, that way if there's a pregnancy, the baby, or babies, will be born in early summer, ensuring a good food supply for the last few months of gestation and the first few months of life." He chuckled. "The wer aren't born with teeth, but they come up d.a.m.n soon after. Of course, all this meant more when they lived solely by hunting, but the basic biology still rules. Thank G.o.d the baby's changes are tied to the mother's for the first couple of years."

Vicki dropped her hand on the old man's arm. The hospital had cleared her of any damage except a nasty b.u.mp but her head hurt and she knew she was missing something. "Dr. Dixon, what the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"Huh?" He turned to look at her and shook his head. "I'm sorry, I'm old, I forgot you've only known the wer for a short time." His voice took on a lecturing tone, slow and precise. "Cloud is nearing s.e.xualmaturity. Her scent is changing. Storm is responding. Didn't you notice the way he was licking her?"

"I thought that was for comfort, to clean the cuts."

"It was, partially, but I didn't like the look of what it was turning into. That's why I sent him to the kitchen."

"But he's her brother," Vicki protested.

"Which is why the family will be sending him away. It's hard on twins. You simply can't keep them together during a first heat; he'd injure himself trying to get to her. When he's older, he'll be able to control his response but this first time, this first time for both of them. ..." Dr. Dixon let his voice trail off and shook his head.

He remained silent as Peter came back into the room.

"I brought you some water, too," he said, handing Vicki the second gla.s.s he carried.

She thanked him. She needed a drink. Water would have to do. She watched carefully as Storm flopped down and rested his muzzle across Cloud's back, sighed deeply, and appeared to go instantly to sleep. It all looked perfectly innocent to her. She glanced at Dr. Dixon. He didn't look worried so apparently this was within the parameters of acceptable behavior.

The tableau shattered a moment later when a car door slammed outside and both wer leapt up and raced for the front of the house, barking excitedly.

"Their father," Dr. Dixon explained. "I called him as we were leaving the hospital. No sense worrying him before that and now he can take you back to the farm."

"Do they know it's going to happen?" Vicki asked. "That he's going to be sent away?"Dr. Dixon looked momentarily puzzled. "Who? Oh. Cloud and Storm? Rose and Peter?" At her nod, he sighed. "They know intellectually that it's what happens, but for all they're wer, they're still teenagers and they don't believe it will happen to them." He shook his head. "Teenagers. You couldn't pay me enough to go through that again."

Vicki reached over and clinked her gla.s.s against his. "Amen," she said. "Amen."

Brows lowered, Mike Celluci worked his fingers around the steering wheel. He'd left his sister's later than he'd planned and felt lucky to get away at all. No one had warned him that their Aunt Maria would be at the "little family barbecue," probably because they knew he'd refuse to come.

"Well, surely you didn't expect Grandma to come on her own, Mike. I mean the woman is eighty-three years old."

If they'd mentioned Grandma was coming he'd have driven out to get her himself. A trip to Dufferin and St. Clair beat the h.e.l.l out of an afternoon with Aunt Maria. Although he'd tried, it had been impossible to avoid her for the entire afternoon and eventually he'd had to endure the litany he'd heard from her at every meeting practically since p.u.b.erty.

When are you getting married, Michele? You can't forget, you're the last of the Cellucis, Michele. I told your father, my brother, rest his soul, that a man needs many sons to carry on the name but he didn't listen. Daughters, he had three daughters. When are you getting married, Michele?

This afternoon he'd managed to keep his temper, but only barely. If his grandmother hadn't stepped in.

"And the last thing I need now is a f.u.c.king traffic jam on the four-oh-G.o.ddamed-one." He had his light and siren in the glove compartment. The urge to slap it on the roof and go tearing up the paved shoulder, around the Sunday evening traffic, was intense.

He wanted to be in London before dark, but he wasn't going to make it. If traffic didn't open up, hedoubted he'd be there before eleven. Time wasn't a problem, he had three days off, but he wanted to confront Vicki tonight.

He'd called Dave Graham, to let him know where he was heading, and ended up slamming the receiver down when the other man started to laugh.

"Jealous," he growled, scowling up at the setting sun. It wasn't funny. Vicki had to be told what kind of person she'd gotten involved with. He'd do the same for any friend.