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Shit, I thought. Apparently Peter Black was holding up as a secret identity. “Yeah, I mean, shit, fine.”

“If he’s eighteen, then he can give permission for it.” Graham gave me a funny look as he said it, as if he wanted to ask why I didn’t believe Peter was eighteen, or maybe he didn’t either.

“Give permission for what exactly?” I asked.

“They’re offering him a vaccine.”

“Like I said, Graham, they’ve been offering a vaccine against lycanthropy for years.

“Not the one that they used to offer in college. Not since that bad batch turned a lot of nice upper-class college students into monsters about ten years back.” He said it without referencing Richard—who had been one of those college students. I wondered if Graham didn’t know. Not my place to share, so I let it go.

“The vaccine’s a dead organism now, not live and kicking,” I said.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

I had to smile. “No.”

“Most people won’t volunteer for it,” he said.

“Yeah, there’s a bill wandering around Washington, D.C., right now to force inoculation against lycanthropy on teenagers. They claim it’s safe now.”

“Yeah, they claim.” Graham’s face said how much he believed in the “claim.”

I shook my head, moved a little too much in the bed, and found that my stomach gave a twinge. However healed I was, it wasn’t perfect yet. I took in a deep breath, let it out, and forced myself not to move around so much. There, that was better. “But Peter has already been attacked. The inoculation is only effective before an attack.”

“They want to give him a live shot.”

“What?” I said, and it was almost a yell.

“Yeah,” Graham said.

“But that will give him whatever lycanthropy is in the shot.”

“Not if he’s already got tiger lycanthropy,” Graham said.

“What?”

“Apparently, they had some people who were attacked by more than one beast in a single night. The two different strains canceled each other out. They came up clean and completely human.”

“But it’s not dead certain that he’ll get tiger lycanthropy,” I said.

“No, most of the feline strains are harder to catch than canine.”

“You can’t even reliably test for cat-based lycanthropy for at least seventy-two hours. If they give him this shot and he’s not going to be a tiger, then he will be whatever the shot is,” I said.

“And therein lies the problem,” Graham said.

“Therein,” Requiem said, his voice softly mocking.

Graham flashed him another unfriendly look. “I try to improve my vocabulary and you make fun of me; what kind of encouragement is that?”

Requiem gave a full bow, graceful, with one hand sweeping outward. That hand always seemed to cry out for a hat with a plume, as if the gesture was only half finished without the right clothing. He stood. “I beg pardon, Graham, for you are quite right. I do wish to encourage you in your improvements. It was churlish of me, and I apologize.”

“Why is it that when you apologize, you never seem to mean it?” Graham asked.

“Back to the main problem, boys,” I said. “What’s happening with Peter?”

“Ted Forrester, federal marshal”—he said it the way you’d say “Superman, Man of Steel”—“is with him. He seems to be helping him choose.”

“But he may be fine, and the shot will guarantee the very thing they don’t want to happen.”

Graham shrugged. “Like I said, it’s a new thing.”

“It’s an experimental thing,” I said.

He nodded. “That, too.”

“What kind of lycanthropy is in the shot?” I asked.

“They don’t want to say, but it’s probably one of the cat-based lycanthropies, and it won’t be tiger.”

“Let’s hope not,” I said. “They make vaccines in big batches. Are they positive what kind of kitty they’ve got in the shot?”

Graham looked at me as if that hadn’t occurred to him. “You aren’t saying that they’d give him tiger twice? I mean, that wouldn’t work at all. That would guarantee that he’d be tiger.”

“Yeah. Has anyone asked them what flavor of kitty it is?” The look on Graham’s face said no one had asked in his hearing. I looked at Requiem.

“I have been in attendance upon your bedside. I have not seen the boy.”

“Graham,