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I went to the door and chased everyone back. I said things like, “It’s okay. He’ll be fine. Just go.” I wasn’t sure he’d be okay, or fine, but I really did want them to go. No one needs to see their Lieutenant lose it. It shakes their faith in him. Hell, my faith wasn’t doing all that well.

I closed the door behind them and looked across the room at Zerbrowski. We just stared at each other. I don’t think either of us knew what to say, or even what to do.

Dolph’s voice came as if from deep inside him, as if he had to pull it up hand-over-hand like the bucket in a well. “My son’s going to be a vampire.” He looked at me with a mixture of such pain and anger, that I didn’t know what to do with it.

“You happy now?” he said. I realized that there were tears drying on his face. He’d cried as he’d destroyed everything. But he wasn’t crying as he said, “My daughter-in-law wanted to bring him over, so he’d be twenty-five forever.” He made a sound that was halfway between a moan and a scream.

Saying I was sorry didn’t seem to be enough. I couldn’t think of anything that would be enough. But sorry was all I had to offer. “I’m sorry, Dolph.”

“Why, why sorry, vampires are people, too.” The tears started again, silent. You’d never have known he was crying if you hadn’t been looking directly at him.

“Yeah, I’m dating a bloodsucker and some of my friends don’t have a pulse, but I still don’t approve of bringing humans over.”

He looked up at me and the pain was flooding over the anger. It made his eyes harder and easier to meet all at the same time. “Why? Why?”

I didn’t think he was really asking me why. I believed what I believed about vampires. I think it was the universal cry of why me? Why my son, my daughter, my mother, my country, my home? Why me? Why isn’t the universe fair? Why doesn’t everyone get a happy ending? I had no answer for that why. I wished to God I did.

I answered the implied why, because I couldn’t answer the other more painful questions. “I don’t know anymore, but I do know that it creeps me out every time I meet someone I knew first as a live human, then as a dead vampire.” I shrugged. “It just seems, I don’t know, unnerving.”

He gave a big hiccuping sob. “Unnerving . . .” He half laughed and half cried, then he covered his face with his hands and he gave himself over to crying.

Zerbrowski and I just stood there. I don’t know which of us felt more helpless. He walked carefully around the room, bringing Jason with him.

Dolph sensed the movement and said, “He goes nowhere.”

“He had nothing to do with this,” I said.

Dolph wiped at his face angrily. “You haven’t alibied him for the first murder.”

“You’re looking for a serial killer. If a suspect is cleared of one of the crimes then he’s usually innocent of all of them.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “We can keep him seventy-two hours, and we’re going to.”

I looked around the destroyed room, met Zerbrowski’s eyes, and wasn’t sure Dolph had enough clout to make those kinds of pronouncements anymore.

“The full moon is in a few days,” I said.

“We’ll put him in a secured facility,” Dolph said.

Secured facilities were run by the government. They were places where new lycanthropes could go and be sure of not accidentally hurting anyone. The idea was you’d stay until you got control of your beast, then they’d let you out to resume your life. That was the theory. The reality was that once you were signed in, voluntarily or otherwise, you almost never got out. The ACLU had started the years of court battles it would take to get them outlawed, or made unconstitutional.

I looked at Zerbrowski. He stared at me with a sort of growing horror and weariness. I wasn’t sure he had the juice to keep Jason out of permanent lockup if Dolph pushed. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t let it happen.

I looked back at Dolph. “Jason has been a werewolf for years. He has perfect control over his beast. Why send him to a secured facility?”

“He belongs in one,” Dolph said,