“Don’t torment the doctor,” continued Chloe, raising her hand as if to go for another smack. Mick cringed away. The blow didn’t come, but her voice sharpened further as she continued: “He needs to be willing to help us, and he’s not going to help us if you’ve got him all pissed off.”

“I’m already pissed off,” I said coldly. “If your goal was keeping me calm and relaxed, you shouldn’t have started with chloroform. I’ve never had a date involving chloroform that didn’t end badly.” I swung my attention to Cooper, moving my head as much as I could against the rope. “Did you tell him to do it?”

Cooper frowned. “Do what?”

“Your man, Mick. He killed one of my mice. Reached up, wrapped his fingers around it, and crushed the life out of it. Was that your idea?”

Cooper blinked, and for just a moment I saw the man I’d thought I met before the attack in the meadow, the man who loved his dog and took everything at his own pace. “Why would I tell him to do something like that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know why you do anything. I don’t know why you bit Gabby, or whether you infected your own dog, or why you think that the answer to not wanting to feel like a monster is spreading a disease among the people who are supposed to be your colleagues. So for all I know, you could have given him the order.”

“Well, I didn’t,” said Cooper stiffly. “I didn’t infect Jett, either. I love my dog.”

“It was just a mouse,” I said. “It was just trying to do what I’d asked of it. They think my family . . . they think we’re gods. It couldn’t tell me ‘no,’ not even if it was scared, not even if it didn’t want to do what I asked. How many of us can look our gods in the face and tell them we’re not going to do their bidding?” The Aeslin mice did refuse us, from time to time, but never without good reason, and never about something that mattered.

Maybe that was going to change after my fragment of the colony made it home from Australia. Maybe I was going to be the one who finally, after decades of living with us, taught the Aeslin that we were fallible.

“Lottie had that damn thing sniffing out werewolves,” protested Mick, seeming to sense the mood in the room shifting against him. “She was holding it up to people’s faces and letting it check them for infection. You said, Cooper, you said do whatever it took to keep our people from getting caught out. Well, that mouse was going to catch everybody out. Sniffing like that.”

“You also said we needed to get Mr. Price here away from the Tanners,” said Chloe. “Killing the mouse accomplished that. It was a necessary loss.”

“I see. It’s funny how you’re taking that approach now, when just a moment ago you were so invested in keeping our new friend from becoming too angry to work with us. It’s almost like you’re changing your allegiances to suit whatever you think will go over best at any given moment.” Cooper turned to look thoughtfully at Chloe. “Is that what you’re doing?”

Chloe’s eyes widened. “No. No, sir. I would never do anything that disingenuous.”

“See, I would have bet that none of you knew any words that big,” I said. I flexed my hands, trying to keep the motion from echoing in my arms and shoulders. It was difficult; I had to restrict myself to even smaller movements of my wrists than would normally have been my preference. Still, my hands moved freely, with no more impediment than the rope. That was what I had been hoping for. “You didn’t go for the organizational brain trust, did you, Cooper?”

“Brains are a liability when you’re trying to build an army,” said Cooper, sounding unconcerned. He began circling Chloe and Mick, cutting them off from their unidentified compatriots. The two remaining werewolves fell back, relieved expressions on their faces. Whatever punishment Mick and Chloe were about to face, they’d be spared. “It leads to having too many generals, and not enough soldiers. That’s just bad planning. We’ll have plenty of time for recruiting smart people to our side—starting with you. You’re smart enough to know that you’ll not be leaving this room still believing yourself to be a human being.”

“You’ll like being a werewolf, once you get used to it,” said one of the unnamed werewolves. She was tall, brunette, and spoke with an accent that marked her as coming from somewhere outside Australia, although I couldn’t have named her country of origin. “It’s nice to know that you’re bigger and badder than anything that might come after you.”

“The running around naked part’s nice, too,” said Mick. He sounded uneasy, and his eyes were tracking Cooper. I couldn’t decide whether the joke was a defense mechanism or a bad attempt at ingratiating himself with his chosen pack. It didn’t matter either way.

I kept working my hands in slow circles, ignoring the way the twine bit into my wrists. These people weren’t professionals: I’d known that as soon as I woke up with numb feet, still fully clothed. No one who catches a Price and wants to keep us captive leaves us with our clothes on. It’s just practicality. The weight of the mice against my chest was gone. Either they had run out of my pocket when I was chloroformed, or Cooper had had them removed. I wanted to ask him if he had them. I couldn’t give him that card. If he didn’t have them, and I asked, he would know that he could lie. “I’m not an exhibitionist, thanks,” I said.

“So which one, hmm?” Cooper turned to look at me. I slowed the motion of my hands by half, reducing it to a painful crawl. “The man who did the deed or the woman who laughed about it? Which one do you blame?”

I didn’t hesitate. “The man who did it. If you didn’t give the order, then he crushed the life out of a living thing because he thought it would be expedient. This is his fault. He’s the one who committed the crime.”

“Good enough for me.” Cooper started to turn away from Mick. Then, grabbing the knife from his belt, he whirled back around. He moved with preternatural swiftness, faster than anything human could have hoped to achieve; I didn’t see the cut so much as I saw Mick’s throat open in a wet red smile, blood spraying from his severed carotid artery. My glasses protected my eyes, and I kept my mouth closed, turning my head away to try to minimize my exposure to his blood. I still saw him hit the floor on his knees, hands clutching his throat in a desperate attempt to stem the bleeding.