This time, her smile seemed to contain substantially more teeth, and those teeth seemed substantially sharper.

I stared at her. “It was you,” I said. “You’re the one who brought the infection to Australia.”

“Brought it to New Zealand first,” said Blithe. “I was on vacation in California when I got nipped. Flew home before I shifted the first time. Didn’t I get a shock! Ate the cat. Ate one of the neighbors, too.” She didn’t sound remotely sorry about either. “New Zealand’s a bit small when you’re a big, healthy predator, you know? I needed a place where I could run, where there were other dangerous beasts to keep people from fingering me for everything that went wrong. I’d worked with the Thirty-Sixers before, and I managed to stick it out six months before anyone caught me. It was an accident that I came across Cooper while I was changed. I didn’t mean to bite him, but he frightened me, and I did what came naturally.”

“You should never have come here,” I said.

“Yeah? Where should I have gone?” Blithe spread her hands in a beseeching gesture. “Look at it from my perspective: I didn’t ask to get bitten. I didn’t volunteer to be changed. Why should I have to give up my life because of a stupid accident? And look, I did my best to minimize the damage. I kept an eye on Cooper until I was sure he was going to change, and then I made sure he went through the first few transformations when he was somewhere nice and isolated, with no one around for him to hurt. He never had the opportunity to become a danger, you can be sure of that.”

“You were the second werewolf in the meadow, weren’t you?” I shook my head, using the motion to distract from the fact that I was working my hands harder now, picking and pulling at the rope that held them. I was starting to get some give in the knots. If I was going to be tied up and held captive, these were the sort of people I wanted doing it: people who had no idea how to take prisoners. “You’re the one who bit me.”

Blithe shrugged. “Cooper explained what you were here to do. I couldn’t let you get a good look at me—it was hard to say whether you’d be able to spot me in my human form, I keep my eyebrows plucked and most people haven’t noticed my hands—but I could help with recruitment. We figured you’d trust him after that. We didn’t count on you being able to mix up your witch’s brew after you’d been wounded, and we definitely didn’t figure on you killing poor Donny. Lead works, if you use enough of it.”

I looked at her blankly. “Your hands?”

She held them up, backs toward me, fingers pressed together. Her index and pointer fingers were the same length. “Some of the old stories are truer than I ever thought. I figured you might catch it if you looked.”

“We usually kill werewolves before they have a chance to undergo any permanent physiological transformations,” I said. Assuming I made it home alive and with my fingers intact, I was going to have a lot of updates to make to the field guide. We’d never realized that werewolves changed like that.

“Oh, then you’ll love this.” She stuck a finger in her eye. I cringed, waiting for gore—and only relaxed a bit as she withdrew her finger, now with a contact lens resting on the tip, and blinked one suddenly lupine, amber eye at me. Her grin was delighted. “You’re a lot more squeamish than I thought you’d be.”

“How is your color vision?” I couldn’t resist. Maybe I should have . . . but it’s not every day that a genuine scientific curiosity decides to try selling me on the idea of becoming part of its pack. Everything Blithe told me was going straight into the guide. Hopefully.

“Not so good,” she admitted. “It’s been getting worse since my irises started changing. I figure there’s something structural happening in there. I used to need glasses, though, and now my vision is better than twenty-twenty. I can see for miles, and you’ll be able to do the same. No more specs for you, brainy boy. Won’t that be a nice change?”

“You know, I like my glasses,” I said. The first knot let go. “I’ve been wearing them for most of my life, and I’m used to them at this point. Besides, they can be useful. They’ve kept me from getting blood, cobra venom, all sorts of things into my eyes. They even helped keep me from being turned to stone once.”

“Too bad.” Blithe smiled toothily. “I know you think this is a bad thing. I know you feel like we’re forcing you. But it’s for the best, you’ll see. We’re a family, a pack. We’re better than what you’ll be losing.”

“Did Mick feel like that?” I kept working at the second knot. It felt like I was going to dislocate my thumb. I was willing to do that, if I had to, but things would be easier if I didn’t. It’s hard to shoot people when your thumb doesn’t feel like working anymore.

Not that I was actually sure I still had a gun, and it wasn’t like I could ask Blithe if they’d taken it off of me: asking would be a good way to get frisked, assuming I hadn’t been already.

Blithe’s lip curled upward in a sneer. “Mick was a fool,” she said. “He didn’t appreciate the pack. He didn’t appreciate what he’d become. He only went along with it because he thought it would make him stronger, and he thought it would help get him into Chloe’s pants. I suppose that’s been a bit of a shock for him on both counts, hmm? Not only did he not get laid, he got weaker. He wasn’t meant to be an alpha.”

“Am I?”

Blithe’s sneer became more pronounced before she abandoned it in favor of laughing out loud. “Heavens, no. You don’t have the right combination of viciousness and wanting to be an alpha. Cooper did. I did. We’re going to lead this pack forever, and you’re going to work for us willingly once you’ve been bitten and the instinct kicks in.”

I frowned, thinking. Cooper hadn’t mentioned Blithe; hadn’t introduced her to me, hadn’t brought her forward as his co-leader. Hadn’t done anything but allow her to stay behind and try to sell me on the exciting werewolf lifestyle. There had been three wolves with him when he came to see us in the swamp. Mick couldn’t have been among them—none of them had been particularly larger than the rest, and more, he’d been in the line, within Charlotte’s line of sight, the whole time. Someone like Chloe or Blithe could move through the crowd without making a fuss, but Mick? He had been a mountain. When mountains move, people notice.