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centuries ago but managed to conceal one from you.”
    “It is possible,” Daharan acknowledged. “Alerian’s powers and mine are in direct contrast with one another. When we are together it seems that both of us are . . . muted, shall we say? But even if he was able to hide the creature, then we should still have seen some evidence of it in intervening years. And I cannot believe Alerian would be so careless as to leave such a monster formless and masterless while he slept.”
    Unless he thought the shapeshifter was safely locked away,
Samiel pointed out.
    Beezle nodded. “Yeah, maybe he stashed the little devil somewhere out of this time and place, thinking he would go back later and retrieve it. There would be no chance of you accidentally detecting the presence of this shifter until it was too late.”
    “Again, it is possible. But my reach and breadth extend far beyond this time or this place.” Daharan said this with no arrogance, only a statement of fact. “It is unlikely the creature could be concealed simply by the expedient of moving it off this Earth.”
    “The second, and more troubling, reason this shifter could have reappeared is that someone—Alerian himself or another person—is using Alerian’s original formula to create more shifters,” Nathaniel said.
    We were all silent for a moment, digesting the unpleasantness of this idea. Everyone here except Daharan had been present when the last lunatic’s biological experiment had been implemented. My own father, Azazel, had tortured humans and Agents until he’d found a serum to help vampires walk in the sun. How much worse would it be if a new player had discovered how to make these shifters? These were creatures who could look like anyone, be anyone so thoroughly that even their family members couldn’t tell the difference.
    “They could infiltrate everywhere, do anything they wanted,” I said.
    “Yeah, it would be like that alien in
The Thing
, except on crack,” Beezle said.
    “And what could anyone do until it was too late?” I said. I’d been afraid of Alerian from nearly the first moment I’d seen him, and I was beginning to get an inkling why.
    And the third way?
Samiel asked Nathaniel.
    My baby shifted in my belly, and I knew the answer before Nathaniel spoke. “One—or all—of the shifters bred with human women while in human form, and their powers were passed through the human bloodline.”
    Nathaniel nodded. “But those powers would not have manifested until now, until this particular individual was born; else we would be in the aforementioned predicament of many creatures abroad, manipulating humans to their will.”
    “It’s not exactly the ‘better’ option,” I said. “If magic is in the gene pool, it could pop up at any time. And we have no way to determine who could have parented these children.”
    “Is it that important to decide where this thing came from?” Jude asked. “It brought harm on my pack. It personally killed at least one wolf. And it came here with the intent of harming Madeline. I say let’s hunt it down and kill it and worry about its origins later.”
    I gave Jude an exasperated look. The wolf had always been partial to action, and impatient with our councils.
    “It does no good to kill one if there may be more—or the threat of more—behind him,” Nathaniel said patiently. “And we must discover his master if you wish to reunite your pack and live in peace.”
    Jude said nothing more but looked grumbly, which meant he agreed but didn’t want to say so.
    Daharan suddenly looked alert. “Something is happening. Turn on the television.”
    “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Beezle said, leaving the dining room table and flying under the arch into the living room.
    He grabbed the remote from the fireplace mantel and flew to his favorite spot on the couch.
    “Find a news channel,” Daharan said.
    “But
La rosa de Guadalupe
is on now,” Beezle said.
    “Find a news channel,”