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hand that was not occupied with his crossbow. “And he called someone, too—but it wasn’t the cops.”
    “Where is he?”
    “Down there.” Jake gestured with the crossbow. “Dropped his coat, for some reason, and kept running. Laurence followed him down, to make sure he doesn’t get out the other end. The punters are down around the corner there.”
    They were standing in front of the physics building, looking down a narrow, enclosed stretch between two buildings, hidden from the street on both sides. There were raised walkways along the edges, beside the buildings, and between them an artfully landscaped strip, now crusted with snow, looking like a small piece of fake tundra. Nick’s jacket lay flopped on the frozen grass halfway down. At the far end was a snow-filled fountain basin and a sculpture made of tall poles that glowed mauve at the top. For a moment it was very quiet.
    Then there was a noise of running feet and excited shouts from around the far corner of the physics building, and a lean, silver-grey wolf shot out from among the poles of the sculpture to leap over the snow-filled fountain. The clients came storming delightedly after it, brandishing their own crossbows. Laurence jogged casually out after them.
    “That was fucking awesome !” the son was yelling. “That was better than CGI! Did you see that?”
    “I guess they got to see him change form,” said Jake, hefting his crossbow into position. “Whatever.”
    The wolf came racing down the strip of fake tundra, but drew up short at a couple of warning shots from Jake. It stood there, ears laid back, tail between its legs. Clare could hear it whimpering. It was pretty in a way that Clare had not at all expected. Its fur was glossy and soft-looking, and quite white on its throat and down its legs. Its eyes were a pale yellow-green. She couldn’t remember what colour Nick’s eyes had been.
    The wolf made a move to spring past Jake, but Clare stepped in its path. It stopped, growling slightly. Then it turned and fled.
    The clients had got over their excitement at really seeing a werewolf transform and begun shooting in earnest at their prey; but they were both bad shots, and neither knew how to use the crossbows. They chased the wolf up and down the strip of fake tundra, the son running on the walkway by the side of the physics building, the father striding over the frozen grass below. The wolf was very fast, and very agile, and the men were no match for it. But it was trapped in the hunting ground where they had driven it, and it was too scared to make an effective escape. As far as Clare could tell, the hunt was a disaster. There was no way the clients were going to be satisfied, even if they did kill the target. She just wanted it to be over. Finally Laurence, trying to stop the wolf from fleeing past him, either accidentally or deliberately put a bolt into one of its paws. It tried to keep running, but it couldn’t. It lay down in the snow. Clare shut her eyes.
    Crossbows are quiet; that was why Stake used them. It could have been over already, and she wouldn’t know. She kept her eyes closed. She didn’t want to know. Only that wasn’t true. She wanted it to be too late; she wanted Nick to be dead, because then she could stop thinking about what she wasn’t doing to prevent that.
    Her eyes snapped open.  
    “Stop! Stop!” It was the other Clare, who had pushed violently out from somewhere inside her. She was a moment too late to make a difference.
    “Holy shit!” came the voice of one of the clients. “What was that?”
    The prone body of the wolf was surrounded by blue flame, not as if it were burning, but as if it were enclosed in a flickering blue vessel of fire. As she watched, a bolt from someone’s crossbow dissolved into the flame as it reached it. Then she looked up, and saw something dark crouching on top of the glowing mauve sculpture.
    It sprang from its perch with the speed of a missile and a dark flutter that was not