The cheese drawer answered with a muffled “hail.”

I groaned, leaning closer and addressing the drawer. “I told you to stay in the bag.”

“False!” A brown-furred head poked out from behind a wedge of what I assumed was brie, whiskers quivering with joyful indignation. Aeslin mice were rarely happier than when they were arguing a point of holy writ. “You told us to Stay Quiet and Stay Still until we were in blessed transit. And truly did we heed your words, which echoed the ancient teachings of the God of Unexpected Situations, husband to the Violent Priestess. But once we came to blessed transit, we turned instead to the words of the Noisy Priestess, who did tell us, lo, You May Leave the Bag, Just Don’t Get Caught. And we have left the bag, and we have not been caught!”

The mouse sounded so delighted with its cunning navigation of a point of theological trivia that I didn’t have the heart to argue. I wouldn’t have been able to win if I had: the God of Unexpected Situations was my great-grandfather, and the Noisy Priestess was Grandma Alice. The mice put a lot of stock in each new generation of gods and priestesses, but most of us lacked the cachet to successfully overturn Great-Grandpa Jonathan or his daughter on a point of order. Maybe someday, when I was older and had done more things to actually impress the mice.

Probably not.

“Well, just don’t take all the cheese, all right? There are other people riding in business class who might want a midnight snack.” Not that any of them seemed inclined to wake up from their alcohol-induced slumber, which was why I felt so comfortable having a religious debate with a talking mouse in the middle of the minibar.

Sometimes I feel as if my life is very strange.

“We will Leave Some Cheese,” said the mouse, in the sort of reverent tone that usually meant I had just solidified a new commandment. Thou Shalt Not Denude the Airplane’s Cheese Selection.

Again, I chose not to argue. If it meant the mice were happy and under control for the duration of flight, they could raid the minibar as much as they wanted. Instead, I took a plate from the stack next to the muffins and piled it with fruit, packets of nuts, and some of the remaining cheese, before filling two cups with coffee (mine black, Shelby’s more than half milk and sugar) and walking back along the aisle to my seat. The mice could find their own way. They’d managed to wander off without my assistance, after all.

Shelby’s laptop was closed and tucked into the seat-back pocket when I returned. She blinked at the tray in my hands, and asked, “Starving, are you?”

“The mice are in the middle of a fairly major supply raid,” I said, squeezing past her and sinking back into my seat, somehow managing to do so without spilling my pilfered goodies. “I’ll warn them about eating everything before we land after breakfast comes around, since that should give them an hour or two.”

Shelby blinked again, slowly this time. “The mice are roving freely through the airplane?” she asked.

“Mice do not feel obligated to obey the fasten seat belt sign,” I said, and picked up my coffee. “What’s the situation on the ground?”

“Not so good,” said Shelby, her confusion—and her levity—melting into a look of grim despair. “Mum says we’ve had four people bitten so far. Two of them are under quarantine. The other two ran off before we could catch them. One of them, Trevor McConnell, probably went to take care of things before anyone got hurt. The other’s a relatively new recruit, Isaac Wall, and it’s harder to say with him. He could be doing the right thing by the rest of us. He could also be going to ground and hoping that if he does turn out to be infected, he can figure out a way to live with it.”

“There is no way to live with it,” I said. “The virus wants to spread. He may have the best of intentions now, but if he changes, he’ll be a monster like all the rest. All this means is that if he’s infected, no one will know to be there to stop him before he starts attacking people.”

I didn’t have to ask what she meant by “doing the right thing.” There’s only one “right thing” where lycanthropy is concerned, and that’s the thing that means you’ll never have the chance to pass the infection on. It’s a horrible, unfair position to put a person in. But viruses have never been known for their mercy, and people who have actually observed the progression of the lycanthropy-w virus within a community have sworn, repeatedly, that suicide is a kinder solution than any of the alternatives, and sadly, I believe them.

Lycanthropy-w is hard to catch. Out of every five people bitten, four of them will be perfectly fine. The virus doesn’t deal well with the static virility of a nonshapeshifting immune system. But the fifth person . . .

The fifth person was doomed. The only question was how long it would take for them to admit it.

Shelby nodded, expression growing even grimmer. “We can’t tell who’s harboring the infection. That’s the worst part. Da says they’ve killed four werewolves so far, but the bastards just keep on coming. There’s so much open space there, we could be looking at almost anything.”

“Remember that it could also be a ‘what’ harboring the infection,” I said, and took another sip of my coffee, trying to buy myself a few minutes to think. We were going to need a way to locate the remaining werewolves, assuming they hadn’t already been put down. Sadly, they didn’t tend to mark their dens with “werewolves here, inquire within.”

Shelby shook her head. “My folks were not happy to hear that kangaroos could be werewolves, too. Not the sort of thing you want to spring on them, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. It was still startling to me how little the Thirty-Six Society knew about lycanthropy. It made sense—they’d never had to deal with it before—but I kept stumbling over things “everybody knew” that were a complete surprise to Shelby. Even Grandpa Thomas’ notes didn’t help. There were too many holes where things that “everybody knew” had been left out to save space. “Have there been any signs that a pack is forming?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay. That’s good.” It might be the only good thing about this situation, but it was more than I’d been expecting to get: I would take it.

As the lycanthropy-w virus became entrenched in a population, the victims would begin to come together instinctively, forming a semi-lupine pack structure. I say “semi” because how genuinely wolflike the pack was would depend on the original species of the people or creatures forming it, and how many of them were far enough gone to have become fully feral. A pack consisting entirely of freshly infected humans would probably exhibit the stereotypical “alpha” behavior attributed (incorrectly) to wolves by generations of naturalists, and would be incredibly dangerous until they had further devolved into skittish, cooperative pack hunters. From there, it would be a matter of them versus their bodies: as their transformations became more frequent, the strain on their hearts would become more severe, until they couldn’t hold their original forms, and their systems collapsed under the strain. It could take six months. It could take six years. But it was how all werewolves ended up, if they didn’t meet the wrong end of a shotgun first.