“Sir, even if I belonged to the Covenant, which I don’t, and even if I wanted to cause difficulty for the Society, which again, I don’t, I would never do anything to hurt your daughter.” I shrugged a little. “I’ve been subverted, if you can call it that when members of two organizations that should be capable of getting along and working together start sharing information. I’m not here to make trouble.”

“No, but you’re apparently here to make speeches,” said Charlotte Tanner, walking in through a door at the back of the room. She was holding a large covered bowl from which the scent of freshly baked soda bread drifted. Looking around the gathering, she sighed and shook her head. “Look at all those guns. I swear, half you people signed up to protect our ecology because you secretly wanted to be in an American Wild West movie. Weapons away, it’s time for supper. Shelly, you and Alex will be eating with me and your father. We want to start filling him in.”

“Yes, Mum,” said Shelby, and pulled her hand out of mine as she trotted over to relieve her mother of her burden. It was a perfectly domestic moment, and the only things that detracted from it were the people looking shamefaced as they made their weapons disappear back into vests and pockets. In a matter of seconds, we looked more like a revival meeting or church group than we did a gathering of cryptozoologists. That was okay by me.

Raina looked over and waved, gesturing for me to join her and the third sister—Gabby—at the table with the pair of them, some people I didn’t know, and Riley Tanner. Lacking any other options (and any bowls to carry), I shrugged and walked over to drop myself into an open seat. “Is dinner always this exciting around here?”

Riley shot me a flatly hostile look, but Raina shrugged and said, “Nah, sometimes we actually get to shoot people. Way more interesting, and the crocs get a snack out of it. You haven’t met Gabby yet, have you?”

“You know I can’t tell whether you’re joking or trying to imply that you would happily feed me to a crocodile,” I said. “Since I’ve fed several people to an alligator snapping turtle, I’ll take it both ways. No, I haven’t met Gabby. Hello, Gabby. I’m Alex.”

“Hiya.” The third Tanner sister held her hand out for me to shake, flashing a quick smile that was very much like Shelby’s: it lit her up from the inside. I was starting to feel like the three of them charted a line from melancholy to joy, with Shelby on one end and Raina on the other. This sister, Gabrielle, seemed to be somewhere in the middle. “Nice to meet you.” She had a sweet, liquid voice; I could understand why she’d chosen opera school. Cryptozoology isn’t for everyone. Some people want to live.

“I just wish it could have been under better circumstances.” I reclaimed my hand and took another look around the room. Pots of stew had been placed on three of the long tables, each too large to have been moved by a single person, and bowls were being filled by servers who clearly had experience at dishing out food for crowds of this size. Shelby and her mother were among the servers. I would have felt bad about that—my mother taught me it was never appropriate for me to sit back while women waited on me—but the other three pots were being staffed by men, and I wasn’t sure I would have been allowed to help if I’d tried. I was a guest, after all, and more than that, I was an untrusted guest. The last thing I needed was for someone to get food poisoning and accuse me of attempted murder.

“Tell me about it,” said Gabrielle. “I was at school, happily getting ready for midterms, and suddenly I’m being pulled out for a ‘family emergency.’”

“Werewolves are a family emergency,” said Raina. She managed to make the words sound halfway reasonable. No small feat. “If they ate us all while you were away at singsong school, you’d have to avenge us alone, and you’d get eaten, too. This way there’s still a chance in hell you’ll graduate.”

“Troll,” said Gabrielle.

“Shrieking kookaburra,” countered Raina.

“Girls,” said Riley. Both Tanner sisters fell instantly, ominously silent, watching their father with wary eyes. Riley shook his head. “We do not fight in front of company.”

Translation: we do not fight in front of the visiting cryptozoologist whom we do not yet completely trust. “I don’t suppose any of you have seen the mice running about, have you?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light and casual. “They weren’t hosting a bacchanal on the pillow when I woke up, so I’m assuming they’re off somewhere exploring and endangering the local wildlife.”

“Mice?” said Gabrielle.

“You’ve got that backward,” said Raina. “The local wildlife is going to be endangering them.”

“You haven’t spent much time around Aeslin mice,” I said.

Riley laughed. I smiled, pleased with myself. If I could just get things to lighten up a little bit on the personal level, maybe we could start properly focusing on the utter devastation the werewolves were preparing to send our way.

Before the conversation could resume, Shelby and Charlotte walked over with a smaller bowl of soda bread and a tray containing six bowls of stew and a large platter of roast root vegetables. They plunked their burdens down on the table; Shelby sat next to me, and Charlotte sat next to Riley, plucking the DS from Raina’s hands as she descended.

“Hey!” protested Raina.

“Not during dinner and strategy sessions,” said Charlotte. The DS vanished into her pocket. “You can have it back after we’ve finished discussing the situation.”

Raina folded her arms and scowled. Gabby snickered, half-covering her mouth with one hand. Raina redirected her scowl at Gabby, which turned her snicker into a full-fledged laugh. Shelby pressed a spoon into my hand, and I turned toward her, startled.

She was grinning at me. “My sisters are better than most of what’s on television, especially if you get Gabby drunk enough that she’s willing to start singing the really filthy arias, but right now, you need to eat. Food’s going to help you get switched over to local time.”

“I don’t think that’s scientifically accurate,” I said, sticking my spoon into the bowl.

“No, but my mum made the stew, and a bunch of people who probably aren’t intending to poison us helped make the damper, just be a peach for once in your life and eat, okay?”