looking—or rather, Jeri's outfit will, right?"
Jeri, still looking somewhat uptight at being in a meeting that so casually discussed burn-before-reading Secret material, nodded. "You can bet on it. Since we're not excluded from their hit list, unlike the rest of you, we also have no reason to hold back. I might note that when I gave my interim report on this incident, my boss did something I've never seen him do in all the years I've known him; give vent to an utterly spontaneous curse."
"Why?"
"It seems," Jeri answered, "that Mr. Carruthers was, in a way, sending us a message just by appearing to you in that guise. Obviously as a Wolf he could have chosen any shape he wanted. You see, Alexi Carruthers was, as far as we knew, killed off a number of years ago in a manner that remains classified. By showing us what he really is, he is basically telling Pantheon, and through Pantheon all of ISIS, that we're dealing with something much nastier than we'd yet suspected . . . and you can rest assured, we already suspected some seriously nasty things."
"Well, Miss Winthrope," Morgan said courteously, "I am sure I speak for us all when I say that you can count on our assistance if it could ever be of service."
I glanced at Syl with a raised eyebrow. She gave a secretive smile. Morgan did seem to like Jeri—how very strange, since I would never have thought she was his type. Whether Jeri had any interests outside of her job, of course, was something none of us would ever know unless she decided to tell us. "I have to give Ms. Gennaro a callback—it's been several days already. I'm just trying to decide what to tell her."
Kafan growled something, then sighed. "Twisty problem. Can't just tell her to stop poking around in those things—it's her job."
"Besides that, trying to shove her out might cause talk by itself, and certainly wouldn't keep someone else from going to the sites," I pointed out.
Verne nodded. "I am afraid, Jason, that you will simply have to use your own judgement. You and I are in essence safe—at least until that day when the King decides to try us again—but if she or her people learn too much, there will be more disappearances, regardless of whether they discover another monster or not. I would, in fact, judge it unlikely they will find anything of that magnitude again, but even a few more artifacts whose age they can accurately measure would be greatly troubling to certain people. The Demons cannot rework the face of a planet now, not with the changes wrought on Earth since those days, but the few of their agents who remain are more than strong enough to obliterate prying scientists."
"If it will help, I can always throw an international security umbrella over the work," Jeri offered.
"No!" Kafan snapped, jumping to his feet.
Jeri looked uncertainly at him, aware of his capabilities. "Why the panic?"
"Control yourself, Raiakafan," Verne said.
He closed his eyes, opened them again. "Because any such move would make it look like the governments are getting interested directly. The very last thing any of them want is for humanity, or its governments, really taking a deep look into these things. That's why you and your agency are all going to be dead sometime soon." He said the last line in the same way I might have said "I'll be ordering pizza for dinner tomorrow"—a casual statement of fact, impersonal but inarguable. "Your people ride the edge, and Carruthers' n