“Where’d you get the wheels?” I asked. It was as much to break the silence as to distract him from his inner struggle. The last thing I needed was him losing control inside the car. Werewolves and closed areas are always a bad mix.

Paul looked at the driver then me. “It is a rental.”

As the tugboat lurched around the winding, narrow roads up into the hills I caught the driver glancing at me more than once. I studied the back of his large head. The palette of his skin was like sick death.

Next time he looked at me I was ready. I caught his eye and leaned forward. “Ghoul?” I asked.

The driver took a wide turn and shook his head. “No sir,” the driver said in a deep hollow voice. “I believe the term used is ‘fiend.’”

I looked at Grimshaw. “Really?”

Grimshaw shrugged. It was a rental. He didn’t care.

I cared. Fiends are the crazy cousin of the ghoul. They do everything ghouls are thought to do: stalk children, eat human flesh, dead bodies. You know the whole Boogeyman thing. They aren’t exactly known for being a part of the work force.

Great, I thought. Here I am on a narrow winding road at night, in a car with a twitching werewolf and a driving fiend.

“Kind of unusual for a fiend to be working a job,” I said.

The fiend in the front seat nodded. “I am trying to adapt.”

“Still eat people?”

“Not for two hundred years.”

“No shit.” I nodded at Grimshaw.

He nodded back. He was impressed too.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Lon.”

I pulled a card out of my wallet. It wasn’t much of a card, just my name, address, and phone number with a little graphic of a monster with a target over it. Sabrina made them for me. Because she did Speculator Magazine, she had access to all this kind of shit.

I handed the card over the seat to the fiend. “Give me a call sometime, Lon,” I said. “I can hook you up with the local ghoul scene if you like.”

The fiend smiled wide as he took my card and slid it into his blazer pocket. “I would like that very much. It would make me very happy. Thank you.”

“Well, you keeping your nose clean makes me happy.”

When I glanced back at Grimshaw I was feeling pretty damn pleased with myself, but the werewolf was not looking good. He was holding his arms against his body, sweating profusely and shaking.

“Grimshaw . . . you okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” he stammered. “It will pass. I . . . it is always hardest during the night.”

That was comforting.