“Well, all my—my visions, I guess you’d call them. All my pictures of the future—and it really is like there’s some sort of divine camera in my head, and the pictures she takes are never wrong—anyway, they were always about somebody else. Michael, your future wife is going to be on the third floor of your building on such and such a day. Derik, you have to go save the world. Mom, if you go out driving in this weather you won’t come back. But they’re never about me, you know?”

“Sure.”

“So, I’m twenty-five, right? That’s old to be an unmated female. And there isn’t a werewolf in Massachusetts—maybe the whole world—who wants me to bear his cubs. So I sat down last week and thought and thought. I was trying to make a vision happen, which I’d never tried before.”

“And it worked?”

“Duh, it worked. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Oh, you’re back,” Bev said. “Good; it’s harder when I feel sorry for you.”

“Save your pity, monkey. Anyway, this thought pops into my head: If you help the queen, you’ll get what you need.”

“And?”

“And that’s it. Well, almost it…an address popped into my head right after. So off I go.”

“To help the queen and get what you need,” Bev repeated thoughtfully.

“Yup.”

“Why aren’t you flying? Or is it so you can occasionally stop and help a monkey stop doing something silly?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Fly? Stick myself in a tin can that hurtles through space at a zillion miles an hour, a thousand miles up on the air? Breathing recycled monkey farts and choking down peanuts?” Antonia shuddered. “No no no no no no no.”

“Werewolves are claustrophic?” Bev guessed.

“And the monkey gets a prize!” Antonia patted her, mussing her short red curls. “Good, good monkey!”

Bev knocked her hand away. “Stop that. I can’t help not being as evolved as you are.”

“That’s true,” Antonia said cheerfully. “You can’t.”

“Is that your big problem with humans? We can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound?”

“Not hardly. Although, that’s a good one.”

“So what else?”

“This wasn’t part of our deal.”

“Yes, but…” Bev smiled at her, and Antonia actually blanched. “You’re dying to tell me. You can’t wait to tell me. So…tell me.”

“Okay, you asked for it. Not only are you not evolved—which, granted, you can’t help—but you’re the most rapacious, bloodthirsty species the planet has ever seen. You go to war over money, religion, land, and drugs. If there isn’t a war on, you make up a reason to have one. You kill when you’re not hungry, and you kill when you’re fat and don’t need it. And you stink.”

“We stink?”