“What’s on the bridge?” he called, but I just waved again because I was already too far to yell loudly enough for him to hear me.

But a woman stuck her head out of a car as I passed, and yelled, “Is it werewolf trouble, Mercy?”

I didn’t know the voice, but I’d been bathing in the reflected glory of Adam long enough that I wasn’t anonymous anymore, either.

“Nope,” I told her. “Fae monster, I think.”

I was sure that Tony wouldn’t have approved: I was informing the public without talking to him. But I figured that in this era of cell phone cameras, whatever was on the bridge was already due to be famous on YouTube anyway.

The bridge was visible from a long way off on both sides of the river. Something big enough to be “eating cars” was certain to attract people with cameras and cell phones. There would be no covering this up.

Up ahead, the Lampson Building came into view, as did the blue and red flashing lights of dozens of police cars. Lampson International builds the world’s largest cranes, and they’d built their headquarters right at the base of the Cable Bridge. Four stories tall, the glass-and-steel structure was distinctively odd. It looked very much as though some giant had picked up a pyramid, turned it upside down, and squished it back into the ground.

The police had set up two barricades. The first was at the last intersection before the bridge, to keep cars away from it. There were several uniformed policemen directing traffic there. The second barricade was closer to the bridge, just past the entrance to the Vietnam Memorial, which was on the edge and up the hill from the parking lot of the Lampson Building.

We ran past the first barricade without any of the police trying to stop us, though we drew sharp looks. Probably they were too busy with traffic, but it also takes real moxie to try to stop someone who is running with a tibicena and a werewolf. Maybe they recognized Adam.

The land rose gently to meet the beginning of the suspension bridge. I looked away from the police and the stalled traffic to peer at the bridge.

It arced gracefully over the river, more or less a mile across, the most beautiful of the three Tri-Cities bridges over the Columbia, and the only one that was not a highway or interstate. Drapes of thick white cable descended from both sides of the two towers on either side of the center of the bridge.