“Oh, I don’t know.” He gave me a look suffused with teenage arrogance. “I think he might find it difficult.”

“No, he won’t. We once fought a dog the size of a two-story house. Raphael ripped one of its heads off.”

Ascanio blinked. “One?”

“It had three.” I got up and pulled a change of clothes from my bag. My other me was about twenty-five percent larger, but my long-sleeved T-shirt had a lot of stretch in it. I pulled it on and put on my pants. They were more like capris now and they were tight on my calves. “I’m going out.”

“Like that?”

I pulled out my knife and sliced the hems of my pants. Much better. “Who’s going to stop me?”

“But you’re…not in human shape.”

Yes, and I was sick of being ashamed of who I was. I looked at him for a long moment. “If I change back into a human, I’ll need a nap. I don’t have time for naps. If someone has a problem with the way I look, fuck them.”

“Uhh…”

“And stop looking so scandalized. I covered my boobs, didn’t I?”

“But I still know they’re there. I saw them.”

“Treasure the memory.” I grabbed my bag off the table.

Ascanio jumped in front of the door. “Can I come with you?”

“No.”

He fluttered his eyelashes at me. “I’ll be very quiet.”

“No.”

“Andrea, I’m sick of being stuck here by myself. Please, please, please, can I come with you? I’ll be good.”

He’d been cooped up in the office for the last few weeks, at first because he was injured, then because he wasn’t and we wanted to keep him that way.

“I’m going to look for a murderer. If you come with me, you’ll get hurt when we run into trouble on the way. And then I will have to have a very unpleasant conversation with Aunt B, which will go like this: ‘You won’t join Clan Bouda, you broke up with my son, and you let that sweet precious boy get hurt.’”

Ascanio picked up my desk with one hand and held it four feet off the ground.

“It’s not your muscle I’m concerned about. It’s your brains. Or lack thereof.”

He set the table down. “Please, Andrea.”

He was going stir-crazy and doing broom drills. I could relate. I’d been there.

“Can you drive?” If I put my seat all the way back, I’d fit into the Jeep, but driving with my size-twelve feet and three-inch claws would be a challenge.

“Do the People navigate vampires? Of course I can drive.”

“Alright.”

He jumped three feet in the air.