“I don’t think so.” I pulled up a chair to the table. The man leaned back, remaining in the shadows.

“Don’t beat yourself over it. He do it to everybody. Why I don’t talk to him.”

“You’re Corwin?”

“No, I’m Snow White.” He rocked back, balancing on the back legs of his chair.

“And who’s the man that walked me here?”

“Mahon,” he said. “The Kodiak of Atlanta.”

“The Pack Executioner?”

“The very same.”

I digested the news.

“He raise Curran, you know,” the man said.

“Oh? And he calls him lord like the rest of you?”

The man shrugged. “That what Curran is.”

“She has trouble with that concept,” Curran’s voice said from behind me.

I was learning. This time I didn’t jump. “You may be their lord. You sure as hell aren’t mine.”

Curran was leaning against the wall.

“Where are the rest?” I asked. There had to be more people watching, probably the eight that greeted me in the room where I almost talked myself into death. The alpha male of the wolf pack, the head of the rats, the person that spoke for the “scouts,” the smaller shapechangers, and someone who stood for the larger beasts.

“They are watching,” Curran said, nodding toward the wall.

For the first time I noticed a one-way mirror.

I looked at Corwin. “Why don’t you move into the light.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He leaned forward, letting the light play on his features. His face was horrible. Large, flint-hard eyes sat deep in his skull, overshadowed by heavy eyebrows. His nose was massive, his jaw too heavy and prominent to be human; he looked like he could bite through a steel wire with little effort. His reddish hair, thick and textured like fur, was combed back into a ponytail. Long side burns hung from his cheekbones almost to his chest, framing tall, pointed ears with small tufts of fur on their ends. The same hair, only shorter and thicker, sheathed his neck and his throat, leaving his chin bare at such a precise line that he must have shaved.

His hands, resting on the table, were misshapen and out of proportion to his body. Despite short, thick fingers, each hand could enclose my entire head. Clumps of reddish fur grew between his knuckles.

Corwin grinned. His teeth were huge and pointed.

Sickle claws shot from the tips of his stubby fingers. He spread his fingers in a catlike kneading motion, scraping the wooden surface of the table.

“Oh, boy,” I said. “How do you fluff your pillows at night?”

Corwin licked his canines at me and glanced at Curran. “I like this one.”

“Let’s start,” I said.

“You haven’t asked me what I am.” Corwin tapped the table with his claws.