‘Takapa drove Woollard to Rico’s place in his limo,’ Kate suggested. ‘So he must’ve picked him up somewhere.’

‘Most likely from here,’ said Stacy. ‘Woollard lives his whole life in this place. Scared to go out.’

Kate took in the crucifixes on the walls, the cryptic texts in their dusty frames and weird mystical symbols daubed about the place. ‘I think I’d be more scared of staying in. But OK, say they met here, to talk stuff over, discuss something?’

Stacy nodded. ‘Or demonstrate something. Come on, Woollard keeps his lab in this little examining room back here …’

Kate followed her across the hall and into another room.

Stacy turned on the light and stared around. A low leather couch was strewn with documents, as was a long workbench along the back wall, bowing under the weight of the high-tech equipment that cluttered it. She grabbed a sheaf of papers and started flicking through.

Kate peered at a padded envelope. ‘No doubt about it, Stacy, Woollard’s been working for Takapa.’ She pointed to the sender’s address label on the back. ‘It’s the address of Takapa’s New Orleans hideout. I was held there for a while. He had all sorts of experiments going on.’ She pulled out some of the papers inside. ‘Cell counts … chromosome analysis …’

But Stacy was barely listening, hunched almost double over some lab results scrawled in a spidery script. ‘You idiot,’ she breathed. ‘You blind idiot.’

Kate frowned. ‘Who?’

‘Me. I’ve been taking Woollard’s comments on the treated blood samples at face value – because they told me what I wanted to hear. The guy’s a genius, and I just always assumed he was as committed to the work as I am. And since I don’t have the equipment anymore to double-check the results …’ She laughed softly. ‘Oh, he’s played me for a fool.’

A feeling of unease twisted through Kate’s insides. ‘What is it?’

‘This research seems to run parallel to mine. Takapa must want to study Tom’s genetic make-up for the same reasons I do: comparing it to other samples –like Rico’s – could help identify and isolate the lupine factor.’

‘The werewolf gene,’ Kate translated. ‘But why would he want that? Takapa’s not looking for a cure.’

‘No –he’s been trying to stop me finding it.’ She screwed up one of the papers. ‘Like with the Stacy Serum … Woollard’s treated my samples as I asked him to –but he’s gone further. Altered the direction of my work without my even knowing.’

‘Then what does the serum actually do?’

Stacy seemed not to hear her. She looked pale and sick, scanning another sheet of scrawls. ‘“A chronically addictive psychotropic drug …”’ she read. ‘“Excitation of the adrenal gland …”’ She looked up at Kate. ‘He’s knocked out the pacifying effect. The serum doesn’t stabilise or soothe the lupine condition –it antagonises it.’