It took me utterly forever to find one drop of mustard in that whole apartment, for Lord’s sake.

I am Emmeline. I am six. I live at the Plaza Hotel.

I have to. Louise’s mother does not visit often, but when she does, it would be a good idea if there were a little girl of approximully the right age to say hello and what did you bring me? I will have to get used to having a different name now. Lily Packmother says so. She says it is the least I can do so Amanda can keep her job and not have to face a lot of uncomfortable questions from the police. Besides, Amanda says it isn’t as if that rich sow will ever catch wise, not for how little she has ever cared about having a child in the first place, and some people are not fit to raise a begonia let alone a little girl.

I am not a begonia and I am really not Louise. I am still me, Emmeline.

I am going to have lots of toys.

I visit Lily Packmother in Central Park all the time. She and Amanda have become very good friends. They both say how proud they are of me for being a big girl and solving a big problem all by myself even if I did solve it with a very messy solution. But Lily Packmother says that is all water and other liquids under the bridge and Amanda says she is only sorry in theory about what I did to that little bitch, no offense meant to Lily Packmother and none taken.

The Vessel of Lyncanthropy has a new name, too. I gave it to him. He is Frankie because that is a lot easier to spell on my drawings of him and also because I still love hot dogs. He says the fact that my power to turn into a wolf in broad daylight manifestoed so soon means that I was the Chosen One and how! He says once I grow up and get the ball rolling, ordinary humans won’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell. Amanda says he should not not not use such language in front of a mere child.

That makes Frankie sad because I am going to take whole entire ages to get that ball rolling, on account of the backwards dog years and me being as young as I am to start with. Then he cheers up because he is immortal and good things are worth waiting for and the twenty-first century is not that far away. He says the humans may be harder to catch then, on account of all the flying cars and jet packs strapped to their backs, but we werewolves will manage.

I say, “Hello, Housekeeping, send someone up to clean our room there are lots and lots of stains all over from the roast beef dinner I had that exploded please give yourselves a gigantic huge tip thank you and charge it please.”

Now all I have to do all day is play in the Plaza Hotel and not give Amanda too many headaches and see to it that the rest of the pack gets a fair share of any leftovers we have from dinner. Then I watch television. I get to watch Robin Hood all I want.

Oh my Lord, there is absolutely too much for one small child to do while waiting around for my loins to spawn and bring about the Kingdom of the Werewolves or to infiltrate the power base of the moneyed classes and overthrow Capitalism, whichever comes first. It will be fun.

Tomorrow I think I’ll write Comes the Revolution! on all the tabletops in the Palm Court with Amanda’s Hazel Bishop red lipstick.

Ooooooh, I absolutely love waiting for the Revolution!

I am Emmmm… Louise. I am six.

For now.

Sea Warg by Tanith Lee

One dull red star was sinking through the air into the sea. It was the sun. But eastward the October night had already commenced. There the water was dark green and the air purple, and the old ruinous pier stood between like a burnt spider.

Under the pier was a ghostly blackness, holed by mysterious luminous apertures. Ancient weeds and shreds of nets dripped. The insectile, leprous, wooden legs of the pier seemed to ripple, just as their drowning reflections did. The tide would be high.

The sea pushed softly against the land. It was destroying the land. The cliffs, eaten alive by the sea (smelling of antique metal, fish odour of Leviathan, depth, death), were crumbling in little pieces and large slabs, and the promenade, where sea-siders had strolled not more than thirty years ago, rotted and grew rank. Even the danger notices had faded and in the dark were only pale splashes, daubed with words that might have been printed in Russian.

But the sea-influencing moon would rise in a while.

Almost full tonight.

Under the pier the water twitched. Something moved through it. Perhaps a late swimmer who was indifferent to the cold evening or the warning danger-keep out. Or nothing at all maybe, just some rogue current, for the currents were temperamental all along this stretch of coast.

A small rock fell from above and clove the water, copying the sound of a rising fish.

The sun had been squashed from view. Half a mile westward the lights of hotels and restaurants shone upward, like the rays of another world, another planet.

When the man had stabbed him in the groin, Johnson had not really believed it. Hadn’t understood the fountain of blood. When the next moment two security guards burst in and threw the weeping man onto the fitted carpet, Johnson simply sat there. “Are you okay? Fuck. You’re not,” said the first security guard. “Oh. I’m-” said Johnson. The next thing he recalled, subsequently, was the hospital.

The compensation had been generous. And a partial pension, too, until in eighteen years’ time he came of age to draw it in full. The matter was hushed up otherwise, obliterated. Office bullying by the venomous Mr. Haine had driven a single employee-not to the usual nervous breakdown or mere resignation-but to stab reliable Mr. Johnson, leaving him with a permanent limp and some slight but ineradicable impairments both of a digestive and a sexual nature. “I hope you won’t think of us too badly,” said old Mr. Birch, gentle as an Alzheimer’s lamb. “Not at all, sir,” replied Johnson in his normal, quiet, pragmatic way.

Sandbourne was his choice for the bungalow with the view of the sea-what his own dead father had always wanted, and never achieved.

Johnson wasn’t quite certain why he fitted himself, so seamlessly, into that redundant role.

Probably the run-down nature of the seaside town provided inducement. House prices were much lower than elsewhere in the south-east. And he had always liked the sea. Besides, there were endless opportunities in Sandbourne for the long, tough walks he must now take, every day of his life if possible, to keep the spoilt muscles in his left leg in working order.

But he didn’t mind walking. It gave extra scope for the other thing he liked, which had originally furnished his job in staff liaison at Haine and Birch. Johnson was fascinated by people. He never tired of the study he gave them. A literate and practiced reader, he found they provided him with animated books. His perceptions had, he was aware, cost him his five-year marriage: he had seen too well what Susan, clever though she had been, was up to. But then, Susan wouldn’t have wanted him now anyway, with his limp and the bungalow, forty-two years of age, and two months into the town-city and walking everywhere, staring at the wet wilderness of waters.

“I see that dog again, up by the old pier.”

“Yeah?” asked the man behind the counter. “What dog’s that, then?”

“I tol’ yer. Didn’ I? I was up there shrimping. An’ I looks an’ it’s swimming aroun’ out there, great big fucker, too. Don’ like the looks of it, mate. I can tell yer.”

“Right.”

“Think I oughta call the RSPCee like?”

“What, the Animal Rights people?” chipped in the other man.

“Nah. He means the RSPCA, don’t ya, Benny?”

“ ’S right. RSPCee. Only it shouldn’ be out there like that on its own. No one about. Just druggies and pushers.”