The far wall was made of glass, maybe Plexiglas. Behind it, the room continued, divided in two by a partition. I moved closer. Both extra rooms had a cot, a washbasin, and a simple toilet in the corner. The Plexiglas had doors cut into it, with handles only on the outside. The doors had narrow slots through which objects might be handed through. Like meal trays. They were cells.

Moving quietly, Cormac stepped beside me. "This is kind of fucked up."

Yeah. "Do you smell garlic?" One of the cell doors was open. I wasn't mistaken; inside, the scent of garlic grew strong. It wasn't like someone was cooking with it, or there was a chopped-up piece of it somewhere. It came from everywhere. I went to a wall, touched it, then smelled it. "Is it in the paint? Did they put garlic in the paint?"

"Check this one out," Cormac said from the next cell over. He shined a penlight over the wall, which glittered. Sparkling like silver—tiny shavings of silver, imbedded in the paint. I kept my distance.

Two cells. One for a vampire, one for a werewolf, designed to keep each of them under control using innate allergies. They looked like they'd been empty for a while.

The sheets were fresh, unwrinkled. They didn't smell occupied.

"Hands-on research, looks like," Cormac said.

Involuntary test subjects was what it looked like to me. My stomach hurt.

Cormac left the cell. "You seen enough?"

"Just a minute." I scanned the room one more time. Most of the paperwork had been moved to the office and shredded, it looked like. Nothing here but empty tables and defunct equipment.

To the side of the silver-lined cell, a clipboard hung on a nail. It looked like the kind of setup someone would use to keep medical records handy. It seemed rather forlorn and forgotten. I picked it up.

Only three sheets of paper were clipped to the board. They were charts, with a list of names. Names—jackpot. Quickly, I scanned them. First names only, maybe two dozen in all.

Halfway down the second page I read: Fritz, 6', 210 lbs., h.s. lupus. Homo sapiens lupus. It couldn't possibly be the same Fritz.

I flipped back to the first page and caught another name, one I should have noticed right away: Leo, 5' 9", 150 lbs., h.s. sanguinis. Vampire.

Riddle wrapped in an enigma… I wasn't sure I wanted to know how Flemming and Leo were tied together. I was about ready to buy into any conspiracy theory that came my way.

"This is it," I murmured. "This is what I need." I took it off the clipboard and started to fold it, to take it with me.

Cormac snatched the pages out of my hand. He stalked back to the next room and the tabletop photocopier parked near the shredder. The machine was so loud, and the scanning lights so bright, I thought surely security goons would find us. Quickly, in a perfectly businesslike manner, Cormac had the three pages copied. He handed the copies to me, clipped the originals back on the board, and returned it to its nail on the wall. He closed the door to the lab and made sure it was locked.

He shut down the computers and surveyed the room. Satisfied, he nodded. "Looks good. Let's get out of here."

After making sure the door to the hallway was locked, he stripped off his gloves and shoved them in a pocket. I followed his lead, then nervously curled the papers we'd liberated.

We took one detour before leaving the building. Cormac stopped at a closet in a side corridor on the main floor. True to his word, he slipped the key card into the front tray of the janitor's cart parked there. It only took a second.

We didn't speak until we were outside, walking down the sidewalk with a dozen other anonymous pedestrians. Daylight still shone, which seemed incongruous with the darkness of Flemming's offices and our clandestine activities there.

"And that is how you break into a government office," Cormac announced at last.

"Those Watergate boys could have learned something from you, eh?"

He made a disgusted huff. "What a bunch of posers."

Supper that evening was room service at Ben's hotel. Cormac sat on the bed, plate balanced on his lap, one eye on the news channel playing on the TV, volume turned way down. He and Ben drank beers, like a couple of college buddies. Maybe that was where they'd met.

We'd debriefed Ben on our field trip. The chart from the lab lay spread across the middle of the table.

Ben nodded at it. "Is this a copy or did you just take it out of his office?"

"It's a copy."

He pursed his lips and gave a quick nod, like he was happy with that answer. "Was it worth it?"

They both looked at me. I rubbed my forehead. My brain was full. "Yeah, I think so."

Ben said, "This doesn't prove anything, you know."

"I know people on that list. At least, I think I do. If I can track them down, they'll give me someone else to talk to." I hoped.

"Will they talk to you?" Cormac said.

"I don't know."

Ben leaned back in his chair. "Kitty, I know this Flemming character is suspicious as hell. But maybe he's exactly what he appears to be: an NIH doctor, ex-army researcher, nervous because he doesn't want his funding cut. What is it you think you're going to find?"

Fritz the Nazi. I wondered what kind of questions Flemming asked him, assuming he actually talked to his subjects. I wondered if Fritz told him the stories he wouldn't tell me. What would an ex-army medical researcher want to learn from a Nazi werewolf war veteran—

"Military application," I whispered. I swallowed, trying to clear my throat, because both men had set aside their forks and beers and were staring hard at me. "He told this story about a patient in a car accident, horrible injuries, but he walked out of the hospital a week later. Flemming seemed totally… entranced by it. By the possibilities. He talked about it in the hearing, remember? Curing diseases, using a lycanthrope's healing abilities. Imagine having an army of soldiers who are that hard to kill."

"If he has military backing he wouldn't need to be explaining himself to Congress," Ben said.

Cormac said, "Even if he's developing military applications, is there anything wrong with that?"

"There is if he's using people," I said. "He has jail cells in his lab."

"Look, I thought you liked what this guy was doing," Ben said. "That you wanted all this out in the open. You want him shut down now?"

"Yeah, I think I do."

"Why?"

I shrugged, because it was true. I'd loved seeing this stuff in the Washington Post. I was enjoying the respect. But I could still smell the garlic paint in the lab. "Because he's unethical."

I hadn't finished dinner, but I couldn't eat any more. It was dark now; time to see Alette. "Look, I won't be able to track one of these guys down until tomorrow, but I think I can find the other one tonight. I'm going to go do that."

"Need company?" Cormac said. Read: need help?

"No thanks, I'll be fine. I think." I collected the pages from Flemming's lab.

"You might want to think about making a copy of those," Ben said. "Maybe put them in a safety deposit box. Just in case."

"Or mail 'em to someone," Cormac said. "With a note to open it if anything happens to you. If you get in trouble you can use it as a threat and not be lying."

"Or you could not do it, say you did, and use it as a threat anyway." Ben said this pointedly at Cormac, weighing the statement with significance.

Cormac gave his best shit-eating grin. "Would I do something like that?"

Ben rolled his eyes. "I'm taking the Fifth on that one." I stared. "Uh, you two go way back, don't you?" They exchanged a look, one of those familiar, it'd take too long to explain the inside joke looks. "You're not going to tell me, are you?"

"You're better off not knowing," Ben said. Now I wanted to run to the nearest Internet connection and dig up what nefarious plot these two had cooked up in the distant past. At least, I assumed it was the distant past. Maybe I should get a different lawyer. Except it would take too long to explain everything to a new one.