I shook my head. “No, not really.” Then I thought about it and wasn’t so certain. Newman knew my background, so I tried for some of the truth. “I knew he’d smell my . . . the lycanthropy in my blood.”
“How did that help?”
“Sometimes, if you can smell another beastie, it can bring you back to yourself.”
“So, I couldn’t do it?”
“No,” I said.
He sighed. “I was hoping it was something you could teach me.”
“Do not try hugging lycanthropes once their eyes have changed, Newman. You don’t have lycanthropy, so you’d just smell like food.”
“Is there anything I could do to keep someone from shifting, like through the cell bars maybe?”
He was so earnest about learning the job, it made me think harder and try to teach better. “If you knew them, if they were friends, you could talk about human memories and maybe bring them back in time.”
“How about if I just knew the names of their spouses and kids, things like that? Could I talk them back to human by just reminding them about their lives, even if I didn’t know them personally?”
“Maybe, but only if you’re on the other side of the cage from them. And it depends on how long they’ve been a shapeshifter. If they’re newbies, then it won’t work. Once their eyes go, the rest will follow. They just don’t have the control to do anything else at the beginning.”
“What about bringing in family members to try to talk them down?”
“Absolutely not. You’d be endangering them. One, they’re civilians, and two, think of the guilt if someone came to after being in their animal form and realized they’d killed people they loved. Don’t ever put anybody in that situation.”
“Okay, you’re right. That would be . . . awful.” He shook his head hard enough that his hat slid out of place. He shifted it back with one hand, the other staying on the steering wheel, and he added, “Awful
seems like such an inadequate word, but I can’t think of another one.”
“You don’t have to find the right word to understand how terrible something will be or why you want to avoid it,” I said.
“Terrible. That’s a good word,” he said.
“Horrifying, heartbreaking, anguish, torment, suffering: I’ve got dozens to describe some of the things I’ve seen over the years.”
“Why do you still do it, then, if it’s so terrible?”
And just his asking that so early in his career after moving up to bumfuck nowhere, which had sidelined his career, let me know that Winston Newman was contemplating a change.
“So that I can help people like Bobby Marchand.”
“I couldn’t have saved him back there. I barely saved you,” he said. I couldn’t see his face clearly in the dimness of the car, but I saw his hands tighten on the wheel and knew some of the emotions prompting it.
“I got into this job to kill monsters so I could save lives, and then a weird thing happened. I stopped being certain of who the monsters were.”
“You fell in love with a vampire,” he said as if that explained it.
“No, I knew a man named Willie McCoy. He was a two-bit hustler, not a friend, but I knew him before he died and after he came back as a vampire. He was still Willie, still himself. That’s what started me rethinking things. If vampires were soulless monsters, then Willie should have been very different after he died, but he wasn’t. So, if that part was wrong, then maybe it was all wrong.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Before I started dating Jean-Claude. Honestly, I think if Willie McCoy hadn’t died and come back as himself, then I might never have dated Jean-Claude or any supernatural.”
“Wow, I never think that clearly about what I’m feeling. It’s impressive,” he said.
I laughed. “Neither do I. Neither do most people, but I’m in therapy now. It’s helped me realize a few things.”
“You’re admitting to another marshal that you’re in therapy?” he said, and made it sound almost joking.