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least.
    I shook my head. “Can’t. Need to question the survivors and make sure they’re not carrying something…extra with them.”
    “Is there anyone else you can trust with it?” The Chief didn’t look like he was going to take no for an answer.
    I gave it a shot anyway. “No. How about this? Jack and I go take a look at City Hospital. If everything seems secure, we’re fine and heading home. If we’re not sure we have a possession, I’ll have Enforcement assign a tail. If things are bad, I have a feeling that’ll wake us both right up. Okay?”
    “No, but I’ll take it. I want you two extra-vigilant and I want you, Wolfe, to stop relaxing. You’re still undercover, and I expect you to stay that way. As for you,” he glared at Jack. “You watch yourself. You’ve already overstepped your assignment and put yourself and your partner in danger.”
    “I know the rules,” Jack said. He sounded tired, too. “There are always reasons to break them.”
    The Chief snorted. “Oh yes. Of course there are.”
    “We don’t have the ‘no partnering with your significant other’ rule in Necropolis Enforcement.” We didn’t. We also didn’t have the “no partnering with your sibling, parent, family member, ex, or wannabe lover” rule, either. Point of fact, we didn’t have the “no partnering with your unlifelong enemy” rule, either. In Necropolis Enforcement, the main rule was “whatever works”. In some cases that was great. I’d have done a lot to get a rule that allowed me to never work with Ralph, though. But no such luck. My wrist-com beeped, and sure enough, it was my least favorite werewolf on the line.
    “Vic, trail’s gone dead.” Ralph sounded tense and disappointed.
    “For real or because it was time to go dead?”
    “I think the latter. But we’ve got nothing.” There was something in Ralph’s tone that made the hair on the back of my neck rise.
    “Where, exactly, did the trail die?”
    “Right in the middle of the Prosaic City National Cemetery.”
    “Fabulous.” We were going from bad to worse. “Okay, stay there. Contact Monty. It’s not a cause for panic unless one of the other trails ends there, too.”
    “You got it. Uh…what’re your orders in case, ah, we run into difficulties?”
    “If the Prince manifests, Ralph, I want you and the others to run like hounds out of Hell, you got that? You do not engage the Prince!”
    “Okay.” He sounded relieved. Ralph was annoying and overly into the whole pack thing, but he wasn’t an utter moron. He had a tendency to grandstand, but only if I was there in the audience. And self-preservation was an animal instinct.
    “Let me know if anything happens, even if it’s a minor thing.”
    “Will do. Over and out.”
    My wrist-com went dead and I looked at Jack. “We need to get moving. No telling what’s going on.” We got up and I headed out the door.
    “Wagner,” the Chief called. “I want you, alone, for a minute.”
    Jack shrugged and I closed the door behind me. It took a lot of willpower, but I forced myself to move down the hall and hum, so I wouldn’t hear whatever it was the Chief wanted to say to Jack. Some of this self-control came from the fact that it always seemed wrong to me to eavesdrop on people I liked. More was because I didn’t want to hear the Chief warn Jack about the stupidity of this kind of inter-species dating.
    I leaned against the wall and hummed good old “Werewolves of London” again. There was a concert coming up soon. I hadn’t wanted to go without a date, and while Maurice and Ken had both offered to be my escort, and Ralph would have leaped at the chance, I wasn’t into pity dates on either side of the fence. But now…maybe. Then again, as I watched Jack slam out of the Chief’s office, maybe not.
    He strode over to me, looking angry. “What’s wrong?” I figured I knew, but why not pretend, right?
    “Just how damn many surrogate fathers, brothers, and uncles, not to mention