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The circumstances leading to the death of Jack Tell was the subject of excited conversation and idle speculation around the breakfast buffet. I soon got the impression, he was not well-liked among the other hotel guests and staff. Slater described him as one totally bogus dude, and Fernando thought of him as the most demanding guest of a decade. Only Catalina found him somewhat tolerable, because he took good care of his child. I tried to strike up a conversation with Darleen, but she was withdrawn and reserved. She was still very pale, and complained about exhaustion and body aches. Miguel had taken Chris and the nurse to the chapel in his van, so that they may say their goodbyes. Archie Phelps was in the lobby, talking to his mother over the phone. I trusted he left out the bit about the screaming and the frozen grimace of terror on Tell's dead face. The always solemn Mr. Tejon sat by himself at breakfast, quietly observing the rest of us. When he overheard me asking around about last nights events, he wiped the crumbs from his mouth with a linen serviette, and quietly left.

"Don't poke your nose into it," said Quinn when I called him on my Skype phone. "Leave it to the local police-force."

"But inspector Ramirez is such an ass!" I insisted. Truth is, I was beginning to enjoy my unofficial role of investigator;

Daniel Kent - paranormal investigator and part-time demon.

I liked the sound of it, and I was daydreaming up a business card for myself, when Quinn brought me down to earth.

"Ramirez is an ass with an official badge. You're the same, only without the badge, so forget about interrogating people."

"I... think it might be a little too late to back out."

Quinn sighed at the other end of the phone. "Use your powers to sense if anything is wrong. Then leave the rest to the officials."

"Oh, something is wrong," I said. "You don't need my senses to figure that much out."

Then an idea hit me. "Hey, you have the nose of a werewolf. You could use your senses to track down whoever made those footprints."

Quinn paused at the other end. I knew this case was too tempting to pass, and he was dying to join me. We had worked on two cases together already, and our team of otherkin and therian was growing closer with each case. But San Blas, Mexico was far too away from his jurisdiction.

"I can't, man" he finally grunted. "I've got a whole spree of high-tech burglaries on my hands."

"Six heists in one week!" he said. "One for each day of the week. They've hit everything from museums to banks and high-street fashion boutiques."

"-and they rested in luxury on the seventh day?"

"Not funny," growled Quinn. "They sabotage every alarm system, every sensor and CCTV camera from thirty feet away, God only knows how. Oh, and Danny..."

"Yes?"

"Try not to get yourself involved, this time."

I was already involved, but I knew what he meant: Quinn was warning me not to shift into demon form. Last time it happened, my demonic side wouldn't let go. I was losing control with every change, and last time, I couldn't shift back.

"Relax," I said. "I'm done shifting. It's not going to happen again."

"I'm relieved to hear that," Quinn said and hung up.

We were both lying, and we knew it.

---

I bumped into Mr. Tejon again on my way out. This time he wore a long-sleeved, white shirt with a delicate floral pattern, and pressed, black trousers, I guess he didn't own any casual clothes. He grabbed me by the elbow the moment we passed each other in the hall.

"I can't help you with your investigations," he said. "But it is for the better I give you this."

He presented me with a small box of Lucky Boat Green Tea. The cardboard box was decorated with a black and white drawing of a sailboat manned with grinning pandas, all rubbing their tummies in jubilous joy. I found myself at a loss of words over the unexpected gift and only stammered an "err...thank you." Tejon nodded, shook my hand and left me in the hallway, alone and clutching my box of green tea. Was I supposed to drink it?

If this had been a mystery novel, that box would contain a hidden message, I thought and poured out the contents on the nearest table. I admit I felt stupid, examining twenty-five bags of premium green tea for clues or secret messages.

What was I thinking? I'd been in San Blas for two days and already I was expecting everyone around me to be involved in covert operations. I quickly gathered the teabags and put the box in my suitcase. I checked myself in the bathroom mirror, I was pale and looking worn out, and in bad need of a shave.

"Don't worry," Slater had said. "By the end of the week, you'll be a changed man." I looked away from the mirror; When I'm stressing out, my mirror image begins to change and move around, and I grow frightened of my own reflection.

Slater was right; my return ticket was valid for another six days. I should use that time to relax, drink Corona beer and work on my tan. Not do police work. I put a fistful of pesos in my back pocket and got ready to head for the beach, when my eyes passed over a copy of the local newspaper. Today was Sunday.

Today was the end of the week.

- - -

I spent most of the day downtown San Blas, concentrating on not getting involved. But there were too many loose ends to the case, and my mind wouldn't let go. I came across a little shop that sold imported goods from China. The window display featured a large pyramid built from Lucky Boat boxes of green tea.

"Popular brand?" I asked the elderly woman behind the counter.

"It's good for the stomach," she replied. "People drink it, so they don't get travel sickness."

She opened another crate of Lucky Boat and stacked the boxes on top of the ever growing pyramid.

"You need some tea before your flight?"

"Thanks," I said. "But somebody already gave me a whole box as a present."

"Oh," she said and looked embarrassed.

"Something wrong?"

"It's tradition you buy it yourself before you leave. It's impolite to give it to someone, unless..."

"Unless?"

"Mister, whoever gave you that gift was trying to warn you. You are no longer welcome here in San Blas... or safe."

In that moment, I decided I'd had enough. If this was the way they wanted it, fine by me! I'd pack my gear and head back on the next flight. Even better, I'd check myself into the one cheap sleaze-bag hotel I could afford and stay the week. I stomped back to the hotel, so full of righteous pissed-offness, I believed I was in the wrong room when I opened the door to my room and stood face to face with Archie Phelps.

"Whoops, sorry," I said. "I must have taken a wrong turn."

I then recognized my own suitcase on the bed. It had been opened, and the smell of bad plumbing killed any remaining doubt: Archie Phelps was standing in my room, searching through my luggage. He left my suitcase, dragged the only comfortable chair in the room to the coffee table and poured himself a large glass of _Farvale_brandy.

• MY _Farvale_brandy.

He was also waving a 9mm Walter PPK at my midriff.

"Your room smells like raw sewage," he said.

"Feel free to leave anytime."

"Sit down, Daniel." Phelps waved his pistol at an empty chair next to the coffee table. "We need to talk."

"You know my name?"

"Of course. You have made quite an impression back at the office." Phelps flashed a leather wallet containing his official badge.

"MI-16," I noted. "Military intelligence. Scientific branch." I guess his shoe business wasn't paying off.

"There are eight guests here, and three staff members." said Phelps. "I checked you all with mother, but guess who were the only ones to show up on record?"

"I think I have an idea."

"Tejon, Slater, Darleen and nurse Richards." Phelps shrugged. "They all turned up blank."

"I guess that only leaves..."

"Jack Tell had a record of petty crimes: writing out bad checks, small time forgery, penny stock manipulation and most recently, his debut into tax evasion."

"At least he was working his way up the criminal career ladder."

"You, on the other hand." Phelps took out a dossier that contained a stack of printed sheets. "You have a substantial history with the MI-16."

"We've met on occasion."

He singled out a page containing a crime-scene photo. It was a black and white laser print-out, but I didn't need color to know it was a picture of a mutilated corpse."

"This is what's left of MI-16 agent Frederick Samza," Phelps read aloud. "Terminated by Daniel Kent; unarmed attack causing severe and lethal trauma." [*]

"Your agent was trying to kill Irene and me. I call it self defense."

"He was only doing his job, Daniel." Phelps sounded plaintive as if he had expected me to play by the rules. "Finding a suitable replacement for agent Samza wasn't easy... or cheap."

"My apologies."

Phelps turned a page in the report. "Then there's agent Bruckner - terminated by Daniel Kent. Subject thrown against wall. Massive internal hemorrhaging." [**]

"He... also tried to shoot me."

"-And agent Burris; terminated by Daniel Kent. Head torn off." [**]

Phelps paused and looked at me, incredulous he tried to connect the description in the report to the skinny chain-smoker sitting in front of him.

"You... actually tore his head off?"

When I didn't reply, Phelps collected the prints and folded them back into the dossier. "The command must have a damn good reason for keeping you alive. Are you really that valuable, Danny?"

"Your mother seems to think so."

Phelps unscrewed a plastic bottle and poured out a pile of semi-precious stones. Soon, a colorful jumble of tiny emeralds, garnets, topaz and sapphires graced the table top. Hundreds of them, and all of them the size of peppercorns.

"What do you make of this?" He asked.

"I saw you sneaking it out of Tell's jacket before Officer Ramirez arrived."

Phelps smiled. "There's no need to confuse the local constabulary with unnecessary details. If Ramirez attributes Jack Tell's death to heart failure in his report, everybody wins."

The gems were pretty, but unremarkable in size, and common in color. I've seen rocks like these for sale at RPG and steam-punk conventions for a few bucks a piece.

"Maybe Tell was trying to go legit," I suggested. "He's got a kid to look after."

"There's one type of stone missing, don't you think?"

"Diamonds?"

"Rubies." Phelps reached into his pocket for the ruby he'd bitten into the day before.

"It's pure," he said. "Down to zero PPM impurities. We've never seen anything like it."

"Nice, if you're a jeweler."

"Or a crook. These rubies have the ideal composition for making small, but powerful lasers."

"Quinn mentioned something about alarms not working."

"It's become a spree. Criminals take out alarm systems and CCTVs with portable lasers. Point it at a surveillance camera and it blows the circuit."

"Tell was smuggling rubies?"

"He was the only dealer we know of. Tell was an opportunist -a small time crook, but he was never bright enough to manufacture anything like this."

"So you followed him to track his source."

"New York, Berlin, London, Stockholm. I've trailed him across the globe and he never met with anyone. He just keeps selling those damn rocks. I finally follow him to this place and BOOM! You show up and Tell drops dead. That's nine months of work, wasted right there."

"Surely you don't think I had anything to do with Tell's heart attack."

"Mr. Kent," said Phelps and his voice was no longer that of a friendly sales representative.

"All I know is whenever you show up, that's when people start dying in messy ways."

Agent Phelps scooped the gemstones back into the plastic vial.

"Tell singled out the rubies and sold them to the criminal underworld," said Phelps. "The leftover rocks are pretty, but they're not much of a retirement plan."

"Natural gemstones could wash down from the mountain and end up in the fish farm," I suggested. "You found a ruby in your fish last night, so maybe Tell was going legit."

Phelps unwrapped the napkin around the one single ruby from the night before. The stone was cut and polished smooth like a drop of frozen blood.

"There's nothing natural about this stone," said Phelps. "It's been cut by an artisan."

"So, we need to track down a jeweler?"

Phelps leaned over and looked me straight in the eye. "There is no "we" in this case, Daniel...Kent..." he stressed each word as if reprimanding a child. "This case is classified under MI-16. MY job is to investigate. Your job is to keep your nose out. You dig?"

"Yeah, I dig."

Phelps showed me a short stack of printed photos of me, in different locations. Here I was at the Oakfort Games Convention. Another showed me leaving the Police station, talking to Quinn. Another one of me, outside my shrink's practice. The last photos were troubling, as they showed me in the company of Irene. We were holding hands, strolling down main street.

"Why are you showing me this?"

"The MI-16 has you and Miss Sapere filed under "T" for trouble; And troublemakers get shut down."

"Are you... threatening me?"

"I'm telling you to leave this investigation to the grown-ups." Agent Phelps packed his papers and left me behind, sitting alone in my hotel room with a strange sensation of relief and unease. Relief because the death of Mr. Tell was no longer my problem. I was nothing more than an inconvenience to the MI. I was a fly in their soup of death and diamonds. At the same time, my stomach knotted up from unease, knowing the MI was keeping a record on me. Of course they did. How could I be so naive to believe they would turn the blind eye, after I'd killed three of their agents?

Did they also have on record that I was a monster? Or a mental case?

I looked at my reflection in the mirror.

What AMI?

I wasn't sure.

There are only two possibilities: one, you're one delusional motherfucker who kills government agents. Two, you're a half-demon from hell who kills government agents. Take your pick.

Finding out was easy. All I had to do was shift and take a walk in public, then watch the reaction of the people of San Blas. That ought to raise a few headlines in the local rag. It was tempting to get it over with. All I needed as one final change - a simple exercise in shape shifting. But doing so would forever change the way I perceived myself in this world, and it frightened me. As did a future of being locked up in some secret MI-16 lab and analyzed into pieces.

The stench of bad plumbing was getting to me, so I left my room and paced the halls. Fernando was in the kitchen installing a CCTV camera. "It'll monitor everything," he said. "Nobody's going to sneak around, killing guests in my hotel - not while I'm sleeping." He was strung out, shaking and sweating. People die in hotel-rooms all the time. They have cardiac arrests when fucking a prostitute, sniffing coke or masturbating to Porn-Hub. But they don't scream in terror and fire their nines, before keeling over and cacking it.

"Dude," I said. "Nobody's going to sneak into the kitchen. All they have to do is call for room service."

"Some service!" fumed Fernando and pointed at the room service panel on the kitchen wall. "The log shows Tell made a call for room service four times last night before he died." Fernando paged through the log-book, but found no record of what Tell had ordered, be it drinks, food or company.

"It was Catalina and Miguel's job to keep an eye out for the buzzer until eleven.

"So they were on duty when he died?"

"Miguel was probably down by the fish farm. Something wrong with the pump."

Fernando went back to installing his CCTV. "There!" he said finally. "That's one down. Smile for the camera."

I looked into the brown eye if the CCTV. Somewhere in the back room, a hard drive was silently recording my every move, chopping them into fifty frames a second and reducing my face to a stream of pixels, ones and zeroes, light and dark, man and monster.

This time I didn't smile.

---

Later that night I went down to the deserted hotel lounge. The other guests stayed clear of each other and I was alone behind the bar . I poured myself a large beer, before taking the stage, strumming my guitar and improvising. But without Ray to accompany me, the sound echoed eerily through the empty hall, entertaining no one.

I'll leave tomorrow, I decided and drank half a beer in one gulp when my mobile rang.

"Hello?"

"Step outside Mr. Kent," said a voice at the other end. It was a man's voice, but strange and muffled, like he was holding a scarf to his mouth.

"Huh?"

"Outside where I can see you."

I left the hall through the double doors and stepped outside. It was almost dark, but you could see the silhouette of Miguel down by the pond, fishing out plastic refuse with a grappling hook.

"Enjoying the view?" asked the stranger.

"Just get to the point."

"There's more than fish in the shallow water. Something lurks beneath the surface."

"I don't care, It ain't my case anymore. Who is this anyway?"

"A friend."

"No friend of mine talks into their sweater!"

The line went quiet as the stranger hung up.

I went back to my table and finished the beer. I checked the caller's number in my call log. It was a mobile number and the caller had made no attempt to mask it. What a jerk, I thought, if you take the trouble to muffle your voice, at least act like a pro and hide your number. Tomorrow, I'd ask Slater if I could use his laptop to trace the call, but I only made it as far as the lobby when my head began to spin.

Had one too many, I thought and leaned against the wall. The hallway swayed and took on strange proportions while I staggered to my room, where I collapsed on the bed. Either I needed to sleep really bad, or an episode was brewing. I fell into a long, feverish sleep, haunted by nightmares I couldn't wake from. In my dream, I was running on all fours and chasing a desperate prey. I had left my human body behind, and I reveled in the sensation of being the predator, running free and fast with no effort. I smelled the sweat and the fear of my prey, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before I caught up with it. To my delight I found my prey to be a human. A fur-less and fang-less thing, that stood no chance as my claws ripped into his flesh and my teeth tore into his throat. The human screamed and bled and struggled, if only for a moment before giving up and quietly accepting death. Deep within, a part of me wanted to stop murdering him. That part of me knew that killing a human was wrong. Then I realized to my horror,

• I had enjoyed the chase and the kill, far too much to stop.

---

The nightmare was still echoing when I woke up the next morning with a metallic taste in my mouth and a knocking sound in my ears. The knocking came from the door.

"There's been an accident!" rasped Fernando, "I think it's Mr. Phelps."

"What do you mean, you think ?"

"I recognize his clothes The rest is..." Fernando pressed his palm to his mouth to prevent himself from retching. "Mr. Kent," he cried. "Something terrible has happened again."

I followed Fernando around the hotel to the lawn that faced the rye fields. He pointed to something that looked like a random pile of clothes, but on closer inspection they were smeared in gore.

"I _think_that's Mr Phelps," whispered Fernando and pointed into the rye field. The remains of agent Phelps was lying a few feet into the field. He'd been torn open from neck to bellybutton and grayish pink entrails were piled around him.

"Somebody really did a number on him."

"Someone, or something!" said Fernando. "Maybe a mountain lion?"

"Miguel mentioned wild cats stealing his fish until he had the fence put up."

"There's a paw print," Fernando pointed enthusiastically at a paw print next to the corpse. It was as large as my open hand and showed clear, feline paw pads. Only, this cat didn't have retractable claws; they had cut four deep grooves into the soil. Four grooves I knew well. Months ago, Quinn had asked me to shift, to stop me from hallucinating. I was in alone my kitchen, and I discovered my hind-paw had carved scratch marks just like these into the linoleum floor [**].

"Did you put up CCTV in the garden yet?" I asked.

Fernando shook his head and covered the corpse of Phelps with a lime-green bed-sheet. "I don't want the boy to see this mess from the window," he said.

Only two rooms in the hotel faced this way: mine and that of Chris. From our position in the rye field, you could just make out the upper body of the boy, sitting motionless as always by the window.

---

"He's not a mute," said nurse Richards. "He just doesn't say much."

She was sitting by Chris, stroking his hand and talking to him quietly.

"Did you see anything from your window last night?" I asked.

Chris made a slight movement of his head, which nurse Richards interpreted as a "yes".

"Then tell us, Chris."

Slowly, the boy began to move in his wheelchair. His movements were stiff and jerky at first. It was like watching ice melting and turning into slurry.

"Cat!" he finally said, in a thick, throaty voice.

"Maybe he saw Mr. Whiskers from there," Said Fernando. "That's Catalina's pet."

"Big cat." This time the words came out fluent and confident. "Big cat chased the shoe-man. He screamed once."

"Strange you didn't hear anything?" Fernando looked at me puzzled. "Your window faces the same way."

"I'm a sound sleeper."

"You!" said Chris. His head turned and for the first time his eyes focused on something closer than infinity; he was looking straight at me.

"You're a cat."

Nurse Richards was looking increasingly concerned.

"Look what you've done!" she snapped. "He's not making sense anymore. You've exhausted the poor boy."

Chris had wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth, chatting quietly to himself. He was repeating some kind of nursery rhyme over and over.

We left Nurse Richards to mind the boy, but his sing-song voice followed me down the hall.

Cat caught the shoe man

clawed up a human.

Think that Tell and Chris have seen'em

Tinker, tailor, soldier, demon.

---

[*] in "Fallen Angels"

[**] in "Havana or Hell"