A werewolf among us

more olive than brown, and her face was more open, her eyes more wide-set than his, her lips sensuous and heavy, whereas Dane's lips were thin and serious. Her black hair dropped straight over her shoulders, curled around the tips of her small breasts, as if accentuating them. At eighteen, she was one of the most interesting women that St. Cyr had ever seen. He wondered if he would have an opportunity to seduce her before the case was finished…
    Negative
, the bio-computer informed him.
    Still and all, she was a charming creature, with—
    Negative. Too many familial complications would result from such a rash
act, obstructing your conduct of the case.
    "I'll tell him the whole thing," Jubal said, sliding forward on his chair. The seat and arms of the chair rippled, gauged his new position, firmed up around his buttocks and thighs.
    "No, Jubal," Hirschel interposed.
    He had only spoken once before that evening, and then only to offer St. Cyr an obligatory welcome. He was quite like Jubal, heavy in the chest and shoulders, over six feet tall, leonine with a mane of hair and muttonchop sideburns. The chief difference was in the lines of his face. Where Jubal was soft, his cheeks smooth and the angles of his face pleasantly rounded, Hirschel was hard, cut deep by character lines, his skin tanned and leathery. Also, while Jubal was white-haired yet somehow young, Hirschel was black-haired and old, infinitely old despite his young man's constitution. Perhaps, actually, Hirschel was only a couple of years Jubal's senior, and certainly no more than a decade older; in experience, however, in knowledge and cunning, he was Jubal's great-great grandfather.
    The simple statement of the negative had drawn everyone's attention to the older man. He said, "I'll tell it, because I don't have nearly the degree of emotional involvement that you do, Jubal."
    Jubal nodded. "Go ahead."
    Hirschel turned to St. Cyr, smiled slightly, looking quite unlike the rider in the storm, the man with the pig heads slapping bloodily at his hip. Succinctly, he related much the same story that St. Cyr had gotten from Teddy, though with no extrapolation whatsoever.
    "You were living here at the times of both murders?"
    "Yes," Hirschel said. "I arrived a month before Leon's death; needless to say, a good part of this visit has not been a happy time for me." However, if he actually did agonize over the deaths of his niece and nephew, he did not indicate his inner turmoil in any way beyond this brief statement. He appeared healthy and happy, without the dark lines of anxiety around the eyes and mouth that characterized both Jubal and Alicia Alderban.
    Correctly projecting the line of thought St. Cyr was then pursuing, Hirschel said, "And, also needless to say, that puts me on your list of suspects."
    "How absurd! "Jubal said.
    "Really, Hirschel," Alicia said, "I doubt that Mr. St. Cyr—"
    "But he does suspect me," Hirschel said. "And he should. Just as he suspects all the rest of you."
    Jubal seemed twice as outraged at this. He turned to St. Cyr, his thick white brows drawn together over his eyes in one snowy bar. "Is this true? Do you think we'd murder our own children—brothers and sisters?"
    "Hirschel is correct," St. Cyr affirmed. "I suspect everyone until I have the data to logically eliminate suspects."
    "I won't have it that way," Jubal said, putting down his cordial.
    "Of course you will," Hirschel said quickly, before St. Cyr could speak. "You wanted a cyberdetective because you wanted a complete investigation, a thorough investigation. Now, you're going to have to take the sour with the sweet."
    "Hirschel, after all—" Jubal began.
    Then something he saw in the older man's expression cut him short. His voice died in volume and conviction until he only sighed, shrugged his shoulders and picked up the tiny glass of liqueur again.
    St. Cyr wondered what had passed between the two men. Clearly, Hirschel exercised some power over Jubal, though he was not a tenth as wealthy as the younger man and hardly old enough to pull a routine about being older-and-wiser-than-thou. Was it only his personality, so much more dominant than Jubal's, that had quieted the family head, or was there something else here? File it for consideration.
    Turning from the hunter, St. Cyr addressed the entire family. "Whose room is nearest the one Leon had?"
    "Mine," Betty said.
    She was demure, not quite as stunningly attractive as her sister but lovely in her own right. Her