The Truth

questions?”
    An indistinct hand rose in the gloom.
    “What cook?” said a voice.
    Mr. Pin opened his mouth to reply, and then turned to his colleague, who was examining the bar’s array of very strange drinks. All cocktails are sticky; the ones in Biers tended to be stickier.
    “Says ‘Kill the Cook!!!’” said the voice.
    Mr. Tulip rammed two long kebab skewers into the bar, where they vibrated.
    “What cooks’ve you got?” he said.
    “It’s a good apron,” said the voice in the gloom.
    “It is the —ing envy of all my friends,” Mr. Tulip growled.
    In the silence Mr. Pin heard the unseen drinkers calculating the likely number of friends of Mr. Tulip. It was not a calculation that would involve a simple thinker taking off his shoes.
    “Ah. Right,” said someone.
    “Now, we don’t want any trouble with you people,” said Mr. Pin. “Not as such. We simply wish to meet a werewolf.”
    Another voice in the gloom said: “Vy?”
    “Got a job for him,” said Mr. Pin.
    There was some muffled laughter in the darkness and a figure shuffled forwards. It was about the size of Mr. Pin; it had pointy ears; it had a hairstyle that clearly continued to its ankles, inside its ragged clothes. Tufts of hair stuck out of holes in its shirt and densely thatched the backs of its hands.
    “’m part werewolf,” it said.
    “Which part?”
    “That’s a funny joke.”
    “Can you talk to dogs?”
    The self-confessed part-werewolf looked around at its unseen audience, and for the first time Mr. Pin felt a twinge of disquiet. The sight of Mr. Tulip’s slowly spinning eye and throbbing forehead was not having the usual effect. There were rustlings in the dark. He was sure he heard a snigger.
    “Yep,” said the werewolf.
    The hell with this, thought Mr. Pin. He pulled out his pistol bow in one practiced movement, and held it an inch from the werewolf’s face.
    “This is tipped with silver,” he said.
    He was amazed at the speed of movement. Suddenly a hand was against his neck, and five sharp points pressed into his skin.
    “These ain’t,” said the werewolf. “Let’s see who finishes squeezin’ first, eh?”
    “Yeah, right,” said Mr. Tulip, who was also holding something.
    “That’s just a barbecue fork,” said the werewolf, giving it barely a glance.
    “You want to see how —ing fast I can throw it?” said Mr. Tulip.
    Mr. Pin tried to swallow, but only got halfway. Dead people, he knew, didn’t squeeze that hard, but it was at least ten steps to the door and the space seemed to be getting wider by the heartbeat.
    “Hey,” he said. “There’s no need for this, right? Why don’t we all loosen up? And, hey, it would help me talk to you if you were your normal shape…”
    “No problem, my friend.”
    The werewolf winced and shuddered, without at any point letting go of Mr. Pin’s neck. The face contorted so much, features flowing together, that even Mr. Pin, who in other circumstances quite enjoyed that sort of thing, had to look away.
    This allowed him to see the shadow on the wall. It was, contrary to expectations, growing. So were its ears.
    “Any qvestions?” said the werewolf. Now its teeth seriously interfered with its speech. Its breath smelled even worse than Mr. Tulip’s suit.
    “Ah…” said Mr. Pin, standing on tiptoe. “I think we’ve come to the wrong place.”
    “I think zat also.”
    At the bar, Mr. Tulip bit the top off a bottle in a meaningful way.
    Once again, the room was filled with the ferocious silence of calculation and the personal mathematics of profit and loss.
    Mr. Tulip smashed a bottle against his forehead. At this point, he did not appear to be paying much attention to the room. He’d just happened to have a bottle in his hand which he did not need anymore. Putting it onto the bar would have required an unnecessary expenditure of hand-eye coordination.
    People recalculated.
    “Is he human? ” said the werewolf.
    “Well, of course, ‘human’ is just a word,” said Mr. Pin.
    He felt weight slowly press down onto his toes as he was lowered to the floor.
    “I think perhaps we’ll just be going,” he said carefully.
    “Right,” said the werewolf. Mr. Tulip had smashed open a big jar of pickles, or at least things that were long, chubby, and green, and was trying to insert one up his nose.
    “If we wanted to stay, we would,” said Mr. Pin.
    “Right. But you want to go. So does your…friend,” said the werewolf.
    Mr. Pin backed towards the