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Isn't That Special

Esther M. Friesner

Esther M. Friesner dearly loves working in a field that has no trouble reconciling her role as the creator of the wildly popular Chicks In Chainmail series of anthologies, her Nebula Awards for some decidedly serious stories, and her latest vocation for YA novels (including Nobody's Princess and Nobody's Prize for Random House, Tem-ping Fate for Penguin, and more on the horizon). Originally from New York until the siren song of Yale brought her to Ph.D.-land, she's been living in suburban Connecticut ever since and knows whereof she writes.

 

If she had to hold that stiff little smile in place for much longer, Donna Vincenzo was sure that her head would explode. That would never do. Belmont Acres was not zoned for explosions. The Homeowners' Association maintained order and decorum scrupulously, rooting out the nits of nonconformity with a singular focus found only in the most dedicated, devoted, otherwise useless and boring lives.

"—and then Nathaniel told us all about how things used to be different for his grampa, in the olden days." While Donna grinned and cringed, her pride and joy, little Gilda, nattered away. The kindergartener had been rambling on about the new child in her class for at least fifteen minutes, all the while slurping skim milk and turning cinnamon-dusted rice cakes to gummy ruin in her hands. She was unaware of the mounting tension vibrating through her mother's trans-fat-free body, and of the intensifying effect her words were having on said tension. "He said that his grampa had to live all by himself for years and years and years in the forest until the war came and he got to be a hero for killing Nazis and he married this girl named Ilona and she was an orphan and they came to 'Merica and—"

"Would you like a cookie, dear?" It was not an offer made lightly. Donna would sooner give up her morning cup of kelp broth than resort to baked goods bribery when dealing with her trophy child. In her world, the only truly obscene S-word was "sugar," and she monitored her daughter's intake of the vile contaminant as closely as possible without pushing Gilda's school into taking out a restraining order, barring both mother and child from the cafeteria. This, however, was an emergency. She needed time to process the atrocious information the girl had just dumped into her lap, and for that she needed Gilda to shut the hell up for a while.

"Gimme!" Gilda dropped the rice cake like a dead cockroach. Donna was so distracted by worry that she didn't bother correcting her daughter's lack of good manners. She stuck two cookies into Gilda's grasping paws and flung herself onto her BlackBerry, skimming her emergency contacts in a wild-eyed panic. By the time Gilda had gobbled up the last crumb of chocolate chip baksheesh, Donna had set up five distinct meetings to handle the dreadful crisis. Breathing a bit more easily, she dragged Gilda off to their in-home fitness studio and made damned sure that her daughter did enough Bye-Bye Baby Cellulite exercises to redeem her from a fat [sic] worse than death.

The next morning, with her daily 5K run and Xtreem Flabslayer workout behind her, Donna swooped into the first of her seek-and-destroy teˆte-a`-teˆtes, her lean limbs reeking of honorable sweat, Chanel No. 5, and the ICan't-Believe-It's-Not-Money air freshener presently perfuming the interior of her BMW SUV. She erupted through the door of Gilda's kindergarten classroom, a Puma sportswear-clad Valkyrie, and opened negotiations with a hoarse, aggrieved, "What are you going to do about it?"

Gilda's teacher, Ms. Randolph, stared at Donna's outstretched, accusatory finger and didn't so much as blink. She'd been teaching kindergarten to the spawn of the Overly Entitled for more than twenty years. By the simple ploy of dropping a dollar into a coffee can every time one of her student's parents used the words "special,"

"empowered,"

"creative," and of course "gifted" to describe their precious booger-eating treasure-from-a gated-community-Heaven, she always saved more than enough to take a yearly posh Caribbean vacation every time spring recess rolled around. She dropped a fiver in the can whenever dissatisfied parents threatened to take legal action if all of their kidcentric demands were not met. An extra buck went in for every "Do you know who I am?" and two for each "My taxes pay your salary!" The coffee can was doing better than most folks' 401ks.

"What am I going to do about what, Ms. Vincenzo?" Ms. Randolph asked calmly. "You'll have to forgive me, but my pet ferret hid my PDA this morning and I'm not sure if you're here about the bake sale or the werewolf."

Donna ground her teeth, then took a deep, cleansing breath left over from her days as a yoga instructor. "I certainly hope you're joking. I've taken time away from my vital commitments to deal with an issue that should never have been an issue in the first place. I shudder to think that the person so many influential members of this community have entrusted with the educative guidance of our nation's most precious resource, our future, our children, would not be suitably informed of the reason for my extremely inconvenient rescheduling of today's agenda just to accommodate your supposedly limited schedule."

Ms. Randolph stared at Donna. "Gob smacked" did not begin to describe her reaction to the spate of verbiage that had just escaped her antagonist's collagen-stuffed lips. Up to this point, Ms. Randolph's interactions with Donna had been limited to Parents' Night, where—this being kindergarten—if you didn't need to tell Mommy and Daddy that their li'l pumpkin was inadequately toilet trained, playing with bodily by-products, or overindulging in Comparative Anatomy, you were home free. The teacher had never suspected Donna capable of such a spate of aggressive gibberish. Ms. Randolph cursed inwardly. She was actually going to have to deal with this sinewy harpy rather than shoo her away with a nice take-home assortment of bland reassurances.

"I'm so sorry," Ms. Randolph replied, taking care to employ a tone that pretty much said The hell I am, but try to prove it, bitch. "Sometimes I forget that I'm not in a teaching situation. The latest authoritative research on elementary education indicates that the more often a child is exposed to humor—the more examples of being able to take a joke which that child encounters during the formative years—the greater the chances of said child being accepted to an Ivy League school. It's all quite fascinating and completely true." She grinned. "But I can see that this interview will go faster if we keep things simple. Obviously you're here about little Nathaniel Corbett."

"Corbett?" Donna echoed. She knew that name. It was a name that had the oomph needed to make her knees buckle and to force her to go from a position of on-her-feet-and-dominant to stunned-and-collapsed in the wobbly chair next to Ms. Randolph's desk. Corbett was the name of one of the town's preeminent families, the sort of people that Donna Vincenzo thought of as Worthwhile Social Contacts as opposed to those she regarded as servants, toadies, inconveniences, or meaty placeholders. With one foot planted on the verdant hills of the country club and the other sunk up to its creamy white thigh in the yacht basin, the Old Money colossus that was Clan Corbett bestrode Donna's narrow world. "Those Corbetts?"

Ms. Randolph switched off her smile. She knew almost to the neuron flash exactly what Donna Vincenzo must be thinking. To cross the Corbetts was to court a good old-fashioned down-home social status stompin', an unthinkable outcome abhorrent to any soul who actually gave a dodo's dookie about such things. This was no time to gloat.

Oh hell, yes, it was!

"My goodness, I thought you knew," Ms. Randolph purred.

"I—Gilda never told me Nathaniel's last name, just that his grandfather was—was a rather colorfully ethnic type of person."

"That's the first time I've heard a werewolf described as something one step away from a Morris dancer, but no matter. I'm just relieved to know there's a healthy reason why you didn't know Nathaniel's a Corbett. For a moment, I was afraid you weren't having meaningful communication with your child." Ms. Randolph launched the gratuitous psychobabble javelin straight at Donna's heart and kept a beautifully straight face when the overbearing shrew cringed.

"I always communicate with Gilda," Donna protested feebly. "Every single day. When she told me about Nathaniel's family history of—physical otherness, I simply assumed she was talking about his paternal grandfather."

"Well, she wasn't." Ms. Randolph's smile was sweet enough to rot a saber-toothed tiger's fangs to nubbins. "Although I do like the image of Burgoyne Corbett stripping off his Savile Row suit under the full moon, going hairy, and running across the golf course, munching the caddies." She laughed.

Donna didn't. She stood up shakily, but with a determined look on her face. "I'm sure you must find this situation very funny, Ms. Randolph, but I can assure you, you are the only one who does." With that, she turned on her heel and strode out of the classroom. The interview was over, and so what if it hadn't yielded the desired result? It was, as previously mentioned, merely the first of Donna's meetings that day.

Three weeks later, Gilda came home in tears. "What's wrong, darling?" Donna asked, embracing the heartsick five-year-old. "Does something hurt? Was someone mean to you at school today? Did you eat a donut and you're afraid to tell Mommy?"

Gilda tilted her head back and wailed, "My boyfriend's gonnnnnnnnne!" Then she buried her head on her mother's shoulder and sobbed bitterly.

"Now, now, precious, I'm sure he's just got a case of the sniffles. He'll be back in school tomorrow, you just wait and see." Donna patted Gilda's curls, then added: "I didn't even know you had a little boyfriend."

Gilda lifted her head and nodded vigorously. "I do and he's wonderful and we're going to get married and he loves me and he gave me a candy bar and he said I'm the only one who can call him Nate and he was even going to let me watch him change into a werewolf later this month and—"

"He gave you a what?" Donna demanded, aghast.

Thus did she learn that her prized offspring was not just consorting with an unacceptable companion whose lupine forebears were not known for either good temper nor good nutrition habits, but had actually accepted a gift of refined sugar from the miserable little son of a bitch. The horror . . . the horror . . .

I didn't get that brat the hell out of my baby's class a moment too soon, Donna thought, basking in the smug comfort of an exclusionary job well done. And there's no way that Burgoyne Corbett will ever know this was all my doing.

She smiled, covered her daughter in an oily wash of other-runny-nosed-fish-in-the-sea platitudes, and let the child indulge herself with all the kelp wafers she could eat until lunch was ready.

Donna was just setting their mother-daughter salad plates on the kitchen table when the phone rang. A distraught Helen Norris was on the line, her voice shrill and inconvenient. "Donna, you've got to help me! My husband just called. He got e-mail from Nathaniel Corbett's grandfather and that man is furious. He found out that we're the ones who got up that petition and forced the Board of Ed. to hold a special session and who got the Channel 3 Child Peril Patrol on speed dial! He said that little Nathaniel is absolutely devastated to be banned from his old kindergarten class and he's threatening all sorts of terrible things unless we tell the authorities to let the boy back in!"

Donna sighed. "Helen, dear, breathe. Your aura is positively jagged with stress. Meet me at Bistro Metrovia in fifteen minutes and we'll get this whole silly misunderstanding settled. My treat."

Helen consented to the meeting. Of course she did. Dining out in Belmont Acres was split among fast food franchise pit stops (accent on "pit"), diners, seafood shacks, "edgy" ethnic eateries (any place the spices were hot enough to make soccer moms shriek and giggle over how daring they were being, as if eating severely toned-down Pad Thai was the equivalent of juggling cobras while getting a butt tattoo in Bangkok), and the high-priced, high-pretense Dining Experiences whose dainty, overwrought dishes and condescending waitstaff permitted patrons to dream that they were still cosmopolitans (instead of merely drinking them).

Bistro Metrovia belonged to the urbane/urban wannabe type of local restaurant. Their NO SHOES, NO SHIRT, NO SERVICE sign went on to specify which designer labels were de rigeur wear for patrons who even hoped to be seated. But no promises were made. Donna was one of the privileged people who'd established Bistro Metrovia bona fides ages ago, indicating Godzilla-sized clout. Her table was always ready.

Oh yes, Helen Norris was there within the fifteen minutes Donna decreed. Donna herself showed up a good thirty minutes later because she could.

Within the elegantly chilling atmosphere of Bistro Metrovia, Helen's hysterics shriveled into mousey peepings. Donna smiled while her friend once more recounted the tale of Nathaniel's grandfather's irate e-mail. No matter how upset Helen was, she'd sooner open a vein or a charge account at Wal-Mart than make a scene in this establishment.

"—and he says he's going to take action, Donna," Helen whispered, nervously shredding her ciabatta roll to crumbs while she spoke.

"That's a pretty empty threat unless he said legal action," Donna replied. "And even then, your family's got a good lawyer."

"My family?" Helen's eyes widened in distressed surprise.

Donna sighed more mightily than necessary, just to make sure the message got across that Helen's behavior was coming dangerously close to annoying her. Much of the power in Donna's hands came from her subtle mastery of bullying-through-implied-but-unspecified menace. "Yes, your family, Helen. When you were entrusted with the leadership of this crusade, you accepted the responsibility for handling every aspect of it like an adult. I wanted to do it myself, but as I explained to you in great detail—" (Behold another subtle barb, shot from the Master's bow, reminding Helen that Donna had already invested a vast amount of her much-more-valuable-than-yours time bringing her minion up to speed.) "—my schedule simply does not allow me to take on even one more commitment. It broke my heart, really it did, but then I asked myself 'Who is the only person I know who comes marginally close to equaling my devotion to the welfare of The Children?"' (Yes, Donna did have the oratorical ability to speak in audible upper case letters.) "That's why I called you." She scowled at Helen, although her latest round of Botox injections fought the effort every dermal micromillimeter of the way. "Now it seems that I was wrong."

Helen turned pale, which was a neat trick considering all the hours she spent getting broiled to a turn at the local Tan-a-Lot parlor. "I—I certainly hope you're not questioning my dedication to our children's best interests. You and I have worked together on enough committees—"

Donna waved away any attempts to invoke the Sisterhood of Robert's Rules of Order. "Helen, darling, you know that you're like a sister to me—" (Donna's birth sisters hadn't spoken to her in years, not since she'd pulled off an absolutely brilliant outflanking maneuver when their grandmother passed away and all of those valuable antiques were just lying there.) "—but if I'd thought you were going to do such—such a half-assed job on this, dropping the ball the instant you're asked to do some trivial follow-up work, I would have gotten somebody capable. You know I'm only saying this because I love you, don't you, dear?"

And there it was, the Love bomb. Donna didn't drop it often, but when she did it could only mean that she was about to flay the hide off of her chosen Target and send them a bill for a Therapeutic Exfoliation treatment afterwards. No matter how heavily laden with offense, churlishness, outright bitchery or classic schoolyard snottiness Donna's words might be, anyone who called her on it was promptly slapped with a wounded, "But I'm only telling you this because I love you!" And then she'd be off in a whirlwind of phone calls, e-mails and text messages, letting all the world know what an unappreciative, cruel and unfair person Target A was, and how anyone who would ever want to associate with Target A after this was probably just as bad.

It was astonishing how well this tactic worked in the hothouse-cum-loony bin of suburbia, especially when there was nothing good on TV.

Helen had viewed the blast crater of more than one of Donna's unlucky Targets and she wasn't stupid. "Oh yes, of course, absolutely, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate the way you believed in me and trusted me to do a good job and—"

"But—?" Donna knew that one of those nasty little interjections was en route and wanted Helen to get to it in a hurry. Lunch time was almost over and she had a hot date with a seaweed body wrap at 1:30.

"But this isn't just about me. If it were, I'd be right out there, facing up to little Nathaniel's grandfather no matter what!" She lowered her head and sighed. "It's my husband."

"What's your husband?" Donna asked, checking her watch.

"The reason why I can't—I can't continue being solely responsible for the fallout from this whole mess."

Donna momentarily debated whether or not to chastise Helen for referring to anything regarding The Children as a "mess," then decided it would be a wasted effort. Her underling's spine was already reduced to the consistency of (ugh!) white bread with the crusts cut off. To hammer at it any more would just be overkill.

"I'm so sorry, Helen, but you'll have to explain this to me just an eensy bit better. You don't mean to say that your husband . . . controls you? This is the twenty-first century."

Ah, another masterstroke! There wasn't a single woman of Donna's acquaintance who didn't claim, loudly and publicly, to be Liberated. Which in their social context meant they were happy to make their husbands set them up in business running darling little giftware or fashion boutiques, but actually campaign to get equal pay or to retain reproductive freedom? With Feminists? Too loud, too scary, and besides, who'd stay home and run the boutique?

"It is! He doesn't! I'm not—!" Helen's eyes began to dart wildly about Bistro Metrovia, as if seeking a bolt-hole among the potted plants and Chihuly glass sculptures. But there was no escape to be had, and so she declared, "My God, Donna, do I have to say it? You know as well as I do that Larry is—is—" She clapped her hands to her face, shuddered massively, and in a pathetic, broken voice exclaimed: "—an investment counselor!"

So much for Bistro Metrovia's vaunted scene-discouraging power. Some parts of the human condition simply happened to contain too much visceral horror to be suppressed by the possibility of incurring a maîtred's cultivated sneer. (Although ever since the stock market's recent shenanigans, with people's investments and retirement funds faring about as well as squirrels trying to cross a NASCAR track, the aforementioned sneer well might have been invoked less by Helen's outburst than by the revelation that her husband did . . . such things for a living. Sic transit gloria Wall Street Journal mundi.)

Donna pursed her lips and regarded the top of her crony's bent head with mild distaste. People were looking. Helen had effectively banned herself from Bistro Metrovia with such ill-considered and immoderate behavior, but Donna would see herself in Hell or an all-you-can-eat buffet line (same difference) if she let this dismal wimp take her down with her.

She summoned the waiter and, in a voice that was at once refined and unquestionably audible to every other person in the restaurant, ordered the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu. It didn't matter that she wasn't going to drink a drop of it. What counted was the subtle reminder of her position of steadfast economic security. She couldn't have distanced herself further from Helen and her [shudder!] investment counselor husband if she'd used a gold-plated ten-foot pole. Only then did she address her dining companion.

"I do know . . . that about Larry, dear. There's no need to attract attention. So I take it that little Nathaniel's grandpa is one of your husband's biggest clients and he's threatened to take his business elsewhere? Is that what you meant when you said he was going to 'take action'?"

Helen nodded without looking up.

"Well, my goodness, why didn't you say it was about money from the start? You just stick to your guns and I promise you, I will do everything in my power to help—from behind the throne, of course. If I joined you on the front lines, it would look like you couldn't handle this on your own, and we don't want people thinking that, do we?"

Helen shook her head a little hesitantly.

"Good girl. Well done." Donna said. She wasn't talking about Helen. "Now you just hold your ground and don't let anyone, make you give up even one inch. I'll be right behind you all the way, don't you worry."

Donna's promises of support—spiritual and material both—were not empty ones. She relished a good fight in the holy cause of Getting Her Own Way almost as much as she loved whipping the hired help (in this case Helen) back into line. She would put her family's lawyer on the case, with the strict injunction that under no circumstances was Nathaniel's grandfather to have even the ghost of a suggestion of a rumor of a hint that she was behind it. She was fairly sure that somewhere in the eternally resectioned bowels of the Law there had to be something smelly enough to discourage the irate Corbett grand-pater familias from taking out his fury on Helen's household with the Big Mallet of Financial Clout. By this means, Donna Vincenzo would be able to help her obedient minion and continue to keep herself in Burgoyne Corbett's good-if-unwitting graces.

And if it didn't work out well for Helen and Larry after all—

Oh, well! C'est la PTA!

Overcome by a surge of kickass jubilation, Donna had the waiter fill her wine glass to the brim, less the mandatory space needed for a theatrical sniff-swirl-sip-and-showboat ("Ah, yes, this has a ripe, deliquescent nose reminiscent of all of those succulent burgundies we sampled on our fifth visit to the Loire Valley. Don't you agree that châteaux are the only way to endure France?") and drank fully half of it. Damn the calories, half!

Then she went home and jogged her sins away before making that pledged call to her lawyer.

Per Donna's request, the loyal attorney did not bother her with anything except results, which came with remarkable swiftness. Only a fortnight of billable hours had passed by the time the call came, assuring Donna that there would be no more threats of material sanctions leveled against Helen's family. Donna went to sleep that night wrapped in a snuggly cocoon of satisfaction and, if she could not lay claim to the sleep of the Just, she could at least enjoy the slumber of the Self-Justified.

The next morning, as she was conquering a new Pilates routine, the doorbell began to chime. She tried to ignore it—her Me-Time was sacred, as was her Me Everything Else—but the caller just would not give up and go away. Donna's devotion to Pilates was that of acolyte rather than mundane practitioner, so imagine if you will the effects of a determined doorbell ringer (and a sufficiently disruptive doorbell) at a Papal High Mass. Donna turned off the CD, flung down her resistance band, and stalked to the door, ready to flash-fry whoever was on the other side.

"What do you want?" she shouted as she flung wide the portal. She had no fear that her impudent caller might be some sort of malefactor, intent on a home invasion. Her house was part of a planned community whose plans included a security system so efficient and detail-oriented that in the summertime, the mosquitoes needed passports to get in. Thus, anyone calling at the Vincenzo domicile was either a neighbor or on the family's Approved list.

The man standing on Donna's doormat was neither. "Where I come from, Madame, the proper greeting to offer a caller—even an uninvited one—is 'Good morning."' He spoke in a deep, melodious voice, spiced with a slight accent that Donna was unable to place more specifically than the original Borscht Belt.

Donna was not a dull-witted person. She didn't require a formal introduction nor even a few more salient hints as to the identity of the silver-haired gentleman. From the moment she'd laid eyes on him, her brain went on Unidentified Individual Alert and leaped into processing all incoming visual, aural, and even nasal data. (Incomplete information, true, but she wasn't about to touch or taste the man!) The long face, so reminiscent of a hunting hound, the slightly pointed ears, the exceptionally white and likewise pointed teeth, the shaggy silver hair that was downright peltlike, the yellow eyes and the faint (though possibly imagined) aroma of kibble clinging to her caller were all set in place like an epic, elaborate arrangement of dominoes. The accent was merely the clincher, the finger tap that sent all of those snippets of evidence tumbling down in a floor pattern that spelled WEREWOLF.

"Eeeeeeee!"

Donna shrieked and slammed the door. And really, what other sort of reaction might a recognized member of Lycanthropus Erectus expect, under the circumstances? She raced through the house to the dining room where she dove into the drawer holding her wedding silver and yanked out a steak knife. Then she grabbed a fork, just to be on the safe side, and returned to the front door.

The man was halfway down the tapestry brick walkway when she hailed him. He raised one frosty eyebrow, surprised and intrigued, before coming back. "I beg your pardon, Madame," he said with a shallow bow. "I did not expect you to open your door to me a second time. I admire your bravery and"—he noticed the improvised silver cross that Donna held up between them, steak knife transversing fork, and smothered a laugh—"prudence."

"You're not afraid of the cross?" Donna looked cheated.

"That would be the other team."

"Or silver?"

"Only when my wife expects me to pay for it. I will not lie to you: A silver bullet is another matter, when I am in my wolf form." He smirked. "In this form as well, if your aim is good. The same may be said for that knife you're holding. But really, madame, it's not necessary. Your life is in no danger from me."

"Oh, I know that," Donna said, with a haughty toss of her head. She lowered the cutlery. "You're here because of that business with your grandson. You're probably going to argue that he should be allowed to attend kindergarten with the normal children because he's no danger to anyone except on nights when the moon is full. It would hardly make your case if you tried to rip my throat out. On the other hand, I don't want you just biting me, either."

"Indeed," the older man replied. He bowed a second time and added: "Teodor Barbu, at your service. May I come in?" He stared intently into her eyes.

"Stop that!" Donna snapped. "If you think you can put some kind of a spell on me—"

"Madame, you are confusing werewolves with vampires, Mesmerists, witches, or possibly Jedi knights. If I hold your gaze, it is because that is how my kindred initiate a challenge. You are a worthy opponent, but I have established pack dominance many times in my life. I admit that this will be the first time I attempt to do so with words rather than fangs. One must move with the times. May I come in?"

Donna was reluctant to allow Mr. Barbu across her threshold, but she reasoned it would be better to get through this awkward interview in private. "I don't know why you're wasting your time, coming to see me," she said as she ushered him into the living room. "I did support the movement to eject—to provide your grandson with a more suitable learning environment for his needs, but I mustn't take credit for initiating it. That would be Helen—"

"Yes." Mr. Barbu was curt. "I have spoken with her. I should have done that from the start, but—I am an old man with old-fashioned ways. In my day, if you wanted to bring the wife into line, you went to the husband."

Donna was taken aback. "You're the one who threatened Larry?"

"Madame, even a man who becomes a wolf when the moon is full and bright may also have a diversified and lucrative portfolio."

"And I suppose Helen sent you here?" Donna asked dryly. He nodded. "I told her to keep me out of this. Just wait until I get through with that useless, treacherous, cowardly—"

"Madame, do not condemn your friend. I could see she was no leader, and so I cajoled her into revealing whose hand it was that pulled her strings."

"You cajoled her?"

He smiled and spread his hands. "I said I'd devour her shih zu if she didn't talk. It is practically the same thing."

Donna resigned herself to hearing him out over a pot of herbal tea and a plate of sliced excellent-sources-of-roughage-potassium-and-antioxidants (i.e. fruit). She was fascinated and aghast to see how he—pardon the expression or not—wolfed down every last morsel on the platter, including a pomegranate, rind and all.

"You've certainly got a healthy appetite for a man of your age," she remarked. "Your grandson is very proud of your war record. Even if you were only a pup—boy at the time, that would still put you in your eighties."

"The appetite goes with my heritage, Madame, as does my lusty health. Plenty of fresh, woodland air, a high-protein diet, an intense, regular exercise regime, maintaining the ability to outdistance one's pursuers, all these are the keys to my longevity." He sized her up from top to toe and added: "You too look as if you like to keep fit."

" 'Like to—?"' Donna echoed, then laughed. "Try live to! I don't care how far the rest of this country slides into a super-sized bucket of lard, I'm not going."

"Your devotion to good health is admirable, Madame."

"Oh, please. If I could show you photos of my husband's two exes, you'd understand. On went the wedding ring and off went the gym membership. He's rich enough to afford two sets of alimony and child support payments, but I'll be damned if I give him any excuse to make it three. I'm not about to eat table scraps when I can own the kitchen."

"A pity. You would look even lovelier with a little more meat on your bones. A little fat never hurt anyone." Mr. Barbu licked his lips discreetly.

"Fat equals failure." Donna was adamant. "Even my little Gilda knows that, and she's only five years old."

"A delightful age," Mr. Barbu agreed. "But also—such a tender one. The hurts a young child receives are never forgotten. My Nathaniel has taken his banishment to heart. If only you could hear how piteously he asks his parents why he can't return to his former school! He believes it's because of something he's done wrong, poor innocent."

"Didn't his mother and father explain that his exclu—educational upgrade is a needful preventative measure?" Donna clucked her tongue. "Sloppy parenting."

"Preventative? What is being prevented?"

"Turning other children into werewolves, of course! We've all seen the movies. If a vampire bites you, you become a vampire, if a werewolf bites you, you become a werewolf, and some children bite anything."

"And you believe that my Nathaniel—?" Mr. Barbu was at a temporary loss for words. "Madame, if you live the rest of your life according to what your American movies teach you, then you have my sincere compassion. A werewolf's bite is like a knife. In the hands of a madman, it kills; in the hands of a doctor, it heals. Its transforming magic has been called a curse, but when you learn to control a curse, to make its magic serve you, then it can become a blessing. Oh, there are as many different ways of looking at a werewolf's bite as there are leaves on an oak, but one thing holds true for all—" He raised one finger, leaned forward, and bellowed in Donna's face: "To give a werewolf's bite you must first be a werewolf, and that my Nathaniel is not!"

Donna recoiled. "But-but-but he's your grandson!" she protested.

"Lycanthropy is not genetic," Mr. Barbu said in a somewhat calmer voice. "Not like that whatever-it's called Ukrainian curse, the one that makes you turn into a ferret on Saint Vaclav's Day. Madame, you are a woman of great authority in this town. When the next full moon rises, come and see for yourself—under whatever conditions you dictate!—that what I've told you is true, that my grandson is not a werewolf. And once you have witnessed this, I beg of you, use that authority to restore a small child's happiness and to right the great wrong you have done to him."

It was a very good speech. Unfortunately, if it had been a successful speech, it would have stopped before bringing up the thorny-though-accurate juxtaposition of you and great wrong, two concepts that just plain did not coexist in Donna's universe.

"My goodness!" she chirped. "I'd really be doing a great wrong if I didn't help you out after all that, Mr. Barbu, but—well, it's just not possible. Helen and the rest of us went to an awful lot of trouble, doing what we thought was best for all of The Children, so if any of us says that a mistake was made, it would entirely destroy our credibility the next time we need to protect them. Don't you worry about protecting The Children, Mr. Barbu?"

"I do." The older man slapped his knees and stood up slowly. "I worry that no one can protect them from stepping into a large, steaming pile of whatever it was you just said."

"What?"

"Never mind. Madame, I see you are resolved to remain unswayed by reason. You see yourself as a woman of conviction, steadfast in your beliefs. I must respect that. May your devotion be suitably rewarded. Farewell." Before Donna could react, he seized her hand, raised it to his lips, and gave it a courtly kiss.

"Eep!" She yanked her hand away in horror. "You bit me! You horrible monster, you bit me!"

"You are quite mistaken," Mr. Barbu said evenly. "Use your eyes. Has blood been drawn? Is the skin broken?"

Donna studied her hand carefully. "Nnnno . . . But I felt something."

"At most it was the glancing touch of my eyetooth across your knuckles."

Donna giggled nervously, embarrassed by her unaccustomed flare of hysteria. "I guess that doesn't count as a bite."

Mr. Barbu placed one hand over his heart and bowed. "By my adored grandson's life, I swear what I have done has no power to turn you into a monster such as I."

 

A full moon hung ripe and radiant in the autumn sky, gazing down in distant serenity at the hulking, shaggy-haired, shambling creature making its way up the crazy-paved path of the slumbering house. Its jaws champed mindlessly, its eyes blazed with bestial frenzy, and its brain throbbed with one thought and one thought alone:

The hunger . . . feed . . . the hunger . . . feed . . .

It threw back its head and the night was pierced by a long, heart-sickening howl.

Teodor Barbu stuck his long, gray-furred snout out of the bedroom window and peered down at the midnight caller. "Hey! Stop all that racket. Don't you have a den to go to? Some of us are trying to sleep."

"Fiend!" the creature on his doorstep bayed. "What have you done to me?" It raised one trembling fist and shook it at the grinning wolf in the window. A fried chicken drumstick dripping with oil glistened in the moonlight for an instant before Donna Vincenzo stuffed it into her mouth and devoured it down to the bone. More crispy chicken parts awaited similar fates in the cardboard bucket she clutched to her chest. The fanny pack that once held her pedometer and water bottle now bulged with cheeseburgers. Her designer running shoes reeked of french fries. "You swore—!"

"—that you would not become a monster such as I." The gray wolf's tongue lolled in a jolly manner. "I have kept that promise. The delicate touch of my tooth to your skin was only enough to let you experience one tiny aspect of the lycanthrope's existence: Our ravenous hunger. Do you like it?"

"It's terrible!" Donna wailed. She dug a squashed brownie out of her jacket pocket and ate it in one bite, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Please . . . please make it stop! Oh my God, I can feel the cellulite growing, spreading, taking over every inch of my butt! Help me or kill me, but for the love of God, don't let me get fat!"

"Poor woman, you break my heart. Be comforted: What I have done, I have the power to undo . . . as do you. For every curse there is a cure, for every cure, a price." The wolf rested his chin on the windowsill. "I think you already know mine."

Without another word—but with virtually nonstop chewing—Donna Vincenzo took out her cell phone and keyed in a number. "Hello, Helen? (om, nom, nom) Yes, I know how (om, nom, nom) late it is but this (nom)is an emergency. Yes, I know I'm(ommity-nommity nom) eating, so would you shut up and listen? We were—I was (om, nom, nom) wrong about little (Nom!)thaniel Corbett and we've got to make it right as soon as possible or—" The rest of the conversation was overwhelmed by the sound of a host of cheeseburgers meeting their doom.

Teodor Barbu howled with laughter.

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Framed