The wall of uniforms surged, not parting fluidly as it had for the commissioner, but stumbling and shoving itself away from something on the far side. Even Swift, not accustomed to being ignored, looked more startled than angry as he attempted to identify the source of the disturbance. I stepped up onto a flower box to see what was happening just as a woman in a second-story window erupted into a sustained, throaty scream. The officers had fallen back, leaving a wide radius around Junior Detective Charlie Cane. He was doubled over, clutching his sides as a spasm shook his body. Something was terribly strange about his arms. They looked dark, and the texture was all wrong; then his leg buckled and he dropped to the ground. His head shot up, and I saw his face in the unforgiving clarity of the moonlight—only it was not the same gentle face I had come to recognize over the past two days on the streets of New Fiddleham. It was not the face of a man at all, but the feral grimace of a beast.
