I let go of Jason's hand and stepped up beside them. They both looked at me. Charlotte was the most startled. Her large, honey-brown eyes went wide. She said, "Anita," as if no one had told her I was in town.

I smiled. "Hi, Charlotte. Can we talk outside?" I had to put my face nearly next to hers to be heard.

She shook her head. "This is the whore that's lied about Richard."

I nodded. "I know. Let's take it outside, though."

Charlotte shook her head again. "I am not leaving until she tells the truth. Richard did not rape her."

We were yelling, with our faces almost touching, to be heard. "Of course, he didn't," I said. "Water is wet, the sky is blue, and Richard isn't a rapist."

Charlotte stared at me. "You believe him."

I nodded. "I got him out on bail. He's waiting to see you outside."

Her eyes went even wider, then she smiled, and it was beautiful. It was one of those smiles that made you feel warm down to your toes. Charlotte was like that. When she was happy, everyone around her was happy. When she wasn't happy ... well, that spilled over, too.

She yelled in my ear, "Let's go see Richard."

I turned to go through the crowd and heard a gasp. I turned to see Betty Schaffer wearing the dripping remnants of a beer. Betty slapped Charlotte. Charlotte returned the favor but with a closed fist.

Betty was suddenly on her butt in the floor, blinking up at us.

The bouncers moved in, as Charlotte moved in to finish the job. I threw Charlotte over my shoulder. She weighed more than she looked like she did, and she was struggling. Unlike most women, she was good at struggling. I didn't want to hurt Charlotte, but she wasn't returning the favor. She kicked me in the knee and I dumped her onto the floor hard.

She lay there for a second, breath knocked out of her, staring up at me. Daniel moved forward to help her up, and I stopped him with a hand on his chest. "No."

The band had fallen silent with a last twangy guitar string. Into the sudden silence, my voice sounded loud, "You can walk out of here on your own, or you can be carried out unconscious, Charlotte. Your choice, but you are leaving."

I went down on one knee, carefully, because Charlotte didn't fight like a girl. I lowered my voice for her ears alone. "Richard will come in here in just a few minutes to see what's wrong. If he gets near her again, the local cops will revoke his bail and lock him up again." It was only partially true. Legally, he had every right to enter the bar, but I was betting that Charlotte didn't know that. Most law-abiding citizens wouldn't have.

Charlotte looked at me for a second longer, then offered me a hand. I helped her stand, still cautious. She had a hell of a temper once it got started. Admittedly, it took a lot to get her this mad, but once she reached it, it was every man for himself.

She let me help her to her feet without trying to slug me. An improvement. We made our way through the crowd with Daniel and Jason trailing behind us. No one crowded us as we went for the door. They stared, but didn't crowd.

The bouncer at the door said, "She doesn't come back in here."

Charlotte opened her mouth to say something, and I gripped her shoulder. "Don't worry. She won't."

He looked at Charlotte but nodded.

I let her get about three good steps ahead of me as we reached the parking lot. Call it an instinct. She whirled, and I think would have hit me, but I was out of reach. She stared at me with those big honey-brown eyes, made somehow paler by the halogen lamps. "Don't you ever lay hands on me again," she said.

"Behave like Richard's mother and not his outraged girlfriend, and I won't."

"How dare you!" she said. She moved closer. I moved away. I didn't really want to have a fistfight in the parking lot of a bar with Richard's mother.

"If anyone should be trying to beat the shit out of Ms. Peroxide Blond, it should be me."

That stopped her cold. She stood straight and looked at me. I could almost see her sanity returning. "But you aren't dating him anymore. Why should you care?"

"That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it?" I said.

Charlotte smiled suddenly. "I knew you couldn't resist my boy. No one could."

"If he keeps dating everything in sight, I might."

She frowned. "I can't believe he ever dated that thing," she said.

We both turned and watched Richard walk towards us. There were nearly identical looks on our faces. We disapproved of Ms. Schaffer -- a lot.

Her first words were, "I cannot believe you dated that woman. She is a whore."

Richard looked embarrassed, more than I'd gotten from him. "I know what she is."

"Did you have sex with her?"

"Mother!"

"Don't you mother me, Richard Alaric Zeeman."

"Alaric," I said.

Richard spared me a frown, then turned back to his mother. "No, I never slept with Betty."

He was saying he'd never had intercourse with her. Charlotte would take it to mean that no sex at all had happened, just like I had. I remembered what Jamil had said about alternatives, but I kept quiet. I didn't want to upset Charlotte, and I didn't want to know.

"Well, at least that shows better sense," Charlotte said. She walked up to him and smoothed the front of his T-shirt, then bowed her head, and I realized she was crying.

I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd bitten him, maybe less.

Richard's entire face crumpled into helpless lines. He looked at me as if for help, and I backed up. I shook my head. I was no better around crying women than he was, maybe less.

He hugged her to him. I heard her murmur, "I was so worried about you in that awful jail."

I backed up out of earshot, and Daniel joined me. He didn't seem eager to join them, either. Of course, Charlotte didn't have to cry to unman Daniel.

"Thanks, Anita," he said.

I looked up at him. He was wearing a red tank top that was almost a twin of one Richard had. For all I knew, it was the same one. He looked tanned and handsome and very grown-up. "You're assertive around everyone but your parents. Why is that?"

He shrugged. "Isn't everyone like that?"

I shook my head. "No."

Jason moved up beside us. He echoed me: "No." Then he laughed. "Of course, my mother would never have gotten into a fight in a bar, no matter what I did. She's much too ... decorous."

"Decorous," I said.

"My last roommate had a word-a-day calendar," Jason said.

"You've been reading again," I said.

He hung his head, looking abashed, then gave me rolled eyes and a grin. It was such a mix of shame and utter cuteness that I laughed. "I can't donate blood and have sex twenty-four hours a day. There's no television at the Circus of the Damned."

"If there was?" I asked.

"I'd still read, but don't tell anyone."

I put an arm around his shoulders. "Your secret is safe with me."

Daniel put his arm around Jason from the other side and said, "Won't breathe a word of it."

We walked towards the four-by-four, arm in arm. "If Anita was in the middle, this would be perfect," Jason said.

Daniel just stopped in his tracks, staring at Jason. I pulled away from both of them. "You just don't know when to stop, do you, Jason?"

He shook his head. "No."

Richard walked over to us. He sent Daniel to their mother, and Daniel didn't argue with the order. He sent Jason on to the car, and Jason didn't argue. I stood looking up at his suddenly serious face, wondered what my orders were going to be, and bet I would argue with them.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I'll have to go with Daniel and my mother to calm her."

"I hear a but coming," I said.

He smiled. "But there's a ceremony to meet my lupa tonight. It's customary before two packs share a full moon that they be formally introduced."