The phone rang again. "The machine can get it," she said.

"No, go ahead."

It stopped ringing.

"Good. Now you wanted to know-"

The phone started again. She sighed and said she'd be just a moment.

I sipped my wine and turned to survey my surroundings. What I saw made me sputter, clapping my hand to my mouth before I sprayed my shirt. There, almost over my head, was a picture of me.

"Do you like wolves?"

I jumped. Lynn stood in the doorway.

"I didn't mean to startle you," she said. "I just asked if you liked wolves."

She pointed to the painting. It was me… as a wolf, in one of Jeremy's paintings. Nightfall, if I remembered right. It had been years since I'd seen this one. The public preferred Jeremy's more atmospheric pictures of wolves in city streets. This was the more natural style he liked better.

"It's a print," she said, as she sat. "I'd love an original, but I could never afford one. I must confess, wolves fascinate me, as they do many people these days."

"They are popular."

"From demonized to romanticized. No, my view of wolves is somewhat more realistic, I hope. True, they aren't the big bad beast of lore. But if I met one in the wild, I'd back away very slowly and get out of there as fast as I could."

"Not try to pet it?"

She laughed. "Exactly. But they do intrigue me more than other animals, which is why when those killings started, I took an interest-"

The phone rang.

Lynn sighed. "This time, I am letting the machine pick up." The answering machine clicked on, and we could hear that the caller was a young man who said he was in town on a logging contract and looking for a place to let.

"I'm getting a lot of interest," Lynn said when the message ended. "But not the sort I was hoping for."

"You're renting out a room?"

"Or two. My husband died a couple of years ago and I'm ready for some company. I was thinking of a stripper."

I can imagine my expression because she laughed. "That didn't come out right, did it? I meant I was hoping to rent rooms to girls on the exotic dance circuit. We get a lot of them through here and their living accommodations are less than ideal. I thought I could offer something nicer, more secure. A safe place to stay is hard to come by in that field."

"I heard a few girls have gone missing lately. They weren't strippers, though. At least, I didn't get that impression."

"No, they weren't. Not officially, that is. The first one was a part-time prostitute, though you won't see that in the articles. And rightly so, in my opinion. One whiff that those girls were less than saintly… "

"And they're dismissed as doped-up whores who took off with the first guy who promised them a new life in Seattle."

"Precisely. The second girl, now she was the type who should make headlines. Joy Sataa. An A student. Came from a fly-in community to attend college. But it's that 'fly-in community' part that moves her down the priority list."

"Native, as was the third girl, I think."

"Right again. Adine Aariak. Seventeen and living on the streets. Maybe turned a trick now and then, though no one on the police force recalls picking her up. Grew up with the three A's: alcohol, abuse and abandonment. She came to Anchorage hoping for a break, but we all know how that works out."

I sipped my wine, waiting for her to go on. When she didn't, I prompted her with, "And you think… I heard something about aliens."

She grinned. "Ah, yes, my alien abduction theory." She leaned closer and lowered her voice. "It's bullshit."

I laughed.

"I don't believe in aliens. Well, no, I do, but not in alien abduction. Can you really imagine a recognizable alien race traveling thousands of light years to impregnate humans? I just like to get folks going. They expect me to come up with outlandish theories, so I do, then have a good chuckle as they humor me and pretend to play along. A monster did get those girls-but one with a very human face. Again, an old story, too often told." She drained half her glass of wine. "Enough of that. You came to talk about other crimes. The ones in the woods."

"You don't think wolves are responsible."

"I will admit it is possible, but I very strongly doubt it. I've taken photos of the sites and the bodies, and while there is evidence of wolf activity, there's no proof that a wolf actually killed or even participated in eating the corpses. A wolf in winter won't kill something and leave it for scavengers. They can't afford to. My guess is that they visited the site, took a look, and left it alone. Wolves don't kill people. They just don't."

"Wolf attacks are rare. Deaths are rare to the point of being unheard of."

She smiled. "Good, you've done your research, which means I can skip the lecture and jump straight to the good stuff. Do you know anything about Ijiraat?"

"Just that they're shapeshifters from Inuit mythology."

Lynn explained that Ijiraat were a lesser known type of shapeshifter, indigenous to the Arctic and the Inuit. They were believed to be spirits of the land who could take on the form of any creature native to that land, from raven to wolf, and even human. As with most such myths, the Ijiraat were commonly believed to be evil creatures, hell-bent on deceiving and destroying humans. Another branch of the myth, though, claimed they weren't inherently evil-just wild creatures that would, if threatened, defend themselves. One common thread in the stories was that the Ijiraat could influence memory. If you saw one, you'd forget all about it if you didn't tell someone else right away, which coincidentally explains why they aren't seen more often.

"Now, as with most legends, there are regional variations. The Inuit say that the type living here can only shift between three forms-human, bear and wolf. There's a rich history of sightings dating back over a hundred years, from tourists to weekend warriors to folks who only leave the woods when they absolutely have to."

She reached onto the table behind her to grab a folder, then handed it to me. I opened it to find a thick sheaf of typed pages.

"Those are all the accounts I've been able to find, both written and oral sources. I typed them all up into a database. You'll see notations on each account-a color and a number. The color indicates the reporting party's credibility. Green would be a group of trust worthy locals all reporting the same thing. Red would be a kid who admitted he was out in the woods drinking. Yellow is in the middle, and you have all kinds of variations in between. There's a legend on the first page. The numbers show how I rank how close the accounts are to the most common core story. Ten means it's dead on the money. One means it's so far off I only included it to be thorough."

"You definitely are thorough."

She laughed. "I might be a nut, but I'm the best organized nut around."

"Would I be able to borrow…?"

"Oh, that's a copy for you to take."

As I flipped through a few pages, I caught familiar phrases and felt a surreal sense of déjà vu. Or maybe not so much déjà vu as spooky coincidence. I'd seen some of these pages… just a couple of hours ago.

"Do you give out a lot of copies?" I asked.

"Not as often as I'm asked for them. I don't advertise my research-I bring my children enough grief as it is-but people find out about my interests, as you did. With most, I prefer not to encourage their fantasies. Give them these and they'd be scouring the country side looking for proof and shooting anything that moves-and not with a camera."

"So this is the only copy?" I tried to say it casually, absently even, as I scanned the pages.

"I did give them to someone else recently. A friend of mine." She blushed. "I suppose friend is being a bit hopeful. An acquaintance really. He's interested in the Ijiraat myth and he knows someone on the police force. My name, and my theory, came up when they were discussing the deaths and he got in touch with me."