The sports pages were full of pictures of some part- and whole-weres who’d become famous. A running back for the New England Patriots, a fielder for the Cardinals, a marathon runner . . . they’d all confessed to being wereanimals of one kind or another. An Olympic champion swimmer had just discovered that his dad was a wereseal, and the number-one ranked women’s tennis player in Britain had gone on record as saying that her mother was a wereleopard. The sports world hadn’t been in such a tumult since the last drug scandal. Did these athletes’ heritage give them an unfair advantage over other players? Should their trophies be taken away from them? Should their records be allowed to stand? Another day, I might enjoy debating this with someone, but right now I just didn’t care.

I began to see an overall picture. The outing of the two-natured was a much different revelation than the vampires’ announcement. The vampires had been completely off the human grid, except in legend and lore. They’d lived apart. Since they could subsist on the Japanese synthetic blood, they had presented themselves as absolutely nonthreatening. But wereanimals had been living among us all the time, integrated into our society yet maintaining their secret lives and alliances. Sometimes even their children (those who weren’t firstborn and therefore not weres) didn’t know what their parents were, especially if they were not wolves.

“I feel betrayed,” one woman was quoted as saying. “My granddad turns into a lynx every month. He runs around and kills things. My beautician, I’ve been going to her for fifteen years, and she’s a coyote. I didn’t know! I feel I’ve been deceived in an ugly way.”

Some people thought it was fascinating. “Our principal is a werewolf,” said a kid in Springfield, Missouri. “How cool is that?”

The very fact of the existence of wereanimals frightened some people. “I’m scared I’ll shoot my neighbor by accident if I see him trotting down the road,” said a farmer in Kansas. “What if he gets after my chickens?”