“Nurses?” He snorted. “Glorified security guards. I wanted to speak to the real boss: Davidoff. They took me to see him at this other place, looked like a warehouse.”

I described what I’d seen of this building when we’d arrived.

“Yeah, that’s it. They took me inside and…” His face screwed up in thought. “A woman came to talk to me. A blonde. Said she was a doctor. Bellows? Fellows?”

Aunt Lauren. My heart battered my rib cage. “So this woman, Dr. Fellows…”

“She wanted me to say Derek started the fight. That he threatened me, punched me, shoved me, whatever. I considered it. A little payback for all the attitude I had to put up with from that jerk. I’d just been goofing around with him when Simon got all up in my face and smacked me with that spell.”

In the version I’d heard, Brady had been the one getting in Derek’s face. Simon had a good reason for interfering, too—the last time Derek took a swing, he’d broken a kid’s back.

“So Dr. Fellows wanted you to say Derek started the fight….”

“I wouldn’t. I’d have to deal with the fallout when I went back to Lyle House and I didn’t need that grief. That’s when Davidoff came in. He hauled her out of the room, but I could still hear him chewing her out in the hall. She kept saying Derek was a menace and the only reason Davidoff kept him was because he couldn’t admit he made a mistake by including Derek’s type.”

“Type?”

“In the experiment.”

A chill settled in my gut. “Ex-experiment?”

Brady shrugged. “That’s all she said. Davidoff told her to shove off. He said he made a mistake with the others, but Derek was different.”

Others? Did he mean other werewolves? Or other subjects in this experiment? Was I a subject in this experiment?

“Did they say any—?” I began.

His head whipped to the side, as if seeing something out of the corner of his eye.