When Vlad found her online, he knew he was in love. With sleek white and black fur and beautiful red eyes, he couldn't think of anything else for days. Even Daniel, the blessed boy, couldn't get him back to earth for more than a few moments at a time.

"Dad?" Daniel huffed, eyes flashing green in irritation. Though he looked fourteen, he'd only recently celebrated his second birthday and was still working on reigning in his powers. "Dad, c'mon and listen already. I have a project due in a week and Dani's still busy in Amity Park."

"Hm?" Vlad blinked back to reality as his son whined at him. "I thought you told me you were done with your homework two days ago."

Daniel blushed and reached up to rub the back of his neck in a gesture Vlad hadn't been able to rid the boy of. "W-Well, it's not really homework if you think about it. I mean, we are working on it in class sometimes, too..."

Vlad sighed in good natured exasperation. What made him think a teenager was something he'd wanted bad enough to clone? But he hugged the boy as he stood, ushering him to his room and promising to help in any way he could.

A price was attached to her picture the next day: five hundred dollars.

Or best offer.

Vlad frowned at his phone, glancing up intermittently at Daniel who was engrossed in researching South African cultures. Dani had promised to tell her little brother all about it personally, but she had been called to Amity Park and couldn't get away.

Such a low price for such a beautiful animal was too good to be true. So he stood and told Daniel to continue researching on his own for a few minutes – and stay off that blasted Doomed game – while he called the number in the hallway.

A man named Andy told him he would send pictures and video of her.

Vlad drummed his fingers on his thigh, frowning. There was a Wildlife Officer on the phone with him, talking about the condition of the poor beast. Whatever image Andy and Fran had used for the tiger's listing, it was nothing compared to the animal that Vlad had seen.

Sure she was a tiger, with white and black fur. Her eyes, when he could see them, were indeed red.

But she was skinny, enough to count her ribs and see her pelvis. She had groomed the fur on her stomach and thighs to nothing, raw pink flesh exposed. The cage she was kept in couldn't have been more than a few hundred square feet, and it was covered in her own filth. There were no toys to be played with and, when asked, Andy said she was allowed to swim in a chlorinated pool once a month.

"It's not good," the officer told Vlad. "From what you told me, she's been captive since birth. In a space that small, there's no way she'd have learned to hunt. It's most likely she'd starve to death or walk up to the first poacher she sees, looking for food."

"Can anything be done for her?" Vlad looked up to see Daniel standing in his doorway. The older man smiled and waved him over, but Daniel just huffed and crossed his arms.

"We can attempt to rehabilitate her, but..." The officer sighed deeply. "It's likely that she'll never survive in the wild."

Daniel couldn't stand being mad at his father for too long, and he hurried over, throwing his arms around Vlad's neck. Vlad hugged the boy tightly before saying, "We'll see what we can do for her. I'll set up a meeting with these monsters."

Daniel sighed as Vlad hung up and immediately called Fran's number. "Dad, I think you love cats more than me."

"Nonsense," Vlad said with a smile, each ring increasing his mounting rage. "I'd never clone a cat."

Vlad couldn't stop the sneer that twisted his lips, and was only barely able to contain the flash of red in his eyes as the officers dragged Fran off his mint bush by the handcuffs. Once he was certain he wouldn't murder someone, he would have to check and make sure Maddie's grave marker was all right. Beside him, Daniel was more apt to make faces as Andy screamed about being "set up".

"Maybe you should take better care of wild animals that don't deserve to be pets!" he yelled, eyes flashing brightly behind his usual dark sunglasses.

Even as Vlad shushed the boy, he wondered how a piece of Miss. Manson's personality had snuck into his programming.

But Daniel was right, he agreed silently. The poor tiger had been shoved in a common horse trailer, and he could see her pacing back and forth. The Wildlife Officers, watching the Madison Police Department collar the two so-called "owners", were talking amongst themselves, trying to figure out the best place for the traumatized animal. He took a deep breath, patting Daniel on the shoulder reassuringly as he walked into the chaos.

"Is there some issue?" he asked the first officer not talking into his radio.

"The zoo is willing to take her, but they're saying the clinic is full. And it would cost them too much to foster her at the tiger sanctuary until she can be properly placed in the exhibit."

Vlad smirked, the warm touch of hope filling him for the first time since seeing the poor animal being hauled up his driveway. "Then it's a good thing you're talking to the richest man in the state. Daniel – my checkbook."

A plaque hung in the zoo, shiny and new, decreeing to all who read it:

Waiting for our new Guest

"Maddie"

Albino Siberian Tiger

Donated by Vlad and Daniel Masters.