Kitty Norville Box Set Books 1-3

by Carrie Vaughn

Genres: Shifters

Synopsis

Kitty Norville isn't just a radio DJ, she's a werewolf and despite her best efforts, keeping that a secret is harder than you would expect in this bind-up of three complete books that are "f resh, hip, [and] fantastic" (L. A. Banks, author of the Vampire Huntress Legends series). KITTY AND THE MIDNIGHT HOUR: Kitty Norville is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station and a werewolf in the closet. Her new late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged is a raging success, but it's Kitty who can use some help. With one sexy werewolf-hunter and a few homicidal undead on her tail, Kitty may have bitten off more than she can chew. KITTY GOES TO WASHINGTON: Celebrity werewolf and late-night radio host Kitty Norville prefers to be heard and not seen, but when she's invited to testify at a Senate hearing on behalf of the country's supernaturals, her face gets plastered all over national TV. Before long Kitty's inherited a brand-new set of friends and enemies. Kitty quickly learns that in this city of dirty politicians and backstabbing pundits, everyone's itching for a fight -- and she's about to be caught in the middle. KITTY TAKES A HOLIDAY: After getting caught turning into a wolf on national television, Kitty retreats to a mountain cabin to recover and write her memoirs. When werewolf hunter Cormac shows up with an injured Ben O'Farrell, Kitty's lawyer, slung over his shoulder, and a wolf-like creature with glowing red eyes starts sniffing around the cabin, Kitty wonders if any of them will get out of these woods alive...

Release date: December 8, 2020

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 984

Sample

Chapter 1

I tossed my backpack in a corner of the studio and high-fived Rodney on his way out.

“Hey, Kitty, thanks again for taking the midnight shift,” he said. He’d started playing some third-generation grunge band that made my hackles rise, but I smiled anyway.

“Happy to.”

“I noticed. You didn’t used to like the late shift.”

He was right. I’d gone positively nocturnal the last few months. I shrugged. “Things change.”

“Well, take it easy.”

Finally, I had the place to myself. I dimmed the lights so the control board glowed, the dials and switches futuristic and sinister. I pulled my blond hair into a ponytail. I was wearing jeans and an oversized sweatshirt that had been through the wash too many times. One of the nice things about the late shift at a radio station was that I didn’t have to look good for anybody.

I put on the headphones and sat back in the chair with its squeaky wheels and torn upholstery. As soon as I could, I put on my music. Bauhaus straight into the Pogues. That’d wake ’em up. To be a DJ was to be God. I controlled the airwaves. To be a DJ at an alternative public radio station? That was being God with a mission. It was thinking you were the first person to discover The Clash and you had to spread the word.

My illusions about the true power of being a radio DJ had pretty much been shattered by this time. I’d started out on the college radio station, graduated a couple of years ago, and got the gig at KNOB after interning here. I might have had a brain full of philosophical tenets, high ideals, and opinions I couldn’t wait to vocalize. But off-campus, no one cared. The world was a bigger place than that, and I was adrift. College was supposed to fix that, wasn’t it?

I switched on the mike.

“Good evening to you, Denver. This is Kitty on K-Nob. It’s twelve-oh-twelve in the wee hours and I’m bored, which means I’m going to regale you with inanities until somebody calls and requests a song recorded before 1990.

“I have the new issue of Wide World of News here. Picked it up when I got my frozen burrito for dinner. Headline says: ‘Bat Boy Attacks Convent.’ Now, this is like the tenth Bat Boy story they’ve done this year. That kid really gets around—though as long as they’ve been doing stories on him he’s got to be what, fifty? Anyway, as visible as this guy is, at least according to the intrepid staff of Wide World of News, I figure somebody out there has seen him. Have any of you seen the Bat Boy? I want to hear about it. The line is open.”

Amazingly, I got a call right off. I wouldn’t have to beg.

“Hello!”

“Uh, yeah, dude. Hey. Uh, can you play some Pearl Jam?”

“What did I say? Did you hear me? Nothing after ’89. Bye.”

Another call was waiting. Double cool. “Hi there.”

“Do you believe in vampires?”

I paused. Any other DJ would have tossed off a glib response without thinking—just another midnight weirdo looking for attention. But I knew better.

“If I say yes, will you tell me a good story?”

“So, do you?” The speaker was male. His voice was clear and steady.

I put my smile into my voice. “Yes.”

“The Bat Boy stories, I think they’re a cover-up. All those tabloid stories, and the TV shows like Uncharted World?”

“Yeah?”

“Everybody treats them like they’re a joke. Too far out, too crazy. Just mindless trash. So if everybody thinks that stuff is a joke, if there really is something out there—no one would believe it.”

“Kind of like hiding in plain sight, is that what you’re saying? Talk about weird supernatural things just enough to make them look ridiculous and you deflect attention from the truth.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“So, who exactly is covering up what?”

“They are. The vampires. They’re covering up, well, everything. Vampires, werewolves, magic, crop circles—”

“Slow down there, Van Helsing.”

“Don’t call me that!” He sounded genuinely angry.

“Why not?”

“It’s—I’m not anything like him. He was a murderer.”

The hairs on my arms stood on end. I leaned into the mike. “And what are you?”

He let out a breath that echoed over the phone. “Never mind. I called about the tabloid.”

“Yes, Bat Boy. You think Bat Boy is a vampire?”

“Maybe not specifically. But before you brush it off, think about what may really be out there.”

Actually, I didn’t have to. I already knew.

“Thanks for the tip.”

He hung up.

“What an intriguing call,” I said, half to myself, almost forgetting I was on the air.

The world he talked about—vampires, werewolves, things that go bump—was a secret one, even to the people who inadvertently found their way there. People fell into it by accident and were left to sink or swim. Usually sink. Once inside, you especially didn’t talk about it to outsiders because, well, who would believe you?

But we weren’t really talking here, were we? It was late-night radio. It was a joke.

I squared my shoulders, putting my thoughts back in order. “Right. This raises all sorts of possibilities. I have to know—did I just get a call from some wacko? Or is something really out there? Do you have a story to tell about something that isn’t supposed to exist? Call me.” I put on Concrete Blonde while I waited.

The light on the phone showing an incoming call flashed before the song’s first bass chord sounded. I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone to call. If I could keep making jokes, I could pretend that everything was normal.

I picked up the phone. “Hold, please,” I said and waited for the song to end. I took a few deep breaths, half-hoping that maybe the caller just wanted to hear some Pearl Jam.

“All right. Kitty here.”

“Hi—I think I know what that guy’s talking about. You know how they say that wolves have been extinct around here for over fifty years? Well—my folks have a cabin up in Nederland, and I swear I’ve heard wolves howling around there. Every summer I’ve heard them. I called the wildlife people about it once, but they just told me the same thing. They’re extinct. But I don’t believe them.”

“Are you sure they’re wolves? Maybe they’re coyotes.” That was me trying to act normal. Playing the skeptic. But I’d been to those woods, and I knew she was right. Well, half-right.

“I know what coyotes sound like, and it’s not anything like that. Maybe—maybe they’re something else. Werewolves or something, you know?”

“Have you ever seen them?”

“No. I’m kind of afraid to go out there at night.”

“That’s probably just as well. Thanks for calling.”

As soon as I hung up, the next call was waiting. “Hello?”

“Hi—do you think that guy was really a vampire?”

“I don’t know. Do you think he was?”

“Maybe. I mean—I go to nightclubs a lot, and sometimes people show up there, and they just don’t fit. They’re, like, way too cool for the place, you know? Like, scary cool, like they should be in Hollywood or something and what the hell are they doing here—”

“Grocery shopping?”

“Yeah, exactly!”

“Imagination is a wonderful thing. I’m going to go to the next call now—hello?”

“Hi. I gotta say—if there really were vampires, don’t you think someone would have noticed by now? Bodies with bite marks dumped in alleys—”

“Unless the coroner reports cover up cause of death—”

The calls kept coming.

“Just because someone’s allergic to garlic doesn’t mean—”

“What is it with blood anyway—”

“If a girl who’s a werewolf got pregnant, what would happen to the baby when she changed into a wolf? Would it change into a wolf cub?”

“Flea collars. And rabies shots. Do werewolves need rabies shots?”

Then came the Call. Everything changed. I’d been toeing the line, keeping things light. Keeping them unreal. I was trying to be normal, really I was. I worked hard to keep my real life—my day job, so to speak—away from the rest. I’d been trying to keep this from slipping all the way into that other world I still hadn’t learned to live in very well.

Lately, it had felt like a losing battle.

“Hi, Kitty.” His voice was tired, flat. “I’m a vampire. I know you believe me.” My belief must have showed through in my voice all night. That must have been why he called me.

“Okay,” I said.

“Can—can I talk to you about something?”

“Sure.”

“I’m a vampire. I was attacked and turned involuntarily about five years ago. I’m also—at least I used to be—a devout Catholic. It’s been really . . . hard. All the jokes about blood and the Eucharist aside—I can’t walk into a church anymore. I can’t go to Mass. And I can’t kill myself because that’s wrong. Catholic doctrine teaches that my soul is lost, that I’m a blot on God’s creation. But Kitty—that’s not what I feel. Just because my heart has stopped beating doesn’t mean I’ve lost my soul, does it?”

I wasn’t a minister; I wasn’t a psychologist. I’d majored in English, for crying out loud. I wasn’t qualified to counsel anyone on his spiritual life. But my heart went out to him, because he sounded so sad. All I could do was try.

“You can’t exactly go to your local priest to hash this out, can you?”

“No,” he said, chuckling a little.

“Right. Have you ever read Paradise Lost?”

“Uh, no.”

“Of course not, no one reads anymore. Paradise Lost is Milton’s great epic poem about the war in heaven, the rebellion of the angels, the fall of Lucifer, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. As an aside, some people believe this was the time when vampires and lycanthropes came into existence—Satan’s mockery of God’s greatest creation. Whatever. At any rate, in the first few chapters, Satan is the hero. He speaks long monologues what he’s thinking, his soul-searching. He’s debating about whether or not to take revenge on God for exiling him from heaven. After reading this for a while, you realize that Satan’s greatest sin, his greatest mistake, wasn’t pride or rebelling against God. His greatest mistake was believing that God would not forgive him if he asked for forgiveness. His sin wasn’t just pride—it was self-pity. I think in some ways every single person, human, vampire, whatever, has a choice to make: to be full of rage about what happens to you or to reconcile with it, to strive for the most honorable existence you can despite the odds. Do you believe in a God who understands and forgives or one who doesn’t? What it comes down to is, this is between you and God, and you’ll have to work that out for yourself.”

“That—that sounds okay. Thanks. Thanks for talking to me.”

“You’re welcome.”

At 4:00 A.M., the next shift came on. I didn’t go straight home and to bed, even though I was shaking. All the talking had taken a lot out of me. After a late shift I always met T.J. for coffee at the diner down the street. He’d be waiting for me.

He wasn’t, but I ordered coffee and when it arrived, so did he. Slouching in an army surplus coat, glancing around to take note of every person in the place, he didn’t look at me until he slid into the booth.

“Hey, Kitty.” He flagged the waitress for a cup of coffee. The sky outside was gray, paling with the sunrise. “How’d your shift go?”

“You didn’t listen to it?” I tried not to sound disappointed, but I’d been hoping to talk to him about it.

“No, sorry. I was out.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep, quiet breath. Grease, cigarette smoke, bad breath, and tired nerves. My senses took it all in, every little odor. But strongest, right across the booth from me, was the earthy smell of forest, damp night air, and fur. The faintest touch of blood set my hair on end.

“You went running. You turned wolf,” I said, frowning. He looked away, ducking his gaze. “Geez, if you keep doing that, you’re going to lose it completely—”

“I know, I know. I’m halfway there already. I just—it feels so good.” His look grew distant, vacant. Part of him was still in that forest, running wild in the body of his wolf.

The only time we had to Change was on full moon nights. But we could Change whenever we wanted. Some did as often as they could, all the time. And the more they did, the less human they became. They went in packs even as people, living together, shape-shifting and hunting together, cutting all ties to the human world. The more they Changed, the harder it was not to.

“Come with me next time. Tomorrow.”

“Full moon’s not for another week,” I said. “I’m trying my damnedest to keep it together. I like being human.”

He looked away, tapping his fork on the table. “You really aren’t cut out for this life, you know.”

“I do okay.”

That was me patting myself on the back for not going stark raving mad these last couple of years, since the attack that changed me. Or not getting myself ripped limb from limb by other werewolves who saw a cute young thing like me as easy prey. All that, and I maintained a semblance of normal human life as well.

Not much of a human life, all things considered. I had a rapidly aging bachelor’s degree from CU, a run-down studio apartment, a two-bit DJ gig that barely paid rent, and no prospects. Sometimes, running off to the woods and never coming back sounded pretty good.

Three months ago, I missed my mother’s birthday party because it fell on the night of the full moon. I couldn’t be there, smiling and sociable in my folks’ suburban home in Aurora while the wolf part of me was on the verge of tearing herself free, gnawing through the last fringes of my self-control. I made some excuse, and Mom said she understood. But it showed so clearly how, in an argument between the two halves, the wolf usually won. Since then, maintaining enthusiasm for the human life had been difficult. Useless, even. I slept through the day, worked nights, and thought more and more about those times I ran in the forest as a wolf, with the rest of the pack surrounding me. I was on the verge of trading one family for the other.

I went home, slept, and rolled back to KNOB toward evening. Ozzie, the station manager, an aging hippie type who wore his thinning hair in a ponytail, handed me a stack of papers. Phone messages, every one of them.

“What’s this?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. What the hell happened on your shift last night? We’ve been getting calls all day. The line was busy all night. And the messages—six people claiming to be vampires, two say they’re werewolves, and one wants to know if you can recommend a good exorcist.”

“Really?” I said, sorting through the messages.

“Yeah. Really. But what I really want to know—” He paused, and I wondered how much trouble I was in. I was supposed to run a late-night variety music format, the kind of show where Velvet Underground followed Ella Fitzgerald. Thinking back on it, I’d talked the entire time, hadn’t I? I’d turned it into a talk show. I was going to lose my job, and I didn’t think I’d have the initiative to get another one. I could run to the woods and let the Wolf take over.

Then Ozzie said, “Whatever you did last night—can you do it again?”

Chapter 2

The second episode of the show that came to be called The Midnight Hour (I would always consider that first surprising night to be the first episode) aired a week later. That gave me time to do some research. I dug up half a dozen articles published in second-string medical journals and one surprisingly high-level government research project, a kind of medical Project Blue Book. It was a study on “paranatural biology” sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers attempted to document empirical evidence of the existence of creatures such as vampires, lycanthropes, etcetera. They more than attempted it—they did document it: photos, charts, case histories, statistics. They concluded that these phenomena were not widespread enough to warrant government attention.

The documentation didn’t surprise me—there wasn’t anything there I hadn’t seen before, in one form or another. It surprised me that anyone from the supernatural underworld would have participated in such a study. Where had they gotten test subjects? The study didn’t say much about those subjects, seemingly regarding them in the same way one would disposable lab rats. This raised a whole other set of issues, which gave me lots to talk about.

Pulling all this together, at least part of the medical community was admitting to the existence of people like me. I started the show by laying out all this information. Then I opened the line for calls.

“It’s a government conspiracy . . .”

“. . . because the Senate is run by bloodsucking fiends!”

“Which doesn’t in fact mean they’re vampires, but still . . .”

“So when is the NIH going to go public . . .”

“. . . medical schools running secret programs . . .”

“Is the public really ready for . . .”

“. . . a more enlightened time, surely we wouldn’t be hunted down like animals . . .”

“Would lycanthropy victims be included in the Americans with Disabilities Act?”

My time slot flew by. The week after that, my callers and I speculated about which historical figures had been secret vampires or werewolves. My favorite, suggested by an intrepid caller: General William T. Sherman was a werewolf. I looked him up, and seeing his photo, I could believe it. All the other Civil War generals were straitlaced, with buttoned collars and trimmed beards, but Sherman had an open collar, scruffy hair, five-o’clock shadow, and a screw-you expression. Oh yeah. The week after that I handled a half-dozen calls on how to tell your family you were a vampire or a werewolf. I didn’t have any good answers on that one—I hadn’t told my family. Being a radio DJ was already a little too weird for them.

And so on. I’d been doing the show for two months when Ozzie called me at home.

“Kitty, you gotta get down here.”

“Why?”

“Just get down here.”

I pondered a half-dozen nightmare scenarios. I was being sued for something I’d said on the air. The Baptist Church had announced a boycott. Well, that could be a good thing. Free publicity and all. Or someone had gone and got themselves or someone else killed because of the show.

It took half an hour to get there, riding the bus. I hadn’t showered and was feeling grouchy. Whatever it was Ozzie was going to throw at me, I just wanted to get it over with.

The door to his office was open. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket and slouched. “Ozzie?”

He didn’t look up from the mountains of paper, books, and newspapers spread over his desk. A radio in the corner was tuned to KNOB. A news broadcast mumbled at low volume. “Come in, shut the door.”

I did. “What’s wrong?”

He looked up. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. Here, take a look at this.” He offered a packet of papers.

The pages were dense with print and legalese. These were contracts. I only caught one word before my eyes fogged over.

Syndication.

When I looked at Ozzie again, his hands were folded on the desk and he was grinning. That was a pretty big canary he’d just eaten. “What do you think? I’ve had calls from a dozen stations wanting to run your show. I’ll sign on as producer. You’ll get a raise for every new market we pick up. Are you in?”

This was big. This was going national, at least on a limited scale. I tried to read the proposal. L.A. They wanted me in L.A.? This was . . . unbelievable. I sat against the table and started giggling. Wow. Wow wow wow wow. There was no way I could do this. That would require responsibility, commitment—things I’d shied away from like the plague since . . . since I’d started hanging out with people like T.J.

But if I didn’t, someone else would, now that the radio community had gotten the idea. And dammit, this was my baby.

I said, “I’m going to need a website.”

That night I went to T.J.’s place, a shack he rented behind an auto garage out toward Arvada. T.J. didn’t have a regular job. He fixed motorcycles for cash and didn’t sweat the human world most of the time. I came over for supper a couple of times a week. He was an okay cook. More important than his cooking ability, he was able to indulge the appetite for barely cooked steaks.

I’d known T.J. forever, it seemed like. He helped me out when I was new to things, more than anyone else in the local pack. He’d become a friend. He wasn’t a bully—a lot of people used being a werewolf as an excuse for behaving badly. I felt more comfortable around him than just about anyone. I didn’t have to pretend to be human around him.

I found him in the shed outside. He was working on his bike, a fifteen-year-old Yamaha that was his pride and joy and required constant nursing. He tossed the wrench into the toolbox and reached to give me a hug, greasy hands and all.

“You’re perky,” he said. “You’re practically glowing.”

“We’re syndicating the show. They’re going to broadcast it in L.A. Can you believe that? I’m syndicated!”

He smiled. “Good for you.”

“I want to celebrate,” I said. “I want to go out. I found this all-ages hole-in-the-wall. The vampires don’t go there. Will you come with me?”

“I thought you didn’t like going out. You don’t like it when we go out with Carl and the pack.”

Carl was the alpha male of our pack, god and father by any other name. He was the glue that held the local werewolves together. He protected us, and we were loyal to him.

When Carl went out with his pack, he did it to mark territory, metaphorically speaking. Show off the strength of the pack in front of the local vampire Family. Pissing contests and dominance games.

“That’s not any fun. I want to have fun.”

“You know you ought to tell Carl, if you want to go out.”

I frowned. “He’ll tell me not to.” A pack of wolves was a show of strength. One or two wolves alone were vulnerable. But I wanted this to be my celebration, a human celebration, not the pack’s.

But the thing about being part of a pack was needing a friend at your back. It wouldn’t have felt right for me to go alone. I needed T.J. And maybe T.J. needed Carl.

I tried one more time, shameless begging, but I had no dignity. “Come on, what could possibly happen? Just a couple of hours. Please?”

T.J. picked up a rag off the handlebars and wiped his hands. He smirked at me like the indulgent older brother he’d become. If I’d been a wolf, my tail would have been wagging hopefully.

“Okay. I’ll go with you. Just for a couple of hours.”

I sighed, relieved.

The club, Livewire, got a deal on the back rooms of a converted warehouse at the edge of Lodo, just a few blocks from Coors Field, when the downtown district was at the start of its “revitalization” phase. It didn’t have a flashy marquee. The entrance was around the corner from the main drag, a garage-type rolling door that used to be part of a loading dock. Inside, the girders and venting were kept exposed. Techno and industrial pouring through the woofers rumbled the walls, audible outside as a vibration. That was the only sign there was anything here. Vampires liked to gather at places that had lines out front—trendy, flashy places that attracted the kind of trendy, flashy people they could impress and seduce with their excessive sense of style.

I didn’t have to dress up. I wore grubby, faded jeans, a black tank top, and had my hair in two braids. I planned on dancing till my bones hurt.

Unfortunately, T.J. was acting like a bodyguard. His expression was relaxed enough, and he walked with his hands in his jacket pockets like nothing was wrong, but he was looking all around and his nostrils flared, taking in scents.

“This is it,” I said, guiding him to the door of the club. He stepped around me so he could enter first.

There was always—would always be—a part of me that walked into a crowded room and immediately thought, sheep. Prey. A hundred bodies pressed together, young hearts beating, filled with blood, running hot. I squeezed my hands into fists. I could rip into any of them. I could. I took a deep breath and let that knowledge fade.

I smelled sweat, perfume, alcohol, cigarettes. Some darker things: Someone nearby had recently shot up on heroin. I felt the tremor in his heartbeat, smelled the poison on his skin. If I concentrated, I could hear individual conversations happening in the bar, ten paces away. The music flowed through my shoes. Sisters of Mercy was playing.

“I’m going to go dance,” I said to T.J., who was still surveying the room.

“I’m going to go check out the cute boys in the corner.” He nodded to where a couple of guys in tight leather pants were talking.

It was a pity about T.J., really. But the cutest, nicest guys were always gay, weren’t they?

I was a radio DJ before I became a werewolf. I’d always loved dancing, sweating out the beat of the music. I joined the press of bodies pulsing on the dance floor, not as a monster with thoughts of slaughter, but as me. I hadn’t been really dancing in a club like this since the attack, when I became what I am. Years. Crowds were hard to handle sometimes. But when the music was loud, when I was anonymous in a group, I stopped worrying, stopped caring, lived in the moment.

Letting the music guide me, I closed my eyes. I sensed every body around me, every beating heart. I took it all in, joy filling me.

In the midst of the sweat and heat, I smelled something cold. A dark point cut through the crowd like a ship through water, and people—warm, living bodies—fell away like waves in its wake.

Werewolves, even in human form, retain some of the abilities of their alter egos. Smell, hearing, strength, agility. We can smell well enough to identify an individual across a room, in a crowd.

Before I could turn and run, the vampire stood before me, blocking my path. When I tried to duck away, he was in front of me, moving quickly, gracefully, without a sign of effort.

My breaths came fast as he pushed me to the edge of panic.

He was part of the local vampire Family, I assumed. He seemed young, cocky, his red silk shirt open at the collar, his smirk unwavering. He opened his lips just enough to show the points of his fangs.

“We don’t want your kind here.” Wiry and feral, he had a manic, Clockwork Orange feel to him.

I looked across the room to find T.J. Two more of them, impeccably dressed in silk shirts and tailored slacks and oozing cold, blocked him in the corner. T.J.’s fists were clenched. He caught my gaze and set his jaw in grim reassurance. I had to trust him to get me out of this, but he was too far away to help me.

“I thought you guys didn’t like this place,” I said.

“We changed our minds. And you’re trespassing.”

“No.” I whined a little under my breath. I had wanted to leave this behind for a few hours.

I glared, shaking. A predator had me in his sights, and I wanted to flee, a primal instinct. I didn’t dare look away from the vampire, but another scent caught my attention. Something animal, a hint of fur and musk underneath normal human smells. Werewolf.

Carl didn’t hesitate. He just stepped into the place the vampire had been occupying, neatly displacing him before the vampire knew what had happened.

Our slight commotion made the vampires blocking T.J. turn. T.J., who could hold his own in a straight fight, elbowed his way between them and strode toward us.

Carl grabbed my shoulder. “Let’s go outside.”

He was about six-four and had the build to match. He towered over my slim, five-six self. He had rough brown hair and a beard, and glared constantly. Even if I didn’t know what he was, I’d have picked him out of a lineup as most likely to be a werewolf. He had this look.

I squeaked as he wrenched me toward the door. I scurried to stay on my feet, but I had trouble keeping up. It looked like he dragged me, but I hardly noticed, I was so numb with relief that the vampire was gone and we were leaving.

A bouncer blocked our way at the passage leading from the dance floor to the main entrance. He wasn’t as tall as Carl, but he was just as wide. And he had no idea that Carl could rip his face off if he decided to.

“This guy bothering you?” the bouncer said to me.

Carl’s hand tensed on my shoulder. “It’s none of your business.”

Frowning, the bouncer looked at me for confirmation. He was judging this based on human sensibilities. He saw a girl get dragged off the dance floor, it probably meant trouble. But this was different. Sort of.

I squared my shoulders and settled my breathing. “Everything’s fine. Thanks.”

The bouncer stepped aside.

Joining us, T.J. followed us down the passage and out the door.

Outside, we walked down a side street, around the corner and into an alley, out of sight of the people who were getting air outside the club.

There, Carl pinned me against the brick wall, hands planted on either side of my head.

“What the hell are you doing out where they could find you?”

I assumed he meant the vampires. My heart pounded, my voice was tight, and with Carl looming over me I couldn’t calm down. My breaths came out as gasps. He was so close, the heat of him pressed against me, and I was on the verge of losing it. I wanted to hug him, cling to him until he wasn’t angry at me anymore.

“It was just for a little while. I just wanted to go out. They weren’t supposed to be here.” I looked away, brushing a tear off my cheek. “T.J. was with me. And they weren’t supposed to be here.”

“Don’t argue with me.”

“I’m sorry, Carl. I’m sorry.” It was so hard groveling upright, without a tail to stick between my legs.

T.J. stood a couple of feet away, leaning back against the wall, his arms crossed and shoulders hunched.

“It’s my fault,” he said. “I told her it was okay.”

“When did you start handing out permission?”

T.J. looked away. Carl was the only person who could make him look sheepish. “Sorry.”

“You should have called me.”

I was still trying to catch my breath. “How—how did you know where to find us?”

He looked at T.J., who was scuffing his boot on the asphalt. T.J. said, “I left him a note.”

I closed my eyes, defeated. “Can’t we do anything without telling Carl?”

Carl growled. Human vocal cords could growl. The guys in pro wrestling did it all the time. But they didn’t mean it like Carl meant it. When he growled, it was like his wolf was trying to climb out of his throat to bite my face off.

“Nope,” T.J. said.

“T.J., go home. Kitty and I are going to have a little talk. I’ll take care of you later.”

“Yes, sir.”

T.J. caught my gaze for a moment, gave me a “buck-up” expression, nodded at Carl, and walked down the street. Carl put his hand behind my neck and steered me in the opposite direction.

This was supposed to be my night.

Usually, I melted around Carl. His personality was such that it subsumed everyone around him—at least everyone in the pack. All I ever wanted to do was make him happy, so that he’d love me. But right now, I was angry.

I couldn’t remember when I’d ever been more angry than scared. It was an odd feeling, a battle of emotions and animal instinct that expressed itself in action: fight or flight. I’d always run, hid, groveled. The hair on my arms, the back of my neck, prickled, and a deep memory of thick fur awakened.

His truck was parked around the corner. He guided me to the passenger seat. Then, he drove.

“I had a visit from Arturo.”

Arturo was Master of the local vampire Family. He kept the vampires in line like Carl kept the werewolves in line, and as long as the two groups stayed in their territories and didn’t harass each other, they existed peacefully, mostly. If Arturo had approached Carl, it meant he had a complaint.

“What’s wrong?”

“He wants you to quit your show.” He glared straight ahead.

I flushed. I should have known something like this would happen. Things were going so well.

“I can’t quit the show. We’re expanding. Syndication. It’s a huge opportunity, I can’t pass it up—”

“You can if I tell you to.”

I tiredly rubbed my face, unable to think of any solution that would let us both have our way. I willed my eyes to clear and made sure my voice sounded steady.

“Then you think I should quit, too.”

“He says that some of his people have been calling you for advice instead of going to him. It’s a challenge to his authority. He has a point.”

Wow, Carl and Arturo agreed on something. It was a great day for supernatural diplomacy.

“Then he should tell off his people and not blame it on me—”

“Kitty—”

I slouched in the seat and pouted like a little kid.

“He’s also worried about exposure. He thinks you’re bringing too much attention to us. All it takes is one televangelist or right-wing senator calling a witch hunt, and people will come looking for us.”

“Come on, 90 percent of the people out there think the show’s a joke.”

He spared a moment out of his driving to glare at me. “We’ve kept to ourselves and kept the secret for a long time. Arturo longer than most. You can’t expect him to think your show is a good idea.”

“Why did he talk to you and not me?”

“’Cause it’s my job to keep you on your leash.”

“Leash or choke collar? Sorry.” I apologized before he even had a chance to glare at me.

“You need to quit the show,” he said. His hands clenched the steering wheel.

“You always do what Arturo tells you to?”

Sad, that this was the best argument I could think of. Carl wouldn’t want to think he was making Arturo happy.

“It’s too dangerous.”

“For whom? For Arturo? For you? For the pack?”

“Is it so unbelievable that I might have your best interests in mind? Arturo may be overreacting, but you are bringing a hell of a lot of exposure on yourself. If a fanatic out there decides you’re a minion of evil, walks into your studio with a gun—”

“He’d need silver bullets.”

“If he thinks the show is for real, he just might have them.”

“It won’t happen, Carl. I’m not telling anyone what I am.”

“And how long will that last?”

Carl didn’t like the show because he didn’t have any control over it. It was all mine. I was supposed to be all his. I’d never argued with him like this before.

I looked out the window. “I get a raise for every new market that picks up the show. It’s not much right now, but if this takes off, it could be a lot. Half of it’s yours.”

The engine hummed; the night rolled by the windows, detail lost in darkness. I didn’t even have to think about how much I’d give to keep doing the show. The realization came like something of an epiphany. I’d give Carl all the syndication bonus to keep doing the show. I’d grovel at his feet every day if he wanted me to.

I had to hold on to the show. It was mine. I was proud of it. It was important. I’d never done anything important before.

He took a long time to answer. Each moment, hope made the knot in my throat tighter. Surely if he was going to say no, he wouldn’t have to think this hard.

“Okay,” he said at last. “But I might still change my mind.”

“That’s fair.” I felt like I’d just run a race, I was so wrung out.

He drove us twenty minutes out of town, to the open space and private acreage that skirted the foothills along Highway 93 to the west. This was the heart of the pack’s territory. Some of the wolves in the pack owned houses out here. The land was isolated and safe for us to run through. There weren’t any streetlights. The sky was overcast. Carl parked on a dead-end dirt road. We walked into the first of the hills, away from the road and residences.

If I thought our discussion was over, I was wrong. We’d only hashed out half of the issue. The human half.

“Change,” he said.

The full moon was still a couple of weeks away. I didn’t like shape-shifting voluntarily at other times. I didn’t like giving in to the urge. I hesitated, but Carl was stripping, already shifting as he did, his back bowed, limbs stretching, fur rippling.

Why couldn’t he just let it go? My anger grew when it should have subsided and given way to terror. Carl would assert his dominance, and I was probably going to get hurt.

But for the first time, I was angry enough that I didn’t care.

I couldn’t fight him. I was half his size. Even if I knew what I was doing, I’d lose. So, I ran. I pulled off my shirt and bra as I did, paused to shove my jeans and panties to my feet, jumped out of them, and Changed, stretching so I’d be running before the fur had stopped growing.

If I didn’t think about it too much, it didn’t hurt that badly.

Hands thicken, claws sprout, think about flowing water so she doesn’t feel bones slide under skin, joints and muscles molding themselves into something else. She crouches, breathing deep through bared teeth. Teeth and face growing longer, and the hair, and the eyes. The night becomes so clear, seen through the Wolf’s eyes.

Then she leaps, the Wolf is formed and running, four legs feel so natural, so splendid, pads barely touching soft earth before they fly again. Wind rushes through her fur like fingers, scent pours into her nose: trees, earth, decay, life, water, day-old tracks, hour-old tracks, spent rifle cartridges from last season, blood, pain, her pack. Pack’s territory. And the One. The Leader. Right behind her, chasing.

Wrong, fleeing him. But fleeing is better than fighting, and the urge to fight is strong. Kill her if she doesn’t say she’s sorry. But she is sorry; she’d do anything for him.

Run, but he’s bigger, faster. He catches her. She tumbles and struggles, fear spurring her on, but he holds her fast with teeth. Fangs dig into her shoulder and she yelps. Using the grip as purchase, he claws his way to her throat, and she’s on her back, belly exposed. His control ensures that he never breaks her skin.

She falls still, whining with every breath. Stretches her head back, exposing her throat. He could kill her now. His jaw closes around her neck and stays there.

Slowly, only after she has stayed frozen for ages, he lets her loose. She stays still, except to lick his chin over and over. “You are God,” the action says. She crawls on her belly after him, because she loves him.

They hunt, and she shows him he is God by waiting to feed on the rabbit until he gives her permission. He leaves her skin and bones to lick and suck, but she is satisfied.

I awoke human in the gray of dawn. The Wolf lingered, bleeding into my awareness, and I let her fill my mind because her instincts were better than mine, especially where the One was concerned.

She lies naked in the den, a covered hillock that is his place when he sleeps off his Wolf. He is there, too, also naked, and aroused. He nibbles her ear, licks her jaw, sucks her throat, and pulls himself on top of her, leveraging her legs apart with his weight. She moans and lets him in; he pushes slowly, gently. This is what she lives for—his attention, his adoration.

Speaking in her ear he says, “I’ll take care of you, and you don’t ever need to grow up. Understand?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

He comes, forcing her against the earth, and she clings to him and slips away, and I am me again.

Alpha’s prerogative: He fucks whomever he wants in the pack, whenever he wants. One of the perks of the position. It was also one of the reasons I melted around him. He just had to walk into a room and I’d be hot and bothered, ready to do anything for him, if he would just touch me. With the scent of him and the wolves all around us, I felt wild.

I curled against his body, and he held me close, my protector.

I needed the pack, because I couldn’t protect myself. In the wild, wolf cubs had to be taught how to hunt, how to fight. No one had taught me. Carl wanted me to be dependent. I wasn’t expected to hunt for myself, or help defend the pack. I had no responsibilities, as long as I deferred to Carl. As long as I stayed a cub, he would look after me.

The next afternoon at the studio, I jumped at every shadow. Every noise that cracked made me flinch and turn to look. Broad daylight, and I still expected vampires to crawl through windows, coming after me.

I really didn’t think anyone took the show that seriously. I didn’t take it that seriously half the time.

If Arturo really wanted me to quit the show, and I didn’t, there’d be trouble. I didn’t know what kind of trouble, but one way or another it would filter back to me. Next time, he and his cronies might not bother going through Carl as intermediary. He’d take his complaint straight to me. I walked around wishing I had eyes on the back of my head. And the sides. I contemplated the fine line between caution and paranoia.

Carl might not always be there to look after me. He couldn’t come to work with me.

I found Matt, the show’s sound engineer, as he came back from supper. One of the benefits of my newfound success: Someone else could pay attention to make sure the right public service announcement played at the right time. He was laid-back, another intern turned full-timer, and always seemed to have a friend who could do exactly the job you needed doing.

“Hey, Matt—do you know anyone who teaches a good self-defense class?”

Chapter 3

I’m Kitty Norville and you’re listening to The Midnight Hour, the show that isn’t afraid of the dark or the creatures who live there. Our first call tonight comes from Oakland. Marie, hello.”

“Hi, Kitty. Thank you for taking my call.”

“You’re welcome. You have a question?”

“Well, it’s a problem, really.”

“All right. Shoot.”

“It’s about my Master. I mean, for the most part I have no complaints. He’s really sexy, and rich, you know? I get lots of perks like nice clothes and jewelry and stuff. But—there are a couple of things that make me uncomfortable.”

I winced. “Marie, just so we’re clear: You’re human?”

“Yeah.”

“And you willingly enslaved yourself to a vampire, as his human servant?”

“Well, yeah.”

She certainly wasn’t the first. “And now you’re unhappy because—”

“It isn’t how I thought it would be.” And Marie certainly wasn’t the first to discover this.

“Let me guess: There’s a lot more blood involved than you thought there would be. He makes you clean up after feeding orgies, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, no, the blood doesn’t bother me at all. It’s just that, well—he doesn’t drink from my neck. He prefers drinking from my thigh.”

“And you’re quibbling? You must have lovely thighs.”

“It’s supposed to be the neck. In all the stories it’s the neck.”

“There are some vampire legends where the vampire tears out the heart and laps up the blood. Be happy you didn’t hook up with one of those.”

“And he doesn’t wear silk.”

What could I say? The poor girl had had her illusions shattered.

“Does he make you eat houseflies?”

“No—”

“Marie, if you present your desires as a request, not a demand—make it sound as attractive as you think it is—your Master may surprise you. Buy him a silk shirt for his birthday. Hm?”

“Okay. I’ll try. Thanks, Kitty.”

“Good luck, Marie. Next caller, Pete, you’re on the air.”

“I’m a werewolf trapped in a human body.”

“Well, yeah, that’s kind of the definition.”

“No, really. I’m trapped.”

“Oh? When was the last time you shape-shifted?”

“That’s just it—I’ve never shape-shifted.”

“So you’re not really a werewolf.”

“Not yet. But I was meant to be one, I just know it. How do I get a werewolf to attack me?”

“Stand in the middle of a forest under a full moon with a raw steak tied to your face, holding a sign that says, ‘Eat me; I’m stupid’?”

“No, I’m serious.”

“So am I! Listen, you do not want to be attacked by a werewolf. You do not want to be a werewolf. You may think you do, but let me explain this one more time: Lycanthropy is a disease. It’s a chronic, life-altering disease that has no cure. Its victims may learn to live with it—some of them better than others—but it prevents them from living a normal life ever again. It greatly increases your odds of dying prematurely and horribly.”

“But I want fangs and claws. I want to hunt deer with my bare hands. That would be so cool!”

I rubbed my forehead and sighed. I got at least one of these calls every show. If I could convince just one of these jokers that being a werewolf was not all that cool, I’d consider the show a success.

“It’s a lot different when you hunt deer not because you want to but because you have to, because of your innate bloodlust, and because if you didn’t hunt deer you’d be hunting people, and that would get you in trouble. How do you feel about hunting people, Pete? How about eating people?”

“Um, I would get used to it?”

“You’d get people with silver bullets gunning for you. For the last time, I do not advocate lycanthropy as a lifestyle choice. Next caller, please.”

“Um, yeah. Hi.”

“Hello.”

“I have a question for you. Werewolves and vampires—we’re stronger than humans. What’s to stop us from, oh, I don’t know . . . robbing banks? The police can’t stop us. Regular bullets don’t work. So why aren’t more of us out there wreaking havoc?”

“Human decency,” I said without thinking.

“But we’re not—”

“—human? Do you really believe that you’re not human?”

“Well, no. How can I be?”

I crossed my arms and sighed. “The thing I keep hearing from all the people I talk to is that despite what they are and what they can do, they still want to be a part of human society. Society has benefits, even for them. So they take part in the social contract. They agree to live by human rules. Which means they don’t go around ‘wreaking havoc.’ And that’s why, ultimately, I think we can all find a way to live together.”

Wow. I shocked myself sometimes with how reasonable I made all this sound. I might even have believed it. No, I had to believe it, or I wouldn’t be doing the show.

The caller hesitated before saying, “So I tell you I’m a werewolf, and you’ll tell me that you think I’m human?”

He couldn’t know that he was asking me to label myself. “Yes. And if you live in the human world, you have to live by human laws.”

The trick with this show was confidence. I only had to sound like I knew what I was talking about.

“Yeah, well, thanks.”

“Thanks for calling. Hello, James, you’re on the air.”

“I have a question, Kitty.” His voice came low and muffled, like he was speaking too close to the handset.

“Okay.”

“Does a werewolf need to be in a pack? Can’t he just be on his own?” A sense of longing tainted the question.

“I suppose, theoretically, a werewolf doesn’t need a pack. Why do you ask?”

“Curious. Just curious. It seems like no one on your show ever talks about being a werewolf without a pack. Do they?”

“You’re right, I don’t hear much about werewolves without hearing about packs. I think—” This was where the show got tricky: How much could I talk about without bringing up personal experience, without giving something away? “I think packs are important to werewolves. They offer safety, protection, a social group. Also control. They’re not going to want a rogue wolf running around making a mess of things and drawing attention to the rest of them. A pack is a way to keep tabs on all the lycanthropes in an area. Same thing for vampire Families.”

“But just because a werewolf is on his own doesn’t mean he’s automatically going to go out and start killing people. Does it?” The guy was tense. Even over the phone I could hear an edge to his voice.

“What do you think, James?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I called you. You’re always talking about how anybody, even monsters, can choose what they do, can choose whether or not they’re going to let their natures control them, or rise above all that. But can we really? Maybe—maybe if I don’t have a pack . . . if I don’t want to have anything to do with a pack . . . maybe that’s my own way of taking control. I’m not giving in. I don’t have to be like that. I can survive on my own. Can’t I? Can’t I?”

I couldn’t do it. From the night I was attacked until now, someone—T.J., Carl, or somebody—had been there to tell me I was going to be okay, that I had friends. They helped me keep control. They gave me a place to go when I felt like losing it. I didn’t have to worry about hurting them. If I didn’t have that, what would I do? I’d be alone. How many people were there—people like James, who didn’t have packs or Families or anything—how many of them were listening to my show and thinking I had all the answers? That wasn’t what I’d planned when I started this.

Had there been a plan when I started this?

Who was I to think I could actually help some of these people? I couldn’t get along without my pack. Maybe James was different.

“I don’t know, James. I don’t know anything about your life. If you want me to sit here and validate you, tell you that yeah, you’re right, you don’t need a pack and everything’s going to be okay, I can’t do that. I don’t have the answers. I can only go by what I hear and think. Look at your life and decide if you’re happy with it. If you can live with it and the people around you can live with it, fine, great, you don’t need a pack. If you’re not happy, decide why that is and do something about it. Maybe a pack would help, maybe not. This is a strange, strange world we’re talking about. It’d be stupid to think that one rule applies to everyone.” I waited a couple of heartbeats. I could hear his breathing over the line. “James, you okay?”

Another heartbeat of a pause. “Yeah.”

“I’m going to the next call now. Keep your chin up and take it one day at a time.”

“Okay, Kitty. Thanks.”

Please, please, please let the next call be an easy one. I hit the phone line.

“You’re on the air.”

“Hi, Kitty. So, I’ve been a lycanthrope for about six years now, and I think I’ve adjusted pretty well. I get along with my pack and all.”

“Good, good.”

“But I don’t know if I can talk to them about this. See, I’ve got this rash—”

I had an office. Not a big office. More like a closet with a desk. But I had my own telephone. I had business cards. Kitty Norville, The Midnight Hour, KNOB. There was a time just a few months ago when I’d assumed I would never have a real job. Now I did. Business cards. Who’d have guessed?

The show aired once a week, but I worked almost every day. Afternoons and evenings, mostly, in keeping with the nocturnal schedule I’d adopted. I spent an unbelievable amount of time dealing with organizational crap: setting up guest interviews, running damage control, doing research. I didn’t mind. It made me feel like a real journalist, like my NPR heroes. I even got calls from the media. The show was fringe, it was wacky, and it was starting to attract attention from people who monitored pop-culture weirdness. A lot of people thought it was a gimmick appealing to the goth crowd. I had developed a set of canned answers for just about every question.

I got asked a lot if I was a vampire/lycanthrope/

witch/whatever; from the skeptics the question was if I thought I was a vampire/lycanthrope/witch/whatever. I always said I was human. Not a lie, exactly. What else could I say?

I liked the research. I had a clipping service that delivered articles from all walks of media about anything pertaining to vampires, lycanthropes, magic, witchcraft, ghosts, psychic research, crop circles, telepathy, divining, lost cities—anything. Lots of grist for the mill.

A producer from Uncharted World called to see if I wanted to be on the show. I said no. I wasn’t ready for television. I was never going to be ready for television. No need to expose myself any more than necessary.

I got fan mail. Well, some of it was fan mail. Some of it was more along the lines of “Die, you satanic bitch from hell.” I had a folder that I kept those in and gave to the police every week. If I ever got assassinated, they’d have a nice, juicy suspect list. Right.

Werewolves really are immune to regular bullets. I’ve seen it.

Six months. I’d done the show once a week for six months. Twenty-four episodes. I was broadcast on sixty-two stations, nationwide. Small potatoes in the world of syndicated talk radio. But I thought it was huge. I thought I would have gotten tired of it by now. But I always seemed to have more to talk about.

One evening, seven or eight o’clock, I was in my office—my office!—reading the local newspaper. The downtown mauling death of a prostitute made it to page three. I hadn’t gotten past the first paragraph when my phone—my phone!—rang.

“Hello, this is Kitty.”

“You’re Kitty Norville?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“Who is this?”

He hesitated a beat before continuing. “These people who call you—the ones who say they’re psychic, or vampires and werewolves—do you believe them? Do you believe it’s real?”

I suddenly felt like I was doing the show, on the phone, confronting the bizarreness that was my life head-on. But it was just me and the guy on the phone. He sounded . . . ordinary.

When I did the show, I had to draw people out. I had to answer them in a way that made them comfortable enough to keep talking. I wanted to draw this guy out.

“Yes, I do.”

“Do they scare you?”

My brow puckered. I couldn’t guess where this was going. “No. They’re people. Vampirism, the rest of it—they’re diseases, not a mark of evil. It’s unfortunate that some people use them as a license to be evil. But you can’t condemn all of them because of that.”

“That’s an unusually rational attitude, Ms. Norville.” The voice took on an edge. Authoritative. Decisive, like he knew where he stood now.

“Who are you?”

“I’m attached to a government agency—”

“Which one?”

“Never mind that. I shouldn’t even be talking to you like this—”

“Oh, give me a break!”

“I’ve wondered for some time now what your motivations are in doing your show.”

“Let me at least take a guess. Are you with the NIH?”

“I’m not sure the idea would have occurred to someone who didn’t have a . . . personal . . . interest.”

A chill made my hair stand on end. This was getting too close.

I said, “So, are you with the CDC?”

A pause, then, “Don’t misunderstand me, I admire the work you’re doing. But you’ve piqued my curiosity. Ms. Norville—what are you?”

Okay, this was just weird. I had to talk fast to fend off panic. “What do you mean, ‘what am I?’”

“I think we can help each other. An exchange of information, perhaps.”

Feeling a bit like the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltskin, I took a wild stab. “Are you with the CIA?”

He said, “See what you can find on the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology.” Then he hung up.

Great, I had my own personal Deep Throat.

Hard to focus on work after that. I kept turning the conversation over in my mind, wondering what I’d missed and what someone like that could accomplish by calling me.

I couldn’t have been brooding for more than five minutes when the phone rang again. I flinched, startled, and tried to get my heart to stop racing before I answered. I was sure the caller would be able to hear it over the phone.

I answered warily. “Hello?”

“Kitty? It’s your mother.” Mom, sounding as cheerful and normal as ever. I closed my eyes and sighed.

“Hi, Mom. What’s up?”

“You never told me if you were going to be able to make it to your cousin Amanda’s wedding. I need to let them know.”

I had completely forgotten. Mostly because I didn’t, under any circumstances, want to go. Weddings meant crowds. I didn’t like crowds. And questions. Like, “So when is it going to be your turn?” Or, “Do you have anyone special?”

I mean, define special.

I tried to be a little more polite. Mom didn’t deserve aimless venting. I pulled out my organizer.

“I don’t know, when is it again?” She gave me the date, I flipped ahead to next month and looked. The day after the full moon. There was no way I’d be in any kind of decent shape to meet the family the day after the full moon. I couldn’t handle being nice to that many people the day after the full moon.

Now if only I could think of an excuse I could tell my mother.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got something else going on. I’ll have to miss it.”

“I think Amanda would really like you to be there.”

“I know, I know. I’m really sorry. I’ll send her a card.” I even wrote myself a note to send her a card, then and there. To tell the truth, I didn’t think Amanda would miss me all that much. But there were other forces at work here. Mom didn’t want to have to explain to everyone why I was absent, any more than I wanted to tell her why I was going to be absent.

“You know, Kitty, you’ve missed the last few big family get-togethers. If you’re busy I understand, but it would be nice if you could make an appearance once in a while.”

It was her birthday all over again. That subtle, insipid guilt trip that only mothers are capable of delivering. It wasn’t like I was avoiding the family simply for the sake of avoiding them.

“I’ll try next time.” I said that every time.

She wouldn’t let up. “I know you don’t like me worrying about you. But you used to be so outgoing, and now—” I could picture her shrugging in lieu of cohesive thought. “Is everything okay?”

Sometimes I wished I could tell her I was a lesbian or something. “Everything’s fine, Mom. I’m just busy. Don’t worry.”

“Are you sure, because if you ever need to talk—”

I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t imagine what sort of nightmare scenarios she’d developed about what I was doing when I said I was busy. But I couldn’t tell her the truth. She was nice. Normal. She wore pantsuits and sold real estate. Played tennis with my dad. Try explaining werewolves to that.

“Mom, I really need to get back to work. I know you’re worried, I appreciate it, but everything’s fine, I promise.” Lying through my teeth, actually, but what else could I say?

“All right, then.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Call me if you change your mind about the wedding.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”

The sound of the phone clicking off was like a weight lifting from my shoulders.

A telephone. Business cards. Next, I needed a secretary to screen my calls.

When a knock on my door frame sounded a few minutes later, I just about hit the ceiling. I dropped the newspaper I’d been reading and looked up to see a man standing in the doorway. My office had a door, but I rarely closed it. He’d arrived without my noticing.

He was of average height and build, with dark hair brushing his shoulders and refined features. Unassuming in most respects, except that he smelled like a corpse. A well-preserved corpse, granted. He didn’t smell rotten. But he smelled of cold blood instead of hot blood, and he didn’t have a heartbeat.

Vampires had this way of sneaking around without anyone noticing them. He’d probably walked right past the security guy in the lobby of the building.

I recognized this vampire: Rick.

I’d met him a couple of times when Carl and Arturo got together to resolve squabbles. He was a strange one. He was part of Arturo’s Family, but he didn’t seem much interested in the politics of it; he always lingered at the edges of the Family, never close to Arturo himself. He didn’t cultivate the demeanor of ennui that was ubiquitous among vampires. He could actually laugh at someone else’s jokes. When I asked nicely he told stories about the Old West. The real Old West—he’d been there.

Sighing, my hair and blood prickling with anxiety, I slumped back in my chair. I tried to act casual, as if his presence didn’t bother me.

“Hi, Rick.”

His lips turned in a half-smile. When he spoke, he showed fangs, slender, needle-sharp teeth where canines should have been. “Sorry if I startled you.”

“No you aren’t. You enjoyed it.”

“I’d hate to lose my knack for it.”

“I thought you couldn’t come in here unless I invited you.”

“That doesn’t apply to commercial property.”

“So. What brings you here?” The question came out tense. He could only be here because I hadn’t quit doing the show and Arturo wasn’t happy about it.

His expression didn’t waver. “What do you think I’m here for?”

I glared, in no mood for any more mind games tonight. “Arturo told Carl to make me quit the show. I haven’t quit. I assume His Mighty Undeadness is going to start harassing me directly to try and get me off the air. He sent you to deliver some sort of threat.”

“That’s a little paranoid, isn’t it?”

I pointed. “Not if they’re really out to get me.”

“Arturo didn’t send me.”

I narrowed my gaze, suspicious. “He didn’t?”

“He doesn’t know I’m here.”

Which changed everything. Assuming Rick was telling the truth, but he had no reason not to. If he was seeing me behind Arturo’s back, he must have a good reason.

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m trying to find some information. I wondered if you could help me.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, smoothed it out, and handed it to me. “What do you make of this?”

It was a flyer printed on goldenrod-colored paper. The production value was low. It might even have been typewritten, then photocopied at a supermarket. It read,

Do you need help? Have you been cursed? Vampires, lycanthropes, there is hope for you! There is a cure! The Reverend Elijah Smith and his Church of the Pure Faith want to save you. Pure Faith Will Set You Free.

The bottom of the flyer listed a date a few weeks old. The site was an old ranch thirty miles north of town, near Brighton.

Reading it over again, my brow wrinkled. It sounded laughable. I conjured an image of a stereotypical southern preacher laying hands on, oh, someone like Carl. Banishing the demons, amen and hallelujah. Carl would bite his head off—for real.

“A cure? Through faith healing? Is this a joke?”

“No, unfortunately. One of Arturo’s followers left to join them. We haven’t seen her since. Personally, I smell a rat and I’m worried.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Arturo must be pissed off.”

“Yes. But it’s been next to impossible to learn anything about this Smith and his church. Arturo’s too proud to ask for help. I’m not. You have contacts. I wondered if you’d heard anything.”

“No.” I flipped the page over, as if it would reveal more secrets, but the back was blank. “A cure, huh? Does it work?”

Every hint of a cure I’d ever tracked down had turned out to be myth. Smoke and folklore. I could be forgiven for showing skepticism.

“I don’t know,” he said simply.

“I’ve never heard of a cure actually working.”

“Neither have I.”

“Arturo’s follower thought it was for real. And she never came back. So—it worked?”

“Some might be attracted by such a possibility. Enticing bait, if someone wanted to lure people like us.”

“Lure why?”

He shrugged. “To trap them, kill them. Enslave them. Such things have happened before.”

The possibilities he suggested were downright ominous. They incited a nebulous fear of purposes I couldn’t imagine. Witch hunts, pogroms. Reality TV.

He was only trying to scare me so I’d get righteously indignant enough to do something about this. It worked.

“I’ll see what I can find out.” Grist for the mill. I wondered if Smith would come on the show for an interview.

“Thank you.”

“Thanks for the tip.” I pursed my lips, suppressing a grin. “It’s a good thing the humble subordinates keep running around their leaders’ backs, or nothing would get done around here.”

Rick gazed innocently at the ceiling. “Well, I wouldn’t say anything like that to Arturo’s face. Or Carl’s.”

Things always came back to them, didn’t they? The Master, the alpha. We were hardwired to be followers. I supposed it kept our communities from degenerating into chaos.

More somber, I said, “Do you think Arturo’s going to do anything about the show?”

“That depends on what Carl does.”

As in, if Carl did nothing, Arturo might. I winced. “Right.”

“I should be going.”

“Yeah. Take it easy.”

He nodded, almost a small bow that reminded me that Rick was old. He came from a time when gentlemen bowed to ladies. Then he was gone, as quietly as he’d arrived.

Phone. Business cards. Secretary. Maybe I also needed a receptionist. And a bodyguard.

Chapter 4

Dressed in sweatpants, sports bra, and tank top, I stood on the mat, and at the instructor’s signal, kicked at dust motes. Craig, an impossibly fit and enthusiastic college student who looked like he’d walked straight out of an MTV reality show, shouted “Go!” and the dozen of us in the class—all of us women in our twenties and thirties—kicked.

Rather than teaching a specific martial art, the class took bits and pieces from several disciplines and combined them in a technique designed to incapacitate an assailant long enough for us to run like hell. We didn’t get points for style; we didn’t spend a lot of time in mystical meditation. Instead, we drilled moves over and over again so that in a moment of panic, in the heat of an attack, we could move by instinct and defend ourselves.

It was pretty good exercise as well. Breathing hard, sweating, I could forget about the world outside the gym and let my brain go numb for an hour.

We switched sides and kicked with the other leg a dozen or so times. Then Craig put his hands on his hips.

“All right. Line up so we can do some sparri. . .