“We went out a couple more times. And then he told me. He told me what he was. I—I didn’t believe him at first. I know werewolves are real, I saw you on TV that time, read the news stories. But I didn’t think I’d ever actually meet one. I thought it was some crazy new come-on, that he was trying to impress me. I thought maybe he was crazy. But I played along, to see what would happen. I told him if he was really a werewolf he should show me. He wouldn’t, not at first. He just talked about it, a little more each time. He made it sound really cool, really great. Like it made you powerful, and the sex was amazing, that you could smell and see and feel things a human never could. He made it sound like a good thing. And I finally said yeah, okay, I’ll do it. He was so happy when I said yes, I really thought he was in love with me, I really thought he wanted us to be together. I didn’t know about Meg or the pack or anything. After, when he brought me to them, Meg said he’d just wanted a new pup.”
My heart jumped to my throat. I sat back and stared at the ceiling, taking a moment to catch my breath. Jenny was young, blond, waiflike—like I had been when I joined the pack, a naive girl caught by a monster on a mountain trailhead, turned by accident. Carl hadn’t been the one to turn me into this thing, but he’d taken an interest in me after. Kept me under his paw, so to speak. Everyone knew I was his. Apparently, after I left the pack, Carl found a replacement.
I’d kill him. I’d fucking kill him myself the next time I saw him.
Right now, I had to pretend like I was doing the show, on the phone with some poor distraught girl. I wasn’t used to seeing the face in front of me, seeing the tears. I wanted to keep staring at the ceiling. But I didn’t.
“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? There’s absolutely no reason to stay with him. Abuse is still abuse, and just because you’re both werewolves doesn’t justify a damned thing. You don’t have to stand up to him—just get in a car and leave.”
“But I’d just run into the same problem somewhere else. That’s what Carl says, no matter where I go there’ll be other . . . other people like us, and that they’ll kill me. He’ll protect me, he says he will—”
“Carl doesn’t know everything. There are places you can go,” I said. “Places where the other wolves won’t hurt you, where there aren’t wolves at all. I’ll make some calls, I’ll set something up.”
“Kitty, I can’t. I don’t have a car, I don’t have a job, I don’t have any money—”
“Carl supports you, doesn’t he? He said, don’t work. Don’t do anything. I’ll take care of you, I’ll protect you, just do what I say and you’ll have it all.”
Again, she nodded. He’d made that same offer to me. I’d clung to my humanity instead. I’d had the radio station and my show to pull me through, to give me something else to live for. Jenny didn’t have that, obviously.
She almost seemed angry now. “It’s easy for you to tell me to get out. You stood up to him. You and T. J.”
“You never even knew T. J.”
“No. But the others still talk about him, when Carl and Meg aren’t around. They say he’s the only one who ever stood up to him.”
Like he was some kind of fucking folk hero. I wanted to scream at her. We’d failed. T. J. had died, and I’d run like a coward. We were nothing to base a revolution on.
If I’d stayed with Carl, I’d be dead. It was that simple. Carl would have killed me months ago, because I couldn’t have kept rolling over on my back for him. How long before that happened to Jenny?
I made a decision.
“Jenny, if you want to get out, I’ll help you. I’ll find a place for you to go and make sure you get there in one piece. But you have to want it, and you have to figure out what to do next. Before you met Carl, what did you want? Were you going to school, was there a job you liked, anything? If you want to get away from Carl, you need to learn to take care of yourself. You have to get a job, support yourself, learn to control the lycanthropy without him looking out for you. Do you understand?”
She thought for a long moment, staring out the window, letting tears fall, wiping them away with the tissue. Then she shook her head. “But I love him. And I know he loves me, I just know it. He’s so good to me the rest of the time, when he isn’t—” She choked on the rest of the sentence. As well she should.
I couldn’t blame her, no matter how much I wanted to, because I’d been in the same place, once upon a time. What was it about guys like Carl that made girls like us throw ourselves at their feet?
Digging in my things, I found a business card. “Here’s my phone number. Call me, okay? When you decide you’re ready, call me.”
She took the card, clutching it in both hands. She seemed a little dazed, staring at it like she didn’t quite know what it was. When I stood, so did she. I held the door open for her.
“When Carl smells me on you, you’re going to have to come up with a good explanation. And he’d better not find that card.”
She paled a little, and we went out to the parking lot.
“Do you need a ride somewhere?” I asked.
“No. I think I’ll be okay. I just need to think.”
“Yeah, you do. Be careful, okay?”
She looked at me. It wasn’t a wolf’s challenging stare. Rather, it was intense and studious. Like she was trying to guess what I’d do next—a subordinate watching her leader for a sign. She was making me nervous.
“You’re not at all like Carl and Meg,” she said.
I had to smile. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
She walked away, ducking to the back of the building and leaving by the alley.
I started for home, but I only drove a couple of miles before my cell phone rang. It was Jenny saying, “Can you come get me?”
Ben was waiting in the living room of the condo, sitting on the sofa, reading a magazine. When I opened the door, he set the magazine aside and crossed his arms. He was wearing sweats and a T-shirt, looking ready for bed. Only the living-room lamp was on, and the place seemed dark.
I pulled Jenny in with me and shut the door quickly. Glancing sidelong at Ben, she huddled near the wall, arms crossed, slouching.
Ben said, “This is keeping your head low? Avoiding confrontation?”
“What was I supposed to do?” I touched her shoulder, trying to peel her off the wall. “Jenny, this is Ben. He’s one of the good guys.”
“Gee, thanks,” Ben muttered wryly.
“Ben, this is Jenny.”
“Hi,” he said. She managed a brief smile.
“Jenny, you need anything? Will you be okay while I make some calls?”
She shook her head. “It smells wrong, it’s not like pack in here.”
“Different pack. Different territory.” I hadn’t thought of Ben’s condo as territory before—this tiny little pocket of Denver that didn’t belong to Carl. I liked the image.
“It’s weird.”
“You don’t have to stay.” And when she went back to Carl, she’d smell like me. She’d smell like a different pack, and Carl would know. God knew what he’d do about it.
“No, no—I’ll stay. I need to figure things out.”
“That’s the spirit. Do you want to see if maybe you can get some sleep? Things might look better in the morning.”
“You can have the sofa,” Ben said, patting the leather cushion next to him. “It’s a great napping sofa. I’ll get some blankets.”
“That okay?” I asked her.
“It’s up to you,” she said.
“No, see, that’s exactly the kind of thing you have to get over. If you’re going to do this, you have to make some decisions. Otherwise, you’ll let anyone who happens to come along walk all over you.”
She looked away. “Yeah. Okay.”
Ben gave her blankets and a pillow, and Jenny curled up on the sofa, hugging a blanket around her, and fell asleep in seconds, like this was the first real, relaxed sleep she’d had in weeks. Months, maybe.
r /> We retreated to the bedroom.
Ben sat on the bed and watched me pace back and forth while I talked.
“I shouldn’t be doing this. This is ridiculous. I can’t protect her. I should never have brought her here.”
“You realize you look like an animal in a cage?”
That always happened when I was nervous. I sat down with a huff.
“The pack’s not any of my business. Not anymore. Why am I even getting involved?”
His lips curled in a half grin, like he wasn’t convinced by my arguments. Like he was about to say something snarky. “You’ve just given a dozen reasons why you shouldn’t have brought her here. So why did you?”
I shrugged. “It felt like the right thing to do? The wolf side wants to keep her safe.” I whined and squeezed my hands over my head, like I could push some sense into my brain. “You’d think after this long the wolf side would stop surprising me.”
“She’s like you were, isn’t she?”
I wanted to argue. I couldn’t possibly have been that bad, that helpless. Honestly, though, I remembered. Those early weeks, my first time meeting the pack, surrounded by wolves, I’d only wanted to know what I had to do to keep from getting hurt, from making them angry. I’d been the most submissive one in the room, to keep Carl happy, to make sure he protected me.
“Yeah. And if it weren’t for the show and T. J. and leaving, I’d still be like that. She said that’s why Carl turned her. He wanted someone like that again.”
“Jesus.” For a long moment we sat quietly, letting the doom settle over us. Then he said, “I want you to take the gun. Keep it with you. We’ll worry about the permit later.”
“Ben—”
“He’ll come after you, sooner or later. You have to be able to stop him. And don’t just keep it in the glove box in the car. Get a purse, carry it with you.”
I drew a deep, frustrated breath. “Guns aren’t always the answer.”
“Not always. Sometimes, they are.” He offered a galling smile.
“Who’s the alpha wolf here?”
“Don’t packs usually have two alphas?”
He was getting cheeky. I kind of liked it. I squeezed his hand and kissed him. “Thanks. I have to go make some calls.”
Jenny slept for ten hours. The next day, she had the look of a fugitive—sunken eyes, permanent frown. But she held herself a little straighter, and she wasn’t crying.
I knew of a couple of places where lycanthropes lived and didn’t have packs. There were werewolves there who’d look after her. They could help her find a job, get her on her feet. I’d waited until morning to call them, but I made one call before dawn. I knew at least one vampire who could find a place in her household for a wayward cub.
I’d developed this network of friends without even realizing it. Ahmed, an amiable old werewolf, and Alette, a surprisingly humane vampire, in Washington, D.C., both offered to take her in, if I could get her out there. Ahmed gave me a couple of more names, lycanthropes in Los Angeles and Seattle who would help her, if she wanted to go there instead. He said that problems like this came up fairly often, but a few people had found a way to deal with it. Battered lycanthrope shelters. Who’d have guessed?
At last, here was a problem I could fix. Here was someone I could well and truly help. When Jenny woke up around lunchtime, I presented her with a page full of names and phone numbers.
“Do you want to go to Seattle, L.A., or Washington, D.C.?”
She looked at the page warily. “What?”
I tried to sound kind. “If you don’t want Carl to be able to get to you, you have to leave town. I have contacts. The ones in D.C., I know them and trust them. They gave me these other contacts, so they’re good. You can go, and you won’t be alone. The people there are friends, they’ll help you.”
She stared at the table, and at the glass of orange juice that was all she’d wanted for her late breakfast. The finality of it must have sounded startling. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in her head, with so much to think about.
“It’s what I did,” I said. “I left. Things’ll be easier—they’ll seem clearer when Carl isn’t around.”
She swallowed, and still her voice cracked. “This woman in Washington, the vampire—you said she’s nice?”
“Yeah, she is. Maybe a little snooty, but aren’t they all? She likes taking care of people.”
“I think I’d like to go there,” Jenny said. “To stay with her.”
Alette was female, and wasn’t a werewolf. I wasn’t surprised Jenny made that choice. “Then we’ll get it all set up. See? It’s easy.”
She sniffed, and I was afraid she’d start crying again. I didn’t want her to start crying again. She was going to get me started. But she smiled, for the first time she smiled, a thin and shy expression.
“Thanks,” she said. “Everything people say about you—Becky said you’d help.”
“I’m happy to,” I said, and I was. It felt like winning, and I didn’t have to fight anyone, and no one had to die.
Over the next few days, we set everything up. In that time, I wouldn’t let her leave the condo, and I wouldn’t leave her alone. Ben or I stayed with her the whole time. Usually me. Ben made her nervous, and I couldn’t blame her. I was constantly looking out the window, checking the streets, jumping whenever the phone rang. I expected Carl to show up any minute. He didn’t.
Ben cleaned a couple of handguns and wore gloves while he loaded them with silver bullets.
I bought Jenny’s plane ticket, gave her some extra clothes, and put her on the phone with Alette so the two could get acquainted. Jenny’s expression was constantly numb, almost shocky, like she’d survived a disaster. She’d given herself over to strangers and had succumbed to fatalism. For my part, I wouldn’t be happy until she was on the plane and away.
The best I could do was walk her to security. We lingered at the end of the line snaking its way to the metal detectors and X-ray machines.
“You have my phone number. Call me if you need anything, anything at all. If it doesn’t work with Alette, we’ll find something else. You have a lot of choices, okay? Everything’ll look better when you get to a new place.”
I wanted her to be happy and excited, but she still looked terrified. “I’ve never been this scared. Not even the first time I shifted.”
“It’s going to be okay.”
“But I think I miss Carl. Is that weird?”
How I could I convince her that she was doing the right thing? “Part of you always will. I still do sometimes.” Though the Carl I missed—the strong, protective Carl, the sex, the feeling of being adored—had faded to a very faint shadow. I mostly remembered Carl the domineering, Carl the angry. “But you have a right to your own life. You don’t belong to him.”
She nodded, her expression still uncertain.
“Call me when you get there, okay?” I said. “Make sure you meet Ahmed. He runs this bar, it’s amazing—”
“I know. You’ve told me about it ten times now.” She flashed a smile. It made her face light up. I could see why Carl had zeroed in on her. It just added fuel to the fire, though, seeing how completely he’d managed to bury her personality.
“Yeah. I have to admit, I think I’m kind of jealous. You get to start out on this great adventure.”
“It feels like stepping off a cliff.”
“Kind of does, doesn’t it? You just have to remember your parachute.”
We hugged. It was a human gesture, not a wolf one. She had to be able to draw on the human side—the side that knew she could live without Carl—if she was going to get through this.
I watched her disappear down the escalator leading to the trains that ran to the concourse. You needed a ticket to go any farther. I took that as a consolation. No one who could hurt her knew she was here. No one could get to her. She was safe now.
“Mission accomplished?” Ben said when I got home.
“Yeah.” He met me at the d
oor, and I folded myself in his arms. “I need a hug.” He obliged.
“What’s Carl going to do when he finds out?”
I mumbled into Ben’s shoulder. “Nothing he can do. Not if he doesn’t know she got help. As far as he’s concerned, she just left. And there’s nothing he can do about it.”
I almost wanted to call him myself and shout the words at him.
There’s nothing you can do about it, you bastard.
chapter 8
Mom had a surgery date: Friday, barring unexpected test results or complications in the meantime. The doctors were calling it a “reexcision” and kept saying it was routine, but that was just to make us feel better. They were still cutting chunks out of my mom. I wanted to stop it if I could. But there were no good solutions, any way you looked at it.
After sending Jenny off, I had a free evening and spent it with Mom, working up the courage to mention lycanthropy. It was a crazy, stupid idea—I couldn’t suggest that my own mother take up this life. I’d have to take care of her the way I’d taken care of Ben when he’d been infected last winter. That had been hard enough, watching him struggle with the changes to his body, what the pain did to him, knowing what he was going through and being unable to make it any easier. I couldn’t imagine Mom in that situation.
But if it was a choice between going through that and losing her entirely, it wasn’t a choice at all. I had to talk to her about it before the surgery.
We sat at the kitchen table and ate ice cream out of the carton. She’d handed me the spoon as soon as I walked in the door. “Life is short,” she said. “I’m going to be completely decadent this week. To think, all those years I was worried about my weight. If I’d known I might lose it all in a heartbeat, I’d have eaten more ice cream.”