Ariel droned on. “Let’s move on to the next call. I have Trish on the line. She’s trying to decide whether or not to tell her mother that she was infected with lycanthropy and became a werewolf two years ago. The kicker: her mother has terminal cancer. Trish, hello.”
Strangely, I suddenly understood the attraction of a show like this, and why people listened to my show. There was always somebody out there who had bigger problems. You could forget about your own for a while. Or secretly gloat, At least it’s not me.
“Hi, Ariel.” Trish had been crying. Her voice had a strained, worn-out quality.
“Let’s talk about this, Trish. Tell me why you think you shouldn’t tell your mother what happened.”
“What’s the point? It’ll upset her. I don’t want to upset her. If it’s true—if she doesn’t have much time left—I don’t want her to spend that time being angry with me. Or being scared of me. And once she’s gone… it won’t matter. It doesn’t matter.”
“Now, why do you think you should tell her?”
Trish took a shaky breath. “She’s my mother. I think… sometimes I think she already knows that something’s wrong. That something happened to me. And what if it does matter? What if when she’s gone, there is something after? Then she’ll know. She’ll die and her soul will be out there and know everything, and she’ll be disappointed that I didn’t tell her. That I kept it secret.”
“Even if you know it’ll upset her now.”
“I can’t win, either way.”
“Is there anyone else in your family you can talk to? Someone who might be able to help you decide what’s best for her?”
“No, no. There’s not anyone. No siblings. My parents are divorced, she hasn’t spoken to my father in years. I’m the only one taking care of her. I’ve never felt this alone.” She was on the breaking point. I was amazed she could even speak coherently.
“What’s your first impulse? Before you started second-guessing yourself, what were you going to do?”
“I was going to tell her. I’m thinking—it’s like everyone talks about how you should work things out before it’s too late. But she’s so sick, Ariel. Telling her something like this wouldn’t be working anything out, it would be torturing her. It’s easier to keep quiet. I want to try to make this time as comfortable and happy for her as I can.
My problems, my feelings—they’re not important.”
“But they are, or you wouldn’t be calling me.”
“I suppose. Yeah.”
Ariel said, “It’s commendable, your wanting to put your feelings aside for your mother’s sake. But you’re not convinced it’s the right thing to do, are you?”
“No. No, I’ve always talked to Mom about these things. And I’m not going to have her anymore. I don’t want to face that.” Finally her voice broke. My heart went out to her. I was almost crying myself.
Ariel spoke gently, but firmly. “Trish, if you’re looking for me to tell you what to do, or to give you permission to do one thing and not another, I’m not going to do that. This is a terrible situation. All I can tell you is, listen to your heart. You know your mom better than anyone. You should think about what she would want.”
I hadn’t intended to do it this time. I was too tired to be snarky. But I found myself digging out my cell phone.
Ben noticed. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Shh,” I hissed at him.
I fought through the busy signal and got to the gatekeeper. I explained my reason for calling—that I could speak to Trish’s situation. Then I found myself telling him my name. “Kitty.”
The guy didn’t say anything. Why should he? I wasn’t the only person in the world named Kitty. He didn’t have any reason to think that Ariel’s radio rival would call in to her show.
I wasn’t angry this time. I wasn’t frustrated and lashing out. I really had something to say.
Ben watched me, kind of like he might watch a train wreck on TV. I had turned down the radio, but he’d moved it over by him and was listening with it up to his ear. I paced the room along the foot of the bed and ignored him.
The call with Trish had drawn to a close. Then Ariel spoke to me. “Hello. Why have you joined me this evening?”
“Hi. I just wanted to tell Trish that she should tell her mother.”
“Why do you say that?”
I wished I were in charge here. I wished Trish had called into my show so I could have told her directly. So I knew she was listening. For the first time in weeks, I really wished I were doing my show.
I said, “Because I told my mother that I’m a werewolf, and it was the right thing to do. I didn’t mean to. It just kind of slipped out. But once I did, she wanted to know why I hadn’t told her sooner. And she was right, I should have. I didn’t give her enough credit for being able to handle it. She was upset, sure. But she’s still my mom. She still wants to be there for me, and the only way she can do that is if she knows what’s going on in my life. In the long run it meant I could stop making stupid excuses about where I was on full moon nights.”
“How long ago did you tell her?”
I had to think a minute. “It’s been a year or so.”
“And you have a good relationship with your mother?”
“Yeah, I think I do. We talk at least once a week, usually.” In fact, I should probably give her a call. I should probably tell her what was really going on in my life. “This is going to sound trite, but if Trish doesn’t tell her mom, she’ll always regret it. If she tells her now they still have a chance to talk it out. If she waits, she’ll be telling it to her mother’s grave for the rest of her life, hoping for an answer that isn’t going to come.”
An uncharacteristically long pause followed. Radio people were trained to shun silence, to fill the silence at all costs. Yet Ariel let maybe five seconds of silence tick by.
Then she said, without her usual sultry, sugary tone, “Wait a minute. You said your name is Kitty. Is that right?”
Damn. Caught. Now would be the time to hang up. “Uh, yeah,” I said instead.
“And you’re a werewolf.”
“Yes. Yes I am.”
“That’s not a coincidence, is it? There couldn’t possibly be two werewolves named Kitty. That would be… ridiculous.”
“Yes. Yes it would.”
“You’re Kitty Norville. What are you doing calling in to my show?”
“Oh, you know. Stuck at home on a Saturday night, feeling kind of bored—”
“But you listen to my show. That’s so cool.”
Huh? “It is?”
“Are you kidding? You’re such an inspiration.”
“I am?”
“Yeah! You’re so down to earth, you make it so easy to talk about things. You’ve changed the way everyone talks about the supernatural. You inspired me to try to build on that. Why do you think I started this show?”
“Uh… to cut in on my market share?”
She said, horrified, “Oh, no! I want to expand what you’ve done. Add another voice, make it harder for the critics to gang up on us. And now you’re calling me. I hardly know what to say.”
Neither did I. To think, I’d wanted to sue her, and here she was sounding like one of my biggest fans. I could have cried. “Thanks, I guess.”
“So why are you sitting at home bored and not doing The Midnight Hour?”
“Let’s just say I’ve had a rough couple of months.”
Again, she hesitated, just a moment this time. She came back, almost shy. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Did I? On the air? But I had to admit, she was good. She knew the trick of making the caller feel like it was just the two of you having a chat over a cup of tea. Maybe I could talk a little.
I glanced at Ben, still listening to the radio turned way low. He kind of looked like he was suppressing a grin.
“A friend of mine was attacked and infected with lycanthropy a couple weeks ago. I’ve been taking care of him, and it’s b
een tough. Another friend just got arrested for something he did to save my life. He’s being charged with a felony. It’s complicated. It also feels like the last straw. No matter how much you try to do the right thing, you get screwed over. Makes it easy to just drop out. To give up.”
“But not really. Life gets hard, but you don’t just run away.”
“Except there’s this thing inside me, the wolf side of me, and all she wants to do is run away. I’m really having to fight that.”
“But you’ve always won that fight. I listen to your show. That’s one of the great things about it, how you always tell people to be strong, and they listen to you. You understand.”
“I’m flying by the seat of my pants most of the time.”
“And that’s gotten you this far, hasn’t it?”
Was sultry Ariel giving me a pep talk? Was it working? I was a bit taken aback, that here was this person I didn’t know, out on the airwaves, rooting for me.
Maybe I’d forgotten that anyone was rooting for me.
I smiled in spite of myself. “So what you’re saying is I just have to keep going.”
“Isn’t that what you always tell people?”
“Yeah,” I murmured. Nothing like having that mirror held up to you, or your words thrown back at you. “I think you’re right. I just have to keep going. I never thought I’d say this, Ariel. But thanks. Thanks for talking to me.”
“I’m not sure I really said anything.”
“Maybe I just needed someone to listen.” Someone who wasn’t depending on me to keep it together. “I’ll let you go back to your show now.”
Ariel said, “Kitty, I’m really worried about you.”
“How about I give you a call in a couple of weeks and let you know how it’s going? Or you could give me a call.”
“It’s a date. Take care, Kitty.”
I shut off the phone and sat on the edge of the bed.
I felt Ben staring at me, but I didn’t want to look back. Didn’t want to face him and whatever snide thing he was about to say. But the room was too small for us to avoid each other for long. I looked at him.
He said, “You really need to get back to doing your show. The sooner the better. You’re too good at it not to.”
I wanted to cry. What I couldn’t say—not to Ariel, not to him, not to anyone—was that I was too scared to go back. Scared that I couldn’t keep it going anymore. I felt like I’d rather quit than fail.
Slowly, I walked over to him, putting a slink in my step and a heat in my gaze. I needed distracting. I sat on his lap, straddling him, pinning him to the chair, and kissed him. Kissed him long and slow, until he put his arms around me and held me tight. Until his grip anchored me.
“Come to bed, Ben,” I breathed, and he nodded, kissing me again.
We went to visit the Wilsons in the morning.
The family lived west of Shiprock, on a flat expanse of desert scrub and sagebrush. The police report left directions. We turned off the highway onto a dusty track masquerading as a road. A couple of miles along, we found the house. Some run-down rail and post fencing marked corrals, but nothing lived in them. The house was one story, plank board, small and crouching. It didn’t seem big enough to serve as a garage, much less house a family. A couple of ancient, rusting pickup trucks sat nearby.
We parked on the dirt road and walked the path—a track lined roughly with stones—to the front door.
“If it were anyone but Cormac I wouldn’t be doing this. I’d write the whole case off,” Ben said. “I have to go in there and ask these people to help me defend the man who killed their daughter. This kind of thing didn’t used to bother me but now all I want to do is growl and rip something apart.”
I started to say something vague and soothing, but I couldn’t, because I felt the same way. Every hair on my body was standing on end. “There’s something really weird about this place.”
We’d reached the door, a flimsy-seeming thing made of wood. Ben stared at it. Finally, I knocked. Ben took a deep breath and closed his eyes, opening them as the door opened.
A young woman, maybe eighteen, looked back at us. “Who are you?” The question and her stance—the door was only open a few inches—spoke of suspicion. Maybe even paranoia.
“My name’s Ben O’Farrell. I’m trying to find information about Miriam Wilson. Are you her sister?”
Of course the girl was. I’d only ever seen Miriam dying and dead, but they had the same round face, large eyes, and straight black hair.
The girl stole a look over her shoulder, into the house, then said, “She’s gone. Been gone a long time. I don’t have anything to say about it.”
Ben and I glanced at each other. Did she know her sister was dead? Surely someone had come to tell her, when the police here found out.
“What’s your name?” I said.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to tell you my name.”
Names had power, yadda yadda. Okay, then. We’d do this the blunt way.
“Miriam’s dead,” I said, “She was killed near Walsenburg, Colorado. We’re trying to learn as much as we can about her so we can explain what happened.”
Some expression passed over her. Not what I expected, which was grief or sadness, or resignation at learning the truth after months of uncertainty. No, the girl closed her eyes and the release of tension softened her features. It was like she was relieved.
She said, “You’re better off letting it go. You’re better off forgetting about it. Let it end here.” That was the same thing Tony had said. And Tsosie.
“We can’t do that,” I said. “It’s not over. Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“No.” She started to close the door.
“Is there anyone else who’d be willing to talk to us about her? Are your parents here?”
“They don’t speak much English,” she said. A convenient shield.
Ben spoke up. “Would you be willing to translate for us?”
“They won’t talk. My sister—my oldest sister died before Miriam disappeared, my brother died a couple of weeks ago. We’ve had a hard time of it, and we’re trying to move on. I have to go now.”
Ben put his hand out to stop the door from closing. “How much of that did they bring on themselves? They hired my client to kill your brother. He did it, then Miriam came after him. He’s in jail now, and you know as well as I do he doesn’t deserve to be there. Where did this whole thing get started?”
She was lost, cornered, staring at us with a panicked expression, unable to close the door on us and unable to speak.
“Please,” I said, “talk to us.”
The words seemed to war inside her, like she both did and didn’t want to speak. Finally, the words won. “Joan was murdered. No matter what anyone else says, she was murdered. But the more we talk of these things, the more likely we are to bring more curses upon ourselves.”
You got to a point where one more curse wasn’t going to make a difference.
“Louise, who are you talking to?” a male voice shouted from within. The father who didn’t speak much English, I bet.
“Nobody!” she called over her shoulder.
The door opened wide, revealing a short man with desert-burnished skin aiming a rifle at us.
I wondered if he knew that he’d need the bullets to be silver.
“My daughter’s right,” he said in perfectly decent English. “We’ve had enough. Get out, now, before you bring more evil with you.”
It seemed to me that we weren’t the ones carrying evil around with us. We just kept finding it. I had the good sense not to say anything. Funny how a loaded gun can shut you up.
“Well. Thanks for your time,” I said. I took Ben’s arm and pulled him away from the door. Slowly, we backed along the path, until the door to the house slammed shut.
Ben’s muscles were so tense they were almost rigid, like he wanted to pounce. “Keep it together, Ben,” I whispered.
“What a pack o
f liars.”
“Does this surprise you? This is the family that produced John and Miriam Wilson. Both confirmed monsters.”
“Okay, but you’re living proof—in fact you’ve based your whole career on the belief—that being a monster doesn’t make someone a… a…”
“A monster,” I finished, grinning wryly. “A fucked-up family’s a fucked-up family, whether or not werewolves are involved.”
“You think I’d have figured that out by now,” he said.
“You know, I’m sick and tired of people pointing rifles at me.”
“That was a shotgun, not a rifle.”
For some reason, that didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference to me.
We got back in the car and pulled out on the dirt track. We didn’t speak. Another door had closed, figuratively speaking. One less chance to boost Cormac’s defense.
“Kitty, wait, look.” Ben pointed to a figure running toward us, from the Wilson house. Small against the landscape, it looked like it fled something terrible. It was Louise, her black hair tangling in the desert breeze.
I hit the brakes and waited for her to catch up. I didn’t see anything chasing her, but I wondered.
I’d started to unbuckle and climb out, but Ben said, “Wait. We may have to drive out in a hurry.”
He was probably right. I left the car running while Ben got out and waited for her. She reached us more quickly than I expected—she was fast, and we hadn’t gone far. The house was still visible. I wondered if her father would show up in a minute with his shotgun.
Sliding to a stop, she leaned on the car’s trunk. Her dark eyes were wide, wild. She seemed too flustered to speak, but she said in a rush, “Let me in. I’ll talk to you, but we have to go.”
Ben put the seat down so she could climb in the back, then he returned to the front.
“Go, now, hurry,” Louise commanded. I was already driving, before Ben even closed the door.
I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She perched at the edge of the seat, her hands pulling at the fabric of her jeans. Her gaze never rested. She looked around, out both side windows, over her shoulder to the back window, ducking to see out the front. Like she was worried something might follow us. She had the look of someone who was always afraid that something was following her.