Kitty Saves the World

by Carrie Vaughn

  The morning was still, cold. The sun was well up—we’d run until dawn, slept late. I still didn’t feel ready to wake up.

  I snuggled closer to Ben. Somehow, after curling up together to sleep, I had a vague memory of his tail tickling my nose, and his muzzle pillowed on my flank. Shifting back, we’d ended up with his arms over my back, my face pressed against his neck. We were naked, warm. I smiled.

  In response, he closed his arms, hugging me, holding me in place. I looked up at him, combed my fingers through his hair. They still itched, a memory of claws.

  He didn’t say anything. His eyes shone, his gaze still wolfish, the animal side bleeding into his waking self. He was still hungry—in a sense. He touched my cheek, held my head, kissed me hard, and didn’t pause.

  His mouth tasted of blood, of the meat we’d killed. So did mine.

  Our lovemaking was fierce; I almost couldn’t keep up. I held tight and lost myself. Our wolves were still with us, and the world felt wild.

  We ended up lying back on the ground, arms around each other, catching our breaths.

  “You okay?” I asked, brushing back his hair.

  “Yeah,” he said, sighing, his human voice finally returned. “I’m just wanting to hang on extra hard to what I’ve got.”

  Skin to skin, we lay together for what seemed a long time. I could have stayed there all day. All week. Surely everything would work out without us.

  “Do you smell that?” he asked, lifting his head, wrinkling his nose.

  “All I can smell right now is you,” I murmured.

  “Thanks? I think? No, seriously.” He nudged me, and we both sat up.

  The air was still, quiet. A normal morning quiet in the woods. I breathed slowly, and a prickling tingled on the back of my neck. Something was definitely out there. But I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t smell it.

  “I spent all night feeling like something was watching us,” I whispered.

  He said, “I don’t remember that much. I just remember … I couldn’t decide if we were running something down, or running away from it.”

  “Yeah, that’s about right.” I climbed to my feet, reached my hand to help him up. “You know, if our ride isn’t here, it’s going to be a long walk back.” We were naked. We had no clothes, no phones. No change for a pay phone, assuming we could find a pay phone. I still had dried leaves and dirt in my hair. I ran my fingers through it, trying to straighten it out. As if that would make it all okay.

  “He’ll be here.”

  Sure enough, Cormac and the Jeep were at the gravel turnout at the end of the service road. We came into view, and Cormac immediately ducked his gaze and studied the mechanism on the crossbow he was holding.

  “Always prepared, I see,” I said.

  “Always,” Cormac said.

  A couple of plain wool blankets sat on the hood of the Jeep; Ben picked them up, brought them over to me, and made a show of shaking one loose and draping it over my shoulders. He looked both tired and amused, and I gave in to an urge to brush my fingers through his hair. He had scruffy, brushable hair.

  With both of us wrapped in blankets, Cormac could look up again. Toughest guy I knew was also the shyest, it turned out.

  Cormac pursed his lips. “You guys accomplish anything?”

  Ben and I exchanged a glance, neither of us wanting to answer. Ben finally said, “We made it very clear to whoever’s watching that we’re not running away.”

  “And you’re sure someone’s watching?”

  “Yes,” I said. Not a bit of hesitation, which depressed me.

  “Well. All right then.” Cormac wore a sly grin. Like poking the hornet’s nest was exactly what we’d wanted to accomplish.

  “I need a shower,” I muttered, and stalked on to the Jeep and my clothes.

  Cormac also brought my phone, which was stuck in my jeans pocket. It beeped a message as soon as we hit the freeway heading back to Denver. I was hoping to see Shaun on the caller ID. But no, it was Ozzie. The station manager at KNOB and my immediate boss. The guy who ran herd on me and made sure that I made sure there was a show every week. I supposed I could just ignore him. But I didn’t, because I’d have to talk to him eventually. Either that, or just disappear.

  “Hi,” I said. I managed to sound even more tired than I felt.

  “You coming in to work at all this week? Or should I plan on playing folk music during your show Friday?”

  Oh yeah. Work. The show. I really ought to think about that. What day of the week was it, anyway? “That depends, are we talking like Bob Dylan pop-rock folk, or British retro-folk like Fairport Convention? Or are you just going to straight-up play Kingston Trio concert bootlegs?”

  That at least made him pause for a second. “There are Kingston Trio concert bootlegs? Seriously?”

  “Should I be worried that you actually sound interested?”

  “Kitty, cut it out. I need you at work, or I need some notice that you’re not coming in so we can plan around you.”

  I glanced at Ben. He was whispering, “Take vacation time.”

  “Um, Ozzie? What day is it right now?” I had completely lost track.

  “It’s Thursday, Kitty,” he said in a long-suffering tone of voice.

  “So when am I going to be powerful enough and untouchable enough that I get to boss you around?”

  “I remember when you were a snot-nosed intern who didn’t know that the Go-Go’s started out as a punk band. So, never.”

  Figured he’d play the old-man card. Well, tomorrow was Friday, I was upright and in town—of course I was going to do the show.

  “Thanks, Ozzie. I’ll be in today, don’t worry.”

  I hung up before he could say anything else patronizing and guilt inducing. Looking at Ben, I waited for him to argue and say I shouldn’t do the show while all the rest of this crap was going on. Not when I had a target painted on my chest.

  What he said: “Wait, the Go-Go’s were a punk band?”

  Chapter 11

  I GOT TO KNOB’s building and felt an incongruous wash of contentment. No matter what happened, this was an island. The chaos rarely stretched this far.

  The receptionist stopped me on the way to the elevator.

  “Kitty, Ozzie wants to see you first thing.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Well, he wasn’t yelling. He’s not in a bad mood.”

  That was entirely inconclusive. “Wish me luck, I guess.”

  I got to the offices upstairs. Ozzie’s door was open, so I knocked on the frame. I avoided entering his domain, where some fifteen years of clutter reigned. I didn’t want to knock over one of the piles of CDs sitting on the floor.

  When I first started working at KNOB—as that snot-nosed intern before landing the late-night DJ gig—Ozzie annoyed the hell out of me. He was one of those smug aging baby boomers with a thinning ponytail and a musical aesthetic frozen at 1978 prog rock. He’d mellowed out over the years since then. Or maybe I had. He’d supported me. Hell, turning The Midnight Hour into a regular show had been his idea. Syndication was his idea. I owed him a lot.

  He got up from his desk. “Kitty, you’re here, good. Great timing. There’s someone here to see you, he’s waiting in the conference room.”

  I blinked at him, bemused. “Is this something I was supposed to know ahead of time? An actual appointment?”

  Ozzie winced apologetically. “Not really. It’s kind of last minute. He called this morning, and since you said you were going to be in today, I told him to go ahead and come over—he really wants to talk to you in person. I think it’s important—it feels big. Just give the guy ten minutes to hear him out.”

  Why not? “You coming?” I assumed this was about the show. As my producer, Ozzie would want to be there.

  “He wants to pitch to you first.”

  Well, okay then.

  Ozzie led me to the conference room, gestured me in, and was strangely deferential during introductions.

  “Hi
, Mr. Lightman? Thanks for waiting. Kitty? This is Charles Lightman. This is Kitty Norville, our star.” His smile was earnest, anxious.

  Mr. Charles Lightman had been standing, studying the bulletin board filled with workplace announcements and concert flyers, colorful and overlapping in archaeological layers. He looked over, brightened, came toward us. He couldn’t have been much more than thirty, so baby faced he might not have needed to shave more than twice a week. Fashionably floppy black hair brushed his ears. He was shorter than me by an inch.

  Just before stretching out his hand for shaking, he pulled up short. “I’m sorry—werewolves aren’t much for shaking hands, isn’t that right? I read that somewhere.” He had the Hollywood patter, fast and easygoing.

  I hoped my smile was gracious rather than irritated. “Most of us are fairly well socialized. We don’t mind it too much.” I offered my hand to demonstrate. He shook with a strong, dry grip.

  Ozzie slipped out without a word, closing the door behind him.

  Meanwhile, Lightman produced a business card and handed it over. Business card at the start of the meeting instead of the end—this must be serious. The card was clean, the text straightforward, stating that Lightman ran his own production company. That was what I thought this was about.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Lightman?”

  “Call me Charlie, please. How are you today, Ms. Norville?”

  “Kitty,” I said, dancing the dance. Politely, I waited for the punch line.

  He stuck his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket—just friends chatting, you know? “I’ve listened to your show—it’s a great show. How long has it been running now? Five, six years?”

  “Seven, actually.” I was proud of that. Sometimes I felt like I’d only been doing this a few weeks. But I was practically established these days.

  “You ever think about moving to TV? You ever get any offers?”

  “Oh, a few. Here and there. I did a TV special out of Vegas a couple years ago.”

  “I’m talking a regular slot. This may sound crazy, but I think you should be in a regular late-night talk show slot.”

  Like, Letterman? Like The Daily Show? Was he serious?

  “And you’re here to tell me you can make that happen?”

  “I am,” he said, in such a way that made me think he could make anything happen. He had presence. He smelled … average. Nothing supernatural about him that I could tell. He bathed regularly, his clothes were washed. Professional, male. He drank a lot of coffee.

  “I have to tell you, the Vegas show I did was a lot of fun, but I don’t know that I could maintain something like that four or five nights a week. Not to mention the full moon plays hell with keeping any kind of regular schedule. I like radio because I can maintain some amount of anonymity. TV brings so much visibility—”

  “Kitty, you say you don’t want visibility, but you keep stepping on stage. Excuse me for saying so, but you gave up anonymity a long time ago.”

  He had me there. “Yeah, well. Life’s strange.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “But I think you really need to consider what a move like this would do for your career. For you. I’m talking the whole bushel here. Top of the game, star billing—this is career making. Life changing. You have to have been working for this all along.”

  I wouldn’t have stuck with the show this long if I didn’t have some spark of ambition. I remembered this feeling, from way back when Ozzie asked that question after my first accidental episode of the show—can you do it again? Yes, I’d told him. Yes I could. I used to hold down the night shift every single weekday. Could I do that on TV?

  “You’re appealing to my vanity, aren’t you?”

  “Nothing wrong with that, it’s how I get things done. Oh, one question though—are you willing to leave Denver?”

  My heart did a jump at that. I had never even thought about it. Never even considered. I couldn’t picture what my life would look like anywhere else.

  “I ask because a show like this, the production facilities and distribution structures are mostly in either New York or L.A. A deal would be easier to make happen at either one.”

  Leave Denver, Angelo had said. And then this comes along.

  “I really don’t know. My family is here—” My birth family, my Wolf family …

  The man ducked his head, smiled, and I bristled because he might very well have been making fun of me.

  “I don’t think you understand. What I’m asking is: What would it take to get you to leave Denver? Cash money? Executive producer credit? Percentage of the take? What do you want? Think big, Kitty. Heart’s desire. What is it?”

  Safety, I thought instantly. Safety, a child to raise in that safety. Things I had by necessity given up. To know that my pack was safe, that my family would always be safe. Hell, think big—a cure for lycanthropy? If I wasn’t a werewolf, everything else would go away. Giving that up was a wide, impossible chasm. My smile was thin, my gaze narrow. “Mr. Lightman, you can’t give me what I want.”

  “We’ll see,” he said confidently. “What’s your answer, Kitty? Is this something we can talk about?”

  No pressure, right? “I’ve been out of the office for a few days and I’m a little distracted right now. I really need to think about this. Talk it over with Ozzie, and my husband.”

  “But you’re the one who makes the final decision, yes? That’s why I wanted to be sure to talk to you first.”

  “And you’ve given me a lot to think about, but now you’ll have to give me time to think about it. If this is something I have to decide on right this minute I’m going to have to say no—”

  He raised placating hands. “No, of course you can have time to think about it. I just wanted to make sure you knew I was serious. Name your price, we can make this happen.”

  Deals like that rarely came along. There were always strings. People like Lightman talked fast so you’d forget to ask about the strings. I said, “It’ll probably take a little more negotiation than that. But I’ll think about it.”

  “That’s all I’m asking. Thanks for meeting with me, Kitty.”

  We shook hands again. He had the hungry smile of a salesman paid by commission.

  I walked him to the elevator and he showed himself the rest of the way out. As soon as the door closed, Ozzie rushed from his office to accost me. He might have been listening at the conference room door the whole time.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  My brow furrowed. “I’m not sure I trust him.”

  “He’s a producer, of course you shouldn’t trust him. But is he for real, is what I’m asking?”

  Good question. I’d thought that of Ozzie the first time I met him. “This,” I said, “sounds like a job for the Internet.”

  * * *

  EVERYTHING I found online about Lightman looked good. Too good, as they said on TV. Good enough to encourage me to say yes, but also to inspire a prickling on the back of my neck. His production company had a website, they had a slate of successes, mostly in the genre of reality TV but also some cable-specific talk shows. Reviews mentioning the company popped up here and there, a few articles in Variety. I kept asking myself, what’s the catch? There had to be a catch.

  Maybe that was because everything else in my life seemed to have a catch these days. If Lightman was serious, if he really did think I had a chance at the late-night talk show audience—the timing was terrible. I couldn’t think about that big of a life change right now.

  On the other hand, if I wanted to run away from it all, this was a fabulous opportunity.

  I had a picture hanging on the corkboard in my office, a sketch of a vision I’d had. Or a hallucination. I supposed it was a vision only if it turned out to be right. In a cave with the vampire Kumarbis and his followers, in the middle of a ritual that was supposed to be the end of all this—they’d kidnapped me, forced me to be the fifth part of their circle, their Regina Luporum. I’d scoffed, but in the middle of that ritual I s
aw her, just a glimpse over my shoulder. The first Regina Luporum, watching out for me. She was tough, small, with wild hair and fierce eyes. A warrior woman, and I couldn’t help but sigh with admiration looking at her.

  What would she do? Well, she wouldn’t have started a radio show … But no. Be serious. She would stay and fight, discover Roman’s plans and stop him. She would stand up for her kind, protect her city. Find her pack, bring them home.

  I had work to do.

  * * *

  ANOTHER FRIDAY night saw me back in the studio.

  Tonight’s show felt like the confluence of several rivers. It felt like an opportunity, but it also felt like a trap. I could play it safe—or I could call out my enemies. I’d be trying to decide which way to go, right up to the moment the On Air sign lit.

  Matt was already in the booth when I arrived—he seemed to live there, though he sometimes came out to New Moon with me. He had a girlfriend who was a night-shift ER nurse. Two night owls, cozied up together.

  I leaned through the door.

  “Hey,” he said by way of greeting. “All set?”

  I took a breath. “Yeah, I think so. I have to warn you though—things may get a little weird tonight.”

  He raised a brow, because he’d heard this before. “Weird how?”

  “Not sure. I just … I’ve been kicking over rocks to see what’s there, and what’s there may kick back. The show’s always a good target for that.”

  He snorted good-naturedly. “You know your cop friend, Hardin, already called me and said she’ll be over if we need her?”

  I might have gotten a little teary eyed at that. I could do what I did because of the people looking out for me.

  “Matt. Thanks. For sticking with it all this time. You’re as much the show as I am.”

  “Are you kidding? What other gig would be as interesting as this one? And I love Denver; it’s not like I’m going to leave for some other job.”

  That was something I hadn’t thought about when Lightman made his offer—if I moved the show, Matt likely wouldn’t move with me. Had Lightman considered all the implications? I was beginning to think he hadn’t. He was an L.A. guy; Denver must have looked like a hick town to him.