He grinned. "I love a challenge."
He leaned over to me, putting his hands on either side of me, trapping me with his arms, and moving closer—slowly, giving me plenty of time to argue and escape before he kissed me.
I didn't argue. Or escape.
I barreled into the Crescent at a quarter after four, convinced I was too late to find Fritz. Not that he'd ever speak to me again. I should have been happy with what he'd revealed last night on the show, but enough never was, was it?
My vision adjusted to the dimness of indoors. I watched Fritz's usual table, expecting his hulking form to be there, once I'd differentiated it from the shadow. I focused, squinting hard, but the table was empty.
Jack stood, elbows propped on the bar, reading a magazine. I leaned on the bar in front of him, and he looked up and broke a wide smile. "Hey! I heard your show last night. That was cool!"
"Thanks," I said, distracted and not sounding terribly sincere. "I missed him, didn't I? Fritz already left."
"He didn't show today."
"But it's past four. He's never late. Does he not do weekends?"
"He never misses a day."
A weight settled into my gut. "Do you think he's okay? Do you have a phone number for him? Should I go check on him?"
"I don't have a clue where he lives."
This was my fault. Fritz was in trouble and it was my fault. He'd talked, he'd spilled the beans, and someone didn't like it. "Are you even a little bit worried?"
He shrugged. "Wouldn't do any good if I was."
Great, another disinterested isolationist. "Is Ahmed here?"
"I don't think so. I can call upstairs if you want, maybe he's there."
"Sure."
He hit a line on the phone behind the bar, stood there with the handset to his ear for what must have been five minutes, then shook his head. "Nothing."
"Do you think he knows where Fritz lives?"
"He might."
I asked for a pen and wrote my cell phone number on a napkin. "If he does, have him call me."
Jack tucked the napkin by the cash register. "You're really worried about him."
I smiled wryly. "Remember, it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you."
I called Flemming. Please, no voice mail, no voice mail—
"Yes?"
"Dr. Flemming? It's Kitty."
The pause was loaded with frustration. "I really don't have time—"
"Where's Fritz?"
"Who?"
"Don't give me that. He's an old werewolf, German. He said you talked to him. Where is he?"
"How should I know—"
"He always comes to… to this one place to have a drink. Four o'clock, every day. He didn't show up today, and I don't think it's a coincidence. He talked on my show, and someone isn't happy—"
"Why should I be that someone?"
"I don't know. But you're my only lead. You must have some idea where he might be."
"Look—yes, I know Fritz. I've spoken with him. If he called your show that's his own business, and I don't know why anyone would have had a problem with it. Not enough of a problem to take drastic action."
I wasn't thinking straight. If I didn't get anywhere with Flemming, I had nowhere else to go, no one else to ask. "I'm worried about him."
"He's a tough old man, he can take care of himself." His voice had changed; it had stopped being flat. I was getting to him.
"He's old. He's falling apart. Werewolves don't get sick, but they do get old. He doesn't have anyone looking after him, does he?"
He sighed. "I have his home address. If you'd like, I'll check on him."
"Can I meet you there?"
"Fine." He gave me the address.
I got the "Thanks" out about the same time I clicked off and ran out to the curb.
Luis was still waiting in the Miata. "Now where are we going?"
I told him the address.
He raised his brows. "You want me to take this car into that neighborhood?"
I smiled brightly. "You paid for damage coverage, didn't you?"
Long-suffering Luis rolled his eyes and put the car into gear.
I bit my lip. I was really going to have to do something nice to thank him later on tonight.
The address turned out to be a tenement building, about forty years old, in dire need of a coat of paint. Or maybe a wrecking ball. Flemming was waiting by the front door, arms crossed, looking around nervously.
His frown turned surly when we pulled up.
"I'm sure there's no need for this," he said as I hopped out of the car. Luis left the engine running.
"You're worried, too, or you wouldn't be here," I said.
"He's on the third floor."
The elevator didn't work, of course. I ran, quickly getting a full flight of stairs ahead of Flemming.
"What room?" I shouted behind me.
"Three-oh-six."
The door was unlocked. I pushed it open. The place smelled like it hadn't been cleaned in a long time: close, sweaty, dank. Too warm, like the heat was turned up too high. The door opened into a main room. Another door led to what must have been a bedroom; a kitchen counter was visible beyond that.
Stacks of newspapers lined all the walls, folded haphazardly, as if Fritz had read them all, front page to back, and had meant to throw them out but never gotten around to it. Some of the piles leaned precariously. In the middle of the room, an old sofa sat in front of a TV set that must have been thirty years old, complete with rabbit ears wrapped in tin foil. It sat in a corner, on a beat-up end table. A static-laden evening news program was playing.
Something was wrong. Something in the air smelled very wrong—coldness, illness.
Dr. Flemming entered the room behind me, then pushed past me. I'd stopped, unable to cross the last few feet to the sofa. Flemming rushed to it, knelt by it, and felt the pulse of the man lying there.
Fritz lay slumped against one arm of the sofa, staring at the television, perfectly relaxed. His face was expressionless, his eyes blank.
Flemming sat back on his heels and sighed. "If I had to make a guess, I'd say it was a heart attack."
"So he's—he's dead."
Flemming nodded. I closed my eyes and sighed. "It couldn't be something else, something someone did to him?"
"You said it yourself. He's old. Something like this was going to happen sooner or later."
"It's just when he called last night, he almost sounded like he knew something was going to happen to him."
The phone—a rotary, for crying out loud—sat on the table next to the TV. He'd hung up and put it back before this happened.
"Maybe he did." Flemming stared at Fritz's body, like he was trying to discover something, or memorize him. "I've seen stranger things happen in medicine."
I bet he had. He claimed he wanted his research to be public, but he sure wasn't sharing. My anger, the shock of finding Fritz, was too much. Words bubbled over.
"Which is it, Flemming? Medical applications or military applications? Do you have dreams of building a werewolf army like the Nazis did?"
"No—no. That isn't what I wanted, but—"
"But what? What are you doing in that lab?"
He turned away. "I'll call the coroner."
He went to the phone by the TV and made the call. That didn't mean he wasn't going to get a shot at his own autopsy as part of his research. I didn't like the idea of Fritz falling out of official channels into some classified research hole of Flemming's devising, embalmed and pickled in a jar. Fritz had spent most of his life outside official channels. It left him in this lonely apartment, surrounded by newspapers and television, with a glass of schnapps at four P.M. for entertainment. How long would it have taken someone to find him if we hadn't come?
We returned to the street. Flemming said he'd wait for the coroner's van. There wasn't anything left for me to do, and Luis convinced me to leave with him.
As the car pulled away, I started crying.
Sunday morning, I was at Luis's apartment. I'd woken up before him, and lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to think. Had Fritz really known his heart was about to give out?
I'd run into a wall. I didn't know what else I could learn about Flemming's research. Maybe there was nothing to learn, nothing but what Flemming had already said in the hearings. I was all worked up over nothing.
My cell phone rang. Luis shifted and mumbled, "Is that mine?"
"No." I retrieved my jeans and pulled the phone out of the pocket.
Caller ID said Mom. Her weekly Sunday call, but hours early. I sat up and pulled the blanket around me. Couldn't be naked, talking to Mom.
I answered the phone. "Hi."
"Hi, Kitty. We're having lunch at Cheryl's, so I wanted to make sure we talked before then. Is this a good time?"
As good as any. As in, not really. "It's okay, Mom."
"How is Washington? Dad's been taping the hearings—C-SPAN's been showing the whole thing, I think. I still haven't seen you in the audience, but he said he did, and he said that's not why he's taping them anyway. He thought you might want to have copies."
I had to smile. "That's cool. Thanks. I'm supposed to testify tomorrow, so tell him to have the VCR ready."
"Oh—good luck! I'm sure you'll do great."
"I just have to answer questions. It'll be fine."
Luis had propped himself on his elbow and was smirking at me.
"Have you had time to do much sightseeing? I visited there when I was in college, we got to see a session of Congress, but it was the House, I think, not the Senate, and—"
Her conversation was so ordinary. It was kind of nice. I made encouraging noises, and avoided saying anything that might make me sound frustrated or depressed. I didn't want her to worry.
Then again, she always knew when I was frustrated and depressed because I didn't say anything.
She actually brought the call to a close herself, almost before I was ready to hear her go. "We should get going. I think Cheryl's nervous about having us over, they've got the new house and I don't think she's got drapes up yet, and Jeffy's teething."
"Tell everyone I said hello."
"I will. Take care, Kitty."
"You, too, Mom. Bye."
"That sounded very suburban. Very American," Luis said, grinning unapologetically.
And there but for the… something… of lycanthropy went I. "Heard the whole thing, did you?"
"I assume Cheryl is your sister? Which means you have a nephew named Jeffy?"
"And a three-year-old niece named Nicky." He was still smirking. As if I could help it that my sister had picked names straight out of a 1950s sitcom. "Are you making fun of my normal family?"
"Not at all. Not at all." He considered thoughtfully, then added, "Jeffy?"
I threw a pillow at him.
After spending all weekend with Luis, I found getting myself to the Senate office building Monday morning almost impossible. I called Ben.
"Hi, Ben? What would happen if I just didn't show up today?"
"When you're scheduled to testify?"
"Yeah."
"They might send federal marshals after you."
Oh. Well then.
I had to stop by Alette's for a change of clothes before heading to the hearings. I thought I might get there before dawn, in time to see Alette, but no such luck. The sun was up when I pulled into the driveway. Tom, the other driver/ MIB, was in the kitchen. He told me that she'd just retired for the day. Briefly, I wondered what exactly that meant. Coffins in the basement?
For once, I didn't ask.
Tom offered me a cup of coffee and said, "We spent the night checking on the vampires you saved from Smith."
"Saved? That's giving me too much credit," I said, muttering into my cup.
He shrugged the comment off. "Some of them want to stay with Alette. They've never had a real place of their own—either they were by themselves or they had abusive Masters. That's why they went with Smith. It must have seemed better."
It probably had seemed better. Some frying pans made the fire look good.
"Is she going to let them? Will she take care of them?"
"Oh, probably. She likes taking care of people." His smile turned wry.
Turns out today was Tom's day off, but he offered to give me a ride to the Senate building anyway. I accepted, finished the coffee, and went to get dressed.
At the Senate building, Ben had something for me—he'd performed some legal wizardry and gotten a copy of Fritz's autopsy report. Flemming was right: heart attack. They were still waiting on some lab tests, but they were calling it a natural death. No conspiracy involved. He was just an old man who'd sensed his own end approaching and wanted to tell his story.
Maybe he'd just given up.
On Ben's advice, I dressed well for the day's session—a suit even, dark blue, with a cream blouse, conservative. He said, don't give them a chance to label me, or classify me as something different or alien. I was an expert witness, nothing more or less.
Not a spokesperson for the entire subject the hearing had been skirting around for the last week.
I'd never advertised what I looked like. I'd never done any publicity stills. When my appearance at the hearings was made public—the panel of witnesses was always made public—at least part of the reason some people were here was to check me out, maybe snap a few pictures for their audiences. I had no idea if I matched their expectations. I was probably younger than they thought I was: mid-twenties, on the thin side, blond hair done up in a prim bun. Wide-eyed and a little scared. Absolutely not what one would expect a werewolf to look like: some sultry, monstrous seductress, no doubt. Someone who exuded sex and danger. I'd never exuded either. More like, "Go ahead, bully me, I'm weak and vulnerable." I wasn't up to explaining to anyone, much less a Senate committee, the subtleties of werewolf pack dynamics, how for every scary dangerous werewolf that fit the stereotype, there were a dozen who would just as soon grovel on their bellies. People who imagined "monster" when they thought "werewolf" might be surprised to see me.
My problem was, I may have been a monster, but all the other monsters were so much bigger and scarier than I was.
I had a short prepared statement that Ben and I had worked on. I carried the folder with the typewritten page with me to the front of the room. The week's anxiety hadn't prepared me for this. I felt like I was walking to my execution.
Ben sat in the first row, right behind me, ready to bail me out if I needed it. I'd realized, over the last couple of months of being alone, that even though I didn't have a pack anymore, I didn't have to be alone. I couldn't be entirely alone. I'd built my own little pack: Ozzie and Matt at my old radio station, Ben, even my mom. I couldn't be afraid to rely on them.
Ben gave me his predator's smile, the one that I was sure made opposing attorneys cringe in the courtroom. A wolf in lawyer's clothing, if that wasn't redundant. I felt a little better.
I settled at the table facing the committee members. They were like vultures, perched behind their desks, staring down at me. I rested my hands on the table and willed them to remain still.
"Ms. Katherine Norville," Duke said. He didn't look at me, but at the papers in front of him, as if searching for an important piece of information. He took his time. "Welcome to this hearing. You have a statement you wish entered into the record?"
There was a microphone in front of me, which was comforting. Hell, it'd be no different than how I made my living week after week. I was just talking to an audience, no different than any other, laying out what I thought and not pulling punches.
"Yes, sir. Senator Duke, I'd like to thank you and the rest of the committee for inviting me here to testify. This is a rare opportunity, and a rare time, to have so much of what is held as scientific fact challenged and reevaluated. I'm privileged to be a part of the process.
"I am what Dr. Flemming would call Homo sapiens lupus. That is, I'm a werewolf. I'm aller
gic to silver, and once a month, during the night of the full moon, I suffer a temporary physical transformation. What this means for me personally: I make adjustments to my life, as anyone with a chronic, nonfatal illness must. And like most people with a chronic, nonfatal illness, I continue to live, to pursue a career, to gain emotional support from my family. It's a decent life, if I do say so myself.
"These phenomena merit discussion for the purpose of bringing them out of the shadows of folktales and nightmares, and into the light of day, so to speak. So that we might confront fear with knowledge."
And just like in an episode of the show, I waited for people to ask questions.
The first came not from Duke—I was bracing for one of the grillings he'd been giving everyone else all week—but from Senator Mary Dreschler.
"Ms. Norville, you'll pardon me for expressing a little skepticism. It's one thing to have so-called experts talk to me about this subject in the abstract. But to have someone sit here and claim to be a werewolf is a bit much to take. What proof can you give us?"
I could have shape-shifted right then and there, I supposed. But I didn't trust my other half to behave herself in this setting—cornered and surrounded by screaming would-be victims. No way.
She wore a flower pendant on a long chain over her cashmere sweater and tailored jacket.
"There's a blood test Dr. Flemming could probably perform. But for right now—Senator, is your necklace silver?"
She frowned quizzically. "Yes."
"May I see it?" I eyed the security goon off to the side. "May I approach?"
No one said anything, and Dreschler slipped the chain over her head, so I went to her place on the risers. She offered me the piece of jewelry.
I took it in my left hand, curling the chain around my fingers for maximum skin contact. My hand started itching immediately, and within seconds the itching turned into burning, like the metal was hot, right out of the furnace hot. I couldn't take it for much longer; my face bunched up into a wince, and I hissed a breath between clenched teeth.
"Here," I said, handing it back to her. I shook it away quickly, more inelegantly than I meant to, in my hurry to get it away from me. I stretched my hand, which still throbbed.
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