Kitty's Mix-Tape Read online

  I had seen animals in cages at the zoo look like this. Quiet, glaring. Simmering. Like a predator who was prepared to wait forever for that one day, that one minute you forgot to lock the cage. On that day, God help you.

  “You’re Kitty Norville, right? I’ve heard about you.”

  “Great!” I said, my bravado false. “Nothing bad, I hope. So are you going to answer my question?”

  He straightened a little, rolled his shoulders, and the mood was broken, the predator image slipped away. His lip turned in a halfsmile.

  “I think about my hands,” he said. Which seemed strange. I must have looked bemused, because he explained. “I have to punch. I can only do that with human hands. Fists and arms. Not claws, not teeth. So I think about my hands. But Kitty—just because I don’t shift doesn’t mean I don’t change.” Some of that animal side bled into his gaze. He must have carried all his animal fighting instinct into the ring.

  That was creepy. I had an urge to slouch, grovel, stick an imaginary tail between my legs. Please don’t hurt me . . .

  “So you do have an unfair advantage?” Larson said.

  “I use what I have,” he said. “I use my talents, like anyone else out there.”

  “But it’s not a level playing field,” she said, pressing. “Tell me about the fight in Vegas. About taking the punch that would have killed a normal human being.”

  “That fight doesn’t prove anything.”

  “But a lot of people are asking questions, aren’t they?” Larson said.

  “What exactly do you want from me?”

  “Your participation.”

  “You want to ruin me, and you want me to help?” This sounded like a growl.

  The trouble was, I sympathized with them both. Jenna Larson and I were both women working in the media, journalists of a sort, ambitious in a tough profession. She constantly needed to hustle, needed that leg-up. That was why she was here. I could understand that. But I’d also been in Jerome Macy’s shoes, struggling to do my job while hiding my wolf nature. I’d been exposed in a situation like this one: forced, against my will.

  I didn’t know who to side with.

  “Here’s a question,” I said, gathering my thoughts even as I talked. “Clearly you have a talent for boxing. But did you before the lycanthropy? Did you box before, and this gave you an edge? Or did you become a werewolf and decide a werewolf would make a good boxer? Are you here because you’re a boxer, or because you’re a werewolf?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Did it? The distinction, the value judgment I was applying here was subtle. Was Macy a boxer in spite of his lycanthropy—or because of it? Was I sure that the former was any better, more noble, than the latter?

  “This isn’t any different than steroids,” Larson said before I could respond. “You’re using something to create an unfair advantage.”

  “It’s different,” Macy said, frowning. “What I have isn’t voluntary.”

  She continued, “But can’t you see it? Kids going out and trying to get themselves bitten by werewolves so they can get ahead in boxing, or football, or anything?”

  “Nobody’s that stupid,” he said. The curl in his lips was almost a snarl.

  Larson frowned. “If it’s not me who breaks the story, it’ll be someone else, and the next person may not let you know about it first. In exchange for an exclusive, I can guarantee you’ll get to tell your side of the story—”

  I saw it coming, but I didn’t have time to warn her, or stop him.

  He sprang, a growl rumbling deep in his throat, arms out-stretched and reaching for Larson. She dropped her recorder and screamed.

  He was fast, planting his hands on her shoulders and shoving her to the wall. In response I shouldered him, pushing him off balance and away from the reporter. Normally, a five-six skinny blond like me wouldn’t have been able to budge a heavyweight like Macy off his stride. But as a werewolf I had a little supernatural strength of my own, and he wasn’t expecting it. No one ever expected much out of me at first glance.

  He didn’t stumble far, unfortunately. He shuffled sideways, while I kind of bounced off him. But at least he took his hands off Larson, and I ended up standing in between them. I glared, trying to look tough, but I was quivering inside. Macy could take me apart.

  “You bastard, you’re trying to kill me!” Larson yelled. She was wide eyed, breathing hard, panicked like a hunted rabbit.

  Macy stepped back. His smile showed teeth. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

  “I’ll charge you with assault,” she said, almost snarling herself.

  “Both of you shut up,” I said, glaring, pulling out a bit of my own monster to quell them.

  “You’re not as tough as you think you are,” he said, looking down at me, a growl in his voice, his fingers curling at his sides, like claws.

  “Well I don’t have to be, because we’re going to sit down and discuss this like human beings, got it?” I said.

  Never taking his eyes off Larson, he stepped back to the table and returned to sitting. He was breathing calmly, though his scent was musky, animal. He was a werewolf, but he was in complete control of himself. I’d never seen anything like it.

  He was in enough control that Larson would never talk him into an exclusive interview.

  She’d retrieved her recorder and was pushing buttons and holding it to her ear. By the annoyed look on her face, I was guessing it was damaged. “I don’t need your permission,” she muttered. “I’ve got Kitty to back me up. The truth will come out.”

  I frowned. “Jenna, I’m not sure this is the right way to go about this. This doesn’t feel right.”

  “This isn’t about right, it’s about the truth.”

  Macy looked at me, and I almost flinched. His gaze was intent—he was thinking fast. “Kitty. Why did you go public?”

  “I was forced into it,” I said. “Kind of like this.”

  “So—has going public helped you? Hurt you? If you could change it, would you?”

  I’d worked hard to keep my lycanthropy secret, until I’d been forced into announcing what I was on the air. It hadn’t been my choice. I could have let it ruin me, but I made a decision to own that identity. To embrace it. It had made me notorious, and I had profited by it.

  I had to admit it: “I don’t think I’d be nearly as successful as I am if I hadn’t gone public. I’d still be just another cult radio show.”

  He nodded, like I’d helped him make a decision.

  “We’re not here to talk about Kitty,” Larson said. “Last chance, Macy. Are you in or out?” She was still treating this with aggression, like she was attacking. She was only offending him.

  “Write your story,” he said. “Say what you need to. But do it without me. I won’t answer any questions. Now, get out.” He hopped off his table, went to the door, and opened it.

  “You can’t do this. You’ll have to talk to someone. Sooner or later.”

  I hooked my arm around hers and pulled her to the door, glancing at Macy over my shoulder one last time. I met his gaze. He seemed calm, determined, without an ounce of trepidation. Before I turned away, he smiled at me, gave a little nod. He was a wolf confident in his territory. I’d do best to slink away and avoid his wrath.

  Larson and I left, and the door closed behind us.

  Silent, we made our way back to the lobby of the arena. I said, “That went well.”

  She’d gone a bit glassy eyed and had lost the purposeful energy in her stride.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” she murmured.

  “You need to get to a bathroom? Go outside?” I started hurrying.

  She shook her head, but leaned against the wall and covered her face. “This must be what the rabbit feels like, after it gets away from a fox.”

  Post-traumatic stress from a simple interview? Maybe. Most people considered themselves the top of the food chain. Few of them ever encountered
something that trumped them.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m usually not on the rabbit side of things.”

  She stared at me and didn’t have to say it: I wasn’t helping.

  “Is he going to come after me? Was he really threatening me? If I run this story, am I in danger?”

  I urged her off the wall and toward the doors, so we could get outside and into the air. The closed space and pervasive odor of sweat was starting to get to me.

  “No. It’s intimidation.” It was what people like him—boxer or werewolf—were good at. “He can’t touch you without getting in trouble, even if he is a werewolf.”

  A few more steps brought us outside, into the night. I turned my face to the sky and took in a deep breath of fresh air, or as fresh as city air ever got.

  “What are we going to do?” she said. “The story’s going to look pretty half-assed without a statement from him.”

  The lack of an exclusive interview wasn’t the end of the world. I’d dealt with worse. We could still break the story.

  “You’ll have a statement from me,” I said. “And I’ll have one from you. We’ll do the best we can with what we have.” What Larson had told Macy was true: the truth would come out eventually. Maybe by being part of the revelation I could mitigate the impact of it—mitigate Larson’s ire over it.

  “It’s not fair,” she grumbled. “It’s just not fair.”

  I wondered if Macy was thinking the same thing.

  As it turned out, Jerome Macy scooped us both. He held a press conference the next morning, revealed his werewolf identity to the world, and promptly announced his retirement from boxing, before anyone could kick him out. Jenna Larson’s exposé and call to action, and my interview of her on my show, were lost in the uproar. Almost immediately, there was talk of stripping him of his heavyweight title. The debate was ongoing.

  About a month later, I got a press kit from the WWE. For the new season of one of their pro-wrestling spectacle TV series, they were “unleashing”—they actually used the word unleashing—a new force: The Wolf. Aka Jerome Macy.

  So. He was starting a new career. A whole new persona. He had chosen to embrace his werewolf identity and looked like he was going gangbusters with it. I had to admire that. And I could stop feeling guilty about him and his story.

  This changed everything, of course. He was going to have to do a lot of publicity, wasn’t he? A ton of promotion. Sometimes, patience was a virtue, and sometimes, what goes around comes around.

  I picked up my phone and called the number listed in the press kit. I was betting I could get that interview with him now.

  Kitty Busts the Feds

  "I’M JUST SAYING if anybody should know about this, it oughta be you, right?”

  Putting my elbows on the desk, I rubbed my scalp and winced at the microphone. “Yes, you’re right, of course. If anyone ought to know the effects of recreational marijuana on lycanthropes it should be me, even though I’ve never actually tried the stuff, even though I live in Colorado. I’m so sorry to disappoint you.”

  I wasn’t sorry, and I seemed to be completely unable to steer the show off this topic.

  “All right, checking the monitor . . . and all the calls are about pot. Okay. Fine. Matt, are we violating any FCC regulations by talking about pot on the air this much?” Pot might have been legal in Colorado, but the show was syndicated all over the country and I didn’t want to get any affiliate stations in trouble. On the other side of the booth window, Matt, my engineer, gave me a big shrug. I figured if I was in trouble, Ozzie, the station manager, would have called by now to ax this whole line of discussion. “What the hell, NPR has done a million news stories on pot, right? It’s not like we’re telling people how to get the stuff. Next caller, you’re on the air.”

  “I mean, if you don’t live in Colorado how do you get the stuff—”

  “I cannot help you with this. Next call, please. Linda, what’s your question?”

  “Hi, Kitty, thanks so much for taking my call. There really are so many medical applications for cannabis, especially in terms of reducing anxiety and alleviating chronic pain, it seems that if we wanted to look anywhere for a cure for lycanthropy it would be with CBD oil.”

  I had voted in favor of legalized marijuana. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  “It’s not magic, okay? It’s not a cure-all. Alleviating symptoms and curing the underlying condition are two different things. Even medical marijuana advocates know that. And frankly, I can’t get past the notion of a werewolf with the munchies. Can you imagine?”

  “I suppose I didn’t think of that . . .”

  “The law of unintended consequences, people. Thanks for your call, Linda. Look, if any lycanthropes with any actual, real experience with pot want to chime in here, please call me.” None had yet, according to the monitor. I hit the line for the next call at random because my carefully reasoned choices sure hadn’t helped me tonight. “Hello, Ray from Seattle, what have you got for me?”

  “Vampires actually can smoke pot,” he said by way of introduction.

  “Oh? Are you a vampire? How does that work?” Vampires technically didn’t need to breathe to live. They drew air into their lungs in order to speak, laugh, whatever. But did pot actually work on them?

  This guy had just been waiting for a chance to lecture. “I am a vampire, and I happen to have a long history of smoking, well, lots of things. As you know—at least I’m assuming you know—vampires can’t ingest narcotics. We can’t ingest anything but human blood. But smoking narcotics? That works.” His accent was American, maybe someplace from the east coast. That didn’t tell me anything about how old he was or where he came from.

  “Do tell me more.” The vampires I knew in real life never seemed to tell me anything.

  “There’s a catch. You have to be full up on blood. And I mean full. When you smoke pot, or tobacco, or opium, or”—he rattled off three more names of things I hadn’t even heard of—“the active ingredients enter the bloodstream through the lungs. We vampires can take in air when we need to, but we don’t need the oxygen because, well—”

  “Because you’re basically dead. In stasis. Whatever.”

  “That’s a simplification—”

  “I want to hear about vampires smoking pot.”

  “For drugs to work there has to be enough blood in our systems for anything in the lungs to transfer. Not enough blood, you’re just inhaling smoke. Really, it’s a lot faster to find someone who’s already high and take theirs. Since you need the blood anyway. Cuts out a step, if you know what I mean.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” I said, fascinated. “But okay.”

  “Some vampires will tell you blood on its own is enough of a high, but sometimes you just want a little variety.”

  “I guess so,” I said. “Thanks so much for calling in, Ray from Seattle.”

  “Happy to, love your show! We should hang out sometime! Because you know what I haven’t done? Taken blood from a werewolf who’s high on pot—”

  “Moving on now, we’re going to take a short break for messages, but I’ll be right here waiting for you. This is Kitty and you’re listening to The Midnight Hour.”

  Meanwhile, something was happening in the booth. Three people had entered, two men and a woman. All three were white, wore dark suits, had subdued professional manners. They moved in behind Matt’s chair and loomed. Matt looked around, his eyes wide, a little freaked. I caught his gaze through the window, and he shook his head, confused.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked through the intercom. The public service announcements playing on the air filled the background. One of the men escorted Matt out of the booth. The remaining two looked out the window, at me.

  “If you’ll stay right there, ma’am,” the woman said.

  I didn’t. I went straight for the door, which opened—and the pair of them stood blocking my way. Matt and the other agent were heading down the hall. What were t
hey doing? They couldn’t take away my sound guy in the middle of a show. I tried to push past, to go after him—they didn’t even flinch.

  Calming myself, I took a steadying breath. They smelled human, plain, ordinary. Nothing unusual to speak of. I wasn’t sure why I expected them to smell ominous. Probably because everything else about them was ominous. They didn’t even have guns, and somehow I had expected them to have guns.

  I curled my lip, showing teeth, a challenge they would have recognized if they’d been werewolves.

  “Ms. Norville? We’d like to talk to you for a few moments,” the woman said.

  “Then you should call and make an appointment.” Their glares told me that no, they didn’t do that sort of thing. “I’m in the middle of a show, I can’t just leave dead air.”

  “Then do something about it.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be up for an interview? We could talk—”

  “I don’t think you want that,” the man said darkly.

  The monitor was filling up with incoming calls. I couldn’t do anything about it. Alrighty, then. “Fine,” I muttered, and went into the sound booth to plug in my phone. I couldn’t leave the broadcast empty, and I didn’t want to go hunting through the archives for past interviews I could re-run. So I pulled up a ten-hour loop of the sax riff in “Careless Whisper” and let it play.

  The two agents in black were still blocking the hallway; I invited them into the studio.

  “Have a seat, Ms. Norville,” the man said.

  I didn’t. “Who are you? Can I see some badges or ID or something? I mean, obviously you’re some kind of government agents.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. The last two Men in Black who came after me weren’t from the government at all, and they were way scarier than you. You two are just . . . creepy.”

  The woman sighed and pulled a badge out of her inside jacket pocket. In movies and TV, agents flashed their badges and the people looking at them seemed to be able to take in all the information with a glance. That didn’t work in real life. I had to lean in close to study the fine print.