Bobby looked at me. “Can I have a shower and you explain it to her?”
I almost smiled but wasn’t sure if Kaitlin would take it wrong. She was trying so hard to be liberal and progressive; she meant well. “Therianthropy isn’t like other diseases. It’s not a virus that makes you sick once a month. It’s literally another being inside you.”
“They change into their beast form once a month, but in between they’re still human,” Kaitlin said.
“Yes, and no,” I said.
Olaf said, “The beast is not separate and gone in between full moons. It is always inside waiting, watching, seeking a way out.”
“Do you have pets?” I asked.
“A cat,” Kaitlin said.
“Okay. Does your cat ever try to dart through a door and get out?”
She nodded. “Sometimes.”
“And what do you do to stop it?”
“I grab her. I push her away from the door.”
“Now, think about the cat being inside you. You’re the house that it’s trying to escape from. If it gets out the door, you turn into the cat, and the cat becomes the house now, and it wants to keep you inside so it can be free.”
“That’s a good analogy,” Bobby said.
“I can’t take credit for it. It’s Micah’s. He has to explain this a lot.”
“Micah Callahan, right? The head of the Coalition,” Kaitlin said.
I nodded.
“The analogy stops too soon,” Olaf said. “If you have the force of will to truly control your beast, then you keep your human mind in both forms.”
“So you’re the cat and the house and you all at once,” Kaitlin said.
“Yeah, it’s like a supernatural version of Schrödinger’s cat,” I said.
“Sort of,” Bobby said, “but if you force your human mind on your beast all the time, then you can’t be a good cat. You can’t hunt and jump and be a leopard if you keep trying to think human.”
“You must find a balance between beast and man,” Olaf said.
“Yes. Now can I have a shower, please?”
Duke said no and the debate or negotiations or argument began. We ended with Bobby getting to shower. Livingston suggested that Duke could go home and have breakfast with his family, and that seemed to be a deciding factor. Duke called one of his deputies who was still at the crime scene to bring clothes for Bobby, and then refused to leave until after they arrived.
“This is my place. That means one of my people needs to be here.” Duke was being so reasonable that none of us argued with him.
Newman escorted Bobby into the shower and took off the cuffs, but Olaf stayed in the room with him. I’d already beaten Bobby senseless with my bare hands. If I could do it, Olaf wouldn’t have a problem handling the prisoner. Duke insisted that the door to the bathroom stay open the whole time in case Olaf yelled for help. I think everyone but Duke was aware that Olaf wouldn’t need help, but it was Duke’s jail and Newman had to live here after I flew back home. It didn’t hurt us to concede enough to keep everyone happyish.
In all the moving around, I found a quiet moment to give Newman the name of the lawyer Micah had recommended for helping Bobby. “It’s your warrant, so I can’t invite Micah and the Coalition into this, but you can.”
“Duke is going to be pissed enough if I give Bobby a phone call to a lawyer. If I invite the Coalition in, he’ll never forgive me.”
“Do you care?” I asked.
He nodded. “I want to live here with Haley for the rest of my life, so yeah, I care.”
“Do you care about that more than Bobby’s life?”