“Thanks. That means a lot. How are you doing?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. I think I’m okay. I think I’m doing what I was meant to do. Why else would this have happened to me, if not to be this way and be able to do these things?”
My stomach froze. “Do what things, James?”
“I have a confession, Kitty. I didn’t much like being human, when I was human. So being a werewolf isn’t much different, except I’m strong now. I’m—I know what to do. When I can’t decide what to do, the wolf tells me what to do.”
James was psychotic. He’d probably been that way before he became a lycanthrope. So, what happened when a self-loathing, misanthropic psychotic became a werewolf?
Blood pounded in my ears when I double-checked the monitor. We collected first names and hometowns from the callers. I couldn’t remember where he was from. I squinted to read the monitor.
Oh, my God. Denver. He’d been under my nose the whole time.
I covered the mike and hissed at Matt, mouthing, ?
?Caller ID. Get his number. Now!”
Leaning into the mike, I tried to keep my voice steady. “What does your wolf tell you to do, James?”
“You know, Kitty. You know. What does your wolf tell you to do? You understand.”
Use claws. Teeth. Get blood. Run. Yeah, I understood. But I’d won that battle.
“Do you ever stop to think that your wolf may be wrong?”
“But the wolf is so much stronger than I am.” He said this admiringly.
“Might doesn’t make right. That’s the whole point of civilization. You called me a voice of reason, James. Where does reason come into all this?”
“I told you. If there’s a reason that this happened, then this is it. For me to be strong.”
I checked the clock. I still had fifteen minutes to go. I’d never let a show go unfinished. I’d never had a better reason to. But I didn’t. I finished. I tried to sound normal, because I didn’t want James to think anything was wrong. “Okay, we’re going to break for station ID. We’ll be right back with The Midnight Hour.”
I switched off the mike and called to the booth, “Did you get the number?”
“Yeah,” Matt said, walking through the door with a piece of paper in his hand. “And an address. Kitty, you’ve gone white. What is it?”
My mouth was dry, and my heart was beating so fast I was shaking. “I don’t know yet. Just—let’s just finish this up. I have to make a call before we go back on.”
Call the police! That was the right thing to do. Except it wasn’t, because all this shit, the supernatural, the claws and fangs and stuff that made us different, made right different. Maybe that would change someday.
James as a wolf wouldn’t be a wolf. He wouldn’t even be a psychotic human in the shape of a wolf. He’d be a little of both, and while I liked to pretend I had the best of both worlds, James seemed to have the worst. A wolf would run away when Hardin faced him down with a gun. James would attack. I couldn’t call Hardin. She’d be killed. Or infected. I wasn’t going to put her in that situation.
Once again, I called Cormac instead of the cops. The shadow law.
“Yeah.”
“It’s Kitty. Feel like going hunting tonight?”
He hesitated for a beat. “I don’t know. What’ve you got?”
“I think I’ve got the rogue who’s behind the maulings.”
“You call Hardin with this?”
“No. This guy—he called into the show. He’s local. He was talking insane. Hardin wouldn’t know what to do with him. She’d try to arrest him, and he’d claw her to pieces.”
“You don’t mind if I get clawed to pieces, then?”