Kitty Takes a Holiday (Kitty Norville 3)

Immediately he stood, shaking his head. “No, uh-uh, there is no way I am listening to this. I’m not watching you listen to this. I’m out of here. Good night.” He went to the bedroom and flopped on the bed.

Cormac came from the kitchen, glancing at the bedroom, and sat on the other end of the sofa. “What’s this?”

“The competition,” I said.

The sultry voice announced herself.

“Good evening. I am Ariel, Priestess of the Night. Welcome to my show.” And again, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” Of all the pretentious…

I muttered at the radio in a manic snit. “Tell us, Ariel, what shall we talk about this week?”

Ariel, via the radio, answered. “We’ve all heard of werewolves,” she intoned. “We’ve seen countless movies. My little brother even dressed up as the Wolf Man for Halloween one year. All this attention has given short shrift to the other species. Lions and tigers and bears. And a dozen other documented lycanthropic varieties. Oh, my.”

Cormac crossed his arms and leaned back. “You have to wonder if she’s got a body to go with that voice.”

I so wasn’t going to tell him about the Web site. I glared at him instead. Then, a niggling voice started scratching at the back of my mind. Scratching, gnawing, aggravating, until I had to ask, “What about my show? You know, before you saw me in person—did my voice ever, you know, make you wonder if I maybe had a body to go with it?”

He looked at me, stricken for a moment. “You’re a little different,” he said finally.

Oh, God, I’m a hack. An ugly, talentless hack and nobody ever liked me, not once, not ever. I hugged the pillow that was on the sofa and stewed. Cormac rolled his eyes.

Ariel was still talking. “Are you a lycanthrope who is something other than the standard lupine fare? Give me a call, let’s chat.”

I had the number on speed dial by this time. I punched the call button and waited.

Cormac watched thoughtfully. “What are you doing?”

I ignored him. I got a busy signal the first time, then tried again. And again, until finally, “Hello, you’ve reached Ariel, Priestess of the Night. What’s your name and hometown?”

I had it all planned out this time. “I’m Irene from Tulsa,” I said brightly.

“And what do you want to talk about?”

“I’m a were-jaguar. Very rare,” I said. “I’m so glad that Ariel’s talking about this. I’ve felt so alone, you know? I’d love a chance to talk.”

“All right, Irene. Turn down your radio and hold, please.”

I did so, pressing the phone to my ear and tapping my foot happily.

Cormac stared at me. “That’s really pathetic.”

“Shut up.”

Then he had the nerve to take the radio to the next room, to the kitchen table. He hunched before it, listening with the volume turned down low. Couldn’t he leave me alone?

I listened in on three calls: the callers claimed to be a were-leopard, a were-fox, and a werewolf who refused to believe that lycanthropes could be anything other than wolves, because, well, he’d never met any others personally. If he’d called into my show I would have told him off with a rant that would have left him dumbstruck. Something along the lines of: Okay, you big jerk, let’s try out a new word, shall we? Say it along with me: narcissistic…

By comparison, Ariel was shockingly polite. “Marty, do you consider yourself to be an open-minded person?”

“Well, yeah, I suppose,” said Marty the caller.

“Good, that’s really good,” Ariel purred. “I’d expect a werewolf to be open-minded. You’re involved so deeply in the world behind the veil, after all. I’m sure there are lots of things you haven’t had personal experience with, yet you believe—like the Pope, or the Queen of England. So exactly why is it that you can’t accept the existence of other species of lycanthropes, just because you’ve never met one?”

Marty hadn’t thought this one through. You could always spot the ones who spouted rhetoric with no thought behind it. “Well, you know. All the stories are about werewolves. And the movies—werewolves, all of them. It’s the Wolf Man, not the Leopard Man!”

“And what about Cat People?”

Hey, that was what I’d have said.