Kitty's Mix-Tape (Kitty Norville 16)

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.”