Kitty and the Midnight Hour (Kitty Norville 1)

I slumped against the passenger-side door. “We don’t all rip people’s throats out.”

“Fair enough. Anyway, a year ago I would have been looking for a pack of wild dingoes escaped from the zoo on a case like this. But now—”

“You’re stalling. How bad is it?”

She gripped the steering wheel. “I don’t know. How strong is your stomach?”

I hesitated. I ate raw meat on a regular basis, but not by preference. “It depends on what I’m doing,” I said, dodging.

“What do you mean, what you’re doing?”

How did I explain that it depended on how many legs I was walking on at the time? I couldn’t guess if that would freak her out. She might try to arrest me. Best to let it go. “Never mind.”

“She was a prostitute, eighteen years old. The body is in three separate pieces. Not counting fragments. Jagged wounds consistent with the bite and claw marks of a large predator. The . . . mass of the remains does not initially appear to equal the original mass of the victim.”

“Shit,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead. She’d been eaten. Maybe I wasn’t ready for this after all.

“It wasn’t a full moon last night,” she said. “Could it still be a werewolf that did it?”

“Werewolves can shape-shift any time they want. Full moon nights are the only time they have to.”

“How do I tell if this is a lycanthrope and not a big, angry dog?”

“Smell,” I said without thinking.

“What?”

“Smell. A lycanthrope smells different. At least to another lycanthrope.”

“Okay,” she drawled. “And if you aren’t around to use as a bloodhound?”

I sighed. “If you can find DNA samples of the attacker, there are markers. There’s an obscure CDC report about lycanthrope DNA markers. I’ll get you the reference. Are you sure it wasn’t just a big dog?”

If the attacker were a werewolf, it would just about have to be one of Carl’s pack. But I didn’t think any of them were capable of hunting in the city, of going rogue like that. They’d have to answer to Carl. If there were a strange werewolf in town, Carl would confront him for invading his territory.

I dreaded what I was going to find. If I smelled the pack at this place, if I could tell who did it—did I tell Hardin, or did I make excuses until I talked to Carl? Nervously, I tapped my foot on the floorboard. Hardin glanced at it, so I stopped.

We drove to Capitol Hill, the bad part of town even for people like me. Lots of old-fashioned, one-story houses gone to ruin, overgrown yards, gangbanger cars cruising the intersections in daylight. The whole street was cordoned off by police cruisers and yellow tape. A uniformed officer waved Hardin through. She parked on the curb near an alley. An ambulance was parked there, and the place crawled with people wearing uniforms and plastic gloves.

In addition, vans from three different local news stations were parked at the end of the street. Cameramen hefted video cameras; a few well-dressed people who must have been reporters lurked nearby. The police were keeping them back, but the cameramen had their equipment aimed like the film was rolling.

I kept Hardin between me and the cameras as we walked to the crime sc

ene.

She spoke to a guy in a suit, then turned to make introductions.

“Kitty Norville, Detective Salazar.”

The detective’s eyes got wide, and he smirked. “The werewolf celebrity?”

“Yeah,” I said, an edge of challenge in my voice. I offered my hand. For a minute I didn’t think he was going to shake it, but he did. He stood six inches taller than me, and I didn’t look that scary. And I had a winning smile.

Salazar said to Hardin, “You sure this is a good idea? If those guys find out she’s here, they’re going to have a field day.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the news vans.

That was all I needed, my face all over the nightly news: “Werewolves Loose Downtown.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them. She’s a consultant, that’s all.”