Kitty and the Silver Bullet

Chapter 3

Fighting with morning traffic, it took us three hours to get to Denver. Ben knew where the hospital was and drove us straight there. "I'm not just a lawyer," he'd explained, grinning. "I'm an ambulance-chasing lawyer."

Good thing he came along. The parking garage was packed, but he patiently wound our way up each level until we found a spot. Then I couldn't figure out what button to push on the elevator to get us to the hospital lobby, and once in the lobby I stood at the end of intersecting corridors and froze, uncertain where to go. Ben steered me in the right direction each time, finally pointing me to an information desk.

I held my stomach, which still hurt. Cramps still gnawed at me. My insides emptying themselves out. I was still sick.

"Don't say anything," I said, walking close to Ben. "Don't tell them about it. The miscarriage, I mean."

"Okay."

I leaned on the information desk. "I'm here to see Gail Norville, she was supposed to check in this morning."

The receptionist took way too long to type in the name and search in her database. Almost, I was ready to believe that it had all been a mistake. Mom wasn't really sick, she wasn't here at all, it was a big misunderstanding, and I'd get to throttle Dad over it later.

"Here she is," the receptionist said brightly. "In the outpatient ward, she's scheduled for surgery in an hour, but right now she's in room 207, one floor up, then turn right."

I was already away from the desk and on the move toward the elevator. Ben said, "Thank you," behind me.

The elevator moved too slowly. I wanted to growl at it. Ben and I stood together, side by side, arms touching. The touch calmed me a little. At the very least, it kept me from screaming.

One floor up, the elevator opened into a standard institutional corridor: off-white floor and walls, faintly humming fluorescent lights, doors and hallways branching off. I saw people moving, things happening, but only focused on the numbers above the doors. Turn right, 201,203…

The door to room 207 stood open. I had no idea what I'd find inside. I crept in, shoulders bunched up, so tense I thought I'd break.

Everybody was there—my whole immediate family. Mom, Dad, big sister Cheryl, her husband Mark, their two kids. Mom lay in bed, wearing a cloth hospital gown. The bed was cranked up so she was sitting up, and she had my sixteen-month-old nephew Jeffy in her lap, entertaining him with a stuffed tiger. Three-and-a-half-year-old Nicky was with her father, sitting in a chair in the back. She was red-eyed, face squished up, crying and unhappy, like she could sense that the grown-ups were upset but couldn't understand why—only that something was wrong. Mark was trying to distract her. Cheryl sat in a chair next to the bed, hovering over Jeffy, and my father, Jim Norville, hovered over her.

"Hi."

Everyone looked at me. For a moment, the smiles stopped being so forced.

"Kitty!" Mom said, laughing.

I practically fell on top of her in my rush to hug her, however awkwardly, with me leaning over her and her pushing off from the bed. "You're here, you're really here!" she mumbled into my hair.

"Why didn't you tell me? You should have told me," I muttered at her.

"That's exactly what your sister said," she answered.

"Mom!"

She shrugged, unapologetic.

Jeffy blinked at us, kind of blankly, and batted the tiger. We regarded each other. "Um, he's gotten bigger, hasn't he?" He was barely sitting up by himself the last time I saw him.

"Well, duh," Cheryl said, grinning at me.

I had to hug everyone then, moving around the bed to get to my sister and Dad.

"Thanks for coming," he whispered.

"Had to," I said.

I waved at Mark and Nicky. Mark waved back, and Nicky stared. My arrival seemed to disrupt her blubbering, and now she seemed as blankly fascinated by the new arrival as her brother. She hadn't doubled in size like Jeffy had—I actually recognized her from our last visit. But she clearly didn't remember me. I wasn't enough a part of her life for her to remember.

Kids. Dammit. Those two were as close as I was ever going to get.

No tears, not here. I stood back and took a good look at my family. My first family. We looked like a family—all of us relatively athletic, fit, like some kind of country club advertisement. Mom and Dad met on their college tennis team and still played a couple times a week. Dad's brown hair was going a rather distinguished gray. The girls all had the blond hair, though Mom's had almost turned the color of ash.

For a moment, Mom didn't look like Mom. She hadn't put on makeup, her chin-length hair was straight, unstyled, and the hospital gown left her looking lumpy, untailored. Mom was an extremely put-together woman. This version of her was unmistakably ill. She had no overt symptoms. She smiled easily enough. But the anxiety was there, in the tension of her jaw and hands.

Dad saw Ben first. Ben had slipped in quietly and leaned against the wall by the door. Dad's gaze drew everyone else's attention.

Well, I hadn't quite planned this to happen this way. Nothing to do but plunge ahead.

"This is Ben," I said. I went to grab him and pull him forward, guiding him by the elbow. I pointed and introduced. "Ben, this is my mom and dad—Gail and Jim. Cheryl, married to Mark over there, and the rug rats are Jeffy and Nicky."

"Hello, Ben," Mom said with a rich smile and insufferable smugness. "It's so good to finally meet you in person."

Ben very politely shook hands with my parents. "Mrs. Norville, Mr. Norville."

"God, this is so high school," I muttered, suddenly feeling sixteen years old. Weren't things like introducing your significant other to your parents supposed to get easier?

"Please, call me Gail," Mom purred, looking pleased as anything.

The room was almost cheerful, the walls painted rose, the blanket on the bed a happy yellow. They'd tried to add some brightness to the institutional setting. But it still smelled like a hospital. And Mom was still sick.

"What's going on? What's happening?" I said.

Mom brushed it all away. "I'll be fine. One way or the other, I'll be fine. The biopsy might even come back negative, and I'll have nothing to worry about. But even if it is malignant—I'll have a little radiation therapy, and it'll all be gone. I won't even have to stop working. It's all going to be fine."

She was the only one in the room who was smiling. I looked at my dad. I had never seen that expression on his face. I hadn't seen that expression on anyone's face. He was anguished in a way that was more than trying not to cry—he never cried. It was like he was watching the world fall apart, and he believed he was the one who had to hold it together. I assumed he'd talked to Mom's doctor, that he knew everything Mom did about the situation. For some reason, he didn't share her sunny proclamation of the outcome. Surely it was too early to be glum. Wasn't it too early to expect the worst? Even if she really did have breast cancer?

Right now, Mom wanted us all to be as cheerful as she was. Wanted us all to believe that everything was going to be okay. Maybe she was right. A little surgery, a little radiation. Cancer wasn't an automatic death sentence. Thousands of women survived this. Mom would be one of them.

Before they wheeled her off for the surgery, Mom squeezed my hand. "If I had known all it would take to get you to come home was getting cancer, I'd have done it sooner."

Sick or no, I could have slapped her for that. "Don't joke like that, Mom."

She had the good grace to look abashed. "I'm sorry, you're right. It's just so good to see you. You're not going to run off again, are you?"

I shook my head. "I'll be right here when you wake up."

"Good."

And that was that. The surgeon had a very soothing demeanor. When he said this was all routine, nothing to worry about, I started to believe it. We waited in one of those generic hospital waiting rooms, with plastic chairs and out-of-date magazines fanned out on the tables. Fake plants and pictures of flowers continued the atmosphere of forced cheerfulness. Ben was very patient, sitting with me the whole time. Dad asked him dad-type questions about work: So, son, what is it you do for a living? Ben managed to answer without bringing up any of the more sordid tales from his practice. Like Cormac, for example. Dad made small talk about his banking job. And there were always the kids to distract us. They turned out to be very useful for that. I watched them reading—pretending to read—their board books and flinging their stuffed toys. Ben watched me watching them, and we didn't say a word.

Mom sailed through the surgery without a hitch. The surgeon was sure he'd removed the whole lump—nobody had said tumor yet—but the test results wouldn't be in for a week. So now we waited.

After the surgery, Ben and I went home—a new home this time, at least for me. He had a second-story condo north of the Cherry Creek area. In his absence, it had gone a bit stale. Mothballed. I hadn't let him come here himself, not with the chance that Carl might find Ben and hunt him down as an invading rogue.

It was a bachelor pad, with little in the way of decoration. The living room had a cushy leather couch and a flat-screen TV. An old coffee table had books, magazines, and file folders piled on it. Half the room was an office: a desk in the corner was covered with work except for an empty space about the size of a laptop computer. There was a balcony off the living room. The kitchen was small, and the single bedroom was in the back. I had an urge to go snooping through all the cupboards and closets, to uncover his secrets.

"It didn't burn down," he said, closing the door behind him. "I'm almost shocked."

"How long have you lived here?"

"Four years maybe. I liked the place, the price was right." Moving over to the glass door to the balcony, he looked out over his view of the city, a carpet of treetops and stretch of buildings. He took a deep breath and exhaled. "It's good to be back. I've missed it."

To tell the truth, I'd missed Denver, too. My favorite restaurants, my old stomping grounds, the line of mountains to the west. But I couldn't enjoy being back. Too many worries.

I dropped my bag and sat on the sofa. Clasped my hands together and looked around, nervous. Exile over, just like that. I'd been displaced for months, since I left Denver. Now I was back, and I still felt displaced. I was a guest in a strange house.

Ben continued. "I guess we should go for groceries. I had my mom clear out all the food when she looked in on things for me. At least the fridge won't smell like sour milk."

Barely listening, I leaned back, holding my head. What was I going to do? I'd have thought I'd be used to my life falling apart by now. It seemed to happen so often.

He slumped onto the sofa next to me. "You want to check out the bedroom?" He had an obnoxious lilt to his brow.

"I bet you say that to all the girls," I said.

"I can tell you're not impressed by the place."

"It's not that. I'm just not sure what to do next."

"I suggested the bedroom—"

I groaned in mock anguish and curled against him, cuddling there, looking for comfort. "I half expect Carl and Meg to break through the door."

"Are they really that bad? You told me all the shit they did, but still. Are you sure you're not building them up in your mind, making it worse?"

I stared at him. "Trust me, I'm not making it worse. They killed my best friend." Carl, murderer, rapist, and Meg the raging bitch egging him on. Match made in hell.

Ben played with my hair, and I settled down, relaxing to his touch. This was his place, it smelled like him, and I felt safe. Mostly safe. I sighed again.

"I'm not sure what to be more freaked out about," I said. "My mom, or me, or the pack. Or Rick. God, if Rick finds out I'm here he'll take it the wrong way."

"How's he going to find out you're here? Denver's huge, no one's going to know you're here."

"Oh, Ben, you're so cute when you're being clueless."

"And you're cute when you're being paranoid."

"It's not paranoia—"

"When they're really out to get you, I know. Remember what you told me, when I freaked out and sat there whining about not knowing what to do?"

"No, what?" Whining, just like he said.

"Get back to work. The cure for everything."

My old radio station, my old home base, KNOB, was in Denver. Maybe I could go back. I'd love to see Matt, Ozzie, and the whole gang.

"Everybody would know to find me there," I said.

"So don't tell anyone you're there. You think they're going to post a watch on the front door?"

"Maybe."

"Fine, I give up. Hide out here the whole time. But if you start climbing the walls, I'm kicking you out."

I lasted a whole day before I left Ben's condo. He didn't have to kick me out. The next day was Friday, and I had the show to do. I couldn't let a little thing like paranoia—however justified—keep me away.

The KNOB building hadn't changed. It was a seventies brick pile, three stories, tucked away on a side street. If it didn't have the grove of antennae on the roof, it could have been anything.

I slunk through the front door, the prodigal daughter returned.

I didn't recognize the woman at the receptionist's desk. She was my age, wore glasses, and was poring earnestly over some kind of paperwork. She didn't look up, and I didn't know what to do. Should I just walk in, as if I still worked here? Had they given my office to someone else?

In keeping with my general mood, I sneaked past her and took the stairs to the next floor. Avoidance was always a good strategy. Second floor was offices, third floor was studios and libraries. I had an urge to go all the way up, to take in the atmosphere and smells of the place. I wanted to find my favorite squishy chair and give it a spin. I'd spent a lot of time here, first as an intern, then as a regular DJ before I started the show. This was where it all started. I was too young to be feeling this nostalgic.

Maybe that was why I avoided the third-floor studios and went to the second floor to find Ozzie, the station manager and my boss. I should have called first. I should have given him some warning.

I really ought to stop second-guessing myself.

Creeping like an intruder, I listened for voices, trying to guess who was here and where Ozzie might be. Maybe I hadn't been gone all that long. Some of the same flyers were up on the bulletin board, the same notices to please clean your crap out of the fridge in the break room and to sign up for the employee picnic.

"Kitty!"

Matt—young, stocky, his black hair in a ponytail—appeared around the corner at the end of the hallway. He ran the show for me, first live and then remotely when I had to go on the road.

I grinned wide and squealed just a little. "Matt!"

We ran into each other and hugged. Ah, I was home.

Matt talked a mile a minute. "What are you doing here? I didn't know you were back, why didn't you call? Hey—we're all set up for the show to broadcast in Pueblo, are we going to have to move everything back here or are you just dropping by or what?"

We separated, and I hemmed and hawed, sheepish. "I'm back, I guess. It was kind of sudden. Is that okay? Is there a problem?"

"There shouldn't be—"

"Kitty!"

And there was Ozzie, coming around the same corner Matt had. Ozzie was an aging hippie type, thinning ponytail, and—geez, he'd grown a beard. Wild.

"Hi, Ozzie."

He swept me up in a hug that lifted me off the floor. Even after everything that had happened, all the publicity, I didn't feel like a werewolf here. This was the only place I was a DJ first and a lycanthrope second. It felt great.

"What are you doing here?" he said, a familiar scowl on his face. He was the kind of manager who got grouchy when things didn't go as planned. "I thought you weren't coming back. We turned your office into a storage closet."

That answered that question.

"Change of plans. Sorry I didn't call, it was kind of last minute." Very last minute. Had it really only been two days since Dad called with the news about Mom? "Is it a problem? Can we do tomorrow's show here?"

"Yeah, sure, of course. Matt?" Matt gave a shrug that Ozzie took to mean yes. "No problem. So what brought you back? Is everything okay?"

I made a decision. Here in this space, everything was okay. All problems stayed outside, and this was home.

"Everything's fine," I said and smiled.

I crept through the next week like I was moving through a minefield—careful where I stepped, waiting for an inevitable explosion. I settled into a kind of routine, albeit a stressful one. Mostly, the stress came from waiting for the phone call about Mom's biopsy. The one that said whether she had cancer, and if so what kind and how bad, and where did things go from there. Ben and I went back to Pueblo briefly to collect a few belongings and the other car. The move to Denver was starting to feel permanent, even though I kept thinking if the test came back negative, I would flee town again.

I avoided downtown and the northwest foothills where the pack mostly ran. Anyplace where anyone supernatural hung out that I knew of, I avoided. I didn't go out much. KNOB, Ben's place, Mom and Dad's in Aurora. That was it. I caught up on a lot of reading.

Ozzie didn't clean out the supply closet formerly known as my office, but he gave me a new one, an equally cozy hole in the wall that had been waiting for a new marketing assistant that hadn't been hired yet. The place rapidly devolved into a state of messiness that made it look like I'd been working there for months. Newspapers and magazines piled at a corner of the desk, piles of letters and e-mails—I had to deal with it directly now, instead of having someone else filter it—and a radio tuned to KNOB. It felt like I never left.

Right down to the phone ringing more than I wanted it to. And it still made me jump out of my skin. It was my cell this time.

"Hi, this is Kitty," I managed to answer in a friendly enough tone.

"Well, it's the famous werewolf Kitty Norville," said a cynical female voice.

I knew that voice. I put a fake smile into my tone. "Detective Hardin. Hello."

Detective Jessi Hardin had gotten caught up in a spate of werewolf killings that happened before I left Denver. She was unusual in that I had told her a werewolf was involved, and she'd believed me, before anyone else even acknowledged the existence of werewolves. She was ahead of the curve. I liked her, except she was always calling me and asking difficult questions. I was her go-to person for cases involving the supernatural.

"A question for you: Are you keeping up with things back in Denver?"

She didn't know I was back. She'd called my cell; I could be anywhere. It felt like a tiny victory. Keeping my head down seemed to be working. Now if I could just keep from letting it slip that I was back in Denver. Then she'd start coming to see me in person, to show me bodies that had died gruesomely.

I remembered Rick's newspaper article. "I heard about the nightclub vampire attacks. Have they got you looking into that?"

"Only on the side. The attackers were vampires, and we’ve got descriptions. We're staking out the most likely clubs—in a manner of speaking. But I've had a different problem thrown at me."

"Oh?"

"I've just been made the head of the Paranatural Unit of the Denver PD." Her voice was wry, like this was a big, ironic joke. "I'm getting to write the law enforcement book on this stuff."

"Great. Congratulations. I think. So tell me, if the cops have to lock up a werewolf on the night of a full moon, what do they do?"

"Paint the bars with silver."

Damn, she was good. "And what about a life sentence for a vampire?"

"That one we haven't quite worked out. I'm kind of in favor of giving the vampire a cell with a nice southern exposure."

And this was the person writing the book on paranormal law enforcement? "Detective, not that this isn't pleasant, but do you need something from me?"

"Can't fool you."

"I sensed it with my keen animal instincts."

She actually chuckled. "Right. This whole legend about vampires and mirrors. That their reflections don't appear. How much of that is true and how much is bogus?"

I shrugged, even though she couldn't see it. The uncertainty carried into my voice. "I don't know, I haven't really had a chance to test it."

I should have. I should have been more observant. I'd met plenty of vampires, but at the moment I couldn't remember any relevant details, like a reflection in a glass door or a distorted image in a piece of fine china. No doubt about it, vampires were weird, and powerful in ways they didn't reveal to anyone. Had I simply failed to notice their reflective properties, or was there something about them that drew the eye, the attention, away?

"Why do you ask?" I said.

"I have to ask myself some questions: If they really don't show up in mirrors, do they show up on film? Is there something about the way they reflect light, or bend light, that keeps them from appearing in mirrors that would affect how they appear on film?"

"I don't know. I could ask around for you."

"I'd appreciate it. I have surveillance camera footage from a convenience store robbery that happened downtown a couple days ago. It got handed to me because something about it isn't right. You can see the perpetrators, right there by the register, collecting the cash. But they're not really there. It's like they're ghosts, or afterimages. A double exposure, maybe. The clerk, the other customers, everyone else in the image is clear, except for these two blurs. And on top of that, none of the witnesses remembers what they look like. The clerk remembers being robbed, but she can't describe the thieves, can't remember what they said, if they held a gun on her, or what. It sounds fishy to me."

It was certainly an interesting bit of speculation, though I hadn't ever heard of a vampire robbing anything. Most of them preferred to make their money with long-term investments. "I can't recall ever seeing a photo of a vampire. But I never really asked."

"Any lead will help. The department's resident skeptics are suggesting that 'vampire' really means 'I have no fucking clue.' I'd love to prove them wrong."

"So if I see a couple of vampires carrying bags of cash, I should call you."

"You got it."

She signed off, and I was grateful that she hadn't asked when I was coming back to Denver, or asked to send me copies of the images from the surveillance footage so I could give her my opinion. I'd half expected her to.

That wasn't the only call I had that day. Oh no, they always came in droves.

The next call came to the office phone, forwarded to me from KNOB's main line. The answering voice was confident and saccharine—someone in show business. I recognized that tone. "Hi, Kitty Norville? My name's Judy Jones, do you have a minute?"

"Sure. What've you got?"

"I'm a publicist here in New York City, and I have a client who I think you'd love to have on your show, if you'll let me arrange it."

I got calls like this all the time. My show didn't have a huge audience, but for some people it had the right audience, which was more important. A quick interview on my show meant great free publicity for them.

I could always say no. My next question was the obvious one. "Who's your client?"

"Have you heard of Mercedes Cook?"

"Yeah. She's a legend on Broadway. Been playing leading roles for, like, forty years. Why do you think she's a good fit for my show?"

Jones's voice took on a tone of amusement, like she was telling a joke and wasn't going to reveal the punch line. "Ms. Norville, I'm going to have to ask you to keep the rest of this conversation in strict confidence. Can you do that?"

Could I keep a secret? I always answered that question the same way. "Sure. What's this all about?"

"People are starting to ask questions about Ms. Cook's career. As you said, she's been playing leads for forty years. Romantic leads. She hasn't aged a day since her first spot on the chorus line in the sixties."

A chill crept up my spine. I hadn't thought of it. I wouldn't have thought of it. I'd have written it off to plastic surgery or a great makeup job. I'd have figured Mercedes Cook was one of those lucky people who hit twenty-five and didn't seem to age for the next couple of decades. But if that was so, Judy Jones wouldn't have been calling me.

I'd never been in the same room with Mercedes Cook to smell her, to be able to tell if she wasn't quite human.

"Go on," I said.

"After all this publicity about the paranormal over the last year, which you might be aware of—" Uh, yeah, did she think? "People are starting to ask the right questions about Ms. Cook and her remarkable career. The bottom line is we'd prefer to make this announcement on our own terms rather than have some reporter splash this all over the nightly news. What could be more perfect, Ms. Norville? America's first celebrity werewolf conducts a live interview with America's first celebrity vampire."

Perfect, indeed. One of the country's most beloved stars of one of its most beloved institutions—a vampire? Oh, the conservative witch hunters were going to have a field day with this. She totally hadn't been on my list—my potential vampire list that included every celebrity who looked younger than plastic surgery could explain.

And I couldn't tell anyone. Jones was smart—she'd given me a very good reason to keep the secret. I had to, if I wanted to get the exclusive story. Breaking this kind of news on my show? Ha! This was too cool.

I took a breath and tried to sound nonchalant. "That's quite intriguing, Ms. Jones. I think I can make the time to have Ms. Cook on for an interview." I acted like I was poking through a calendar. "Yes, I'm sure I can fit her in. When is she available?"

"Is this week too soon? She'll be in Denver for her concert tour."

"This week is fine."

"I can arrange for her to come to your studio for an interview. I'm assuming that would be convenient?"

"Yes, yes, of course. I'll make sure we're set up on this end."

"That's great. Would you like tickets for her concert?"

Why the hell not? "That would be great. Thanks."

"I'll be in touch."

She clicked off, and I had my show for the week all set up. Belatedly, I realized I had admitted that I was in Denver. But surely the publicist couldn't reveal that to anyone who would cause trouble.

After the show, I'd have to call Detective Hardin and tell her that Mercedes Cook had hundreds of publicity photos and several videos of her musicals. Vampires did appear on film, and something else had robbed that store.