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.