Kitty Takes a Holiday

I glanced at Ben, still listening to the radio turned way low. He kind of looked like he was suppressing a grin.

"A friend of mine was attacked and infected with lycanthropy a couple weeks ago. I've been taking care of him, and it's been tough. Another friend just got arrested for something he did to save my life. He's being charged with a felony. It's complicated. It also feels like the last straw. No matter how much you try to do the right thing, you get screwed over. Makes it easy to just drop out. To give up."

"But not really. Life gets hard, but you don't just run away."

"Except there's this thing inside me, the wolf side of me, and all she wants to do is run away. I'm really having to fight that."

"But you've always won that fight. I listen to your show. That's one of the great things about it, how you always tell people to be strong, and they listen to you. You understand."

"I'm flying by the seat of my pants most of the time."

"And that's gotten you this far, hasn't it?"

Was sultry Ariel giving me a pep talk? Was it working? I was a bit taken aback, that here was this person I didn't know, out on the airwaves, rooting for me.

Maybe I'd forgotten that anyone was rooting for me.

I smiled in spite of myself. "So what you're saying is I just have to keep going."

"Isn't that what you always tell people?"

"Yeah," I murmured. Nothing like having that mirror held up to you, or your words thrown back at you. "I think you're right. I just have to keep going. I never thought I'd say this, Ariel. But thanks. Thanks for talking to me."

"I'm not sure I really said anything."

"Maybe I just needed someone to listen." Someone who wasn't depending on me to keep it together. "I'll let you go back to your show now."

Ariel said, "Kitty, I'm really worried about you."

"How about I give you a call in a couple of weeks and let you know how it's going? Or you could give me a call."

"It's a date. Take care, Kitty."

I shut off the phone and sat on the edge of the bed.

I felt Ben staring at me, but I didn't want to look back. Didn't want to face him and whatever snide thing he was about to say. But the room was too small for us to avoid each other for long. I looked at him.

He said, "You really need to get back to doing your show. The sooner the better. You're too good at it not to."

I wanted to cry. What I couldn't say—not to Ariel, not to him, not to anyone—was that I was too scared to go back. Scared that I couldn't keep it going anymore. I felt like I'd rather quit than fail.

Slowly, I walked over to him, putting a slink in my step and a heat in my gaze. I needed distracting. I sat on his lap, straddling him, pi

"Come to bed, Ben," I breathed, and he nodded, kiss­ing me again.

We went to visit the Wilsons in the morning.

The family lived west of Shiprock, on a flat expanse of desert scrub and sagebrush. The police report left direc­tions. We turned off the highway onto a dusty track mas­querading as a road. A couple of miles along, we found the house. Some run-down rail and post fencing marked corrals, but nothing lived in them. The house was one story, plank board, small and crouching. It didn't seem big enough to serve as a garage, much less house a family. A couple of ancient, rusting pickup trucks sat nearby.

We parked on the dirt road and walked the path—a track lined roughly with stones—to the front door.

"If it were anyone but Cormac I wouldn't be doing this. I'd write the whole case off," Ben said. "I have to go in there and ask these people to help me defend the man who killed their daughter. This kind of thing didn't used to bother me but now all I want to do is growl and rip something apart."

I started to say something vague and soothing, but I couldn't, because I felt the same way. Every hair on my body was standing on end. "There's something really weird about this place."

We'd reached the door, a flimsy-seeming thing made of wood. Ben stared at it. Finally, I knocked. Ben took a deep breath and closed his eyes, opening them as the door opened.

A young woman, maybe eighteen, looked back at us. "Who are you?" The question and her stance—the door was only open a few inches—spoke of suspicion. Maybe even paranoia.

"My name's Ben O'Farrell. I'm trying to find informa­tion about Miriam Wilson. Are you her sister?"

Of course the girl was. I'd only ever seen Miriam dying and dead, but they had the same round face, large eyes, and straight black hair.

The girl stole a look over her shoulder, into the house, then said, "She's gone. Been gone a long time. I don't have anything to say about it."

Ben and I glanced at each other. Did she know her sis­ter was dead? Surely someone had come to tell her, when the police here found out.

"What's your name?" I said.

She shook her head. "I don't want to tell you my name."

Names had power, yadda yadda. Okay, then. We'd do this the blunt way.

"Miriam's dead," I said, "She was killed near Walsenburg, Colorado. We're trying to learn as much as we can about her so we can explain what happened."

Some expression passed over her. Not what I expected, which was grief or sadness, or resignation at learning the truth after months of uncertainty. No, the girl closed her eyes and the release of tension softened her features. It was like she was relieved.

She said, "You're better off letting it go. You're better off forgetting about it. Let it end here." That was the same thing Tony had said. And Tsosie.

"We can't do that," I said. "It's not over. Don't you want to know what happened?"

"No." She started to close the door.

"Is there anyone else who'd be willing to talk to us about her? Are your parents here?"

"They don't speak much English," she said. A conve­nient shield.

Ben spoke up. "Would you be willing to translate for us?"

"They won't talk. My sister—my oldest sister died before Miriam disappeared, my brother died a couple of weeks ago. We've had a hard time of it, and we're trying to move on. I have to go now."

Ben put his hand out to stop the door from closing. "How much of that did they bring on themselves? They hired my client to kill your brother. He did it, then Miriam came after him. He's in jail now, and you know as well as I do he doesn't deserve to be there. Where did this whole thing get started?"

She was lost, cornered, staring at us with a panicked expression, unable to close the door on us and unable to speak.

"Please," I said, "talk to us."

The words seemed to war inside her, like she both did and didn't want to speak. Finally, the words won. "Joan was murdered. No matter what anyone else says, she was murdered. But the more we talk of these things, the more likely we are to bring more curses upon ourselves."

You got to a point where one more curse wasn't going to make a difference.

"Louise, who are you talking to?" a male voice shouted from within. The father who didn't speak much English, I bet.

"Nobody!" she called over her shoulder.

The door opened wide, revealing a short man with desert-burnished skin aiming a rifle at us.

I wondered if he knew that he'd need the bullets to be silver.

"My daughter's right," he said in perfectly decent English. "We've had enough. Get out, now, before you bring more evil with you."

It seemed to me that we weren't the ones carrying evil around with us. We just kept finding it. I had the good sense not to say anything. Fu

"Well. Thanks for your time," I said. I took Ben's arm and pulled him away from the door. Slowly, we backed along the path, until the door to the house slammed shut.