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"Did he, now?" Ben said, smiling. "He said the same thing to me about you."
I might have blushed. I did look away. It was almost like Cormac was giving us each a mission, to keep our minds off him.
I said, "Does he have so little faith in our ability to take care of ourselves?"
"Can you blame him?"
No, I couldn't. "Is he going to be the same when he gets out?"
"I don't know. He's been through worse than this. But who knows? Am I the same? Are you the same? I wonder sometimes what you were like before the lycanthropy, if we would have had the time of day for each other. I guess—some of him'll be the same, some'll be different. We'll just have to see what stays and what doesn't."
Like peeling back the bandages after surgery, hoping it worked. Praying it isn't worse. It made me feel so out of control.
"How did you do?" What I meant was: how did his wolf do.
"I kept it together. But I hate how that place smells."
I bet he did. I didn't want to think about how it smelled. "So. What did you think of it?" I gestured to the manuscript in his lap.
Idly, he flipped through the top half of the pages, around the rubber band, wearing a studious expression. He made some noncommittal noises that might have expressed a positive or negative opinion. My anxiety increased. If the whole thing was crap, I wasn't sure I could start over.
"I have to admit, I especially like the chapter called 'Ten Ways to Defeat Macho Dickheadism.'" I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. Or if the joke was at my expense.
I felt like I was eight years old and begging. "But what about the whole thing? Did you like it? Is it any good? Should I just give it all up and go into accounting?"
He chuckled and shook his head. Then, he set his joking ma
It hadn't turned out the way I was expecting either. The publisher came to me wanting a memoir, a look back at my past experiences. It had ended up being more about the present, and a little about the future.
"Thanks—I mean, thanks for reading it. I really needed you to read it since you and Cormac ended up in it, at least a little bit."
"Yeah, that's what I wasn't expecting. But it's subtle. You don't use our names, but it's all there. I don't know how you got some kind of message, some kind of optimism out of that mess."
"Don't you know I'm an idealist?"
"God help us all."
The producer from the station, a young woman, the usual public radio night owl staff, leaned in the doorway and said, "Kitty, you've got one minute. We have Dr. Shumacher on the line."
"Thanks," I said to her, and she ducked back out. To Ben I said, "You going to stay and watch?"
"Sure, if you don't mind."
I didn't. I was glad to have him around. I found the headphones, adjusted the mike, checked the monitor, found my cue sheet. I didn't think I'd listen to Matt; I'd take as many calls as I wanted. Because when I got right down to it, everybody was right: I loved this. I'd missed it.
The on air sign lit, and the music cued up, guitar chords strumming the opening bars of CCR's "Bad Moon Rising." Sounded like angels. And there I was, just me and the microphone. Together again. Here we go—
"Good evening, one and all. I'm Kitty Norville, bringing you an all-new episode of The Midnight Hour, the show that isn't afraid of the dark or the creatures who live there…"