Rob Thurman - Roadkill

“Which is why we need a healer, and since we cannot reach Rafferty, we’ll have to try our former client at Columbia, Dr. Nushi.”

Who was in reality a Japanese healing entity called O-Kuni-Nushi. He was known to his less than observant human colleagues as Ken Nushi and worked as a doctor and special seminar instructor for the premed upperclassmen at Columbia University. With the only other healer we’d known, Rafferty Jeftichew, now missing for almost a year, Nushi was our only hope. You fought fire with fire; and you fought a hyped-up, homicidal, megalomaniac Rom Kevorkian with another healer-and not the kind healing warts for God and five bucks at a tent revival either. You needed the real deal.

Unfortunately, per his answering machine, Nushi had returned to his homeland two months ago-on a sabbatical-and was unreachable at this time. There was no forwarding number or address. Niko tried calling Promise, who in turn called in some favors from the nonhuman crowd-nothing. She even tried the other side of her life, the insanely rich-some of whom had buildings at Columbia named after them. Her luck wasn’t any better there. Nushi liked his privacy. No one knew where he was or how to contact him. “Now what?” I checked my watch. It was almost nine, close to time for me to be heading to work. Until Niko’s pals at the university finished burning the prime-time viewing oil, we didn’t even have a direction to start driving.

“Go to work. I’ll try Rafferty. It’s bound to be pointless, but he’s all we have left.” Rafferty was a healer we’d met about three and a half years ago, maybe longer. If anyone could give Suyolak a run for his money, it would be him. Rafferty had kept me alive when I’d had a single drop of blood left in me. He’d also put me to sleep by merely thinking it and stopped my heart and restarted it without breaking a sweat. But he had a sick cousin and was, as far as we knew, traveling looking for a cure even he couldn’t provide. We’d called a few times, but he hadn’t felt much like communicating, because he hadn’t answered a single call, had abandoned his house, and no one, not even Goodfellow with his network of fellow tricksters across the country, had seen hide of him nor hair of his cousin for more than a year.

Rafferty’s cousin was a werewolf, same as Rafferty-a Wolf healer; weird, I know. They seemed made to savage, not heal, but, like people, Wolves were all different. But that was the only way they were like people. Werewolves were born, not made; they were a completely different species from humans, although the switching from one form to the other could understandably fool those in the past who had passed on the legends. Unfortunately, the cousin was stuck in wolf form. He was also slowly losing the human reasoning werewolves carried with them while wearing the fur. Rafferty was determined if he couldn’t save his cousin, there had to be someone out there who could. He had his mission and he wasn’t straying from it. I understood that. I understood family. But talk about bad timing.

“Go to work,” Nik ordered, as he punched a number into his cell. “Watch out for the Kin-all of them.” After what the revenant had told me, it wasn’t something my brother had to tell me twice. Until I knew what the Kin’s price would be, I’d be looking over my shoulder more than usual. I pushed up off the soft couch with regret at a lost nap, wished for once we’d catch an easy break, and was just grabbing my jacket when Niko said with a surprised tone I didn’t often hear from him, “Rafferty? Is that you?”

Holy shit. Forget the break. Forget the lotto.

We’d just hit the jackpot.

My name is Catcher.

My parents named me after Catcher in the Rye , the book on which they’d had to team up to do a class presentation. Until then, they hadn’t been that interested in each other. But that book about teen angst and a loss of innocence had brought them together, and from then on they had been small-town high school sweethearts-depressing book; nice story.

But that’s not the point.

My name is Catcher.

I thought that every morning when I woke up-every single one-to make sure I was okay; all there; in my right mind; not having an episode. I could picture the air quotes around that last word clear as a bell. “Episode”-what a stupid thing to call it. I snorted and opened my eyes to see the morning light streaming through the battered blinds. It was useless really. If I were in my wrong mind, I wouldn’t know anyway. But the routine made me feel better, so I said it in my head. My name is Catcher.

My name is Catcher, and I’m hungry.

It wasn’t War and Peace , but it was an accomplishment and a relief. I took it as such and lounged on the motel bed, its busted springs complaining under me while I waited for my cousin to bring back breakfast. They didn’t like my kind in diners. They had their laws, their signs on the door: NOT ALLOWED. KEEP OUT. Pure prejudice. They had ramps for the physically challenged; parking spots for the same. For me they had nothing but the boot. The hell with them then. If I wasn’t good enough for them, then I’d hang around and watch TV until my cousin came back with all the sausage and pancakes I could eat. It was better than dealing with cranky morning commuters trying to snatch some breakfast before work anyway.

Besides, any day I was myself was a good day, and I was determined to enjoy every good day to the fullest. My mom had always said I wasn’t the glass-half-full type-I was more of an Olympic- sized-pool-overflowing kind. Moms, they always thought the best of you, but I had to admit she’d been right. If there was a bright side, I could see it. If there wasn’t a party, I would start one. Life was a gift. I’d always known that-maybe for a reason. The universe was all about balance.

I yawned, and lazily smacked the remote bolted to the table. News. Smack. Morning show. Smack. Cartoons. Smack. Nature channel. Wolves of Alaska. Fighting wolves. Running wolves. Romping wolves. Mating wolves.

Hello.

The door opened and my cousin walked in with several Styrofoam containers stacked in his hands. He looked at the television and rolled his eyes. “Porn? This early in the morning?”

Like there was a bad time for it, but Rafferty wasn’t a morning person, so I cut him some slack. I liked the morning myself, but I was easy to please. I grinned and yipped forcefully as I bounded off the bed.

“Yeah, yeah. I got your pancakes with apples and whipped cream. Keep eating like this and you’re going to be one fat son of a bitch.” I pawed the air impatiently. “Don’t get your tail in a wad,” he grumped. “I have your two pounds of sausage and bacon too.” He set the containers on the flimsy table by the window and began opening them up. I jumped up on one of the two chairs and dug into the pancakes. They’d always been my favorite since I was a kid. My mom fixed them every Sunday morning, the same Sunday mornings Rafferty would wander over. His mom, my mom’s twin sister, had died a year after he was born, and his own dad wasn’t much of a cook. Raff ate most of his meals with us.

We’d done most everything together. We were in the same grade. All the new kids would think we were brothers. When your mothers were twins, you tended to favor each other. We both had auburn hair, but mine was a shade darker, and neater than the I-don’t-give-a-crap style Rafferty had had his whole life. My eyes had been the same russet of his-except when they were yellow.

They were yellow all the time now.

We’d grown up together, three houses apart. Gone to elementary school together, junior high, high school. Family stuck together. Wolves stuck together. When you were both, you really were glued at the hip. We’d even gone to the same college, although postgrad we’d gone different ways. He’d gone to one with a better med school, and I’d headed to one with a professor famous for his study of the rain forest. But we still e-mailed, called once in a while, spent the first year’s spring break together chasing bikinis on beaches. Then the second year I’d chased my master’s degree in biology to the Amazon.