Carrie Vaughn: Kitty Goes to Washington

I'd been trying to talk to him. I had his phone number, but I only ever got through to voice mail. As long as I kept trying, he'd get so sick of my messages that he'd call me back eventually.

Or get a restraining order.

The phone rang. And rang. I mentally prepared another version of my message—please call back, we have to talk, I promise not to bite.

Then someone answered. "Hello?" The car swerved; I was so surprised I almost let go of the steering wheel. "Hello? Dr. Flemming?"

There was a pause before he answered, "Kitty Norville. How nice to hear from you."

He sounded polite, like this was a friendly little chat, as if there wasn't any history between us. He wasn't going to get away with that.

"I really need to talk to you. You spent six months calling me anonymously, dropping mysterious hints about your work and suggesting that you want me to help you without ever giving any details, then without any warning you go public, and I have to recognize your voice off a radio broadcast of a press conference. Then silence. You don't want to talk to me. And now I've been subpoenaed to testify before a Senate committee about this can of worms you've opened. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great can of worms. But what exactly are you trying to accomplish?"

He said, "I want the Center to keep its funding."

At last, a straight answer. I could imagine what had happened: as a secret research organization, the Center's funding was off the books, or disguised under some other innocuous category. An enterprising young congressman must have seen that there was a stream of money heading into some nebulous and possibly useless avenue and started an investigation.

Or maybe Flemming had wanted the Center to be discovered in this manner all along. Now the Senate was holding official hearings, and he'd get to show his work to the world. I just wished he'd warned me.

"So all you have to do is make sure the Center comes off looking good."

"Useful," he said. "It has to look useful. Good and useful aren't always the same thing. I'd heard that you'd been called to testify. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't be," I said lightly. "It'll be fun. I'm looking forward to it. But I'd really like to meet you beforehand and get your side of the story."

"There's nothing much to tell."

"Then humor me. I'm insanely curious." Wait for it, wait for it—"How about I interview you on the show? You could get the public behind you."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea."

Good thing I was driving across Texas—no turns and nothing to run into. Flemming had all my attention.

"This may be your only chance to tell your side of the story, why you're doing this research and why you need funding, outside of the hearings. Never underestimate the power of public opinion."

"You're persuasive."

"I try." Carry them along with sheer enthusiasm. That was the trick. I felt like a commercial.

He hesitated; I let him think about it. Then he said, "Call me again when you get to D.C."

At this point, anything that wasn't "no" was a victory. "You promise you'll actually answer the phone and not screen me with voice mail?"

"I'll answer."

"Thank you."

Mental calculation—the next show was Friday, in four days. I could reach D.C. by then. I could get Flemming on the show before the hearings started.

Time for another call, to Matt this time. "Matt? Can you see about setting up this week's show in Washington, D.C.?"

For years I hadn't left the town I lived in, much less driven across country. I didn't want to leave the place where I was comfortable and safe. It was easy to stay in one place and let my packmates, my alpha, take care of me. Easy to stagnate. Then the show started, and the boundaries became too narrow. What was supposed to happen—what happened among wild wolves, behavior that carried over to the lycanthropic variety—was that a young wolf moved up through the pecking order, testing boundaries until she challenged the leaders themselves, and if she won, she became the alpha.

I couldn't do it. I challenged and couldn't lead. I left town. I'd been essentially homeless since then. Wandering, a rogue wolf.

It wasn't so bad.

I drank coffee, which put me on edge but kept me awake and driving. Before I left Denver I'd never done this, driven for hours by myself, until the asphalt on the highway buzzed and the land whipped by in a blur. It made me feel powerful, in a way. I didn't have to listen to anyone, I could stop when I wanted, eat where I wanted, and no one second-guessed my directions.

I took the time to play tourist on the way. I stopped at random bronze historical markers, followed brown landmark highway signs down obscure two-lane highways, saw Civil War battlefields and giant plaster chickens. Maybe after the hearings I could set some kind of crazy goal and make it a publicity stunt: do the show from every state capital, a different city each week for a year. I could get the producers to pay for a trip to Hawaii. Oh, yeah.

Matt set me up at an Arlington, Virginia, radio station. I got there Friday around noon. I was cutting it close; the show aired live Friday night.

Lucky for me, Flemming had agreed to be a guest on the show.

The station's offices and broadcast center, a low brick fifties-era building with the call letters hung outside in modernist steel, were in a suburban office park overgrown with thick, leafy trees. Inside the swinging glass doors, the place was like a dozen other public and talk radio stations I'd been to: cluttered but respectable, run by sincere people who couldn't seem to find time to water the yellowing ficus plant in the corner.

A receptionist sat at a desk crowded with unsorted mail. She was on the phone. I approached, smiling in what I hoped was a friendly and unthreatening manner—at least I hoped that the dazed, vacuous smile I felt would pass for friendly. I could still feel the roar of the car tires in my tendons. She held her hand out in a "wait a minute" gesture.

"—I don't care what he told you, Grace. He's cheating on you. Yes… yes. See, you already know it. Who works past eleven every night? Insurance salesmen don't have night shifts, Grace… Fine, don't listen to me, but when you find someone else's black lace panties in his glove box don't come cryin' to me."

My life could be worse. I could be hosting a talk show on normal relationship problems.

After hanging up the phone she turned a sugary smile on me as if nothing had happened. "What can I do for you?"

Wadded up in my hand I had a piece of paper with the name of the station manager. "I'm here to see Liz Morgan."

"I think she may be out to lunch, let me check a minute." She played tag with the intercom phone system, buzzing room after room with no luck. I was about to tell her not to worry about it, that I'd go take a nap in my car until she got back.

"I don't know. I'll ask." She looked up from a rather involved conversation on one of the lines. "Can I pass along your name?"

"Kitty Norville. I should be scheduled to do a show tonight."

Raised brows told me she'd heard the name before.

She didn't take her gaze off me when she passed along the answer.

"Says she's Kitty Norville… that's right… I think so. All right, I'll send her back." She put away the handset. "Wes is the assistant manager. He said to go on back and he'll talk to you. Last door on the right." She gestured down a hallway.

I felt her watching me the whole way. Some time ago I'd stated on the air, on live national radio, that I was a werewolf. Listeners generally took that to mean a couple different things: that I was a werewolf, or that I was crazy. Or possibly that I was involved in an outrageous publicity stunt pandering to the gullible and superstitious.