I didn't even want to think about it. "I need my clothes."

"They kind of got trashed. You ready to get out of here?"

I propped myself against Ben and braced against the wall to get myself to my feet. My muscles popped, and my bones creaked. Ben pulled me to my feet without effort. I let him hold me up. I'd turned Wolf twice in the last twenty-four hours. I'd never done that before, never turned a second time so soon after the first. Almost, it seemed the pieces hadn't come back together quite right. Fur still peeked between the cracks. Wolf still looked out of my eyes. My brain felt fuzzy, the world looked strange; the shadows seemed to loom.

He must have noticed me craning my neck and squinting, trying to focus.

"You're going to have to sleep a week when this is all over," he said.

God, that sounded so nice…"I could just let Carl kill me. Sleep all I want then."

He gave me an odd sideways look.

“Kitty! Are you all right?" Ozzie intercepted us. He was actually wringing his hands.

"I'll be fine," I said. Though I must have looked awful, all tangled hair and bloodstains. "So, are you worried about me, or are you really worried about your cash cow?"

He gave me a look that was half hurt, half admonishing. "Geez, Kitty, give it a rest. When I heard the gun and they told me who got shot I about had a heart attack. Don't ever do that again."

I smiled tiredly. "I'll try not to. Ozzie, have you met Ben?"

Ben said, "He introduced himself while you were asleep."

Ozzie pointed at him. "Don't let her get shot again."

"I think we'd better get home and cleaned up," he replied.

Ozzie found me a T-shirt and sweats from the stash of KNOB giveaways. I could add them to the million KNOB T-shirts I already had. I was just grateful not to have to drive home naked.

During the ride home, Ben kept asking if I was okay. Huddling in the passenger seat, I kept muttering that I was fine.

Finally, he gave a frustrated sigh. "You're damned lucky, you know that?"

Yeah, I was. I had to remember that. I smiled at him. "Thanks. For taking care of me."

"We're pack."

I wished he would stop saying that. I wasn't sure why it was starting to piss me off. He wasn't saying anything that wasn't true. Maybe because it sounded like a cop-out. Like if we weren't pack, he'd have been out of here a long time ago.

Chapter 13

The car's tires squealed as Ben swung into the parking lot of his building. With his help, I stumbled out of the passenger seat and limped toward the front door. I hurt all over. The bullet wound itself had faded to an ache, but the shock of it, the shape-shifting, and waking up on the hard floor had wracked my whole body. I wanted a very hot shower.

Ben stopped before we reached the front of the building, and I lurched to a halt beside him. I started to ask why—I wasn't really paying attention, not like I should have been. I was lulled into a false sense of security, tucked snugly under Ben's arm. But then I saw Cheryl marching toward us on the sidewalk. She wore her usual T-shirt and jeans, and a furious expression. I hadn't seen that expression since she caught me borrowing her Metallic Mayhem nail polish when I was eleven.

Out of all the trouble I was currently facing, I hadn't expected this.

"What's she doing here?" I muttered.

"She's your sister," Ben said. "You tell me."

I'd done something. Something so horribly wrong and sinister she had to come in person to chew me out. And I thought I knew what it was. "Mom went in for surgery yesterday," I said. "I wasn't there." No, I was at the shooting range, learning how to be a killer.

A sudden cold washed through me, and I tried to dismiss it. If something had gone wrong with the surgery, someone would have called me right away, not waited a day.

"Cheryl, what's wrong?" I said when she was close enough.

She put her hands on her hips. "I've been waiting for you to get back. I'm taking you to the hospital to see Mom since you can't seem to be bothered to get yourself over there." Then her eyes grew wide, and the color left her face. She was staring at Ben's bloody shirt. The blood had turned dry and crunchy. My own shirt had a sizable spot of blood on the upper chest, where the wound was still leaking.

"Holy crap, what happened to you guys?" She started to look a bit green.

"I got shot," I said.

"You what? Oh, my God. Why aren't you in a hospital?" Her voice was going shrieky.

I was so not in the mood for any of this.

"Because I'm a werewolf and it wasn't a silver bullet."

"Oh my God…what…what have you gotten yourself into?"

I only sighed. This would take way too long to explain. In my silence, Cheryl kept going, and I realized that this whole talking too much thing wasn't just me. It ran in the family.

"Kitty, what is going on? Are you in some kind of trouble? Is that why you couldn't go to the hospital? And you—" She pointed at Ben. "This all started when she met you. This is your fault, isn't it? "

"Actually, no," Ben said, full of mock cheerfulness. "Kitty made this mess pretty much on her own."

Please, let me pass out now. I didn't want to have to talk to either of them anymore.

"Listen, Cheryl, can you not tell Mom and Dad about this?" I could imagine Mom's reaction exceeding Cheryl's level of hysteria.

"Not tell Mom and Dad? Are you crazy?"

"Oh, come on, what about all those times you sneaked out of the house and told me not to tell? And that time Todd came over—"

"But you did tell!" she screeched.

"No I didn't, they figured it out on their own because you were an idiot!"

Ben was rubbing his forehead like he had a headache.

I took a deep breath and tried to start over. "I'm trying to keep you guys out of this."

"Kitty!" Cheryl said, making the word part demand, part reprimand, part plea. She was four years older than me. Our relationship had started on a foundation of years of forced babysitting and commands from our parents that were all some variation of "Cheryl, look after your sister." After she left for college, my teenage years continued in pure, unsupervised bliss. Our lives diverged radically after that, but we loved each other. We were family. And the tone of voice she was using now evoked a long history of responsibility and authority.