“If I say yes will he go away?” Ben said.

We could only avoid the inevitable for so long. I held Ben’s face and kissed him, lips firmly planted against lips that melted against mine.

“Time to go?” he asked when we finally parted. I nodded.

Hand in hand we made our way to the den where the rest of the pack bedded down. Human shapes stretched in strangely canine manners, backs arched and limbs straight, or scratched heads of tangled hair. Some were far enough along to be pulling on shirts and jeans that had been stashed under trees and shrubs the night before. Already dressed and keeping watch toward the road, where our half dozen cars were parked, Shaun waved at me.

“Tom, you okay?” Ben asked. “You took a pretty good hit there.”

Tom was in his early thirties, with dark hair that reached his shoulders and a shadowed expression. He seemed to be moving a little slower than the others, sitting up and catching his breath.

“Yeah, I’ll be feeling that for a little while.” Wincing, he rolled his shoulder, where a bruise, splotching purple and gray, colored the skin. It was mostly healed. If he’d been a wild wolf, that hit might have killed him, or at least broken bone, which would have been the same thing in the wild.

“That’ll teach you to look before leaping,” Shaun said, laughing. Some of the others joined in, chuckling and teasing him. Tom blushed and gritted his teeth.

“Hey, it could have happened to anyone,” I said, and they quieted. Tom ducked his gaze when I glanced at him.

One big happy wolf family, that was us. And I was Mom. It still weirded me out sometimes.

The sun was up and the spring chill starting to fade when we divided ourselves among the cars to head back to Denver and its suburbs. A couple members of the pack had to rush home to showers and clean clothes before going to jobs and pretending to be human for another day. I thought again about what Ben had said about a shower, a home base—maybe it would make things easier for everyone.

Shaun called out a question before climbing into his car, “Hey—when are you leaving for London again?”

“Two weeks,” I said. “They were kind enough to schedule the conference over the new moon ‘to make our lycanthrope guests more comfortable.’”

“Nice of them,” he said. “You know what you’re going to say in your speech yet?”

I was giving the keynote address for the First International Conference on Paranatural Studies. I figured if I didn’t think about it too much I wouldn’t get nervous. “That would be no,” I said, with more of a wince than a smile. Shaun just laughed.

Ben and I were the last to leave. We made sure everyone else was safe and happy, keeping it together, before we took one last look around our wild refuge, gave each other another kiss, got in the car, and headed out to the rest of our day.

There it was. Full moon over for another month. We traveled back to reality, such as it was.

* * *

A FEW days later found me deeply embroiled in the act of making my living.

I was trying to do meaty on the show tonight. Meaty was good. And not just rare steaks or fresh kill for the Wolf. Meat—real topical substance—gave me credibility. Sometimes, it even gave me answers.

“All right, we’re back from the break and station ID. This is Kitty Norville and The Midnight Hour coming to you from KNOB in Denver, Colorado. Unlike next week when I’ll be prerecording a show for you in London, England, where I’ll be attending the First International Conference on Paranatural Studies. This will be the first time that scientists, academics, policy makers, and pundits like me from all over the world will gather to discuss the topics that are so near and dear to my heart: vampires, werewolves, magic, what science has to say about it, what’s their place in the world. As you know I’m a werewolf and have a vested interest in some of those answers. I’m hoping to line up some really slam-bang interviews, because when else am I going to have this many victims all in one place? In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m very excited about the trip.

“Now I want to hear from you—once I get these scientists and diplomats where I want them, what questions should I ask? What would you want to learn at the conference? The lines are open.” I checked the monitor and hit a line at random. “Hello, you’re on the air.”

“I want to know if it’s true that vampires are going to lobby for a seat at the United Nations.” The caller was male and enthusiastic, a fast talker.

“Where did you hear that?” I asked.

“On the Internet,” he said, with a tone of duh.

“I’ll certainly keep my highly sensitive ears open for rumors on that topic, but I don’t think it’s a real possibility, because I don’t think vampires have any interest in deferring to human authority on anything. They’ve got their own systems of organization and haven’t felt much of a need to take part in ours over the centuries. At least that’s my impression. Next call, please. Hello, talk to me.”

“Hi, Kitty, thanks for taking my call!” The woman sounded bubbly and nice. Maybe she wouldn’t be crazy. “I was wondering, do you think you could give us a sneak preview of your keynote address for the conference?”

Well, no, because I hadn’t written it yet, but I wasn’t going to admit that. “I’m afraid I’m keeping that firmly under wraps until I actually give the speech. More fun that way, don’t you think?”

“Well, I can’t wait to hear it!”

Neither could I … “Thank you. I’m going to take another call now.” I punched another line, glancing at the screener info on the monitor. “Jane from Houston, what’s your question?”

“Hi, Kitty, big fan here, thanks for taking my call. I’ve been listening to you for years and you’ve been talking around these questions that whole time. For all the so-called scientists you’ve interviewed and research you’ve talked about, nobody seems to have any answers. I have to tell you, I’m shocked there’s even anything like a conference happening. Does that mean there are finally going to be some answers? Have scientists finally been able to figure out where vampires and lycanthropes came from? Are they actually going to tell us it’s a mutation or a disease?” She sounded genuinely frustrated.

I said, “Science isn’t like an Internet search. You don’t just stick a question in one end of a machine and have the answer pop out the other side. I don’t see the conference as a sign that scientists have finally found answers so much as it’s proof that there’s now a critical mass of researchers even asking these questions, that they can benefit from this kind of gathering.”