“Idoubt it,” I said quickly. “He moved away right after graduation.”
Sadieleaned in. “They broke up right in the middle of prom, it was amazing.”
“You’venever told me any of this,” Ben saidadmiringly.
Honestly,I hadn’t thought much about it until now. It hadn’t been very relevantto the post-werewolf life.
“Hewon’t come to this,” I said, almost pleading with Sadie to agree withme. She shrugged expansively.
“So,Sadie, you have any embarrassing pictures of Kitty I should knowabout?” Ben asked.
Iblanched. “We don’t really need to go looking—”
Shegrinned. “They’ve got some old yearbooks at the front table if we wantto go check.”
Theplace filled up, and I recognized more and more people, and somehow weall looked completely different than we had, and we hadn’t changed abit, both at the same time.
“Hi,Kitty?” An upbeat woman with her dark hair in a ponytail, wearing asilky pantsuit, came up to me. “I don’t know if you remember me—”
“Amanda,we worked on yearbook together,” I said and accepted a quick hug. Wedid the one-minute update of the last ten years of our lives, and Irepeated the same exchange with a dozen other people. Wolf slowlysettled; these weren’t strangers, we weren’t in danger, even thoughthis definitely didn’t feel like our territory. It helped that Ben waslooking out for us. He patiently let himself be introduced over andover. This is my husband, Ben. And what do you do,Ben? Lawyer, criminal defense. Yeah, that got a couple ofstares. And a raised eyebrow when one of the old marching band crowdasked him for a business card.
“Youwere on yearbook?” Ben asked, incredulous.
“Yup.”
“Ihad no idea. I’m learning all kinds of things about you. I supposeyou were all over spirit week and went to all the football games?”
“Iwas practically normal, back in the day.”
“Before,”he said.
“Yeah,before.”
Hesqueezed my hand and kissed my cheek.
“Sadie?”A tough-looking guy with an expensive-looking haircut and dark jacketcame up to our table, and Sadie’s eyes widened. “Trevor?”
TrevorAmes? He’d changed. He hadn’t just put onthat filling-out weight that everyone else had, he’d put on muscle, andmoved with a practiced efficiency. He was a fighter. Back in schoolhe’d been one of our crowd, Sadie and Jesse and me and the rest of uswho weren’t cool enough to be in the cool crowd but weren’t goth orjocks or nerds enough to be in any other clique so we just made ourown. He’d joined the army right after graduation, and was another oneI’d completely lost track of when I lost track of everybody.
“He’sgot a gun under that jacket,” Ben whispered in my ear.
Ilooked sharplyat him. “Silver bullets?”
“Can’ttell.”
Hesmiled wryly as Sadie insisted on hugging him. They separated, then helooked right at me, a challenging stare, and his smile thinned.
“Kitty.You really are a werewolf.”
“Yousaw the YouTube video, just like everyone else,” I said drily.
Helooked me up and down. “I could just tell.” He looked Ben up and downthe same way, meaning he’d spotted both of us. We usually didn’t tellpeople about Ben being a werewolf too.
Youcould spot a werewolf just by looking, if you knew what to look for.This meant Trevor knew what to look for. And how,exactly?
“Thata problem?” I asked.
“No,”he said. “No, it isn’t.”
Iwondered . . . what would make it a problem?
“Thisis making me so happy,” Sadie said, beaming. “All of us togetheragain—”
“Doyou know if Jesse’s coming?” Trevor asked me.
“Idon’t,” I said. “Ikind of lost touch with everybody.”
“Ifigured if anyone knew . . .” He trailed off and shrugged.
Bensaid brightly, “I really want to meet Jesse. I hope he shows up.”
“He’snot going to show up,” I said.
Theguy who’d been class president went to a podium at the front of theroom and tapped on the microphone, which was indeed on and screeched indisapproval. I winced—what had that poor mic ever done to him? He gavea speech about how happy he was, how great it was to see everyone, andhow happy he was again, and so on. Then he announced that there wereprizes. Prizes? Shouldn’t we all get a prize just for being here?
Formerclass president went down the list. Who had traveled the farthest to behere? Someone had come from Amsterdam, and why would anyone leaveAmsterdam to come back to freaking Aurora, Colorado? Who had the mostkids—four. Well, someone had been busy. The prizes were giftcertificates to local restaurants for the most part, which was kind ofironic for the guy who’d come from Amsterdam. A few more categoriesfollowed, and I started to tune them out.
“Andwho has the most interesting job?” the guy asked. “The winner is . .. Kitty Norville!”
What?Who had decided this? I had a suspicion that Trevor’s job was way moreinteresting than mine, which hardly seemed like a job most of the time.Maybe I should have brought my own mic and recorder and done anepisode of the show from here. People were clapping. Everyone waslooking at me. I had to get up. Probably a good thing I hadn’t had asecond glass of wine yet.
Imanaged to get to the podium, collected my gift certificate, andmurmured a polite thank you into the microphone before fleeing. Theymight have expected more, considering my job involved talking into amicrophone. But no one was paying me for this, and nobody stared at mein radio. One of the other members of the reunion committee corneredme before I could get back to my territory. I didn’t remember everknowing her.
“Itreally was no contest about the job thing,” she said. “You seem to meetso many interesting people on your show!”
“Isuppose I do.” She wasn’t wrong, I did meet some interesting people.And that was only what I could be public about. Just last winter I’dconsulted for the army, trying to help werewolf veterans returning fromAfghanistan. Maybe I deserved that fifty dollars for Mario’s ItalianBistro.
Itried to escape. She kept talking at me. “So what’s it like, being awerewolf?”
Ihonestly didn’t know how to answer that. It was strange. It waspersonal. It was too big. “It’s hard to explain.”
Thoughtfully,she put a finger on her chin and her gaze went unfocused. “I suppose acondition like that, it must be a little like fibromyalgia,” she said.
Istared. “It’s nothing like—yeah, sure, it’s a little like that.”Because that was
