Kitty Raises Hell

“I have on the phone with me Dr. Edgar Olafson, a professor of anthropology from the University of Colorado, here to give us the accepted party line about magic. Professor Olafson, thanks for being on the show.”

“Thank you very much for inviting me, Kitty.”

Olafson was one of the younger, hipper professors I’d had during my time at CU. He was hip enough to appear on a cult radio show, which was good enough for me. He was also a scientist and spent a minute or so saying what I expected him to. “Belief in magic has been with human culture from the very beginning. It’s been a way to explain anything that people in early civilizations didn’t understand. Diseases were caused by curses, a spate of bad luck meant that something was magically wrong with the world. By the same token, magic gave people a way to feel like they had some control over these events. They could use talismans and amulets to protect against curses, they could concoct potions and rituals to combat bad luck and promote good luck.”

“That’s still true, isn’t it? People still have superstitions and carry good-luck charms, right?”

“Of course. But you have to wonder how many people do these things out of habit, built up in the culture over generations, and how many people really believe the habits produce magical effects.”

“And we’ll find out about that in a little bit when I open the line for calls. But let me ask you something: What about me?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand the question.”

I hadn’t prepped him for this part. Sometimes I was a little bit mean to my guests. They still agreed to come on the show. Served ’em right. “I’m a werewolf. I’ve got incontrovertible, public, and well-documented proof of that condition, validated by the NIH. I’ve had vampires on my show. I’ve talked to people claiming to be magicians, and some of them I’m totally willing to vouch that they are. While the NIH has identified lycanthropy as a disease, modern medical science hasn’t been able to explain it. So. This inexplicable sliver that you have to acknowledge as existing. Is it really magic? Not a metaphor, not habit, not superstition, but really some effect that contradicts our understanding of how the world works.” Whew. I took a big breath, because I’d managed to get that all out at once.

He chuckled nervously. “Well, we’ve gone a little bit outside my disciplines at this point. I certainly can’t argue with you. But if something’s out there, I’m sure someone’s studying it. Maybe even writing a PhD thesis on it.”

“I plan on getting ahold of that thesis just as soon as I can. Sorry for putting you on the spot, Professor. I’m just trying to get us a neutral baseline before the conversation goes completely out of control. Which it always does. Let’s go to the phones. Hello, you’re on the air.”

With great condescension, a man started in. “Hi, Kitty. Thanks for taking my call. With all due respect for your guest, this is exactly the kind of attitude that’s held human civilization back, that’s kept our species from taking the next step toward enlightenment—”

Away we went.

I had to butt in. “Here’s what I’m wondering: In this day and age, with the revelations of the last couple of years, isn’t it a mistake to think of magic and science as two different things, as polar opposites, and never the twain shall meet? Shouldn’t practitioners of both be working together toward greater understanding? What if there really is a scientific explanation for the weirder bits of magic? What if magic can explain the weirder bits of science?”

A rather intense-sounding woman called in to agree with me. “Because really, I think we need both points of view to understand how the world works. Like this—I’ve always wondered, what if it’s not the four-leaf clover that brings good luck, but belief in the four-leaf clover that causes some kind of mental, psychic effect that causes good luck?”

“Hey, I like that idea,” I said. “The problem that science always has with this sort of thing is how do you prove it? How do you measure luck? How do you prove the mental effect? So far, no one’s come up with a good experimental model to record and verify these events.”

Sometimes my show actually sounded smart, rather than outrageous and sensationalist. I was hoping with Professor Olafson on board that we’d be leaning more toward NPR than Jerry Springer. So far, so good. But it couldn’t possibly last, and it didn’t.

“Next caller, hello. What have you got?”

“I want to talk about what’s going on with Speedy Mart.” The caller was male. He talked a little too fast, a little too hushed, like he kept looking over his shoulder. One of the paranoid ones.

“Excuse me?” I said. “What does a convenience-store chain have to do with magic?”

“There’s a pattern. If you mark them all on a map, then cross-reference with the locations of violent crimes, like armed robbery, there’s an overlap.”

“It’s a twenty-four-hour convenience store. Places like that get robbed all the time. Of course there’s a correspondence.”

“No—there’s more. You overlay both of those sets of points on a map of ley lines, and bingo.”

“Bingo?”

“They match,” the caller said, and I wondered what I was missing. “Every Speedy Mart franchise is built on the intersection of ley lines.”

“Okay. That’s spooky. If anyone could agree on whether ley lines exist or where they really are.”

“What do you mean, whether they exist!” He sounded offended and put out. Of course he did.

“I mean there’s no quantitative data that anyone can agree on.”

“How can you be such a skeptic? I thought this was supposed to be a show about how magic is real.”

“This is supposed to be a show about how to tell the real from the fake. I’m going to say ‘prove it’ every time someone lays one on me.”

“Yeah, well, check out my web site and you’ll find everything you need to know. It’s w-w-w dot—” I totally cut him off.

“Here’s the thing,” I said, long overdue for a rant. “People are always saying that to me—how can I possibly be a skeptic given what I am? Given how much I know about what’s really out there, how can I turn my nose up at any half-baked belief that crosses my desk? Really, it’s easy, because so many of them are half-baked. They’re formulated by people who don’t know what they’re talking about, or by people trying to con other people and make a few bucks. The fact that some of this is real makes it even more important to be on our guard, to be that much more skeptical, so we can separate truth and fiction. Blind faith is still blind, and I try not to be.”

“Houdini,” Professor Olafson said. I’d almost forgotten about him, despite his occasional commentary.

“Houdini?”

“Harry Houdini. He’s a good example of what you’re talking about,” he said. “He was famous for debunking spiritualists, for proving that a lot of the old table-rapping séance routines were sleight-of-hand magic tricks. What many people forget is that he really wanted to believe. He was searching for someone who could help him communicate with his dead mother. Lots of spiritualists tried to convince him that they’d contacted his mother, but he debunked every one of them. The fakery didn’t infuriate him so much as the way the fakers preyed on people’s faith, their willingness to believe.”

“Then he may be one of my heroes. Thanks for that tidbit.”

“Another tidbit you might like: He vowed that after he died, he would try to send a message back to the living, if such a thing was possible.”

I loved that little chill I got when I heard a story like this. “Has he? Has anyone gotten a message?”

“No—and lots of people have tried.”

“Okay, let’s file that one away for future projects. Once again, thank you for joining us this evening, Professor Olafson.”

“It was definitely interesting.”

So was his tone of voice. I couldn’t tell if he loved it or hated it. Another question to file away.

Matt and I wrapped up the show. I sat back, listened to the credits ramble on, with my recorded wolf howl in the background. Soon I’d have to go back outside, back to the real world, and back to my own little curse, which I didn’t have any trouble believing in.

* * *

New Moon stayed open late on Friday nights, just for me.

Restaurant reviews describe New Moon as a funky downtown watering hole that features live music on occasion, plays host to an interesting mix of people, and has a menu with more meat items than one might expect in this health-conscious day and age. All in all, thumbs-up. What the reviews don’t say is that it’s a haven, neutral territory for denizens of the supernatural underworld, mostly lycanthropes. As the place’s co-owner, that’s what I set it up to be. I figured if we could spend more time relating to each other as people, we’d spend less time duking it out in our animal guises. So far, it seemed to be working.

The bartender turned the radio on and piped in the show Friday nights. When I walked through the door, the few late-night barflies and wait staff cheered. I blushed. Part of me would never get used to this.

I waved at the compliments and well-wishes and went to the table where Ben sat, folding away his laptop and smiling at my approach. Ben: my mate, the alpha male of my pack. My husband. I was still getting used to the ring on my finger.

Though Ben could pull off clean-cut and intimidatingly stylish when the situation required it, most of the time he personified a guy version of shabby chic. He was slim, fit, on the rough side of handsome. His light brown hair was always in need of a trim. He could usually be found in a button-up shirt sans tie, sleeves rolled up, and a pair of comfortably worn khakis. If you went back in time to a year ago and told me I’d be married to this guy, I’d have laughed in your face. He’d been my lawyer. I only ever saw him when I had problems, and he scowled a lot when I did.

Then he landed on my front door with werewolf bites on his shoulder and arm. I took care of him, nursed him through his first full moon when he shifted for the first time and became a full- fledged werewolf. I’d comforted him. That was a euphemism. It had seemed the most natural thing in the world to fall into bed with him. Or so my Wolf side thought.

Over the months, my human side had come to depend on having him in my life. Love had sneaked up on us rather than bursting upon us like cannons and fireworks.

Sliding into the seat next to him, I continued the motion until I was leaning against him, falling into his arms, then almost pushing him out of the seat. Our lips met. This kiss was long, warm, tension-melting. This was the way to end a day.

When we drew apart—just enough to see each other, our hands still touching—I asked, “So, how was it?” The show, I meant. Everyone knew what I meant when I asked that.

He smirked. “I love how you work out your personal issues on the air. It must be like getting paid to go through therapy.”

I sat back and wrinkled my brow. “Is that what it sounds like? Really?”

“Maybe only to me,” he said. “So, are you okay? Everything’s all right?”

“I’m fine. Nothing’s happened. I still haven’t learned anything new.”

“What’s Rick been doing?”

“Sitting on rooftops being gargoyle-y. He says he can see ‘patterns.’” I gave the word quotes with my fingers.

“He’s just saying that to make himself look cool,” Ben said. I kind of agreed with him.

“Is there anything else we ought to be doing?” I asked.

“The restraining order against our friend Nick and the Band is filed. There’s not much more we can do until something happens. Maybe this—this emotional harassment—is all there is.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Nick, a were-tiger, was the leader of the Band of Tiamat. He also led an animal and magic act in Las Vegas—only the animals were all feline lycanthropes. The whole act was a front for the Tiamat cult, and when they weren’t using the Babylonian-themed stage and sets in their show, they were using them to conduct sacrifices. Their preferred victims? Werewolves. Dogs and cats, at it again. Nick himself was certainly hot and sexy enough to front a Vegas show. He was also an evil son of a bitch. I got chills just thinking about him.