Pulling all this together, at least part of the medical community was admitting to the existence of people like me. I started the show by laying out all this information. Then I opened the line for calls.
“It’s a government conspiracy . . .”
“. . . because the Senate is run by bloodsucking fiends!”
“Which doesn’t in fact mean they’re vampires, but still . . .”
“So when is the NIH going to go public . . .”
“. . . medical schools running secret programs . . .”
“Is the public really ready for . . .”
“. . . a more enlightened time, surely we wouldn’t be hunted down like animals . . .”
“Would lycanthropy victims be included in the Americans with Disabilities Act?”
My time slot flew by. The week after that, my callers and I speculated about which historical figures had been secret vampires or werewolves. My favorite, suggested by an intrepid caller: General William T. Sherman was a werewolf. I looked him up, and seeing his photo, I could believe it. All the other Civil War generals were straitlaced, with buttoned collars and trimmed beards, but Sherman had an open collar, scruffy hair, five-o’clock shadow, and a screw-you expression. Oh yeah. The week after that I handled a half-dozen calls on how to tell your family you were a vampire or a werewolf. I didn’t have any good answers on that one—I hadn’t told my family. Being a radio DJ was already a little too weird for them.
And so on. I’d been doing the show for two months when Ozzie called me at home.
“Kitty, you gotta get down here.”
“Why?”
“Just get down here.”
I pondered a half-dozen nightmare scenarios. I was being sued for something I’d said on the air. The Baptist Church had announced a boycott. Well, that could be a good thing. Free publicity and all. Or someone had gone and got themselves or someone else killed because of the show.
It took half an hour to get there, riding the bus. I hadn’t showered and was feeling grouchy. Whatever it was Ozzie was going to throw at me, I just wanted to get it over with.
The door to his office was open. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket and slouched. “Ozzie?”
He didn’t look up from the mountains of paper, books, and newspapers spread over his desk. A radio in the corner was tuned to KNOB. A news broadcast mumbled at low volume. “Come in, shut the door.”
I did. “What’s wrong?”
He looked up. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. Here, take a look at this.” He offered a packet of papers.
The pages were dense with print and legalese. These were contracts. I only caught one word before my eyes fogged over.
Syndication.
When I looked at Ozzie again, his hands were folded on the desk and he was grinning. That was a pretty big canary he’d just eaten. “What do you think? I’ve had calls from a dozen stations wanting to run your show. I’ll sign on as producer. You’ll get a raise for every new market we pick up. Are you in?”
This was big. This was going national, at least on a limited scale. I tried to read the proposal. L.A. They wanted me in L.A.? This was . . . unbelievable. I sat against the table and started giggling. Wow. Wow wow wow wow. There was no way I could do this. That would require responsibility, commitment—things I’d shied away from like the plague since . . . since I’d started hanging out with people like T.J.
But if I didn’t, someone else would, now that the radio community had gotten the idea. And dammit, this was my baby.
I said, “I’m going to need a website.”
That night I went to T.J.’s place, a shack he rented behind an auto garage out toward Arvada. T.J. didn’t have a regular job. He fixed motorcycles for cash and didn’t sweat the human world most of the time. I came over for supper a couple of times a week. He was an okay cook. More important than his cooking ability, he was able to indulge the appetite for barely cooked steaks.
I’d known T.J. forever, it seemed like. He helped me out when I was new to things, more than anyone else in the local pack. He’d become a friend. He wasn’t a bully—a lot of people used being a werewolf as an excuse for behaving badly. I felt more comfortable around him than just about anyone. I didn’t have to pretend to be human around him.
I found him in the shed outside. He was working on his bike, a fifteen-year-old Yamaha that was his pride and joy and required const
ant nursing. He tossed the wrench into the toolbox and reached to give me a hug, greasy hands and all.