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Finally, she looked at me, really looked at me, with astonished human eyes. I understood, and that surprised her.
“This is why Becky said I should talk to you,” she said. I nodded.
“Jenny, do you mind if I ask how you were infected? How you became a werewolf? You haven’t been one long, have you?”
Slouching miserably in the chair, she looked away. Didn’t say no outright, so I gave her time to collect herself.
Finally she said, “I met him at a club a few months ago. Carl, I mean. He was nice. I liked him, you know? He paid a lot of attention to me. I took him home and all.”
I listened, my brow furrowed in thought. This didn’t sound like Carl. Carl, picking up girls in clubs? And what did Meg have to say about this? I could guess that Meg had lost a lot of points with him during that last fight, the one that drove me out of Denver. She’d made a bid for his position as pack alpha, lost, and then groveled at his feet to beg his forgiveness. He’d given it, but he’d probably lord it over her to the end of time. He could step out on her and she wouldn’t be able to say anything. That was all I could figure.
“We went out a couple more times. And then he told me. He told me what he was. I—I didn’t believe him at first. I know werewolves are real, I saw you on TV that time, read the news stories. But I didn’t think I’d ever actually meet one. I thought it was some crazy new come-on, that he was trying to impress me. I thought maybe he was crazy. But I played along, to see what would happen. I told him if he was really a werewolf he should show me. He wouldn’t, not at first. He just talked about it, a little more each time. He made it sound really cool, really great. Like it made you powerful, and the sex was amazing, that you could smell and see and feel things a human never could. He made it sound like a good thing. And I finally said yeah, okay, I’ll do it. He was so happy when I said yes, I really thought he was in love with me, I really thought he wanted us to be together. I didn’t know about Meg or the pack or anything. After, when he brought me to them, Meg said he’d just wanted a new pup.”
My heart jumped to my throat. I sat back and stared at the ceiling, taking a moment to catch my breath. Jenny was young, blond, waiflike—like I had been when I joined the pack, a naive girl caught by a monster on a mountain trailhead, turned by accident. Carl hadn’t been the one to turn me into this thing, but he’d taken an interest in me after. Kept me under his paw, so to speak. Everyone knew I was his. Apparently, after I left the pack, Carl found a replacement.
I’d kill him. I’d fucking kill him myself the next time I saw him.
Right now, I had to pretend like I was doing the show, on the phone with some poor distraught girl. I wasn’t used to seeing the face in front of me, seeing the tears. I wanted to keep staring at the ceiling. But I didn’t.
“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? There’s absolutely no reason to stay with him. Abuse is still abuse, and just because you’re both werewolves doesn’t justify a damned thing. You don’t have to stand up to him—just get in a car and leave.”
“But I’d just run into the same problem somewhere else. That’s what Carl says, no matter where I go there’ll be other . . . other people like us, and that they’ll kill me. He’ll protect me, he says he will—”
“Carl doesn’t know everything. There are places you can go,” I said. “Places where the other wolves won’t hurt you, where there aren’t wolves at all. I’ll make some calls, I’ll set something up.”
“Kitty, I can’t. I don’t have a car, I don’t have a job, I don’t have any money—”
“Carl supports you, doesn’t he? He said, don’t work. Don’t do anything. I’ll take care of you, I’ll protect you, just do what I say and you’ll have it all.”
Again, she nodded. He’d made that same offer to me. I’d clung to my humanity instead. I’d had the radio station and my show to pull me through, to give me something else to live for. Jenny didn’t have that, obviously.
She almost seemed angry now. “It’s easy for you to tell me to get out. You stood up to him. You and T. J.”
“You never even knew T. J.”
“No. But the others still talk about him, when Carl and Meg aren’t around. They say he’s the only one who ever stood up to him.”
Like he was some kind of fucking folk hero. I wanted to scream at her. We’d failed. T. J. had died, and I’d run like a coward. We were nothing to base a revolution on.
If I’d stayed with Carl, I’d be dead. It was that simple. Carl would have killed me months ago, because I couldn’t have kept rolling over on my back for him. How long before that happened to Jenny?
I made a decision.
“Jenny, if you want to get out, I’ll help you. I’ll find a place for you to go and make sure you get there in one piece. But you have to want it, and you have to figure out what to do next. Before you met Carl, what did you want? Were you going to school, was there a job you liked, anything? If you want to get away from Carl, you need to learn to take care of yourself. You have to get a job, support yourself, learn to control the lycanthropy without him looking out for you. Do you understand?”
She thought for a long moment, staring out the window, letting tears fall, wiping them away with the tissue. Then she shook her head. “But I love him. And I know he loves me, I just know it. He’s so good to me the rest of the time, when he isn’t—” She choked on the rest of the sentence. As well she should.
I couldn’t blame her, no matter how much I wanted to, because I’d been in the same place, once upon a time. What was it about guys like Carl that made girls like us throw ourselves at their feet?
Digging in my things, I found a business card. “Here’s my phone number. Call me, okay? When you decide you’re ready, call me.”
She took the card, clutching it in both hands. She seemed a little dazed, staring at it like she didn’t quite know what it was. When I stood, so did she. I held the door open for her.
“When Carl smells me on you, you’re going to have to come up with a good explanation. And he’d better not find that card.”
She paled a little, and we went out to the parking lot.
“Do you need a ride somewhere?” I asked.
