Kitty's Mix-Tape

Authors

Kitty and the Missed Opportunity

INTRODUCTION BY EMMA BULL

HERE'S HOW I REMEMBER IT: I had the chance to provide a cover quote for Kitty and the Midnight Hour, and I didn’t.

Now I should warn you, I’m not the most reliable narrator. Writers love a good story more than almost anything, and when you ask them about their memories, you should expect narrative structure, not strict adherence to fact. Maybe I did provide a quote. But what’s stuck in my head is that I didn’t realize at the time how much I liked and admired that introduction to Kitty Norville, late-night DJ and talk-show host, determined pursuer of truth, and reluctant celebrity werewolf.

I’d been a DJ at my college radio station. Kitty’s late-night life in front of a microphone, solitary but connected to a host of people she can’t see, felt familiar. That familiarity vouched for the story; if that part was right, it suggested the rest of Kitty’s world was authentic, too. Even the werewolves.

And what werewolves! They were convincingly both human and lupine, with the instincts of each species, and a mixed social structure that made sense for people who had to live with ordinary humans but keep their difference secret.

If that makes you think of metaphoric possibilities, I’m not going to warn you off. But you should understand that writers don’t always know when we’re crafting metaphors. Sometimes we discover them as readers do: when we read the finished work and see the subtext, the supporting mesh, of the story we’ve told. Even if we’ve intended a deeper, parallel meaning in a work of fiction, readers may find a different metaphor in the tale, one that hits closer to their lives and experience.

Fantasy is one of the best mediums for telling two stories (if not more!) at once. They layer on one another: reality and make-believe, life and myth, perception and fact. Unternehmen Werwolf, on its face, is the story of a young soldier in World War II tasked with a mission we can’t sympathize with. But the story asks: Can we look past the mission to see the man? Kitty Learns the Ropes puts Kitty in a tough place between her two communities, human and werewolf. But underneath the action, it asks a question just as tough: Is it ever right to out someone, to take away their control of what the world knows of them?

Speaking of communities, the characters in these stories (I think of them as Kitty and the friends she hasn’t met yet) don’t move through life alone—like wolves, they need their pack to survive, whether they know it or not. Each story is as much about a community as about individuals, and characters succeed because of the connections they make and the bonds they form with others. The lone hero who triumphs on solo strength, knowledge, and determination? That character may be a regular in adventure fiction, but in the world where we live, that’s more commonly the person whose neighbors are quoted as saying, They were quiet. Kept to themselves. We had no idea all those bodies were in the basement. That focus on connection and community is another thing that makes these stories feel real, as if they’re happening right around the corner.

After I finished Kitty and the Midnight Hour, I found myself telling people, "There’s this book about a woman who’s a DJ on nighttime radio, and she’s secretly a werewolf, and there are more werewolves, and some vampires, but they’re not those sorts of werewolves and vampires—Anyway, you should read it."

An audio version of a cover quote, maybe? Definitely an act of community-building.

The kind folks at Tachyon have allowed me to remedy my original lapse. But now it takes a whole introduction to recommend Carrie Vaughn’s work, because after a series of novels and this delicious collection of short stories, there’s so much more to say. If you aren’t already part of the community—the family—that knows and loves Vaughn’s real and fantastic universe, think of this volume as its Welcome Wagon, arrived on your doorstep with a plate of brownies and an intriguing air of mystery. Go ahead. Invite it in.

Emma Bull

March 2020

Kitty Walks On By, Calls Your Name

BEN PARKED, and we sat in the car for what seemed like a very long time, not saying anything, staring grimly ahead as if we were about to go into battle.

It’s not too late to back out of this, he said finally. There’s nothing in the universe that says you have to go to your high school class reunion.

Ten years. With everything that had happened to me over the last ten years, it seemed like a century ought to have passed. On the other hand, I could still remember what it felt like to walk down those stinky school halls and worry about grades and graduation and the rest of it. Ben was right, I didn’t need to do this, I didn’t need to be here, and I certainly didn’t need to drag him along.

He was wearing a suit and tie, his courtroom best, a fresh shave and brushed hair, all the polish and not his meeting-clients-at-the-county-jail-at-two-in-the-morning scruff, which meant he was taking this seriously. I was in a very mature cocktail dress, black with a red belt, in a style that showed off my figure. My blond hair was up, and I’d put on makeup. Retro elegance. Looking in the mirror before we’d left home made me think I ought to dress up more often.

Did I really want to do this? We could start the car back up and turn around right now.

I wouldn’t even have known the reunion was happening except Sadie Martinez sent me an email. She’d reached out and practically begged me—she didn’t want to be here alone. Sadie and I had been best friends, study partners, double dating to prom, all of it. And I hadn’t talked to her since junior year of college because I hadn’t talked to anyone since junior year of college. The year I’d been attacked by a werewolf and transformed into something that didn’t normally think much about high school class reunions.

My life fell into two halves: before I was turned into a werewolf and after. High school was before. It had happened to someone else. Now, I’d walk through those hotel ballroom doors and wouldn’t know anyone, and the ones I did know would be angry that I’d stopped talking to them. If they didn’t run screaming because I was a monster. Because I wasn’t just a werewolf. I hosted a talk-radio advice show on the supernatural and had been caught shape-shifting on national television. I was a famous werewolf.

Part of why we wanted to turn around was the off chance someone might have brought a gun with silver bullets, thinking they’d be doing the world a favor. But I felt like I owed it to Sadie, after all the years I’d dropped out of sight.

Did you go to your high school reunion? I asked. Ben was enough older than me that his ten-year reunion had happened before I met him a few years ago.

Oh hell no, he said. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

You weren’t even a little bit curious about what happened to people?

Nope. He grinned. My dad was in prison by then, I had no interest in explaining all that to that crowd.

I was suddenly daunted. I was going to have to explain the werewolf thing over and over again. Maybe I don’t want to do this, I murmured.

Okay, Ben said. Just to get it out in the open, why are we doing this?

Because I’m super curious and this is the kind of thing that only happens once, and if I miss it I’ll always wonder.

All good reasons. Right. Let’s go. We can always ditch if things go sidewise.

But they’re not going to go sidewise. It’s a high school reunion, what could possibly go wrong?

He gave me a scowling look. Don’t ever ask what could go wrong, I knew that lesson.

We left the warm, late-evening June air and entered the excessive air-conditioning of the hotel ballroom lobby. A few people, also in suits and cocktail hour finery, mingled, talking in groups. There was nervous laughter. I didn’t recognize anyone, not right away. I looked for Sadie with a sudden spike of fear that I wouldn’t recognize her either.

Ben guided me toward a table where a couple of unassuming soccer-mom types were standing guard over rows of name-tag stickers. They seemed familiar—one was brunette, average build, and might have been a cheerleader. The other tanned, dark-haired. Also a cheerleader? Maybe we’d had algebra together?

We found our stickers, and the women’s smiles remained relentlessly cheerful—maybe they didn’t recognize me either. This had been a pretty big high school. So, now what? Just keep wandering around until I recognized someone?

This wasn’t how high school reunions looked in the movies, where the bitchy popular girls came back as stuck-up suburban housewives, the jocks were out-of-shape used car salesman, the oppressed nerds were billionaire tech geniuses, and the people who were most unhappy had found their way while the people who were bullies got their comeuppance. High school reunion: a chance to right old wrongs and take revenge on the cool kids.

But that wasn’t how this looked at all. Everyone was scanning faces, walking past each other like we were at some kind of statue gallery, searching for signs of the people we had been years ago. Searching for familiarity. So many of the men—I had to shave twenty pounds off them before they looked familiar, and it wasn’t that they had gotten fat, but that they filled out. They weren’t scrawny boys anymore. Names hovered on the tip of my tongue. I should have looked in the yearbook for a refresher before coming here. We were like deer in the headlights, amazed that any of us had survived at all. Because enough time had passed to make us realize that nobody in high school thought they were cool, they just acted out on their worst insecurities and struggled to get through in one piece.

High school felt so big while we were living it, but the percentage of our lives those years represented got smaller and smaller as time went on. What was an entire quarter of our lives ten years ago was now, what, fourteen percent? And in ten more years it would be ten percent. And the beat goes on.

You look like you’re about to start crying, Ben said.

I think I’m sad, I said.

Let’s go find you a glass of wine—

Kitty! I turned to the call, coming from down the foyer. A woman rushed toward me. She had honey-brown hair in a bob, and was stout and confident, in a cute black dress and loud earrings. Sadie hadn’t changed a bit. Except neither one of us had the confidence and poise for slinky cocktail dresses back in high school. Now look at us, like we were grown-ups or something.

She ran up to me. In wolf language, this—a fellow predator coming at me with arms outstretched—was an attack. But I was a civilized werewolf and she was a friend, and I was just so happy that I recognized her, and she knew me. And this right here made me glad I came. I reached for and accepted the enthusiastic hug. A little of the tension I’d been feeling slipped away.

I’ve missed you! she said into my hair, holding tight.

I’m sorry I lost touch, I murmured. You look really good!

So do you. We separated and beamed at each other in admiration.

How are you? What have you been doing?

We have so much to talk about! She glanced appraisingly at Ben. And you are . . .

Sadie, this is Ben. I presented them to each other.

Nice to meet you, Ben said neutrally.

Hm, she purred.

Do you want to go get a glass of wine or something?

Oh God yes. We hooked arms and stalked into the ballroom. Ben followed, amused.

After acquiring wine and staking out territory at one of the white-cloth-draped tables, we caught up. Sadie had gone to school at Northwestern, then law school, returned to Denver to work for the legal department of an environmental non-profit, which was exactly the kind of thing she always said she’d do, if maybe not exactly the way she thought. She’d had dreams of riding Greenpeace Zodiacs to save whales, which I was just as glad she never did. This was safer. She and Ben instantly bonded over law-school anecdotes and seemed relieved that their areas of expertise were so far apart they’d never had to meet professionally.

As for me . . . I didn’t have to explain much because Sadie said she listened to my show sometimes. As soon as I’d gotten a website with a contact form she’d thought about sending me a note. The reunion finally prompted her to do it.

I couldn’t explain why I hadn’t ever reached out to her. I . . . had a rough couple of years there. And then I figured you’d be too angry to want to hear from me. It sounded stupid now, and her frown of reprimand told me that yes, it was stupid.

So, she said, idly running a purple-painted nail around the base of her wineglass. You talk to Jesse at all?

Jesse Kramer. Another set of memories crashed over me. Part of the old life, again. I shook my head. I haven’t talked to him since graduation.

Ah, she said suggestively.

Ben caught the tone. And who is Jesse?

Just a guy, I said, pretty sure I was blushing. I didn’t want to talk about this. Ben arced a brow.

Her boyfriend senior year.

Oh really? Ben’s brows went up. Any chance I’ll get to meet this guy?

I doubt it, I said quickly. He moved away right after graduation.

Sadie leaned in. They broke up right in the middle of prom, it was amazing.

"You’ve never told me any of this," Ben said admiringly.

Honestly, I hadn’t thought much about it until now. It hadn’t been very relevant to the post-werewolf life.

He won’t come to this, I said, almost pleading with Sadie to agree with me. She shrugged expansively.

So, Sadie, you have any embarrassing pictures of Kitty I should know about? Ben asked.

I blanched. We don’t really need to go looking—

She grinned. They’ve got some old yearbooks at the front table if we want to go check.

The place filled up, and I recognized more and more people, and somehow we all looked completely different than we had, and we hadn’t changed a bit, both at the same time.

Hi, Kitty? An upbeat woman with her dark hair in a ponytail, wearing a silky 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. We did the one-minute update of the last ten years of our lives, and I repeated the same exchange with a dozen other people. Wolf slowly settled; these weren’t strangers, we weren’t in danger, even though this definitely didn’t feel like our territory. It helped that Ben was looking out for us. He patiently let himself be introduced over and over. This is my husband, Ben. And what do you do, Ben? Lawyer, criminal defense. Yeah, that got a couple of stares. And a raised eyebrow when one of the old marching band crowd asked him for a business card.

You were on yearbook? Ben asked, incredulous.

Yup.

I had no idea. I’m learning all kinds of things about you. I suppose you were all over spirit week and went to all the football games?

I was practically normal, back in the day.

Before, he said.

Yeah, before.

He squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek.

Sadie? A tough-looking guy with an expensive-looking haircut and dark jacket came up to our table, and Sadie’s eyes widened. "Trevor?"

Trevor Ames? He’d changed. He hadn’t just put on that filling-out weight that everyone else had, he’d put on muscle, and moved with a practiced efficiency. He was a fighter. Back in school he’d been one of our crowd, Sadie and Jesse and me and the rest of us who weren’t cool enough to be in the cool crowd but weren’t goth or jocks or nerds enough to be in any other clique so we just made our own. He’d joined the army right after graduation, and was another one I’d completely lost track of when I lost track of everybody.

He’s got a gun under that jacket, Ben whispered in my ear.

I looked sharply at him. Silver bullets?

Can’t tell.

He smiled wryly as Sadie insisted on hugging him. They separated, then he looked right at me, a challenging stare, and his smile thinned.

Kitty. You really are a werewolf.

You saw the YouTube video, just like everyone else, I said drily.

He looked me up and down. I could just tell. He looked Ben up and down the same way, meaning he’d spotted both of us. We usually didn’t tell people about Ben being a werewolf too.

You could spot a werewolf just by looking, if you knew what to look for. This meant Trevor knew what to look for. And how, exactly?

That a problem? I asked.

No, he said. No, it isn’t.

I wondered . . . what would make it a problem?

This is making me so happy, Sadie said, beaming. All of us together again—

Do you know if Jesse’s coming? Trevor asked me.

I don’t, I said. I kind of lost touch with everybody.

I figured if anyone knew . . . He trailed off and shrugged.

Ben said brightly, I really want to meet Jesse. I hope he shows up.

He’s not going to show up, I said.

The guy who’d been class president went to a podium at the front of the room and tapped on the microphone, which was indeed on and screeched in disapproval. I winced—what had that poor mic ever done to him? He gave a speech about how happy he was, how great it was to see everyone, and how happy he was again, and so on. Then he announced that there were prizes. Prizes? Shouldn’t we all get a prize just for being here?

Former class president went down the list. Who had traveled the farthest to be here? Someone had come from Amsterdam, and why would anyone leave Amsterdam to come back to freaking Aurora, Colorado? Who had the most kids—four. Well, someone had been busy. The prizes were gift certificates to local restaurants for the most part, which was kind of ironic for the guy who’d come from Amsterdam. A few more categories followed, and I started to tune them out.

And who 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 more interesting than mine, which hardly seemed like a job most of the time. Maybe I should have brought my own mic and recorder and done an episode of the show from here. People were clapping. Everyone was looking at me. I had to get up. Probably a good thing I hadn’t had a second glass of wine yet.

I managed to get to the podium, collected my gift certificate, and murmured a polite thank you into the microphone before fleeing. They might have expected more, considering my job involved talking into a microphone. But no one was paying me for this, and nobody stared at me in radio. One of the other members of the reunion committee cornered me before I could get back to my territory. I didn’t remember ever knowing her.

It really was no contest about the job thing, she said. You seem to meet so many interesting people on your show!

I suppose 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’d consulted for the army, trying to help werewolf veterans returning from Afghanistan. Maybe I deserved that fifty dollars for Mario’s Italian Bistro.

I tried to escape. She kept talking at me. So what’s it like, being a werewolf?

I honestly didn’t know how to answer that. It was strange. It was personal. It was too big. It’s hard to explain.

Thoughtfully, she put a finger on her chin and her gaze went unfocused. I suppose a condition like that, it must be a little like fibromyalgia, she said.

I stared. It’s nothing like—yeah, sure, it’s a little like that. Because that was easier than trying to explain. If you’re really curious you could tune into the show sometime.

Oh, of course, I’ll be sure to do that!

She was never going to listen to my show.

Back at our table, Ben offered me a fresh glass of wine and I gratefully drank it down.

What’d you get, what’d you get? Ben asked.

Food.

Hm, the night almost pays for itself. He cheered my wine with his glass of water.

With the speeches over, the dancing began. The DJ started the first set with Smash Mouth’s All Star. So, it was going to be like that, was it?

So, Ben asked. Why’d you break up with this Jesse guy?

I narrowed my gaze. Is this going to be a problem, you being jealous of a guy I dated ten years ago?

Just curious.

He was going away to Boston for college. He made noises about trying to stay together, but . . . it was just noise. We’d have been setting ourselves up to fail.

It might have worked out.

And if it had, we wouldn’t be here, I said.

If Jesse and I had managed to stick together and make it work . . . my life would be so completely different I had trouble fathoming it. For one thing, I wouldn’t be a werewolf. Which sounded good until I also realized it meant I wouldn’t have my radio show, and I wouldn’t have Ben.

I tried to avoid regretting pretty much anything. Regret had no boundaries once it started.

Trevor was standing a little apart from the table, watching the crowd, noting every face, turning to the doorways every time someone entered or left.

You look like a hunter on the prowl, I said.

He chuckled. Yeah, I suppose you’d know all about that.

What’s your story? You joined the army, and then . . .

He shrugged. Here and there, this and that. It’s not that interesting.

Not like me, I said, waving the envelope I’d won for having the most interesting job. Trevor laughed.

Next up on the set list: Tubthumping. That got a couple of people out on the dance floor for some half-hearted bouncing.

Ben said preemptively, I’m not dancing, that’s my line in the sand.

I will not ask you to dance, I promise, I said.

Suddenly, his chin tipped up, his nose flaring. His brow furrowed, and a tension tightened his shoulders. An intrusive smell caught his attention. I took a breath to find the scent he’d spotted. A body moving into the ballroom. Chilled, corpse-like but not rotting, cold with death but still alive. A vampire.

We both turned to the man who had just entered the ballroom. Svelte, wearing a dark shirt and gray slacks, casual and stylish, his hair slicked back. Everyone was eyeing him. He looked good. Of course he did, it was how vampires attracted prey. I gasped and slapped my hand over my mouth, astonished, because it finally clicked and I recognized him.

Jesse Kramer, my high-school sweetheart, broke-up-at-prom-drama ex-boyfriend, was a vampire.

Across the room, he met my gaze. And I let him, and I think Sarah McLachlan came up on the set list right that moment. For just a moment, he looked into my eyes with his vampiric, mesmerizing stare, and I was frozen—

Oh my God, he’s actually here, Sadie exclaimed.

I shut my eyes and shook my head to clear it. Had Jesse actually tried his vampiric hypnotism on me? The bastard . . .

There he is, Trevor murmured and stalked toward him. Jesse spotted him. His eyes widened, and he turned and walked out.

Wait a minute— I ran after Trevor.

What— Sadie ran after me. I assumed Ben followed as well.

In a foot race between a vampire and a mortal human, I’d put money on the vampire every time. Trevor must have known he couldn’t win a straight-up race, so in the ballroom lobby he veered to a side door while Jesse charged out the front. I kept after Jesse.

Jesse, get back here, you jerk! I shouted.

This was almost exactly what had happened at senior prom, which made me even more furious. You cannot escape the past, you can only repeat it. I pounded out the doors to the lighted nighttime parking lot and caught him just about to round the corner of the building. Wolf loved this. This was a chase. We had him in our sights. Next was the pounce, the grabbing him by the throat, the ripping—

No. I just wanted to talk.

Jesse! I yelled, and it must have come out partly like a growl, because he pulled up short. Slowly, he turned around.

Jesse couldn’t have been a vampire for more than a couple of years—he looked to be in his mid-twenties. Now, if this had been the twentieth reunion, there’d have been questions about how well preserved he appeared.

Still, I had a lot of questions.

Hey, Kitty. He scuffed his foot, tried to smile.

I had to take a moment to slow my breathing down so I didn’t, like, freak out and sprout fur. A reunion to remember.

What . . . what is this? I gestured vaguely at him, his condition, unable to formulate a concise question to take it all in. Although this is pretty much the first time I’ve met a vampire and known exactly how old he is.

Good to see you, too, he said, chuckling.

That