KITTY FREED up her schedule the very next day and rode with Cormac down to Manitou Springs. She was uncharacteristically quiet during the trip, spending most of the time fidgeting, picking at her fingernails. Remembering, he expected. The disaster that had killed Amy Scanlon hadn’t been all that long ago. Kitty’s gaze had turned inward.
He found parking a block away and led her to the souvenir shop’s front.
“This is it, huh?” she said, looking up at the MANITOU WISHING WELL sign overhead, arms crossed. Her hair was up in a sloppy ponytail, fringes of it hanging down around her ears and tanned cheeks. “Seems so ordinary. You say it’s a couple of witchy types?”
“Something like that. Ready for this?”
She sighed. “Yeah.”
A bell on the door rattled as they went inside. He watched her reaction—her nose flared, taking in scents, and she tilted her head and examined the space. Lupine movements, slightly odd if he hadn’t been used to them by now.
“I suddenly want to buy everyone I know a T-shirt,” she murmured, looking around at the collection, Colorado flags on pastels, lots of pictures of deer and columbine blooms. She gave a wry smile to one that showed a romanticized picture of a howling wolf, along with the words COLORFUL COLORADO. Wild wolves hadn’t lived in the state for decades.
“I think they’ve got a spell on the place for that,” he said.
Her brow furrowed. “Really? Nice.”
The cat, Esther, was sitting on the glass counter again. When it saw Kitty, it arched its back, hissed loud enough to echo, then spun and dashed away. Kitty stared after it, blinking.
“Was that a cat? A hairless cat?” she said. “A hairless cat that evidently hates me?”
“She’s a good judge of character,” Frida said, emerging from the back room. She leaned both hands on the glass and nodded at him confrontationally. “You’re a man with two auras and now you bring me a werewolf?”
Cormac hadn’t remembered mentioning that about Kitty; of course, Frida could just see it.
“Hi,” Kitty said, waving a hand. “Nice to meet you, too.”
“Judi wanted to talk to her,” Cormac said, then stepped out of the way.
“Who is it?” Judi asked, coming from the back of the store, feather duster in hand. “Wait a minute, I recognize you—aren’t you the werewolf who shape-shifted on TV?”
Kitty turned to him. “See? We already know what the first line of my obituary is going to say.”
He wished she wouldn’t joke about obituaries.
When she looked back at the women, her smile was bright and amiable. The radio personality coming to the fore, a useful mask for situations like this. “I’m Kitty Norville. Cormac said you wanted to talk to me about Amy.”
Both women seemed to deflate. Like they hadn’t believed he would really bring Kitty to talk to them. She was the eyewitness, tangible proof that Judi’s niece was well and truly gone.
“I’ll go make some tea,” Frida said softly. She glanced at Kitty, and her gaze fell. Frida squeezed Judi’s hand as she passed by.
“We have some chairs, if you’d like to sit down.” Judi led them toward the back of the shop, near the crystals and bookshelves, where she arranged a couple of folding chairs that had been tucked to the side. Kitty took the offered seat, and Judi sat across from her, but not too close—enough to read her face, not close enough to touch.
Cormac shook his head at a third chair and remained standing nearby, listening in but looking elsewhere. Wasn’t his conversation, but he felt like he was standing guard.
Judi started: “He says you were with Amy when she died.” Not a question, almost an accusation.
Kitty’
s smile was comforting, sad. “Not exactly. She was still alive when I left her. But we were in a cave, part of an old defunct mine up near Leadville. It collapsed while she was still inside. She … she knew she wasn’t going to make it.”
Kitty was very calm during this explanation. Cormac and Ben had arrived on the scene shortly after the cave-in—the noise of it, the rumble of a minor earthquake shuddering along the hillside, had drawn them to the location. She’d texted Ben, left a message with a GPS tag he’d been able to track, but the mine collapse had guided them the last hundred yards. Kitty had been missing for a week, and she’d looked like the survivor of some horror movie, coated with grime, torn clothes hanging off her, a wild look in her eyes. A starved wolf breaking out of a trap.
Hard to believe this was the same person. He’d been holding a rifle at the time, and a small corner of his mind had wondered if he’d have to shoot at her. When Ben arrived, she’d fallen into his arms, one of those beautiful scenes of reunion and love. He’d stepped aside, like usual.
Frida arrived with mugs of tea, gave one to Judi first, and Kitty accepted the next. She didn’t offer one to Cormac, and that was fine.
“She caused the cave-in. I don’t know exactly everything that happened, but there was a lot of magic involved. She and the people she was with were working a very powerful ritual. I was there because they kidnapped me, they needed a werewolf queen in order to work the spell—” She shook her head, as if she still hadn’t made sense of it. “They opened a door, and a demon stepped through. Amy tried to banish it, but couldn’t, so she brought down the cave to close the doorway on the thing. She didn’t make it out, but two of us did. She saved our lives.”