"Estelle. Won't you return to me? You can regain what you have lost. I'll even forgive this betrayal." A calm, reasonable voice echoed like it came from a TV in the next room. It sounded like a high-school social studies teacher explaining a lurid rite-of-passage ritual as if it were a recipe for mashed potatoes. A smooth voice, comforting, chilling. This voice spoke truth. Even over the phone, it was persuasive.

Elijah Smith, in his first public appearance.

"What are you?" Estelle said, as loud as she'd yet spoken, but the words were still muffled, filled with tears. "What are you really?"

"Oh, Estelle. Is it so hard for you to believe? Your struggle is most difficult of all. The ones who hate themselves, their monsters—their belief comes easy. But you, those like you—you love the monsters you have become, and that love is what you fear and hate. Your belief comes with great difficulty, because you don't really want to believe."

I sat down so heavily my chair rolled back a foot. The words tingled on my skin. He might have been talking to me, and he might have been right: I didn't believe in a cure. Was it because I didn't want to?

"A cure is supposed to be forever! Why can't I leave you?"

"Because I would hate to lose you. I love all my people. I need you, Estelle."

What was it Arturo had said: She is part of me. If she is destroyed, part of me is destroyed as well. Could Elijah Smith be some sort of vampire feeding on need, on his followers' powers?

If only I could get him to pick up the phone.

Yet again, I called Cormac.

"Yeah?"

"Has it been five minutes? At least keep the line open so I know what's happening."

"Jesus, Norville. Hang on. There's an SUV parked here. Three guys are standing guard in front of the building. I don't see weapons. They might be lycanthropes. They've got that animal pacing thing going, you know? Arturo's limo is parked around the corner. Lights off. Wait, here he comes. He's trying to get in. I gotta go." I heard the safety on a gun click, then rapid footsteps.

I hated this. Everything was happening off my stage. I was blind and ignorant. For the first time, I hated the safety and anonymity of my studio.

Then Cormac said, "Don't move. These are loaded with silver."

"You!" That was Arturo. "Why on earth—"

"It's Norville's idea. Get your girl and get out of here before I change my mind. You, step aside. Let him through."

I had two lines open on a conference call. Two feeds of information culled from static and noise, all of it broadcasting. Outside, nothing. Cormac must have had something big trained on Smith's goons, because I didn't hear a grumble from them.

Then, from inside—

"Estelle? Time to come home. Walk with me." This voice was edgy, alluring. Arturo.

"Estelle—," Smith said.

"No. No no no!" Estelle's denial became shrill.

"Estelle." Two voices, ice and fire, equally compelling.

"Estelle, pick up the phone! Pick up the phone and talk to me, dammit!" I shouted futilely.

I wished I could talk to her. What would my voice do to the mix? What could I possibly say to her except: Ignore them! Ignore us all! Follow what heart you have left, if any, and leave them.

She gave one more scream, different from the previous shrill scream of fear. This was defiant. Final. There was a crash. Something broke, maybe a set of shelves falling to the floor.

A pause grew, as painful and definitive as a blank page. Then, "This is your fault," said Arturo, his voice rigid with anger. "You will pay."

"You are as much to blame," said Elijah Smith. "She killed herself. Anyone would agree with me. Her own hands are wrapped around that stake."

For a moment, I could feel the blood vessels in my ears, my lips, my cheeks. I felt hot enough to explode.

I could piece together the bits of sound I'd heard and guess what had happened. A piece of split wooden shelf, maybe a broken broom handle. Then it was just a matter of aiming, falling on top of it.

Goddamn it. My show had never gotten anyone killed before.

Arturo said, "What are you?"

"If you come to me as a supplicant, I will answer all your questions."

"How dare you—"

"Everyone get out before I start shooting." That was Cormac, showing admirable restraint.

Quick, angry footsteps left the room, growing distant. Calm, slow footsteps followed. Then, nothing.

Cormac's voice burst through my silence, in stereo, coming through both lines now.

"Norville? Are you there? Talk to me, Norville."

My hands dug into the edge of the table. The plastic laminate surface cracked; the sound of it startled me. When I looked, my fingers were thickening, claws growing. I hadn't even felt it. My arms were so tense, my hands gripping the table so hard, I hadn't felt the shift start.

I pushed away from the chair and shook my hands, then crossed my arms, pressing my fists under my elbows. Human now. Stay human, just a little longer.

"Norville!"

"Yes. I'm here."

"Did you get all that?"

"Yes. I got it all."

I hadn't even said thank you to her. Thanks for the interview. I knew better than anyone how much courage it sometimes took just to open your mouth and talk.

"There's a body here. A girl. It's already going to dust. You know how they do."

"I should have done more for her."

"You did what you could."

A new sound in the background: police sirens.

Without a closing word, Cormac hung up, and I heard silence. Silence inside, silence out.

Silence on the radio meant death.

Matt said, "Kitty? Time's up. You can go thirty over if I cut out the public service announcements."

I gave a painful, silent chuckle. Public service, my ass. I sat here every week pretending I was helping people, but when it came to really helping someone—

I took a deep breath. I'd never left a show unfinished. All I had to do was open my mouth and talk. "Kitty here, trying to wrap up. Estelle found her last cure. It's not one I recommend.

"Vampires don't talk about their weaknesses as weaknesses. They talk about the price. Their vulnerability to sunlight, wooden stakes, and crosses—it's the price they pay for their beauty, their immortality. The thing about prices, some people always seem willing to pay, no matter how high. And some people are always trying to get out of paying at all. Thanks to Estelle, you now know what Elijah Smith and his Church offer, and you know the price. At least I could do that much for her. As little as it is. Until next week, this is Kitty Norville, Voice of the Night."

The police couldn't go after Smith for anything. There wasn't a body. The only crime they had evidence of was breaking and entering at the convenience store, and the suspect, Estelle, was gone. The Church caravan had pulled up stakes and left town by the next morning. If I hadn't had the recording of the show proving otherwise, I could have believed that none of it had happened. Nothing had changed.

The next day, another mauling death downtown, the fourth this year, made the front page of the newspaper. A sidebar article detailing the police investigation included an interview with Hardin's colleague, Detective Salazar, who happened to mention that one of the detectives on the case had consulted with Kitty Norville, the freaky talk show host. Did that mean the police were seriously considering a supernatural element to these deaths? Were they part of some ritualistic serial killing? Or did they think a werewolf was on the loose downtown? The police made no official comment at this time. That didn't stop the newspaper from speculating. Wildly. The press was calling him "Jack Junior," as in Jack the Ripper.

Sheer, pigheaded determination got me through the day. Putting one foot in front of the other, thinking about things one step at a time, and not considering the big picture. The life-and-death questions. I stopped answering my phone altogether, letting voice mail screen calls. At least the CDC/CIA/FDA government spook didn't leave any messages.