Kitty Goes to War Read Free

value.But it also made them explain themselves. Made them delve, and often exposed more information.
    Frustrated, he said, “If he was at any one of those locations it would be a coincidence but not noteworthy. But the fact that he was at all of them? Right around the time of some of the most destructive storms in modern history? And doesn’t it make you wonder about the storms
before
modern history? That maybe Harold Franklin is just the latest in a long line of weather terrorists? Did you know that some people believe that the storm that scattered the Spanish Armada in the English Channel in the sixteenth century was created by English witches?”
    “How did you get so interested in this?” I said. “How did you know to look for Franklin?”
    “Have you ever met him?”
    “No.”
    “Well, I have. And there’s something off about him. I think he should be brought to justice for what he did to New Orleans.”
    He certainly wasn’t alone in thinking someone ought to be brought to justice for happened to New Orleans. But most people were referring to events after the hurricane, not the hurricane itself.
    “The thing is, Charles, science provides us lots of perfectly reasonable, natural explanations for how storms happen. Most people will say that Katrina wasn’t anyone’s fault. There’s no need to go looking for malevolence.”
    “It’s a nice little arrangement, isn’t it? He wreaks all this havoc and everyone just writes it off on convection currents.”
    The guy may have been a crackpot or he may have been spot on the money. But I ran into the problem I usually ran into when dealing with the supernatural: how did we go about proving this connection?
    “Charles, thank you very much for calling, but I’m running out of time and need to move on, all right?”
    “As long as you listen to me. You have to listen. You’re the only one who can do anything to stop him.”
    I highly doubted that. I highly doubted there was anything to do.
    Matt gave me a neck-cutting signal through the window, then held up a finger—one minute to go. I’d been doing the show long enough that my sense of timing was pretty good—I’d given myself just enough time for a closing.
    “All right, folks, we’re out of time. I want to thank everyone who called in for helping me out on my little research project. I’ll certainly let you know if anything comes of it. In the meantime, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you never can tell what’s out there. So good night, stay safe, and until next week this is Kitty Norville, voice of the night, on
The Midnight Hour
.”
    The on-air sign dimmed, and the recorded closingcredits rolled, a familiar wolf howl playing in the background. My own wolf howl, my other voice, the other half of my being.
    I slumped back, exhausted, pulled my headphones off, and rubbed some feeling back into my ears. Matt came in to stand in the doorway between the booth and studio. He was stocky, and he’d recently cut his black hair short. Way short. He used to wear it in a ponytail, but he’d noticed it was thinning up top and didn’t want to end up like our boss, Ozzie, KNOB’s station manager, who compensated for his thinning hair by growing his graying ponytail even longer.
    Just another little change in the world. If you didn’t pay attention to the little changes, you’d wake up one day and the whole universe would be different.
    “How do you think it went?” I said.
    “I think it went fine,” he said. “I always like it when you do investigative stuff. But it’s going to suck if you don’t actually find some conspiracy. Al Capone’s vault, baby.”
    “That won’t matter,” I said. “No conspiracy theory ever really dies. I’ll be perfectly happy if nothing comes of this, because then I won’t have to look over my shoulder every time I drive past a Speedy Mart.”
    “You do spend an awful lot of time looking over your shoulder, don’t you?” he said, and I grimaced,