He must have noticed me craning my neck and squinting, trying to focus.

"You're going to have to sleep a week when this is all over," he said.

God, that sounded so nice…"I could just let Carl kill me. Sleep all I want then."

He gave me an odd sideways look.

“Kitty! Are you all right?" Ozzie intercepted us. He was actually wringing his hands.

"I'll be fine," I said. Though I must have looked awful, all tangled hair and bloodstains. "So, are you worried about me, or are you really worried about your cash cow?"

He gave me a look that was half hurt, half admonishing. "Geez, Kitty, give it a rest. When I heard the gun and they told me who got shot I about had a heart attack. Don't ever do that again."

I smiled tiredly. "I'll try not to. Ozzie, have you met Ben?"

Ben said, "He introduced himself while you were asleep."

Ozzie pointed at him. "Don't let her get shot again."

"I think we'd better get home and cleaned up," he replied.

Ozzie found me a T-shirt and sweats from the stash of KNOB giveaways. I could add them to the million KNOB T-shirts I already had. I was just grateful not to have to drive home naked.

During the ride home, Ben kept asking if I was okay. Huddling in the passenger seat, I kept muttering that I was fine.

Finally, he gave a frustrated sigh. "You're damned lucky, you know that?"

Yeah, I was. I had to remember that. I smiled at him. "Thanks. For taking care of me."

"We're pack."

I wished he would stop saying that. I wasn't sure why it was starting to piss me off. He wasn't saying anything that wasn't true. Maybe because it sounded like a cop-out. Like if we weren't pack, he'd have been out of here a long time ago.

Chapter 13

The car's tires squealed as Ben swung into the parking lot of his building. With his help, I stumbled out of the passenger seat and limped toward the front door. I hurt all over. The bullet wound itself had faded to an ache, but the shock of it, the shape-shifting, and waking up on the hard floor had wracked my whole body. I wanted a very hot shower.

Ben stopped before we reached the front of the building, and I lurched to a halt beside him. I started to ask why—I wasn't really paying attention, not like I should have been. I was lulled into a false sense of security, tucked snugly under Ben's arm. But then I saw Cheryl marching toward us on the sidewalk. She wore her usual T-shirt and jeans, and a furious expression. I hadn't seen that expression since she caught me borrowing her Metallic Mayhem nail polish when I was eleven.

Out of all the trouble I was currently facing, I hadn't expected this.

"What's she doing here?" I muttered.

"She's your sister," Ben said. "You tell me."

I'd done something. Something so horribly wrong and sinister she had to come in person to chew me out. And I thought I knew what it was. "Mom went in for surgery yesterday," I said. "I wasn't there." No, I was at the shooting range, learning how to be a killer.

A sudden cold washed through me, and I tried to dismiss it. If something had gone wrong with the surgery, someone would have called me right away, not waited a day.

"Cheryl, what's wrong?" I said when she was close enough.

She put her hands on her hips. "I've been waiting for you to get back. I'm taking you to the hospital to see Mom since you can't seem to be bothered to get yourself over there." Then her eyes grew wide, and the color left her face. She was staring at Ben's bloody shirt. The blood had turned dry and crunchy. My own shirt had a sizable spot of blood on the upper chest, where the wound was still leaking.

"Holy crap, what happened to you guys?" She started to look a bit green.

"I got shot," I said.

"You what? Oh, my God. Why aren't you in a hospital?" Her voice was going shrieky.

I was so not in the mood for any of this.

"Because I'm a werewolf and it wasn't a silver bullet."

"Oh my God…what…what have you gotten yourself into?"

I only sighed. This would take way too long to explain. In my silence, Cheryl kept going, and I realized that this whole talking too much thing wasn't just me. It ran in the family.

"Kitty, what is going on? Are you in some kind of trouble? Is that why you couldn't go to the hospital? And you—" She pointed at Ben. "This all started when she met you. This is your fault, isn't it? "

"Actually, no," Ben said, full of mock cheerfulness. "Kitty made this mess pretty much on her own."

Please, let me pass out now. I didn't want to have to talk to either of them anymore.

"Listen, Cheryl, can you not tell Mom and Dad about this?" I could imagine Mom's reaction exceeding Cheryl's level of hysteria.

"Not tell Mom and Dad? Are you crazy?"

"Oh, come on, what about all those times you sneaked out of the house and told me not to tell? And that time Todd came over—"

"But you did tell!" she screeched.

"No I didn't, they figured it out on their own because you were an idiot!"

Ben was rubbing his forehead like he had a headache.

I took a deep breath and tried to start over. "I'm trying to keep you guys out of this."

"Kitty!" Cheryl said, making the word part demand, part reprimand, part plea. She was four years older than me. Our relationship had started on a foundation of years of forced babysitting and commands from our parents that were all some variation of "Cheryl, look after your sister." After she left for college, my teenage years continued in pure, unsupervised bliss. Our lives diverged radically after that, but we loved each other. We were family. And the tone of voice she was using now evoked a long history of responsibility and authority.

I spoke as calmly as I could. "Cheryl, I'm sorry I haven't been to the hospital yet. I'm sorry I can't explain everything. I'm okay. I got shot, but I'm okay. I—I think you should go home, or go back to Mom, or whatever. I'll call later. I really need to take a shower."

"No," she said. "No, enough of this, you haven't been straight with any of us since this happened to you. You know those old lists, how to tell if someone's a drug addict? The secrecy, the lies, the weird behavior—that's you! That's totally you!"

Wow. She had a point. Now if I could just quit being a lycanthrope. "What the hell are you going to do about it—run an intervention?" God, this wasn't going well. I had to get her out of here.

Beside me, Ben stiffened, his attention suddenly drawn elsewhere. He turned, his nose flaring, taking in a scent. He started to unzip my backpack, where he'd stashed a handgun.

"What is it?" I said.

"Do you smell that?"

I took a deep breath to taste the air.

"Kitty, what is it, what's going on?"

"Be quiet," I said, straining my ears.

Then I caught it. Ben had only been a werewolf for a few months, but he had a better nose than I did. Something was out there, something wrong. An alien touch in the air. Wolf, but not pack. No. Oh, no. Hardin hadn't found Carl. Single-minded, brutal Carl who probably only had one thought in his pea brain right now: me. He'd tracked us here, we were all doomed.

But this smelled female. This smelled familiar.

Ben drew the handgun from the backpack.

"Holy shit! You have a gun!" Cheryl cried.

"Cheryl, can you go back to your car and get out of here, please?"

"What's happening? I'm not leaving until you tell me what's happening!"

The figure, the intruder, finally appeared, coming around the corner behind Cheryl, moving toward us. Keeping Cheryl between us.

"Cheryl, move, please," I begged. My sister finally turned, to see what we were staring at—to see what was behind her.

"He wanted me to check if you were still alive," Meg said.