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description." He had to laugh. "Just remember to breathe slowly," she said.

"Yeah." He started to get up.

"You're going right now?"

"I'm going to make some calls." He gestured to the front door and the pay phone outside.

"Do you need money or something? For the phone."

"I'll call collect. This is the one night a year I know my folks will be home. It's . . . it's been a while since I've called. They'll want to hear from me. I can get some money wired, then catch a bus for home."

He finished standing, because he really was anxious to get going. Anxious to test himself. She seemed put out. She really wanted to help, and it heartened him that people like that were still out there.

"Here, take this." She dug in her bag and pulled out something, which she handed to him. A business card. "That has all my info on it. Let me know if you need anything."

"Thanks."

"Good luck." Smiling, she watched him leave.

He was at the pay phone before he took a good look at the card. It was for a radio station: KNOB. Her name: Kitty Norville. And a line: Host of The Midnight Hour, The Wild Side of Talk Radio. She hosted a talk radio show. He should have guessed.

He hadn't talked to his parents in months. Not since he'd run away. He'd done it to protect them, but now, dialing the operator, he found himself tearing up. He couldn't wait to talk to them.

He heard the operator ask if they'd accept the charges. Gave him his name, and he heard his mother respond, "Yes, yes of course, oh my God . . ."

He said, his voice cracking, "Hi, Mom?"

Thankfully, Jane turned the news off when the reporter started repeating herself.

The movie was long over. The carols were back, all the ones Kitty knew by heart. Jane must have had the same compilation album that her parents played when she was growing up. Funny, how it wouldn't be Christmas without them.

One of her favorite tunes came on, a solemn French carol. A choir sang the lyrics, which she had never paid much attention to because she didn't speak much French. But she knew the title: "Il Est Ne le pin Enfant." Il Est Ne. He is born.

She dug in her bag and found her cell phone. Dialed a number, even though it was way too late. But when the answer came, Kitty heard party noises in the background - her parents, her sister, her niece and nephew, laughter, more carols - so it was all right.

Chapter Eight

The Perfect Gift

Dana Stabenow

Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage and raised on a seventy-five-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere, and found it in writing. Her first science fiction novel, Second Star (1991), sank without a trace, but her first crime fiction novel, A Cold Day for Murder (1992), won an Edgar?Award, and her first thriller, Blindfold Game (2006), hit the New York Times bestseller list. Dana's second thriller, Prepared for Rage, came out in 2008, and her twenty-fifth novel (and sixteenth Kate Shugak novel), Whisper to the Blood, is due out in February 2009.

"They're overgrazing their range."

"True."

"If we don't reduce their population, there'll be fuck all left to hunt."

"Also true," Neri said.

"They savaged us the last two times we tried to establish some control over their activities, to the point that the population of the various packs is now seriously out of balance."

"No one is arguing with you, Lucas," Mannaro said.

"Then why are we pussyfooting around here?" Lucas had a long, strong nose, a square jaw, and cheekbones by Praxiteles, although Mannaro thought his countenance exhibited an almost regal lack of animation. Austerity was not usually a characteristic of the young, and Mannaro thought it only made Lucas appear ever so slightly pompous. "We have to make a decision," Lucas said, "and the sooner the better." His attitude said all too clearly that they had left it too late as it was.

Wulver leaned forward. His broad Scots' accent would have been impossible to understand if he hadn't spoken so slowly and with such deliberation. There was no doubt the board understood the seriousness of the issue before them. "One caveat, however. Do we really want to start a shit-storm of this magnitude just before Christmas?"

He looked at the head of the table. Mannaro, impeccably coifed and immaculately tailored, sat very much at his ease, an attitude belied by