Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

Chapter 9

We’d been on for an hour and no one had taken a shot at me. Halfway there. I considered it a victory.

Nevada State Senator Harry Burger, the man sitting next to me on the stylish office chair we’d set up for my guests, was a classic western politician, complete with cowboy hat and boots, big silver belt buckle, and swagger to match. He could defend the Second Amendment and denounce Washington politics with the best of them.

He was explaining why he had introduced a bill to the state legislature creating a law that would ban psychics, vampires, and anyone else with supernatural abilities from Nevada casinos.

“Here in the great state of Nevada we take the security of our casinos—and our guests—very seriously. When cheaters win, everyone else loses, that’s our motto, so the gaming industry has worked hard making sure none of these people get ahead. This is just another brand of cheater, and we won’t tolerate it, no sir.”

“You really think werewolves have an edge in gambling? Really?” I had to say that with a straight face, thinking of Ben.

“Ma’am, who knows what kind of powers any of them have? Not just predicting what card’s coming out of the shoe next, but mind control, telekinesis—you have any idea what kind of havoc telekinesis would play on a slot machine? I say it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Telekinesis on a slot machine? I wanted to see that... “Senator, seriously: is this sort of thing even a problem? Are there any kind of statistics showing how many gamblers might be beating the house because of psychic powers?”

Burger shifted, drawing himself up and taking on a serious, fatherly expression. A patriarch about to deliver his own brand of wisdom. I braced for the lecture.

“I think it’s in our best interest to be proactive on these matters. Sure, it’s easy enough to say that it isn’t a real problem. But just because we don’t see a problem doesn’t mean the problem isn’t there. By taking this kind of action we can stop problems like this before they become even bigger problems.”

None of this made any sense to me. If people were using psychic powers to cheat in casinos, they’d been doing it for a lot longer than these sorts of powers had been a subject of public-policy discussions. And no one had much noticed before. Was it really different than any other kind of cheating?

Carefully, I said, “Are you sure this isn’t inventing a problem that isn’t there?”

He gave me a patronizing smile. “I wouldn’t expect someone without a lot of experience in the gaming industry to understand.”

Ooh, that just made me mad. “And how do you propose enforcing this ban on supernatural beings? Especially if, as you suggest, some of them are capable of mind control and can convince security officers that they aren’t even there?”

Leaning back in his chair, Burger said expansively, “Well, that’ll have to be for the agencies involved to work out, won’t it?”

Government in action. I loved it.

I still had another guest and phone calls to get through, and time was moving on. “All right, then! Thanks very much for coming to talk with us tonight, Senator. Let’s hear it for Senator Burger.” We shook hands, and the senator graciously gave the clapping crowd a politician’s smile before heading offstage.

I didn’t even need someone holding up a sign reading “applause.” The best part about doing The Midnight Hour in front of an audience? I didn’t have to guess what my listeners were thinking. I could see them right in front of me, rows of faces looking a little shadowy behind the lights. I could react to them. Their applause made my heart rate speed up.

Never mind that it also made Wolf pitch a fit. We were trapped in the stares of hundreds of potentially dangerous faces, and they were challenging us, waiting for us to show weakness, waiting to strike. I had expected this, knowing I’d have to spend some attention clamping down on those animal instincts. But the instinct was powerful. Wolf wanted to growl a warning, then run to get out of danger. But we weren’t in danger. I kept repeating that. This was our shining moment. I was in charge here. I was the alpha. Smile, relax.

Of course, it didn’t help that I kept seeing people— suspicious people—out of the corner of my eye. On the fringes of the crowd. Maybe not Boris and Sylvia, but people who looked like them. Like the guy in the suit sitting in one of the seats farthest to my left, dressed with a lot of polish. He had a watchful expression and hadn’t laughed at any of my jokes. Very suspicious. And one more time, how many of these people were packing heat?

Never mind.

The setup looked like that of a typical late-night talk show, but with radio equipment. I had a desk with my monitor and microphone. Beside the desk was a sofa for my guests, who were wired with mikes. I pictured this being sort of a cross between The Tonight Show and Howard Stern. If I was lucky. Unlucky? There’d be some Jerry Springer involved. Also at my disposal, I had the rest of the stage, where I could do all kinds of things I never could on the radio. I wanted to take advantage of the visuals. My next guest would never have worked on radio.

“Moving on, I wouldn’t even think of hosting a show in Vegas without introducing you to my next guest, who is a member of a fine and noble breed of men. Say hello to Arty Gruberson. Arty?”

Arty Gruberson, Elvis impersonator, resplendent in a rhinestone-encrusted polyester bell-bottomed jumpsuit, jogged out from behind the curtain stage right. He had the sideburns, he had the sneer. He joined me in the guest chair, with its own microphone. I still had my radio audience—they’d hear everything.

“Arty, tell me: why do you believe that you’re the King reincarnated?”

“Well, you know, it’s just a matter of fate. And mathematics. And a little astronomy. And some basic meteorology.” He might have had the look pretty much nailed, but he had an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. Closer to Barry Manilow maybe.

“How so?”

“Well, first of all, I had a feeling growing up. When I listened to the King’s music, something came over me. It was more than liking the songs or being a fan. It’s like they made me understand who I was, know what I mean? So I started doing some research. I figured out a few things. See, I was born right in Memphis, just an hour after the King himself passed on. The hospital where I was born is sixteen miles from Graceland, where the King left his mortal shell behind.” He started drawing a map in the air. I nodded helpfully, trying to be encouraging. He went into a convoluted explanation involving the locations of the buildings, the barometric pressure of the atmosphere, the direction of the wind, and the angle of light cast by the sun. “If you believe—and I certainly do believe—that a body’s soul is made of pure energy, then if you calculate the time it would take for a soul to travel the speed of light from Graceland to heaven, which based on my calculations is somewhere near the asteroid belt”—huh?—“and back to this here hospital, it’s the exact amount of time between the King’s death and my birth.”

You know, it almost made sense. “That’s... awesome. I think. You certainly did a lot of work to, ah, establish your credentials.”

“I did. And I’ve got it all written down in a book I sell at my show—Friday and Saturday nights at the Hideaway, downtown off Fremont Street.”

“Another question: why you? There had to have been other babies born at that hospital that day. Why did the King choose you?”

“I think he knew I had the moves. He found a willing vessel in my little baby body.” He sat back, looking smug.

“And that’s the fate part of it?”

“You bet.”

“Do you ever have doubts?”

True believers always responded to that question exactly the same way. Arty said, “What do you mean?”

“If this is really the right path for your life. You’ve basically spent your whole life becoming someone else. That has to be... weird.”

“I’m dedicated to keeping his memory alive,” he explained.

I didn’t know quite how to put this. “Do you think that maybe if you’re Elvis Presley reincarnated you’d be happier, I don’t know, working on something original? Starting a new music career?”

“You think anything’ll top the last one?”

He had a point.

“Arty, would you do a song for us? What you do you guys say?” I asked the audience, which roared encouragement. Bet that sounded cool over the radio. Of course we’d planned this out ahead of time; we had a mike set up and music on cue.

Arty trotted off to the performance space we’d set aside at the edge of the stage. He had the moves down—he was, in fact, a pretty good Elvis impersonator. Grabbing the mike, he said, “Kitty, this one’s just for you.”

The bastard sang “Hound Dog.” And the crowd went wild.

In the back of my mind I worried that the cameras weren’t working right, that the microphone wasn’t picking up my voice, that something little was going to go wrong to ruin the whole broadcast. But that was why we had techs. It was their job to worry about it. I just had to keep the show moving.

How did Oprah do this every single day?

Besides having my parents in the audience, which gave the evening a sort of school-play undertone (before the show, Mom had insisted on giving me a hug and telling me that I’d do just fine, she was sure of it), I spotted Dom. He was standing in the back, exuding his elegant post-Mob gangster aura and surveying the theater like he owned the place and had set up the show himself. It gave me an urge to call him up to the microphone, just to see if it would shake that smug expression. But I’d promised.

I didn’t smell any other lycanthropes in the theater. There were a few vampires besides Dom. But nothing animal, nothing that suggested lycanthrope. I was disappointed. I liked to think that I did the show for them. That me talking about my own experiences helped them. But none of them had come. Dom had said there weren’t any outside of the show at the Hanging Gardens. Maybe I’d hoped that at least one of them would be in the crowd.

After saying farewell to Arty, I alternated between taking questions over the phone and from the audience. During commercial breaks, I had to keep my crowd entertained—no chance to sit back and stretch during station ID like I could on the radio. I did giveaways, raffle drawings using ticket stub numbers, CDs, T-shirts, copies of my book, all kinds of things. They loved it, which was all that really mattered. If the audience—whether it’s in front of you or listening on the radio—loves you, it’ll follow you anywhere. I had fun—in the same way that bungee jumping must be fun. Not that I’d ever wanted to try it.

I took another call. “Hello, I’ve got our next caller on the line. What’s your question?”

“Hi! Would sunscreen work for a vampire who really wanted to go out in daylight?”

I looked quizzically at the microphone. “I’m not sure anyone’s ever asked that question. And I’m not really sure I know the answer. Except I don’t think I’d want any of the vampires I actually like to try it.”

“I’m talking about sunblock. The really heavy-duty SPF 60 stuff.”

“They make SPF 60? Wow. But for it to work, I think that would assume that the UV radiation is what causes the damage to vampires. I’m not sure that’s a valid assumption. I’ll tell you what, I’ve got some vampires here in the audience—any of you guys want to take a stab at answering Dan’s question?”

And there was Lisa, coming toward the microphone below the stage where people came to ask their questions. She was wearing a kicky red dress today, and her hair was up in a ponytail, which bounced when she moved. She grinned and waved at me. Definitely the perkiest vampire I’d ever met.

Murmuring carried through the audience, heads bent together, whispering. Normal people who’d maybe come here for just this chance—to see a real live, sort of, vampire. The thing was she’d been sitting there the whole time, and people who didn’t know what to look for would never recognize her. But now she was spooky. Lisa glanced over them with a sly smile on her lips and a glint in her eye, encouraging all their ideas about what her being a vampire meant, before turning back to me.

“Hi, Kitty!”

“Hello! And what can you tell us?”

“I’ve only been a vampire for like five years, but I can totally tell you it doesn’t matter how much gunk you put on, it won’t help. It’s just like you said, it’s not the UV radiation, it’s something else. Something about the light. I mean, what makes people vampires in the first place? It’s the same kind of weird things that can hurt them. It doesn’t make much sense, but there it is.”

“Okay, caller, I think that’s your answer. The miracles of modern chemistry aren’t enough to combat the supernatural. At least not yet, but I know some people who are working on that. Thanks for that answer, Lisa.”

She beamed so hard I thought her face might break, then returned to her seat.

We were entering the last half hour of the show, about the time I started feeling like I’d been running a marathon, usually. This time, I’d felt like that from the start, but adrenaline kept me going. Wolf had settled down. I was still on high alert, but the situation hadn’t changed—hadn’t become any more dangerous—so she trusted me that we weren’t going to get ambushed.

Thank God the evening’s really weird question came over the phone. I had no idea what I’d have said to this person face-to-face.

“You’re on the air.”

“Yeah, hi, thanks for taking my call.” It was a woman, serious in a school librarian kind of way. The not-cool school librarian who told you to be quiet rather than the cool school librarian who slipped you Stephen King books when no one was looking.

“What’s your question?”

“I wanted to know: do you find dog shows to be offensive?”

I raised my eyebrows at the microphone as I took a moment to decide what to say. The audience twittered slightly.

“You know,” I said. “I never really thought about it, but now that I have, I’m going to say no, they don’t offend me. Not on the surface. I suppose if I thought about what inbreeding does to some of those show dogs, I might be. But I’ve never spent any brain energy on it at all.”

Now she was offended. She spoke in a huff. “It doesn’t bother you that your canine brethren are being paraded around show rings like slaves?”

“My canine brethren?” I said. “I don’t have any canine brethren.”

“How can you say that! You’re a werewolf.”

“That’s right. I’m a werewolf, not a poodle. What makes you think I have any kinship with dogs?”

“Well, I thought—”

“No, obviously you didn’t. I can’t get within twenty feet of my sister’s golden retriever without it barking its lungs out. We’ve got no brethren going on there. Show dogs are pets, while I’m a sentient human being. Do you see the difference?”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. Don’t you think that the very existence of werewolves, of all lycanthropes, proves that there really isn’t much difference between us at all, and that maybe we should think about extending human rights to all creatures?”

I had a flash of insight. “Oh my God, are you from PETA or something?”

A long, ominous pause. Then, “Maybe...”

I leaned forward and bonked my head on the table, just like Matt was afraid I would do. And the audience laughed, and I blushed, because while I tried to tell myself they were laughing with me, I was pretty sure they were laughing at me.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not supposed to do that where people can actually see me. All right. Equal rights for animals. What can I say? If I say no, absolutely not, that opens an argument for claiming I’m not human and denying me my civil rights.”

“Right, exactly,” said PETA lady, sounding like she’d won a point.

“Okay. So I’m not going to do that. But I’m sure as hell not going to lobby for voting rights for beagles. Here’s the thing: a werewolf isn’t a half-person, half-wolf cousin of the AKC grand champion. I’m a human being with a really whacked-out disease. Apples and oranges. Got it?”

“But—”

I clicked her off. “I always get the last word. Ha.”

During the PETA lady call, one of the doors in the back of the theater opened. That didn’t catch my attention in itself. We didn’t have an intermission, so people had been slipping in and out all evening, usually during the commercial breaks. This time when the door opened, I caught a scent—the smell I’d been missing. Human and animal, merged, inseparable. Lycanthrope.

A man strode down the far left aisle, making his way to the microphone near the stage. Beside him stalked a hip-high leopard. The animal was sleek, muscles sliding under fur and skin. His tail flicked behind him. His head held low, he glared forward with yellow-green eyes. Some human awareness glinted in those eyes—a lycanthrope. A couple of people screamed, in short bursts of shock. Others tried to push away, leaning back in their seats, crowding into the people next to them, an instinctive reaction, trying to get away from this uncaged predator. The cat ignored the ruckus; the man beside the cat smiled.

He was medium height, with rich brown hair, like mahogany, and a wicked, I’ve-got-a-secret expression on his tanned, boyishly gorgeous face. He was a lycanthrope, some variety I hadn’t encountered before. It wasn’t just the smell, it was the stance. He moved like a feline, muscles shifting under his almost-too-tight black T-shirt and just-tight-enough jeans. Graceful, poised, ready to pounce. He had a cat-that-ate-the-canary look about him. Literally.

When the pair reached the microphone, the cat leapt to the stage. This elicited another round of gasps from the audience, and a couple of security guys pounded forward from the wings. I jumped from my chair to intercept the guards.

“No, wait!” I held my arms out, stopping them, and the two burly guys hesitated, straining forward, ready to do their jobs, glancing at me with uncertainty. But the very last thing I wanted was for them to tangle with a were-leopard, possibly getting scratched or bitten in the process.

The leopard stalked along the edge of the stage, tail flicking thoughtfully. Still watching me, he sat primly, a few feet away from his companion. We regarded each other, and I resisted an urge to stare, though my heart was racing and Wolf’s hackles were stiff. I suppressed a growl—find out what this was about first. Then get pissed off at the invasion. I couldn’t believe the nerve, bringing a fully shifted lycanthrope into a crowded room like this. My Wolf would have fled, fighting her way clear if she had to. But I had to admire this one’s control. He stood in front of a crowd and hardly seemed to notice. Maybe they just had a question for the show.

The leopard started licking its paws, like a big old cat, after all. The human half of the pair looked up at me; his stare didn’t quite challenge me, but he was definitely sizing me up. Wanting to see if I’d blink first.

I never blinked first. Mostly. But I kept glancing at this huge cat, perched a couple of yards away from me. He could shove me over in a single leap.

I gave the man a hunter’s smile. “Aren’t there laws against letting wild animals out of their cages?”

“You mean Kay here? He’s perfectly safe,” he said. The leopard blinked at me. He really was a beautiful animal; I wondered about the person inside.

“How do you know I was talking about him?” I said, raising a brow. The guy actually winked at me. Oh, I hoped the cameras were picking this up. Ratings gold. “And what brings you to The Midnight Hour?”

“I’ve got a secret. Wondered if you’d be interested.” He had a clear male voice to go with his handsome body. He might have fronted a boy band.

“I just bet you do. You sound like someone who’s about to make me an offer.”

He pulled something out of his back pocket and held it up—a pair of tickets. “These are you for you, if you want them.”

“Front-row seats to see Wayne Newton?”

“No, not quite,” he said, turning the smile on full force. It was pouty and sultry.

I moved to the edge of the stage to take his offering, which made the security guys—still lurking behind me, ready to tackle the leopard—twitch, but oh well. I didn’t get any overt aggression from either one of them. Just posturing. I could do posturing.

Close to him, his smell washed over me like strong aftershave. The lycanthropy on him was thick, like his animal was close to the surface, more fur than skin. He spent a lot of time in animal form, I guessed. The leopard was now close enough to take a swipe at me, but I stayed calm. Kept my breathing steady. Worked very hard to pretend like I wasn’t nervous around him.

I wasn’t surprised when I looked on the tickets and saw the name of the show printed.

Smirking, I announced to my audience, both TV and live, “Two tickets to see Balthasar, King of Beasts, at the Hanging Gardens. Trying to make me feel at home, are you?”

“Oh, there aren’t any werewolves in this show.”

“But there are... something else?”

He winked. “It’s a secret.”

“I get it,” I said, playing to him, the audience, the cameras. “It’s a publicity stunt. You’re here with tickets to Vegas’s hottest animal show, acting all mysterious and talking about a secret, so I will naturally want to check it out. And in the meantime you get a free plug.”

I almost said something. I almost pointed to them and called, Lycanthrope! But I was sensitive to revealing the lycanthropic identities of people who didn’t want to be revealed. Until this guy announced the fact himself, I wasn’t going to blow their cover. As far as the audience was concerned, this was a guy and his very well-trained leopard.

“You really should come see for yourself.”

This was sure making me wish I’d been able to get Balthasar on for an interview. “So I see the show. Then what?”

“Then we’ll talk.” He gave me another wink, turned, and walked away, stalking up the aisle like, well, a king of beasts. The leopard sprang off the stage and trotted after him. Most of the people here would assume he was just a trained cat. But didn’t anyone notice that not a single word or hand signal had passed between them?

I stared after him probably a little longer than I should have. Shaking my head, I brought my attention back on task.

“Well, it’s just like getting hung up on, except in person. Story of my life.” A few people in the audience made sad, sympathetic noises on my behalf.

The teleprompter said I had five minutes left. After a moment of panic wondering how I was going to wrap everything up after that bit of excitement, I returned to my chair and got to work.

“It looks like we’re about out of time this evening. Thank you all so very much for joining me in this great experiment.” And everyone cheered. Victory.

I closed the show by thanking everyone, introducing everyone, letting the crew and stage managers have their moment in the spotlight, because I thought it would be fun. I finished downstage, front and center, letting the applause crash over me. A person could get addicted to this sort of thing. Live TV. I’d done it and survived, and it felt good. This was the rush that made all the anxiety worthwhile.

Once the cameras were off, I gave away the rest of the T-shirts and sat on the edge of the stage for half an hour to sign autographs, which was fine, because I had so much nervous energy bubbling in me I wouldn’t have been able to do anything but stand there and shake if I hadn’t had a job to do.

In the midst of the post-show chaos and winding down, Erica handed me a cordless phone. Through it, Ozzie’s voice greeted me. “It was fabulous. I told you this was a good idea. You’re a natural. How did it feel?”

“Like I’d fallen from twenty thousand feet and was building my parachute on the way down,” I said. As in airless and desperate. Yet exhilarating. He just laughed.

We wrapped up a short debriefing. Finally, the only people left were crew breaking down equipment and cleaning up, Dom the vampire with some of his hangers-on, my parents, and Ben. I sat on the edge of the stage to talk to them.

Dom came to shake my hand and offer congratulations. “Thanks for inviting me, Kitty. That was a lot of fun.”

“Glad you liked it. Hey—do you know who that guy was with the tickets to Balthasar’s show?”

“One of the people from the act, I assume,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t keep up with them all.”

“Really? Every other vampire Master I’ve met has kept files on the local lycanthropes. Total spy crap.”

“But this is Las Vegas. They leave me alone, I leave them alone. Better that way, don’t you think?” He winked at me before sauntering off with his entourage. The vampires looked like any other night owls crawling around Vegas.

“Oh, Kitty, we’re so proud of you!” Mom and Dad joined me next, leaving their front-row seats. Big hugs all around.

“Did you like it? Did you have fun?”

They said yes, and I had to admit that no matter how old I got, I would still be happy at my parents’ approval. So much for being a rebel.

Dad nodded at the door Dom had just left through. “Who was that guy?”

“That was a real live vampire. A real undead vampire, I mean. Friend of a friend.”

He donned a thoughtful “well, isn’t that something” expression. “Hmm. How about that?”

Sometimes I thought my parents really hadn’t registered the fact that their daughter was a werewolf and made a living delving into the realm of supernatural horror movies made real. They seemed to regard it all as a rather strange hobby that I’d taken up—they didn’t understand it, but they’d be supportive. That was okay, because I didn’t want them to have to understand it any more than necessary. I wanted them to stay safe. As safe as possible. The world didn’t need supernatural badness to be a scary place. It already had things like cancer.

Ben joined me, sitting next to me on the edge of the stage.

“Hello, Ben, how are you?” Mom said, beaming at her soon-to-be son-in-law.

“Fine, thanks.”

“You two all ready for tomorrow?”

The getting-married thing. I kept forgetting. Not really forgetting, but I’d been so focused on the show, it had faded to the background. No, I’m not, I wanted to say. That was post-show nerves talking. “I guess I ought to get some sleep or something. I think I need a drink.”

Mom took Dad’s hand. “It’s past our bedtime, so we’ll leave you two to it.”

I said, “This is Las Vegas. You can’t have a bedtime in Vegas.”

Mom just gave me a look. “Good night, dear.”

Oh. Right. Bedtime. I didn’t want to know.

I hugged them each one more time. Then it was just me and Ben.

We sat for a long time. I took a deep breath through my nose. The familiar scent of him steadied me. He smelled like pack, like home. Safety. I shifted closer, took his arm, and leaned my head on his shoulder.

“What was that all about?” he said.

“I think my mom and dad are having too much fun.”

“Not that. That guy. The were-whatever. And I can only assume that the leopard is from the Balthasar, King of Beasts Show.”

Ah, yes. I’d have to look at the recording of the show to even guess what that must have looked like from Ben’s point of view.

“I think he might be a tiger.”

“So is he cute? Good-looking, I mean? Because I can’t really tell with guys, and it looked like you two might have hit it off.”

I grinned at him. “Jealous?”

He grinned right back. “That’s a trick question. If I say yes you’ll accuse me of being paranoid and unreasonable, and if I say no you’ll make some defensive crack about how I don’t think you’re worth getting jealous over.”

This was what I got for hooking up with a lawyer.

“They were here to get my attention,” I said. “They want me to go check out their show and ask questions.”

“Maybe they want to go public.”

“Then they should have called me earlier,” I grumbled. “I don’t see how I even have time to go talk to them. We’re going to be in the middle of a lot of celebrating tomorrow.”

He raised his brows and clearly didn’t believe me. “But you’re curious. You want to know what a troupe of performing lycanthropes is really like.”

“What I really want to know is if they’re there because they want to be, or if something funky is going on. To be part of his act, they’d have to shape-shift every night. That’s not normal, it’s not right.”

“I’m still having a little trouble finding a baseline normal with this whole situation,” he said.

He hadn’t been a werewolf for even a year yet. We’d grown so comfortable, I forgot that. At least, I’d grown comfortable. I almost took him for granted. Almost.

“There’s something weird about the whole thing.”

He put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. “You always manage to find the weird stuff, don’t you?”

I whined. It wasn’t like I went out looking for weird. Much. It just found me.

“Now, what about that drink you mentioned?” he said.

When Ben steered me toward the Olympus Hotel’s main bar—right across from the gun show—my feet started dragging. “This wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

“This is where all your fans congregated. Think how popular you’ll be.”

The place was also filled with people from the gun show who looked like Boris.

“My fans or your fans?” I muttered.

In fact, we’d only just found places at the bar when someone called, “Ben! Hell, it really is you!”

A guy with Asian features, short dark hair, a long face and hard gaze, wearing a leather jacket—not a biker leather jacket, but a designer jacket in brown leather with lean, slimming lines—came over from one of the tables. In his thirties, he had polished good looks and the confident stance of someone who was successful in his line of work and proud of it.

Unlike the meeting with Boris, they engaged in a burly old-pal handshake. “Evan, how you doing?” Ben said.

“Not bad,” said the suave and smiling Evan. “Yourself?”

Ben gave a noncommittal shrug. “You here for the exhibition?”

“You know how it is, it’s a good place to meet up with people. Catch up on all the gossip.”

“Hear anything good?”

“I heard about Cormac. That must have been a rough scene.”

“It could have been worse.”

Wives who went to their husbands’ business conferences must feel like this. I didn’t even have a drink to hide behind yet. I sat there smiling. In five seconds, I was going to jump in and introduce myself.

I must have been vibrating or something, because they both looked at me. Ben might have been about to introduce me, but Evan beat him to it.

“And you’re Kitty Norville. Good to finally meet you,” he said, and we shook hands. He focused his gaze on me like he was taking aim. My shoulders tensed up. Then it clicked.

I glared. “You were at the show. I saw you! Left-hand side, third row back—you were spying on me!”

He didn’t try to deny it, and he didn’t seem bothered by it. His laid-back, amiable expression didn’t change. “I wanted to see what a performing werewolf looked like.”

“Well, I hope you had a grand old time at the freak show—”

Ben put a hand on my arm. “Kitty. Calm down.” My teeth were bared. I crossed my arms and snarled.

Evan continued, “Not to sound too rude, but I didn’t expect to see the two of you having a drink together.”

“We hear that a lot,” I said. I wondered if he could see it. If I wasn’t so publicly known, would he be able to tell I’m a werewolf? Could he tell about Ben?

“Kitty’s my client,” Ben said. Again with the client thing. What was he going to say when we were both wearing matching rings?

“I have to say, that’s pretty funny,” he said.

“We hear that a lot, too,” I said. Evan laughed politely.

“You in town long?” he said to Ben.

“Just for the weekend.”

“Maybe we could have lunch or something, if you have time.”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll call you. Your number still good?”

“Last time I looked.”

The hair on my neck tingled, and the muscles in my shoulder tightened. A woman entered the bar. We all turned to look.

She was my height, but she had a presence that seemed to take up the room. Dark hair, short and full-bodied, bouncing around her ears. Spiky earrings, red lipstick. Dark sunglasses that she took off, folded, and slipped into a pocket of her leather jacket as she scanned the bar. And her outfit. That was mainly why everyone stared: knee-high leather boots with four-inch spike heels, perfectly shaped legs, a leather skirt that would have had me tugging at the hem, yet she wore it as naturally as skin, a form-fitted top of silk and lace, and a cropped leather jacket—all of it in black, of course. I might have seen her picture on a flyer taped to a street sign out on the Strip. Every straight man in the place left his jaw hanging open, and every straight woman clung a little tighter to her boyfriend.

Except me, ’cause I’m more secure than that. Mostly. I might have inched a little closer to Ben. But then, his jaw wasn’t open. He arced a brow and pursed his lips.

She looked at us, and those scarlet lips turned a smile. She marched over. Though she looked supernatural—in one sense—she smelled human. Basic, even. No perfume, no extras. Leather, clean soap, and gun oil. I’d bet an awful lot that that she carried a gun in a holster under that jacket. Maybe another tucked in the back waistband of the skirt. And probably a knife in her boot, stilettos up her sleeves, throwing stars in her pockets, and God knew what else. Everyone in the place might have stared, but no one sauntered up to offer to buy her a drink, because she was the scariest-looking person here.

“Brenda, Brenda, Brenda, I was wondering when you’d make an appearance,” Evan said, smiling and offering his hand for shaking.

She glanced at it, didn’t take it. Hands on her hips, she looked us all over like we were drenched in pond scum.

Evan smirked like this was par for the course with Brenda. And my God, did she not look like a Brenda. More like a Veronica, or maybe a Blaze. He carried on. “Brenda, do you know Ben? Ben, this is—”

“Oh, we’ve met,” Ben said.

“Been a while. How’s that knee?” Brenda asked, studying him up and down. I inched a little closer to him again. I wondered: was this all an act on her part? Surely nobody was this in-your-face naturally.

“Fine. Thanks,” Ben said, deadpan. Okay, that was a story I needed to pry out of him.

Then she looked at me. Scanned me up and down just the same way, and for some reason I suddenly felt like I had a target painted on my chest.

“And hello to you,” she said wryly. “I’ve always wanted to ask you something: Kitty’s your stage name, right? It can’t be your real name.”

She was about to make a “werewolf named Kitty” crack. I could feel it. My smile was strained to the point of breaking. “It’s my real name. Proof that God has a sense of humor,” I said.

“That’s too damn funny for words,” she said, shaking her head. “You like living dangerously, I take it.”

Who, me? A werewolf standing in the middle of a mini supernatural bounty hunter convention? “Oh, come on, are you telling me we aren’t all civilized people here?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. What’s the story, boys? There a reason you’re letting someone like her hang around?”

Which meant whatever it was she hunted, and however good she was at it, she hadn’t spotted Ben. None of them had. It was all I could do not to sigh with relief. But any second now another one of them was going to walk into the bar, and that one would be psychic, or magic, or something, and blow the whole deal. I didn’t want to know what this crowd would do if they found out what had happened to one of their own.

I relaxed and tried not to cling to Ben. That, if anything, would give it all away.

“She’s okay, Brenda,” Ben said. “Let her alone.”

She got close to him, right in his face. “And you are the last person I’d expect to stick up for something like that. No, I take it back—the second-to-last person. But Cormac’s not around at the moment, is he?”

“No, he’s not.”

I didn’t like this. We were cornered against the bar, and she was staring him down like she wanted to take a piece out of him. Ben was tense, but I was ready to crawl out of my skin. Wolf wanted to get out of here. Brenda smelled dangerous.

“He should have finished her off when he had the chance.”

Before either of us could respond—not that explaining the situation would have helped—Evan made a nod toward the bar and said to Brenda, “Let me buy you a drink.”

“I can buy my own damn drink. Club soda with lime!” she called to the bartender, who was in the middle of drawing a couple of beers. He glanced over in a panic.

It occurred to me that perhaps she was over-compensating.

“You know, it’s late,” I said, pointing a thumb toward the door. “I think I’m going to head out. It was nice meeting you all.”

“Late?” Brenda smirked. “That’s rich coming from one of you lot.”

“I’m atypical.” My smile was stiff. “Good night.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Ben said, mostly sounding casual, and fell into step with me.

“I imagine she does need someone watching her back around here,” Brenda said. Ben tossed her a fake salute.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, but I still had too much pride to run. Out of sight of the bar, walking down the hall to the elevators, Ben took my hand and squeezed.

“You okay?” he said.

“Yeah. I might have preferred someplace a little quieter. With fewer people.”

“Sorry. I just wanted to see who all was around. You can usually find everyone in the bar sooner or later.”

“And Brenda. What was that?”

He chuckled. “Just goes to show you don’t have to be a werewolf to be an alpha female.”

“Boy, you said it. I’m not even a human being to her, am I?” I said.

“Nope. That’s how all those guys justify hunting people like you. Er, like us.”

“And you used to be one of them.”

“Not really. Well. Maybe. I mostly just tagged along.”

Which was how he ended up as a werewolf in the first place. Just tagged along to watch Cormac’s back, and the monster flanked him. He was lucky to be alive. Or not, depending on your point of view.

Maybe he was thinking the same thing, because he had this sad look on his face, a distant gaze. Like he knew he wasn’t part of that world anymore. Maybe he even missed it.

“I still want to know about you and Brenda,” I said.

“Jealous?”

“Trick question, honey.”

“All I want to know is how she can sprint in four-inch heels without breaking her stride, but I wear track shoes, trip on a pebble, and tear a ligament that puts me in a knee brace for eight weeks.”

“That’s our mysterious universe for you. And what were you hunting at the time?”

“Cormac.”

I raised a brow. What the hell was Cormac doing that had Ben and Brenda chasing after him? And why hadn’t I heard about it? And why... The questions could go on forever.

“It’s a long story,” he said.

“I bet it is. And what’s Evan’s story? He another client?”

“No, he’s the competition. Works out of Seattle. Though I guess Cormac doesn’t have competition anymore.”

“I used to figure Cormac was one of a kind, or one of maybe a half dozen, tops. How many vampire and werewolf hunters are there? There’s Evan, Brenda, Boris, Sylvia—” I counted on my fingers. This was already too many.

He shrugged. “Hard to say. It’s a tough group to keep tabs on. People disappear, people retire, and no one really announces anything. It’s like Evan said, it works pretty much on gossip and rumor. But that’s how you know where the vampires and lycanthropes are, and where the work is.”

“How many of them were sitting in that bar?”

“Maybe a dozen,” Ben said finally. “I recognized a lot of faces, even if I don’t know them well.”

“Don’t you find that disturbing?”

“I suppose,” he said. “I used to hang out with people like that a lot. I guess I’m having trouble thinking of myself as the enemy.”

That was his old world. It didn’t matter if he was the target now. However much he might want to, he couldn’t go back to the way he was. His wolf must have been telling him that.

I squeezed his hand back and walked closer, so our bodies brushed. I wanted to run my fingers through his hair. There’d be time for that when we got to the room.

“What happens when they find out about you?” When they found out he was one of the bad guys now, nominally.

“They probably won’t shoot me on sight, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “You stood in that bar a whole ten minutes and no one took a shot at you.”

“But I imagine there was a lot of visualization going on in a lot of minds.”

He chuckled, but the sound was sad. Then he said, “I think they’d feel sorry for me. But I’d really rather they didn’t find out.”

Outside the elevators, from a side corridor, a shadow stepped in front of us to block our way. I jumped and caught a growl in the back of my throat. Ben touched my arm, and I could feel us both poised between flight or fight, staying together to protect each other or separating to confuse our enemy—

The shadow turned into Odysseus Grant, looking down on us with a stern gaze. He was tall, with a face like chipped stone. I hadn’t realized how tall he was. I’d attributed his height to stage presence. He wore his tuxedo, with jacket and bow tie, like he’d just come from his own show. Maybe he’d always been there, and my imagination had turned him into a shadow, made him appear out of nowhere. Maybe he’d been waiting for us.

“Mr. Grant,” I said, catching my breath and trying to slow my heart. I had to call someone in a tux “mister.”

“Ms. Norville. Mr. O’Farrell.” He nodded at Ben, and I didn’t have to wonder if he knew that Ben was a werewolf, or if he could tell. He knew and took in the knowledge with a slight nod. But how had the magician known Ben’s name? “I’m sorry if I startled you. I wanted to tell you—I watched your show. I’m almost sorry I didn’t take part. But about the gentleman inviting you to Balthasar’s show—don’t go. Don’t have anything to do with them.”

“Why? What’s the story?”

“It’s complicated.”

“It always is.”

He quirked a smile. “Have you met any other lycanthropes here? Have you seen any sign of a pack here, besides those two this evening?”

“No. I’ve been wondering about that.”

“Balthasar does not tolerate rivals.”

“I’m not a rival.”

“Of course not. But he might see you as something else. A possession, maybe?”

I laughed. “I don’t think so.” Ben wasn’t laughing, though. He’d curled his hand around my arm.

“I wanted to warn you.”

“What’s your stake in it? Why tell me this?”

“I’m simply a concerned citizen who knows something you don’t.”

And if that didn’t pique my curiosity... “What’s the big secret, then? What do you know? What’s going on over there? The lycanthropes—they perform under duress, don’t they? They’re trapped—”

Chuckling, he shook his head. “It’s not so mundane as that.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s best you don’t concern yourself with such matters.”

“Secrets don’t scare me, they only piss me off.”

“That can be dangerous.”

“Thanks. But I’m pretty good at taking care of myself.”

He looked both of us up and down. Taking our measure. “I suppose you’d have to be.”

“We look out for each other,” Ben said.

“Good. I’ll be off, then. Sorry for interrupting your evening.” He tipped an imaginary hat at us, then disappeared around the corner, a dapper gentleman from another century.

I stared after him, vaguely aware that Ben was still squeezing my arm. “It’s frustrating. I can’t find anything out about Balthasar, and then Grant comes along talking all this doom. And he wouldn’t even come on my show.”

“You sure seem to be popular with the guys,” he said.

“Jealous?”

“Yeah, I think I am.”

I put my arm around his waist as we walked to the elevator. “Good.”