Kitty Steals the Show

Chapter 5

WE ARRIVED in time for opening remarks by the director of the British Alternative Biologies Laboratory, the British version of the NIH’s Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology and co-sponsor of the conference. The main auditorium had room to seat over a thousand and was currently half filled. A few of the people scattered around were lycanthropes—I could almost spot them without smelling them, seated in the back and along the edges, near the doors and away from other groups of people. Close to escape routes, away from crowds. Ben and I did the same, sitting in back. Oddly enough, Wolf had reconciled to the situation. The smell of strange werewolves in someone else’s territory should have set me on edge, but there was so much strangeness here, so much sensory overload, getting worked up about it seemed pointless. We’d keep our eyes open, sure, but we weren’t going to panic. I settled into my seat a little more firmly and started to enjoy myself.

The sleekly modern room had reasonably comfortable padded folding seats that sloped downward to the stage, holding a podium where spotlights focused. A large screen toward the back of the stage meant we would probably be subjected to PowerPoint presentations. At the end of the week, I’d be giving my speech from this stage. I still didn’t know what I was going to talk about. I had some ideas. Maybe I could get the audience to ask me questions for an hour …

While waiting for opening remarks to start, we studied the schedule of events for the week. Within moments, my eyes blurred. I wanted to see it all, every single panel and lecture. I was pretty sure I’d done a show on every single panel and lecture topic at some point. This was going to give me enough material for the next six months.

“There’s too much,” I said. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“We could tag team it. Cover twice as much ground,” Ben said, looking much less awestruck.

“What are you interested in?”

He pointed to one of the evening’s lectures: “Case Law and Paranatural Citizens: A Survey.”

“Huh. Better you than me,” I said.

“Forewarned is forearmed,” he said.

“Then you’d darned well better sit through that. I’m trying to decide between ‘In Plain Sight: Did Hammer Film Studios Know Something We Didn’t?’ and ‘Theoretical Notions of Space and Time as Applied to Vampire Physiology.’”

“What does that even mean?” Ben said.

“I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”

Conferencegoers filed in, the auditorium filled with the white noise of dozens of murmured conversations. Only five minutes after the scheduled time, a middle-aged man in a smart gray suit and wire-rimmed glasses came onstage with a set of note cards. Our presenter, obviously. Polite applause greeted him.

“Since the National Institutes of Health in the United States made the announcement four years ago, a vast new field of study has opened to us, encompassing not only biology but sociology, anthropology, and even folklore…”

His perfunctory account of the controversial field of paranatural studies made no mention of my own contribution in mainstreaming the topic, my role in prompting Dr. Paul Flemming of the NIH to make his announcement proclaiming the existence of vampires and lycanthropes to the world, his role in trapping me in order to broadcast me shape-shifting on live TV, which meant that no one could really ignore us anymore. Probably just as well.

The PowerPoint slides, which he did in fact include in his presentation, did reference Flemming’s work. Footnotes mentioned his name, papers he’d written, research he’d sponsored. I tensed, wanting to stand and declare—Flemming had been thoroughly discredited, how could anyone possibly even mention his name? Surely his research had to be discredited right along with him? The presenter may not have actually spoken the name, but it was there, clearly written, blazing across the room. Because even after everything that had happened, Flemming had helped establish the paranatural as a legitimate field of study. He’d be here in spirit, if not in flesh, all week.

The slides were mostly pie charts that had disclaimers about how no one could really be sure of the number of vampires and lycanthropes in a given population, these were estimates, and so on. Nothing nefarious, nothing earth-shattering. At least the guy’s British accent was fun to listen to.

The whole conference was going to be very staid, I gathered, which was probably a good thing. The subject was so sensationalist on its own we hardly needed to be adding to the hype. If we were all calm and boring about it maybe we could counteract the proto-riot going on outside.

Maybe I could work some of this into my speech—why the supernatural evoked so much emotion in people, why establishing much less maintaining objectivity was so difficult, and what that meant for all of us here. And whether maybe the topic deserved a little sensationalism.

“THEORETICAL NOTIONS of Space and Time as Applied to Vampire Physiology” turned out to involve a dark room and another PowerPoint presentation describing obscure bits of quantum physics and string theory. Not good in combination with lingering jet lag. I sat in the back of the room, notepad and pen in hand, trying to make sense of what the lecturer, a physics professor from the University of California at Berkeley was saying. Dr. Shumacher had worked with the guy on some of his research and recommended the talk. When the lecture opened with a physics joke—“Vampires: alive or dead? Does Schrödinger’s cat walk among us?”—I knew I was in trouble.

He went on to describe his hypothesis that vampirism was characterized by anomalies at the atomic level in the bodies of those affected by it. I hoped he had a question-and-answer period, because I really wanted to know if—and how—he intended on testing his ideas on actual vampires. Had he ever looked at a vampire tissue sample under, say, an electron microscope? If you did, what would you expect to find? Surely a vampire somewhere would donate a sample for such an experiment, since vampire blood contained the contagion that caused the disease. Maybe I could talk Rick into it.

I had to keep bringing my focus back to the slides that flipped past on the screen in the front of the room. Diagrams with arrows and squiggly lines kept showing up, and I kept not understanding. I wrote down the lecturer’s name and e-mail address so I could grill him later, when I was more conscious.

My attention drifted away again to study the rest of the audience. My werewolf eyes saw just fine in the dark. The room was about two-thirds filled, mostly with the academic types I’d seen throughout the conference so far. Many leaned forward, listening studiously. A pair of men in back stood together, whispering, pointing to the slides. A few journalists might have been here. Someone with a netbook on her lap seemed to be taking notes.

There weren’t any vampires here.

I straightened, breathing more calmly and deeply to make sure I was right. Vampires smelled cold, lifeless. They didn’t have heartbeats, and I could usually spot one across the room, even in a crowd. I searched for the familiar chilled eddies, the hair pricking along my neck and shoulders, and sensed nothing. Everyone in the lecture hall was alive, with steady heartbeats and fresh flowing blood. Well, that was interesting. I found it hard to believe that not a single vampire would be interested in a topic like this. Apparently not. All the vampire-specific lectures had been scheduled after dark specifically so that vampires could attend. So much for that idea.

Many vampires I’d talked to insisted on telling me how they moved outside of human interests and didn’t concern themselves with such pedestrian matters. But … really? Not to mention the fact that this stuff was cool?

I’d ask Emma. She wouldn’t give me the runaround.

On my way out of the room, I caught the scent of a werewolf nearby. The conference had so many werewolf delegates the distinctive fur/skin smell had become almost invisible, part of the background. But this one, a middle-aged, brusque-looking man at the back of the room, looked out of place. He had a conference badge on a lanyard around his neck, but instead of a professional-looking suit, or even the geeky business-casual most of the delegates managed, he wore jeans, a rough corduroy coat, and had a scruffy, unkempt appearance. I hated to think it, but he looked too blue-collar for the conference. I thought I remembered him from earlier—also standing in the back of the main auditorium after the opening speeches. I only noticed him now because his gaze flickered my way, and he seemed to smile.

I kept my pace steady, not revealing discomfort as I walked away.

WE PLANNED to meet Emma in the front lobby of the convention center after the evening’s events. Ned’s vampire convocation was tonight, and she was our ride.

Ben approached me from the other end of the hallway. “How was your shindig?” I asked.

“Leave it to a roomful of attorneys to pioneer a whole new branch of law they can specialize in and charge extra for. I think I may have a new line to add to my letterhead.”

“Specializing in supernatural law? Really?”

“Yup. Did you know I’m not the only werewolf lawyer in the world? I’m not even the first. Or second.” He seemed pleased at the prospect, and I wanted to give him an encouraging hug.

“So you had a good time?”

“It was just like law school graduation, we were all passing around business cards and sizing each other up.” His wry smile fell, and he put his arm around my shoulders when I sidled up to him. “Some of them are worried about where we could be headed, with legislatures taking up the status of supernaturals. Maybe even criminalizing it.”

“What? Making it illegal to be a werewolf?” Like we could even help it. Some people chose this life, but Ben and I had both been attacked.

“Yeah. It turned into an argument, the human lawyers saying it’ll never get that bad, the lycanthrope lawyers arguing that it already has in some places. Most of the lycanthropes think we need to do what we can to bring cases and establish precedents that make our status a civil rights issue rather than a criminal one. Make sure it gets decided in courts first.”

“What do you think?”

“That they may have a point? I don’t know. It’s surreal to be talking about it in the open. I know this stuff has been public knowledge for years, but it seems like such a no-brainer. I’m still a person, still a U.S. citizen, why are we even arguing about this?”

I squeezed him. “The way I understand the argument is that we regulate guns because they’re dangerous weapons, and werewolves are dangerous, therefore…” I waved my hand, leaving the rest of the statement open.

“It’s enough to make you want to run off into the woods and never come back,” he said.

The police had cleared out the protests after dark—we could safely leave through the front doors, now. Waiting for us on the front sidewalk, Emma looked as enthusiastic and hip as she had at the airport, in a silky blue dress with a hem that danced at her knees and a sweater over her shoulders. Her hair hung loose, shining.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Are we dressed for it?” I was business-casual, in khakis and a blouse, and Ben wasn’t wearing a tie with his suit jacket. I expected vampires would treat this kind of event like dressing for prom: a celebration of fashion, excess, and an exercise in one-upping each other. How did a couple of werewolves fit into that?

“You’re fine,” she said, smiling.

The car drove what felt like the long way around, but I was beginning to wonder if London had a direct route between any two points.

“I wanted to ask you—I went to a lecture on vampire physiology, and there were no vampires in the audience. Aren’t you guys interested in that sort of thing? I figured one of you was sponsoring a research lab somewhere.”

“There isn’t really a tradition of funding scientific research among vampires,” she said. “Was it interesting?”

“It was a little over my head. A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic kind of thing. I took notes.”

“I think it may come down to vampires not really being interested in what mortals have to say about them.”

“Yeah, so I’ve gathered,” I said.

She fidgeted with the edge of her sweater. “It doesn’t even seem real sometimes. Some days I feel like I ought to be getting up in the morning and going to class. I’m still young by human standards, never mind vampire. It’s like I don’t know what I am.”

“But is it getting any … I don’t know. Easier doesn’t seem like the right word.”

“Alette says that in another ten years, when I stop relating to people who look my age, and the people my age start looking older, I’ll feel less torn. The old life slips away, and it really does feel like you’ve died. You move on. Ned says the same thing. So I guess I just have to wait a few more years before it starts to feel normal.”

Normal. How could we even use that word to describe our lives? Because normal was what you lived with every day, no matter what it was. Nobody had the same normal when you put it like that; normal didn’t exist.

“You look really good,” I said. “Have I mentioned that?”

She shrugged, but her expression brightened. “I’ll never have to worry about wrinkles, will I?”

We drove on.