Low Midnight

Chapter 21

HE ARRIVED at New Moon, sure that Kitty and Ben would be there. That was always his excuse. It wasn’t like he needed to go out; he’d never go out at all, if not for meeting those two at their restaurant. Maybe an exaggeration, maybe not. Sometimes they weren’t there; he’d go anyway, sit in the back and read a book and have a beer before packing up and going home. But odds were good they’d be there, and he could give them an update on what he’d found. Leaving out the exploding bits, of course.

He went in, paused a moment to take in the shape of the place, the number of people and where they were sitting, the traffic patterns, the mood. This was a mellow after-work crowd, carrying with it an atmosphere both exhausted and giddy. Shaun, working behind the bar tonight, gave Cormac a cautious nod in greeting.

“Kitty here?” Cormac asked.

“She should be here in half an hour or so,” the bartender said. “You want something to drink or are you just dropping by?”

“Sure. The usual.” Predictable. He’d become painfully predictable. He had a usual watering hole where people recognized him and they knew what he drank without asking.

And why not? You’re practically middle-aged, you ought to be more settled than you were in your youth.

He was not going to start thinking about that.

Shaun finished pouring the beer and set it on the bar. “Thanks,” Cormac muttered, and carried it to a table in back, where he could sit in a corner and watch. And read—at Amelia’s insistence, he brought along Milo Kuzniak’s notebook. He sat, drank his beer, read, and didn’t much care how it looked from the outside.

Sure enough, Kitty came in about a half an hour later. Ben was with her, and the two were talking. Or she was talking, and he had a vaguely amused smile on while he nodded at her encouragingly. They spotted him quickly, as soon as the door opened. They could smell him.

The ensuing pattern was familiar: she checked in with her pack members, Shaun at the bar and anyone else who happened to be around. She had the friendly, amiable disposition of a politician without the artifice, handing out friendly touches and comforting smiles. Her pack members, the other werewolves, leaned into her, following her with devoted gazes. Cormac wasn’t sure she realized the effect she had on them. She’d say she was just being nice.

Ben came straight over and took the chair across from Cormac. “Well?”

“Well what?”

He shrugged, leaving Cormac wide open to stick his foot in his mouth. Kitty rescued him by sweeping over, setting two mugs of beer on the table, and perching in the other chair. She revealed the book she’d held tucked under her arm and pushed it across the table to him.

“Look what I got. Galleys for the new book. Isn’t it pretty?”

On top of everything else she managed, she was an author. That was more of a sideline to the talk radio show, but if she was going to be doing all that talking anyway, might as well write some of it down.

It was a cheap paperback, not the final fancy hardcover that would be out in a few months. Storytellers: Myth and History, the title read. The cover was a photograph, her portrait against a backdrop of pine trees. She was all made up and airbrushed and looked like a celebrity, which he supposed was the idea. But it didn’t look like the Kitty he knew.

“Congratulations,” he said, his tone as even as ever.

“Thanks! This is an extra. You know, if you wanted to read it. Or something.” She blinked hopefully.

He was about to politely decline, but Amelia insisted. Yes, we want to read it. He picked up the copy, and Kitty beamed.

“You find out anything new?” Ben asked. “I assume that’s why you’re here.”

“Don’t think I just stopped by for a beer and company?”

“Not that you’d ever admit it,” Ben observed, which was more accurate than not.

“So what have you found?” Kitty demanded.

He started to say something, stopped. Thought for a second about how to condense everything that had happened since the run-in with Nolan and Eddie. Realized that Ben would ask how much of what he’d been doing was technically illegal, and Cormac didn’t precisely know. He didn’t think they were trespassing on private land when they experimented with that mining spell. Bottom line, none of it would make Ben and Kitty happy, and he didn’t want the grilling he’d go through if his answer was too vague.

They watched him expectantly, waiting for an answer.

He said, “I got a hit on the stuff we posted online. Don’t know if anything’ll come of it. But it may be another lead.” It all depended on whether or not they had e-mail waiting for them when they got home.

“Yeah?” Kitty asked. “What kind of a hit?”

“Hard to tell. Someone who knows about Amy. And who knows about Kumarbis.”

Kitty sat forward at that—a wolf on the scent, ears up and nose quivering. “Knows how? This person—they must be a vampire, to know about Kumarbis. What would a vampire know about Amy’s book—”

“I told you, I don’t know. We’ve just exchanged a couple of e-mails so far. I’m still feeling the person out.”

She sighed, obviously disappointed. “If you find out anything more, and if you think we can even trust them, find out what they know about Roman, the Long Game, all of it.”

“Yeah. One step at a time.”

“Thank you again,” Kitty said. “For working on all this.”

He brushed her off out of habit. “I figure I’m in it as deep as you are at this point.”

Can you please finish your beer so we can go see if our mysterious correspondent has answered?

How could someone who was functionally dead be that impatient?

Kitty rambled on about the new book, the release schedule, and possibly going on a signing tour, which gave him a twinge of anxiety. Traveling all over the country meeting total strangers—what could possibly go wrong? He nursed his beer and listened to his friends’ banter.

The phone in his pocket rang. He considered not answering, then thought it might be Layne wanting to blow off more steam. Curious, he checked, while Ben and Kitty looked on with interest. Because they were nosy.

The caller ID wasn’t Layne this time. He answered and heard, “Cormac?” It was Mollie.

He got up from the table and walked a few paces off, then realized that wouldn’t be far enough away to keep the couple and their werewolf ears from listening in, so he went out the front door. Aware the whole time that Ben was smirking and Kitty’s eyebrows had lifted—they knew his caller was female.

“Hey,” he answered the phone, propping himself up against the brick wall outside the door.

“Hi. Andy gave me your number.” She didn’t sound happy, and Cormac braced. She waited, and waited. Expectantly.

He said, innocently as he could, which wasn’t very, “Heard you guys had a fire out at the ranch.”

“I should have shot you where you stood, Cormac Bennett. That was my car you blew up.”

He winced. Just his luck. “Well. Thank you for not shooting me.”

“You’re lucky Andy won’t let me call the cops. He won’t even let me call my insurance company, because they’d call the cops.”

He wasn’t going to apologize. He refused to apologize. He’d do it all over again. He’d just pick a different car. “What’s he expect you to do?”

“I made Andy give me his car. And five grand.”

“That was big of him.”

“I suppose I deserve it, hanging out with him in the first place. I don’t know what all he gets up to, I don’t want to. But God, Cormac, what the hell!”

“I needed a distraction.”

“I know better than to ask Andy what he’s doing, but you—you all but vanish for twenty years, then show up setting cars on fire? He says you’re some kind of magical vampire hunter—is that true?”

She didn’t know the stories. Didn’t know about his father, had stayed out of the politics of what followed while she was off getting married and having kids.

“Mollie, it’s a lot like the stuff with Layne, you really don’t want to know.”

There was a pause, and he could just about picture her straightening, brushing back her hair, and changing her stance in order to change her voice. Because the next thing she said was gentle, suggestive. “Cormac, I know it’s been a long time. I don’t know what you have going on in your life right now. But I was thinking maybe we could get together. Catch up, you know? I could bore you with pictures of my kids.”

He didn’t know if it was the sudden shift in the tone of her voice or his natural suspicion, but he didn’t trust the request. “Layne put you up to this, didn’t he? He’s sitting right there, isn’t he?”

A sigh. He imagined her looking across whatever room she was in to her brother egging her on. And to think, for a split second Cormac thought maybe she really wanted to see him.

“He wants to meet. Just to talk.”

“I bet he does. The answer’s still no, not as long as he’s likely to put a bullet in me.”

“He was working with that Kuzniak jerk so he wouldn’t have to put bullets in anyone! Just watch them keel over dead when they get in his way!”

“Like Kuzniak,” Cormac said.

A long silence followed. Amelia murmured, Anderson Layne found something. He discovered something.

They were supposed to be washing their hands of it.

“Cormac—”

“Mollie. It really has been good to see you. I have to go.” He hung up. Sighed. Well, at least he had her number now.

You wanted to ask her out for drinks.

It wouldn’t work out, he thought. He wasn’t that kind of guy.

He could just go on home, but Kitty or Ben—or both—would call and demand to know what was happening. Best get it over with now, in person, when they might actually believe he wasn’t hiding something. He went back inside.

They were waiting for him, and they didn’t even have to ask, just looked at him with these expectant, questioning gazes. Puppy dog eyes? Hm.

“What was that all about?” Kitty finally asked when he didn’t say anything.

“Just a call. Not important,” he said.

“You were out there a long time,” Kitty said. She might have batted her eyelashes.

“Yeah?” He found some beer left in his mug and drank it down.

Kitty added, “Is she nice?”

He rolled his eyes. “I should get going. I’ve still got some work to do. Let you guys have your fun in peace.”

“You’ll let us know if anything comes up?” Ben said.

“Always do.”

“Not likely,” he said, his smile friendly enough, but the dig was there as well. The words held a lot of shared history. A lot of not talking.

“If it’s important, I’ll let you know,” he amended and waved himself out.