Low Midnight

Chapter 23

CORMAC MISSED his guns. The feel of them, the weight, the confidence they brought, the reassurance of his own power. He would reach under his jacket for a shoulder holster that wasn’t there, purely out of habit, and feel off balance. Go for the gun at his hip and grab empty space instead. He always would, he thought. Slowly, he stopped missing the actual ability to shoot. Because Amelia brought her own firepower to the partnership.

The first time he’d seen her use magic in a fight was in prison, against a ravaging demon. The only thing that could defeat that monster had been magic. Bullets sure wouldn’t have done it. She prevailed again, going up against some weather magician who had it in for Kitty. She explained the principles to him—was happy to explain—how one studied energies that already existed and worked to turn them, to use them against the person attacking, to build your own energy that you could use to defend yourself; that the world was made up of energy as much as it was made of matter and just because you couldn’t see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Among the twentieth-century reading she’d been catching up on, she’d been very interested in quantum mechanics, because she said it sounded so much like how she thought of magic.

If he thought about it too hard, he’d shut down. The implications were too big. He didn’t need to know how it worked, only that it did, and that he could use it when he needed to get himself out of trouble or make his intentions known in as decisive a manner as possible. So far, they’d done pretty well.

They had a couple of hours before they needed to hit the road, and Amelia spent that time reviewing the spells she thought she’d need and gathering the materials she’d use to work them. Not as simple as grabbing your revolver and checking the chamber, but what did he know? There might be demons.

He was on the freeway, halfway to Manitou, when he decided to call Kitty. Just in case something happened. Her phone rang once and went to voice mail. He clicked off the call rather than leave a message. A message wouldn’t have made any sense and would be too late anyway.

It’s Friday night, Cormac.

“Dammit,” he muttered. Kitty’s cell phone was off because it was Friday night and she was at the KNOB studio doing her show.

You could call Ben.…

He was not up to the lecture he’d get from Ben, and he couldn’t call Ben without telling him he was headed to a midnight showdown with Anderson Layne. Not that Kitty wouldn’t lecture him, but the lecture would somehow be easier to take from her.

Because you don’t have a lifetime of history with Kitty. When Kitty says you’re being reckless, you tell yourself she doesn’t know what she’s talking about and that she’s just being shrill. When Ben says you’re being reckless, you can’t ignore him because he knows you very, very well. And he’s usually right.

“Whose side are you on?”

What a silly question that is.

He turned on the Jeep’s radio and tuned it to KNOB. Her voice—rather, a more brash and manic version of her voice, her on-air personality—came through the speakers.

“—and what did you think would happen, when you invited your vampire boyfriend to your parents’ house for dinner without telling them he’s a vampire!”

A panicky-sounding woman answered. “That was the whole point of the dinner, to tell them that he’s a vampire! I figured it was the best way, if they could actually see him—”

“And your boyfriend agreed to this?”

“I—I—I told him they already knew.”

“So your Italian mother fixes a giant batch of garlicky pasta sauce that the vampire can’t eat, and you wonder why everyone’s mad at you?”

Listening to Kitty’s show was like driving past a car wreck—you couldn’t turn away.

“My mother hasn’t spoken to me since, and Gerald says that maybe we should take some time off from things, and this isn’t how I wanted things to turn out at all—”

“Then maybe you should have been up front with everyone in the first place. Boyfriends, parents, family dinners—this is primal stuff, you can’t screw around with it. You definitely can’t use these things as a hammer to passive-aggressively bludgeon everyone into thinking and feeling what you want them to.”

“But—”

“I want you to practice something for me. Repeat these words: I’m sorry.”

“But—”

“Say it. ‘I’m sorry.’”

“I’m sorry?”

“You need to apologize to your mother, and your boyfriend. And none of this ‘I’m sorry you were offended’ crap. You need to be sorry that you lied to your boyfriend and that you didn’t tell your mother that she probably shouldn’t cook a big meal for this particular gathering.”

“But all I did was make a little mistake—”

“Exactly! Apologizing is what we do after we make mistakes!”

The Midnight Hour’s audience often seemed to call in wanting validation. Wanting to be told that they’re right and everyone else in the world is wrong. Didn’t usually work out for them, and Kitty had a great talent for cutting through their bullshit.

Kitty continued: “Here’s the thing, and this goes for everyone out there: if having a boyfriend you can take home to meet your parents is important to you, and your parents are very traditional, then maybe you shouldn’t date vampires. Trust me, I’ve had experience with this sort of thing.”

Cormac had not met Kitty’s parents, or her sister and her family. He had no intention of meeting them, because it would be too weird. What would he say? Hi, I met Kitty when I tried to kill her, and I had a thing for her for a while, but now we’re just friends, but there still might be some feelings, and what? No. This was another reason she was better off with Ben, who went to her parents’ house for dinner on a regular basis. He was a lawyer, he could talk about his job. He knew how to make small talk.

Cormac had the number for Kitty’s direct line at the studio, one that would bypass the screening queue and go directly to her monitor. Which meant he shouldn’t have gotten a busy signal when he called, but he did.

“Next caller, you’re on the air, what have you got for me?”

“Hi, Kitty, longtime listener, thanks so much for taking my call, I just want to know what you think about vampire couples adopting children. Since they, you know, can’t biologically have kids, do you think it’s reasonable for them to want to adopt? And, you know, would you expect them to turn that child into a vampire when it got old enough? You know how some people say ‘Don’t you wish they could stay little forever?’ Do you know if anyone’s ever actually made their baby a vampire, to keep it from growing up?”

Maybe a third of the people who called in needed serious advice and made reasonable contributions to the discussion. The rest of her callers were like this: people who didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about but sure had a lot of crazy going on.

Kitty sounded like she was in physical pain when she answered. He pictured her with her eyes closed, head in her hands. “There’s so much wrong with everything you said that I don’t even know where to start. First off, when we talk about vampire Families, we’re not talking Mom and Dad and two-point-five kids. In all my years, I’ve never met a vampire who has expressed an interest in having children—some of them have had children before becoming vampires, and continue to care deeply for those children. But those children are usually already grown. I’ve never met a vampire with, you know, children children. Mostly because I imagine arranging day care would be a bitch. Also, I’ve never met a non-adult vampire. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I imagine it’s possible. But you do know that people who wish babies could stay little forever are crazy, right? As the proud aunt of two adorable rugrats myself, I was so happy when they got to be old enough to take themselves to the restroom, you know? Anyway. From a purely biological perspective, vampires don’t reproduce by having children, they reproduce by infecting others with vampirism.…”

He tried her number again, and again. The third call got through, and a man’s flat, professional voice answered. “You’ve reached The Midnight Hour. What’s your question or comment?”

The screener. Somehow, the direct line had shunted him over to her regular call-in line. She didn’t have a screener in the early days of her show. She’d gotten a lot bigger since then. His frustration grew.

“It’s Matt, isn’t it?” he said. “I thought this was the direct line—I need to talk to Kitty, now.”

“Who’s this?” the guy said. “Where are you calling from?”

“Just put me through to Kitty.”

“You can’t just talk to Kitty, she’s in the middle of—”

“It’s Cormac. She’ll talk to me. Put me through.”

“No! Wait a minute, Cormac—aren’t you that guy who wanted to kill her?”

People kept harping on that. He’d never live it down. “Tell her I’m on the line.”

“I don’t think—”

“Just do it.” He did not have the patience for this shit. “Tell her it’s important.”

“Please hold,” Matt spat at him. He probably didn’t have the patience either, but at least he had a button to push to pass the buck. “And you’ll need to turn your radio off.”

He did. He knew Kitty had a monitor, that she picked what calls to answer based on the screener’s listing. He wanted Matt to just tell her he was on the line. The lack of control was aggravating.

Then Kitty picked up. He was kind of surprised. “Cormac. What the hell?”

“What happened to your direct line?”

“Wait, what?”

“Your direct line, the emergency number—”

She groaned. “We’ve been having problems since we added a couple more lines. I’m sorry. I’ll get Matt to look at it after the show. Wait a minute … are you having an emergency?”

Was he? Probably. “No. I just need to tell you something.”

“Can’t it wait? I’m in the middle of the show!”

“Yeah. I’m kind of in the middle of something, too; it can’t wait.”

“Maybe I can make us both happy—can I put you on the air? Just for a couple of—”

“No. Hell no.”

“Just a couple of questions, people will love it!”

“Kitty—”

“Please?”

He sighed. Why did he even bother? “Fine.”

You really are a big softy at heart, aren’t you? Amelia said teasingly.

Yeah, or something.

A sound in the background clicked and the quality of the line changed to a more open tone, with more interference.

Sure enough, her next words were, “And I’ve got a sudden visit from a special guest. My very longtime listeners will know exactly who I’m talking about. It’s my great pleasure to introduce sometime bounty hunter and man of mystery, Cormac. Cormac, welcome!”

He ought to just hang up on her. “Norville. Make it quick.”

“Right. So, Cormac, what have you been up to since the last time we talked?”

He didn’t say a word. Not necessarily because he was trying to be difficult. He just couldn’t think of anything he’d want to say to Kitty’s nationwide audience.

Kitty only let the dead air linger for a second or two. “I think I’ve mentioned that Cormac is the strong and silent type, yes? Maybe he’ll be up for a game of twenty questions. Cormac, twenty questions, yes or no.”

“No,” he stated.

“Are you on a job right now?”

He wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that. Or if he should. “Yes. And I need to talk to you about it. Privately.”

“I can’t believe this, I’m being coerced on my own show. You know you’re one of the few people who could get away with this,” she muttered. “All right, don’t go anywhere, because after a short break for local messages, we’ll get right back to your calls on The Midnight Hour.”

He listened closely for the click and change in tone that meant they were off the air. Not that he didn’t trust her, but the reassurance was nice.

“Cormac, what are you doing?” she said.

“If something happens to me, if something goes wrong, you need to go to Judi and Frida and tell them you know how Milo Kuzniak killed Crane. It’s a spell attached to some kind of Maltese cross amulet. Tell them that, and get them to help you with Amy Scanlon’s book.”

“What do you mean, if something happens to you? Why can’t you tell them yourself?”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong. I’m going after that amulet and I have to go through some not-very-nice people to get it. It’ll be fine.”

“Except, just in case, you had to tell me? Because you’re meeting not-very-nice people at midnight? There is nothing about this situation that sounds not-dangerous.”

“Amelia’s looking out for me.”

“No offense, but that doesn’t reassure me.”

“You trust me or not?”

She didn’t say anything, which he supposed was the best he could expect in response to that question.

“You know I’m going to call Ben right after this, right?”

“Better it comes from you than me.”

“That’s so dysfunctional. Do you even listen to the show? You know how many problems come from people not telling each other things?”

“Kitty—”

“Call me when it’s all over. Let me know everything’s fine.”

“I’ll call.” He hung up before she could say anything else.

“Dysfunctional” is one of those eminently useful modern words that serves as a catchall for so many otherwise complicated issues. It tends to lose meaning, doesn’t it?

“Well. She’s not wrong.”

Amelia didn’t argue.