He’d looked at me through the glass doorway, only mildly perplexed, like this wasn’t the biggest problem he’d faced all day. “This is awkward,” he’d said.
“What? What’s the matter?” I’d said through the glass.
“There’s something odd about this place.”
I’d gotten a big grin on my face. Crossed my arms, regarded him smugly, and seriously considered not inviting him in.
“That’s because it’s not yours,” I said. Then I opened the door and invited him in, because when all was said and done, he wasn’t just the Master vampire of Denver. He was my friend.
“Arturo never would have let you get away with this,” he’d said.
Arturo was the previous vampire running Denver, and this was a place within his city where lycanthropes had power.
“Well. Thanks for not being Arturo.”
This night, we sat in the back, at what had become my usual table. Rick leaned back, looking over the thinning late crowd. We were down to barflies and a birthday party in the far corner.
I was distracted, tapping my fingers, waiting for the building to burn down. “You ready for me to tell you what happened last night?”
He made a palm-up gesture, giving me the floor. I told the story again, and it seemed even more vague and less likely than when I told it to Grant. The whole thing was turning into a dream. Rick listened thoughtfully, attentively, brow slightly furrowed. In a lot of ways, of all the vampires I’d ever met, Rick had stayed the most human. He could still engage in the problems and concerns of mere mortals. At least, he could make it look like he did, finger tapping his chin, his dark eyes thoughtful.
I finished, and he sat back in his chair.
“You didn’t get a good look at it? You don’t know what it was?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing anything, only what it felt like. Maybe it wasn’t a thing, but a force. You’ve been around for five centuries. Does stuff like this happen a lot? Have you ever heard of a monster that likes to attack werewolf packs on full-moon nights?”
“And also could be summoned by a vampire,” he said.
“Or has something to do with Tiamat. Maybe this isn’t a vampire thing.”
“I think this goes beyond the Tiamat cult,” Rick said. “The cult leader might be using this as an opportunity to get a foothold in this territory.”
“Rick, just because the cult is run by a vampire doesn’t mean this has anything to do with vampire politics. Does it?”
He glanced away, seeming to ponder, and didn’t answer. And wasn’t that just what I needed right now, to worry about vampire politics, as well?
Sighing, I said, “We wanted something to happen so we’d have information. So we’d have something to work with. But I feel like we’re worse off than before.”
“We both have contacts,” he said firmly, decisively, in a way that was probably meant to sound reassuring. “We’ll do our research.”
“Like standing on rooftops, looking for patterns?”
He seemed to be scanning the crowd. It made me nervous, because I could never forget what he was, and the look in his eyes was appraising. I didn’t want him treating my restaurant like his restaurant. He absently tapped a finger on the table.
I was about to say something catty to him when he said, “I called Dom. To ask his opinion, for old times’ sake.”
Dom, the Master of Las Vegas, was only a figurehead. I wasn’t entirely clear on the situation, but he was there to divert attention from the real powers there. Like the priestess of the Tiamat cult.
“What did he say?”
“He told me I’d be better off if I stayed out of it and suggested I’d be happier if the local alpha werewolf wasn’t so uppity. You seem to have made an impression on him.”
“Dom doesn’t know anything,” I said.
“I know. He refused to talk about the vampire priestess of the cult. Whatever we’re up against has him cowed.”
Hell, it had me almost cowed. This wasn’t anything I didn’t already know. “How does that fit into your pattern?”
“I know Dom. It would take more than a two-bit cult to cow him.”
I hadn’t been that impressed with the guy, but Rick had known him for at least a hundred fifty years. Maybe there was more to him. What I didn’t want to hear was that we were dealing with something more powerful than a two-bit cult, though it certainly didn’t feel two-bit to me.
I rubbed my hair and sighed. “I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“I know. We’ll do our best.”
Our best didn’t always keep people from getting killed.
When my phone rang at work the next day, I jumped at it, hoping it was Grant with a glorious revelation, or at least a piece of news that would help explain what was after me and the pack. But it wasn’t. I didn’t recognize the voice.
“Is this Kitty Norville?”
“Yes, can I help you?”
Anxious, the man asked, “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about Ted Gurney.”
“Ted Gurney? I’m not sure—” But then the name clicked, and the world around me lurched. My stomach froze in the same moment the caller said, “Theodore Joseph Gurney.”
T.J.
T.J. had been my best friend. He’d protected me, saved my life, helped me adjust to being a werewolf when I was new to it all. He showed me how I could use the lycanthropy, how it could make me strong, if I could learn to integrate both sides of my being. He’d died in my arms, his heart torn out of his chest by the alpha male of our pack. The pack I had taken over, after watching that same alpha die by the claws of a dozen angry wolves.
Revenge was supposed to make me feel better.
Grief for him had turned into something like a land mine. It would lie quietly for days, weeks even, me not thinking of him, not dwelling. But then something would come along to set it off. Then his death felt like it happened yesterday.
I couldn’t hide my suspicion. Why was this land mine bringing up T.J. now? “Why do you want to know about him? Why are you calling me?”
He sounded like he’d prepared the speech. “I have a copy of a police report of a murder that happened outside your apartment a little over a year ago. You’re listed as a witness, and you named Ted Gurney as the murderer.”
Here was a ghost. Metaphorical, but here he was. I could see T.J.’s face appearing before me.
“Who are you?” I demanded, half rising from my chair, ready to growl.
He hesitated. I could almost hear him swallow. “My name is Peter Gurney. I’m his brother.”
That knocked the wind out of me. I sank back, trying to figure out what to say, what to think. T.J. never told me he had a brother. I didn’t know anything about his life before I met him.
Peter Gurney filled the silence. “I’m looking for my brother. I’ve spent the last year tracking him down. It hasn’t been easy, I know he doesn’t want to be found. But I really need to find him. The trail dried up here, and the last sign I can find of him anywhere is this police report. I need to know: Do you know him? Did he really kill someone? Do you have any idea where he is?”
He didn’t know T.J. was dead. I didn’t know how I was going to talk to this guy.
“Where are you? Are you here in Denver?” I said.
“Yeah.”
That made it harder, and maybe a little easier. I wanted to look him in the eye. For T.J. “Can we meet some- place? I can answer your questions, but I’d rather do this in person.”
“Yeah. Okay.” He sounded nervous. He had to suspect what was coming, didn’t he? “Just tell me where.”
I sent him to New Moon and met him there half an hour later.
Peter was waiting just inside the front door, glancing around like he wasn’t sure he wanted to be here. He was younger than I was expecting. Twenty, maybe. Lanky, boyish, scuffing a nervous foot on the floor. But I spotted him right off. He looked like T.J.: dark hair, sharp face. A young T.J., like he m
ight have been as a teenager. Weirdly, though, his scent was different. T.J. worked on motorcycles and always smelled a little like grease. He also smelled like wolf, of course. He smelled like all the familiar little parts of his life. Peter didn’t have that. He smelled like travel: fast-food restaurants, gas stations, clothes that needed washing. No wolf at all.
I greeted him as I walked in. “Hi, Peter? I’m Kitty.”
“Oh. Hi.” We shook hands.
“Let’s sit in back.” I gestured him to my favorite table in the back of the bar, where we wouldn’t be disturbed. “You want anything to drink? Soda, tea . . . double whiskey?” My smile, like my humor, was weak.
“Just water,” he said, and I relayed the request, water for Peter, soda for me, to one of the staff while we settled in.
We looked at each other across the table. I had so many questions. I didn’t know anything about T.J.’s past. Nothing of him remained after I’d lost him. Suddenly, here was a connection, answers—evidence that he’d ever lived at all. I wanted to cling to Peter, but he wouldn’t have understood any of that. At least not until I had a chance to explain what had happened to his brother. Which I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to be the one to extinguish his hope.
Peter spoke first. “Kitty, can you tell me where my brother is?”
There was no way to soft-pedal this. Out with it, that was all I could do. Calmly, methodically, I started in on it.
“How much do you know about him and what he was doing here? When was the last time you talked to him?”
He hesitated a moment, editing his response maybe, like he didn’t want to tell me anything. “It’s been a long time. I know he moved out here a while ago. He doesn’t have a regular job—he fixes bikes. I know he’s hiding, but I need to find him. I know he’ll want to see me.” He was tense, leaning on the table, desperate. And he didn’t have a clue.
I said, “Did you know he was a werewolf?”
He chuckled, disbelieving. “What?”
“T.J.—Ted—was a werewolf. Like me. We were part of the same pack. He was my best friend.”
He stared. “You’re not serious.”
I soldiered on. The words were cotton in my mouth. I just kept spitting them out. What else could I do? “There was a fight. It happens sometimes, like with natural wolves. They—we—have fights for dominance. Your brother was killed. He died protecting me.”
Stricken, he murmured, “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I wish—” Of course I wished it had all turned out different. That wasn’t the right thing to say. I shook my head. “T.J.—everyone here called him T.J.—never told me anything about his family. I didn’t really know anything about him, other than his life here. It never occurred to me that he was hiding. I have so many questions—”
“Do you have proof? Is there a grave? A death certificate? I should have been able to find a death certificate.”
He’d died in a werewolf battle, in the hills. The body had vanished, dropped by the other wolves down some dark hole where no one would find it. The pack cleaned up its messes precisely so there wouldn’t be a trail for the police, or people like Peter, to follow.
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police this?” He was growing angry, his face flushed, puckered from grief, from a struggle not to cry. So he did believe me, deep down. At some level, he must have suspected how his search would end.
“Because it wasn’t their business.” I smiled sadly at the harshness of my tone. What a bitter assessment of the situation. It must have sounded shocking. “Because they’d need the same kind of proof, which I didn’t have. I didn’t want them to keep asking questions.”
“But if he was killed, if someone killed him—”
“The man who killed him is dead, if that helps.”
By the stark expression of shock he wore, I guessed it didn’t. No—I’d watched the man who killed him die, and it didn’t help me at all.
I was about to ask him more about T.J.—where had he come from, what other family did he have, why didn’t he want to be found? But Peter, his gaze down, pushed away from the table. I wanted to hear everything, but I’d had a year to live with T.J.’s death. Peter had just learned about it. He wasn’t ready.
“This is crazy,” he said. “I’ll find out what happened. What really happened.”
His long strides carried him to the front door in moments. I let him go. What else could I do?
I stayed put to finish my soda, but I was having trouble getting even that past the lump in my throat. I covered my eyes with a hand when the tears started.
“Hey, you okay?”
Through a gap in my fingers I saw Shaun standing next to me.
“Headache,” I muttered.
By his smirk I could tell he wasn’t convinced. I scrubbed my already reddened face and looked at him full on. “That guy who was just here?”
“Yeah? Hey, if he hurt you I’ll—”
Aw, wasn’t that sweet? “No. Apparently, T.J. has a younger brother. That was him.”
“Oh. Oh, shit.” He sank into the chair opposite me.
“Yeah.” I smiled stiffly. Shaun had known T.J., too.
An unplanned moment of silence, of grief, followed.
Shaun said, “What did he want?”
I sighed. “To find his brother. I told him he couldn’t. The guy has a right to be upset.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Not a lot I can do. But if he stops by again, be nice to him.”
Chapter 5
I had a lot to put out of my mind before the show on Friday. T.J.’s brother haunted me—like T.J. I tried to imagine his story, to make up the background that built their lives. What made T.J. leave his family, disappearing so utterly that his brother had to turn detective to find him? What drove Peter to go through the trouble? The stories I came up with were all unhappy, and it made me unhappy to think of it. T.J. had always been so levelheaded. I couldn’t imagine him in that kind of life. I didn’t want to. I wanted to let him rest, to preserve the memories I did have.
The Band of Tiamat’s recent attack was at the front of my mind, aggravating because of how little I could do about it. All I knew: They had sent something against me, and it involved fire. And maybe a vampire conspiracy, if Rick was right. I had to hope Rick or Grant found something out. Or wait until it struck again and we learned more about it.
I thought about calling Gary and canceling the Friday gig with the Paradox PI team. Maybe the house was really haunted, maybe it wasn’t. I wasn’t sure I could deal with another confrontation with supernatural weirdness, in either case. But as cliché as it sounded, staying home and cowering would have felt like losing ground. Would have admitted that whatever attacked us had gotten to me. I didn’t want to do that.
If we ignored it, would it go away? Despite what my mother told me about my big sister’s teasing, that never worked. But I hadn’t yet let the scariness in my life interfere with the show. In fact, I sometimes thought having the show to focus on saved my sanity. I needed my sanity right now.
Ben insisted on coming with me to meet the Paradox crew. I didn’t even have to ask. Safety in numbers. We could watch each other’s backs.
I did a little research about Flint House on my own before heading out on Friday night. The death of the investigator hadn’t made it into major news outlets, so it took some digging into publicly released police reports to discover anything about it. A short investigation determined that the death was accidental—he’d fallen down the stairs. That sort of thing didn’t draw any attention or raise any eyebrows, but the paranormal community jumped on the story and ran with it.
The usual background applied: The house was a hundred twenty years old, a stately Victorian, built by a silver mogul with more money than sense, and bad luck followed him. Several of his children died of illness or injury. His wife committed suicide. He went mad and died young
. The house was sold, and the new owner immediately began reporting the usual haunting symptoms: strange noises, drops in temperature, voices in rooms where nobody was talking. That owner moved out and rented the house to a couple who within the year died in a messy murder– suicide situation. The house was sold again, and again, and now it had stood empty for almost ten years, because no one was willing to live there.
The body count piled up over the years. Every death could be attributed to normal, nonsupernatural causes, but this went beyond the law of averages or mere coincidence. Consensus among those who studied these things: The house was killing people.
It stood in an older part of Denver, west of the freeway, in one of those neighborhoods that started out as the wealthier side of town, lined with lots of Victorian houses; then went downhill, the houses falling into disrepair and the yards becoming choked with weeds; then became the really bad part of town; then slowly underwent a gentrification that was turning it into the artsy part of town.
The house wasn’t the nicest on the street, but it wasn’t the worst. The pale green exterior could have used a coat of paint, and rather than lawn the yard held a forest of shrubbery that hadn’t been pruned back in a decade. Two stories and an attic, with a round window, looked out on the street. The place was dark. I wished the Paradox crew hadn’t told me it was haunted. It would have looked perfectly normal, otherwise. Now it did look rather sinister.
The Paradox PI vans were already here, and a camera crew was already filming background footage, a few shots of the team poking around the yard and wrought-iron fence. A wrought-iron fence complete with spikes lining the top—of course the place was haunted.
The KNOB van, black, with the station logo painted on the side in big letters, was also here, with Matt and one of his minions waiting in the front seats. We had a few hours before we needed to set up, but I wanted to watch the team work and record a bunch of material to play back later.
We emerged from the car, and I got to work, gathering the gang over and making introductions. “This is my husband, Ben.” It still felt weird saying that, but people smiled, and no one else acted like it was unusual.