Meanwhile, Cormac’s gaze had finally settled on Tina, and he was studying her thoughtfully. Like he was sizing up an elk he was about to shoot.
“What?” Tina said.
“She’ll do,” he answered.
“What?” I repeated.
“We need an Amelia,” Cormac said. “She’ll do.”
Oh good God, he had to be kidding. “No,” I said. “No no no. We can’t ask her to do that.”
“Do what, what is he talking about?” Tina asked.
Tina knew about Roman, the Long Game—most of it, anyway. She was one of the people I called when I had questions. One of my allies. But she didn’t know what she’d be getting into with this. It was too dangerous, and I wasn’t going to put her in danger. Not again.
I didn’t say anything. Ben didn’t say anything. Cormac was the one who explained. “We have a chance to take out Roman, but we need a woman to front the trap. Someone he doesn’t know.”
Direct and to the point. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous. And besides, Roman knows Tina—he’s seen her, she was with me when he was in Denver that first time.”
“Then she knows exactly what we’re up against,” he said, without a speck of hesitation.
“Not to mention she’s on a famous TV show!” I shot back.
Now Tina had that same thoughtful, determined look on her face that Cormac did. “You’d be amazed how many people don’t recognize me without makeup and my hair done.” Sure enough, no one in the bar was looking her way now. In her casual jacket and jeans, her hair tied back, cosmetics free, she looked different. Inconspicuous.
“Roman would recognize you,” I said. “Ben, tell her—”
“Do you think I can’t do it?” she interrupted.
I slumped and set my head in my hands. “That’s not it. It’s…” I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. Anyone else. I didn’t want any more people to die because of this. Cormac and Ben would tell me that this was the whole point—to confront Roman so no one else had to die. The risk was worth it. We weren’t going to solve anything by sitting here and stewing. Here, we finally had a plan. So what was my problem?
“I don’t like any of this,” I said simply, sullenly.
“I’m here for a reason,” Tina said. She put a hand on my arm, a simple gesture of comfort, like she knew that a gentle touch from a friend calmed werewolves. “I knew I had to come see you. This must be why.” Being psychic, believing in magic—that made everything so easy, didn’t it? Everything became a matter of fate. I didn’t much like fate. “If not me, then who? Who else are you willing to put in danger?”
I couldn’t answer that.
Cormac said, “You won’t have to do anything but stand there. I’ll take care of the rest.” He was probably trying to sound reassuring, but it came out ominous.
“Sounds like fun,” Tina said, bright eyed, a picture of cheerful enthusiasm.
Ben gathered my hand in his, squeezed. “It’ll be fine. It’s a good plan.”
I wasn’t sure I’d go so far as to call it a good plan. But it was the best plan we had.
Chapter 3
AFTER E-MAILING back and forth a few more times, Cormac and the mysterious correspondent identifying himself as Roman set up a meeting in Albuquerque in three days. I was suspicious enough to start questioning whether this person even was Roman, or was actually one of Roman’s minions trying to draw us out, or some entirely new player trying to pull one over on us. Any possibility seemed likely when they all seemed outrageous.
Roman originally asked for a meeting in Las Vegas, which was out of the question. The city was one of Roman’s strongholds, its vampire Master one of his dedicated servants. I had allies there—the magician Odysseus Grant, especially—but I couldn’t risk it. I wanted neutral ground. We came up with excuses and alternatives, without dropping any clues that Amelia had anything to do with Denver, and therefore me.
This was turning into real cloak-and-dagger shit. I hated it, but Cormac seemed determined. Driven. He was finally hunting again, the biggest prey of all. He was very excited about Tina playing the part of Amelia. At least, as excited as he ever got about anything, emotion revealing itself as a glint in his gaze.
He explained over dinner at our place. “Roman’s not stupid. He may only have her name, but he’ll dig up what he can on Amelia Parker, and he’ll know that she’s dead. He’ll already be suspicious no matter what we do, but he’ll also be curious. When he sees Tina, maybe he does recognize her—but he knows she’s psychic, and he might think that she’s channeling Amelia, or that Amelia possessed her. It’ll make sense to him, and even if he thinks there’s some connection with Kitty, he’ll want to check it out. It’s the best kind of bait: too good to pass up, but not too good to be true.”
Tina stayed in our guest bedroom. We spent some time catching up on news. Her show was still going strong in its eighth season, and her cohosts, Jules and Gary, were doing well, though she confessed they’d started checking out urban legends and rumors that made the more science-minded Jules bristle. None of them were ready to quit yet. I talked her into recording an interview for The Midnight Hour, which seemed excessively normal next to all the other weirdness going on.
After she’d started hearing voices, she’d spent some time trying to contact Anastasia using her toolbox of channeling techniques, which included Ouija boards and automatic writing. But our Chinese vampire friend had gone quiet. She’d nudged Tina, Tina was here, and that was that.
I wondered if Tina was having trouble talking to her because Anastasia wasn’t really dead—or not fully dead. Tina knew how to contact the dead, but Anastasia was something else. I suggested this to Tina, who turned thoughtful at the suggestion.
“It feels bigger than that,” she said, her gaze vague. “Like we’re all tools for a greater force.”
And didn’t that sound ominous? I wasn’t a fan of destiny as an excuse for these things. Like magic, it was too easy a target to blame. I wanted more control over the situations I found myself in. I wanted to believe we had a chance. In the meantime, all we could do was wait, and prepare. Three days seemed like a very long time when you were trying to save the world from a powerful vampire.
Three days was long enough to introduce complications.
I was at KNOB wrapping up work on the next episode of the show the day before we were set to drive to Albuquerque, when my cell phone rang. The caller ID said it was Detective Jessi Hardin. I shouldn’t get a sinking feeling in my stomach when the police called, but I felt that every time I got a call from Hardin. She was head of the Denver PD’s Paranatural Unit, and she rarely brought good news.
“Hi,” I said cautiously.
“I can sense the dread in your voice in one syllable,” she said.
“Can you blame me? Maybe if you ever called offering, like, prize money or wishing me happy birthday or something.”
“Mercedes Cook is back in the country. I thought you’d want to know.”
My mouth went dry and for a second my brain stopped thinking because it was too much to deal with. Mercedes Cook—another old and powerful vampire, one of Roman’s minions, and this couldn’t be a coincidence.
“I don’t even know what to do with that,” I said finally.
“Watch your back, I imagine.”
I’d been watching my back for years now. I was tired of it. “How’d you find this out? Where exactly is she?”
“It was luck,” she said. “She didn’t show up on any of the security cameras, but we’ve gotten pictures of her in every Interpol office in Europe and in quite a few agencies outside it. An officer spotted her at the airport in Frankfurt boarding a private jet. And I don’t care how supernatural and scary you are, your private jet still has to file a flight plan when it uses major international airports. She landed in Atlanta. This was last week. After that, we don’t know.”
Still, a little information was better than nothing. “Doe
s her professional schedule show anything?” Mercedes Cook made her name as a Broadway performer and world-class singer. This was before she made her name as the world’s first celebrity vampire. She’d been keeping a lower profile lately—no shows, no concert tours announced for the near future.
“No,” Hardin said. “She doesn’t have anything planned. She’d be easier to track if she did.”
“Yeah, that’s the point, I imagine. I’ll ask around; maybe someone else has heard something.” Sometimes it felt like all I could do was share information. Little more than gossip. It had to be worth it, it just had to.
“Anything else going on?” she asked. An innocent question, but I felt a spike of anxiety. My first impulse was to brush her off. Everything was fine, just fine. But it wasn’t. I wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors by not telling her.
“Actually, something’s come up. You might be able to help out…”
* * *
ONE SET of people I hadn’t told anything to: my family. Ben and I had dinner with my parents, my older sister, Cheryl, and her husband and kids every other week or so. We’d been scheduled for dinner in a couple of evenings, but the trip to Albuquerque meant I had to cancel. Since I couldn’t tell my pleasant, easygoing mother that I was on my way to trap and assassinate the two-thousand-year-old mastermind of a global vampire conspiracy, I made up something about a onetime chance to interview a very important person for the show. Mom made impressed and encouraging noises and didn’t ask questions. Bless her.
But she did want to know if we could have dinner tonight instead, and I couldn’t say no. So there we were, Ben and me sitting in the car in their driveway, getting ready to go in. Cheryl and Mark and the kids were already here. The lights in the front window were blazing and warm, welcoming. Domestic bliss.
“Remind again me what our cover story is,” Ben said.
“I’ve gotten a chance to interview a Hopi medicine woman who’s only going to be in Albuquerque this weekend. We’re making a vacation out of it.” I sounded disgruntled.
Ben sat back, sighed. “Vacation. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
“We can still call the whole thing off.”
“How about this: we get through this standoff with He Who Must Not Be Named, then take that vacation you’re telling everyone about. Deal?”
I tried to imagine the weight that would come off my shoulders if we could really and truly get rid of Roman. It sounded like heaven. “That’s a deal.”
“All right, then. Eye on the prize.” He patted my leg, and we hauled ourselves out of the car for our evening of domestic normalcy.
The noise started as soon as we opened the door. “Kitty!” my mother announced, sweeping out of the kitchen to plunge at me for a big hug. I could explain to her that to a wolf, a too-enthusiastic hug looked like an attack—arms out, forward movement. But she wouldn’t get it, so I tamped down Wolf’s growls and accepted the love as it was intended. Ben, too. We’d both had a lot of practice at this. Then came Dad, solid and benevolent, who like Mom had never really processed the me-being-a-werewolf thing, so we let it go. Brother-in-law Mark, then sister Cheryl, who out of all my family had some idea of how weird my life had gotten, and when I told her not to ask questions, she usually listened to me.
“Kitty!” The loud squeals came from Nicky and Jeffy, niece and nephew, who roared in from the living room and attempted to tackle me. Nine and six, they’d gotten articulate and willful enough to be interesting. So I had Jeffy hanging on my arm, trying to pull me to a pile of plastic cars and trucks, insisting he had to show me something, and Nicky standing there, looking up at me, very serious—her “I’m a grown-up” face. “Aunt Kitty, Mom said I should tell you about the thing that happened at school last week.”
“Oh?”
“The teacher gave us some homework to write a story about someone in our family, and so I wrote about you, but the teacher didn’t believe you really were a werewolf, she said I was making it all up and called Mom to tell her that I was lying, and, well, Mom told her that it was all true. And now the teacher looks at me funny when I come into class.”
I looked over Nicky’s head to Cheryl, questioning. She gave a silent, grim nod, confirming the story.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s cool that you picked me to write about, but I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
“It’s okay. I just don’t understand why she has to be like that.”
“Neither do I, kid. Your teacher probably never thought that someone she sees every day might know a werewolf. You gave her something to think about, and she didn’t like that.”
Nicky’s nose wrinkled. “I can’t wait until this year is over and I get a new teacher.”
I smiled and gave her a hug. I remembered years like that.
The grand entrance continued with small talk and assurances that everything was fine, nothing was wrong, we were doing well, work was going well, and so on. I asked Cheryl about her new job, and was pleased at how her eyes lit up. With both her kids in school now, she decided last year to head back to work and promptly had a midlife crisis. Her IT credentials were out of date, and she was daunted by the thought of going back to school. Instead, she switched gears and now managed an art gallery on Broadway. Back to her alt-punk roots—she wore jeans to work. She explained how it was the best of both worlds—a job that made her feel useful, the chance to get her foot back in the real world, but still enough time to be there for her kids. Seeing her happy made me happy.
It was like I had two packs, human and wolf. An embarrassment of riches, and that much more to protect and worry over.
After a pure comfort food dinner of pasta and chicken Parmesan, we retreated to the living room for talk and drinks. I watched Ben with the kids. Nicky was telling him a story about a school field trip to the Museum of Nature and Science, while Jeffy was trying to get him to help color a page in his superhero coloring book. Ben didn’t just tolerate them, he engaged, asking Nicky questions while somehow simultaneously giving Jeffy advice about what color Spider-Man’s mask should be. I never would have expected it, except in hindsight. He wasn’t a lawyer for the money—he’d gotten into the field wanting to help people. He was thoughtful. He listened. It didn’t matter if the person in front of him was six or sixty. The kids sensed it, and they gravitated to someone they felt would take them seriously. Watching them gave my heart a room-sized glow.
I wanted kids. I’d wanted kids for a few years now—pretty much since I learned I couldn’t carry a baby to term myself, I’d wanted one. The paradox of denial, wanting precisely what you can’t have. Usually the feeling was abstract. I’d wanted kids because it felt right. But the thought “Ben would be a great dad” popped into my head, and my heart ached and tears welled.
We’d talked about adoption. After this trip, after this confrontation, after we didn’t have to worry about the Long Game anymore. We could make it happen.
Grandma came in and announced ice cream, the kids screeched with delight and bounded to the kitchen, and Cheryl shouted after them to calm down, leaving Ben and me looking across the living room at each other. His smile was bemused, and I had no idea how I looked, but he must have suspected what I was thinking, because he came over, put his hands on my shoulders, and kissed my forehead.
“That bad, huh?” I said, wiping a stray tear.
“I’ve never seen you look so happy and sad at exactly the same time,” he said.
“I will be so damned relieved when this is all over.”
“Yeah. Come on, ice cream will make you feel better.”
And it did, at least briefly. Rocky road. Sometimes it was the little things.
As we left, I made sure to give everyone extra-big hugs, even though Jeffy wiggled and escaped as soon as he could. Cheryl was the one who pulled back, her brow furrowed. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
Oh, was it. I almost gave into an impulse to fall sobbing into her arms. Instead, I offered her a crooked smile. “No more so than us
ual,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. Usually I said something like, I’m a werewolf, of course something’s wrong. But she already knew that.
“Well. Be careful.” She brushed a loose blond strand out of my face, and suddenly I was thirteen again and wishing I could be just like her.
If Roman ever went after them … And that was why we were going to Albuquerque. That was why the risk was worth it.
* * *
THE KIDS had early bedtimes, so we were back on the road by nine. After dark, I could finally call Alette, Mistress of Washington, D.C., and arguably one of the most powerful vampires in the U.S. She knew where the bodies were buried—or where they weren’t, in some cases.
One of her people answered the phone—I hesitated to call them human servants, even though most vampires would. She had housekeepers and drivers and bodyguards, people who looked after her during daylight hours, people who were devoted to her. But many of them were her own descendants. She’d had children before becoming a vampire, and she still took care of them. She was a however many greats grandmother to them all, and they knew it and loved her for it.
Once I said who I was, I didn’t have to ask to speak to Alette.
“Mercedes Cook is back,” I said.
“Yes, so I’ve heard,” Alette replied in her prim English accent. I kind of suspected she had.
“Any idea what she’s up to?”
“What is she ever up to? She’s gone to ground, I’m afraid. You should keep vigilant, of course.”
Exactly what Hardin had said. “I think Roman’s on the move. We’re going after him, Alette. We’ve got a plan. It’s—it’s a good one, I think.”
She hesitated a moment before answering. “Well. I know you wouldn’t act on anything less.”
“That’s probably more of a vote of confidence than I deserve.”
“If he’s moving on his plan, he likely summoned Mercedes Cook here to be part of it. When you confront him, you’ll make provisions for facing her as well, won’t you?”
“How many vampires is he likely to have with him at any given moment? I’ve only ever seen him by himself. He has followers, but he seems to travel and act alone. He finds his minions where he goes.”