Kitty's House of Horrors kn-7

by Carrie Vaughn

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She hadn’t called to argue with me. She’d called because she needed to vent. She needed to gush. And gush she did. “It’s so hard when you can’t count on the people close to you. They’re great guys, they really are, but I feel like they’re always judging me. Of course they are—they’re way too good for me. They deserve someone better, someone who isn’t always getting into trouble, who doesn’t have my temper. Someone prettier.”

  “Whoa, hold on there, what has that got to do with anything?” I said.

  “I just want people to like me. But how can I afford to be nice, doing what I do?”

  I turned off the snark. “You’re a really strong woman, I can tell. You fight a lot of battles, you stand up to a lot of really bad stuff. I get that. So tell me something: why don’t you feel better about yourself? Don’t you think there’s a certain strength to be had in standing tall, in thinking you’re beautiful and acting that way? You don’t have anything to prove, right?”

  “Easy for you to say—everybody loves you.” She sniffed. Now I wanted to feed her chocolate and give her a big hug.

  “Honey, some days I’m not too sure about that. But ever onward, I say. I gotta tell you, I think we’re a little out of my league here and I’m really not qualified to offer you guidance. Have you thought about getting counseling?”

  She huffed, and whatever moment of honesty and openness had passed. The defenses slammed back into place. “Counseling? I don’t need help. I’m not weak.” She clicked off.

  I sighed. “Alrighty, then. Public service announcement here: there’s no shame in getting help. Really. Honest. We’re all in this together, and life is a little easier when we act like it. Well, it looks like we’re out of time. Alas. Now, for next week I’m trying to dig up information on a vampire-only beauty pageant held in New York City last month. Apparently it was all very hush-hush and no one’s talking about it. But I’m bound and determined to bring the winner of that pageant on the show for an interview. Join me for the next exciting Midnight Hour. This is Kitty Norville, voice of the night.”

  Two weeks later, I was set to go.

  Ben and I stayed awake for a long time the night before I had to fly to Montana. I was still contemplating backing out of the whole thing. If he’d told me right then that he didn’t want me to go, I’d have called it off and stayed, just for him.

  But we were both trying to pretend that neither of us was that needy.

  We’d made love, then made love again, and now lay sweaty and tired, arms around each other. I absently ran my fingers through his hair—scruffy and tangled no matter how much I combed it and smoothed it. It was amazing how long I could focus on his hair. I was comfortable, with his arms around my middle holding me to him like I was a giant pillow. His face nuzzled at my neck, moving along the skin, around my ear, into my hair, as he breathed deeply all the while. Like he was trying to memorize my scent.

  “I can’t smell that good,” I whispered.

  “Yes, you can,” he whispered back. “I’m not going to wash the sheets ’til you get back.”

  I pulled away so I could look at him, and so he could see my goofy smile. “That’s so romantic.”

  “It is? I was thinking it was another one of those creepy things that only a lycanthrope would say.”

  “That, too,” I said. “Maybe I can get myself voted off the island early.”

  “Hmm, cool.”

  We kissed again, and again, and again.

  Chapter 3

  When Joey Provost said the mountain lodge where the show was being filmed was in the middle of nowhere, he wasn’t kidding. I arrived at the Great Falls airport, then had to wait for another, smaller airplane that would take us to the site. The lodge was accessible only via aircraft or a long, hard hike. Was it bad that I kept thinking, limited escape routes?

  “Kitty! You’re here!” a female voice squealed when I entered the tiny waiting area at the far end of the concourse, and a minute later Tina McCannon had her arms around me.

  I resisted an urge to snarl or flee. “Tina, you know better than to sneak up on me like that.” But the moment of panic faded—I managed to convince Wolf that just because someone ran at us didn’t mean they were attacking—and I hugged Tina back.

  Tall, thin, buxom, she was the eye candy for the paranormal-investigator TV show Paradox PI and the secret of its success. She had an uncanny sixth sense, and spiritualist tricks like Ouija boards and automatic writing actually worked for her. She always knew which places were really haunted. She was kinda scary—the same way I was kinda scary. We were scary only if someone knew what we were. Otherwise, we must have looked like a couple of really girly girls, hugging and carrying on.

  Tina stepped aside, and I glanced past her to see Jeffrey and Ariel, also waiting for the same flight out. TV psychic Jeffrey Miles gave me a big hug. In his thirties, clean-cut, with sandy hair and a photogenic smile, he was handsome and charismatic. Friendly as all get-out. You couldn’t help but like him.

  “You look great!” he said. And he totally wasn’t kidding about that, because he could read auras. At least, he said he could. The first time we met, he’d pegged me as a werewolf before I’d introduced myself. Like Tina, he was too nice and friendly to be too scary.

  I beamed at him. “Thanks. It’s good to see you.”

  I’d never met twenty-something Ariel in person, but I recognized her because her photo was on her website, and we’d talked on the phone—a lot. Ariel, Priestess of the Night, hosted a talk-radio show like mine, if a bit fluffier. She was way nicer to her callers. Her black hair was pinned up in a bun, and she wore a black dress with a lacy black cardigan, and cool boots. Goth-y, and she wore it well.

  “Kitty!” She squealed, just like Tina had. God, this was going to start sounding like a fourth-grade sleepover. She wanted to hug me, too. “I’m so happy you’re here and I finally get to meet you.”

  “God, Kitty. Do you know everyone or what?” Tina said.

  “Kinda. Just because I end up interviewing everyone on my show. Come on, sit down, tell me everything.”

  We traded gossip and recent life stories for about half an hour before the pilot for the local commuter airport came to tell us the plane was ready. We filed out behind him to the tarmac.

  My confidence was not boosted. The pilot was brusque, not talkative. He wore what he probably considered to be a uniform, the logo of the tiny commuter airline embroidered on the sleeve of his khaki shirt, tucked into slacks. He wore aviator sunglasses and didn’t smile. And the plane—I wasn’t convinced it would even get the five of us and our luggage off the ground. We barely fit inside, and the walls seemed paper thin.

  I hesitated, staring at the tiny airplane.

  “Come on,” Jeffrey said, urging me on with a smile. “It’ll be an adventure.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I replied, scowling.

  But the pilot knew what he was doing, and the little plane did get off the ground. The engine rumbled so loud we couldn’t talk—or even think much—which left me staring out the windows at the scenery. We quickly left civilized territory, the city falling away, development growing more sparse, until all I saw were open meadows, forests cut through by hills, then mountains. Forty-five minutes later, we landed on a narrow airstrip nestled in a mountain valley. I closed my eyes during the landing and tried not to think about being trapped in a little metal box, hurtling toward the ground.

  The plane pulled to a stop, the pilot opened the doors, and we all piled out. The clean mountain air hit me, and all was forgiven.

  Another plane, a bit larger than ours, was parked at the end of the narrow airstrip. The pilot explained that it belonged to the production company and had been used to fly in equipment and supplies. The production crew had a pilot with it—there was our escape route. We wouldn’t be completely cut off.

  The descriptions I’d been given, variations of “a beautiful mountain retreat,” didn’t do th
e place justice. I’d seen mountain lodges that didn’t have much thought put into them, squat buildings that looked like they’d been dropped into the landscape by a crane with no consideration of surroundings. This place nestled at the edge of the valley like it had grown there. I had to search for it, where it sat against a hillside—part of the hill, almost. A meadow swept down from it, a clean expanse of rippling green grass dotted with patches of wildflowers. I bet elk and deer grazed here in the mornings. A wide stream ran through the meadow to a lake, and on the other side of the lake—ringing the whole meadow, in fact, up to either side of the lodge—was a forest of tall pines. And beyond the forest, on the horizon, were the mountains. A spur of the Rockies jutted out here, bluish-gray peaks capped with snow even at the end of summer. They were sharp, grouped together like teeth. Clouds were gathering above them. The sun was setting, casting the whole valley in a rich blue twilight. I hoped I got a room with that view.

  A few aspens butted up against the lodge itself, which was tasteful log architecture rather than the obnoxious version of it. The whole thing had a warm, rustic atmosphere. My muscles started relaxing.

  We spent a few moments just looking around, admiring. I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath of air: trees, stone, a hint of snow, cold water, sun-touched grass, animals in a collage of trails and scents. Untouched wild. So much prey here, my Wolf thought. So many creatures, vegetation, smells all jumbled together, I couldn’t make them all out right away. Also, predators: bears, maybe even mountain lions. Their smells were dangerous.

  The pilot unloaded our luggage. I turned to thank him, but he had already climbed back into the cockpit and revved the engines. Taxi ride over. We collected our bags and found a path that led to the lodge.

  I took out my cell phone just to check, and sure enough: no signal. I couldn’t say I was surprised. Middle of nowhere and all that.

  We climbed the steps to the lodge’s front porch and went inside.

  Stopping inside the front door, with the other three crowding around me, I had my first look at the place: the entire first floor was open, with a large, modern kitchen on one side and a living room area on the other. Here, a big stone fireplace dominated the far wall, and a collection of sofas and cushy armchairs gathered in front of it. A couple of cameras and cameramen were set up in opposite corners, staring at us. So, they’d already started collecting footage. One of the cameramen was Ron Valenti, from the meeting with Joey Provost. He’d shed the Armani in favor of jeans and a flannel shirt—very rustic, in a bought-it-out-of-a-high-end-catalog way. He looked at us but didn’t acknowledge us. Focused on getting that perfect shot.

  People were sitting on the sofas, looking up at us with interest. One of them was Joey Provost.

  He stood and came toward me, hand outstretched for shaking. Another attack, Wolf growled. We were never going to appreciate aggressive human friendliness, were we? I gritted my teeth, smiled, and shook his hand.

  “Hi! Welcome, all of you!” He shook each of our hands in turn. His smile was ferociously pleasant.

  “Thanks,” I said, glancing around, taking it in. I smelled old soot and the smoke of many fires from the immense fireplace; dinnertime cooking smells from the kitchen, red wine in glasses, and people. Different kinds of people—not entirely human people. My nose was working overtime, trying to take it all in.

  “Why don’t we come in and make some introductions?” That smile never dimmed, and I sensed an edge of anxiety to it. I didn’t envy Provost his job here; he wasn’t just going to be producing a TV show, he was going to be playing mediator and camp counselor.

  Provost gestured to a large, aggressively muscled black man with a hooded glare sitting on a chair, a little ways from the others.

  “Jerome Macy,” Provost said.

  “Yeah, we’ve met,” I said while the others nodded greetings.

  The pro wrestler nodded at me. I nodded back, and we didn’t meet gazes—wolf body language that said, Hey, we’re cool, nothing wrong here. He was another werewolf and understood how weird this all was. I might spend the next couple of weeks being more comfortable around him than anyone else.

  “Finally, we get some eye candy,” said a guy I didn’t know, scoping out Tina, Ariel, and me with a definite leer. I had to admit, we did sort of look like Charlie’s Angels standing together.

  He smelled weird. Definitely not human, but a flavor of not-human I hadn’t encountered before—and I was racking up quite the scent catalog. Not a vampire, not a werewolf, were-tiger, or were-jaguar. I’d even met a were–African wild dog, but this wasn’t any of those. He had a human and something-else smell, like all lycanthropes had. But the something else was kind of… fishy. Salty. Wild without the fur. Weird.

  “Lee Ponatac,” he said in response to my inquiring glare. He had dark hair, and his features were square, young, his eyes brown and shining. He had the scruffy appearance of someone who spent a lot of time outside and didn’t care much about polish. It was a nice look, and he pulled it off well. My inquiring glare didn’t go away, and he just kept his charismatic smile. “Were-seal. Children of Sedna, we call them back home,” he said finally.

  My eyes widened. “Really?”

  Provost said, “Lee is a state legislator in Alaska. He may be the first publicly acknowledged lycanthrope elected to office in the country. I’m a little surprised we discovered him before you did.”

  “Yeah. But hey, happy to meet you now. Were-seal? Really? And you don’t think this gig will come back to haunt you if you ever decide to run for president?”

  He smirked. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

  I didn’t think there’d ever come a time when I couldn’t be surprised, and he seemed pleased at my astonishment. Oh, this was going to be a fun couple of weeks.

  The other man, a guy in his thirties, a little overweight and a little balding but not more than average, sat back in an armchair, arms crossed, frowning slightly as he regarded us all. He smelled human. But so did more than half the people in the room.

  “And you are?” I asked.

  “Conrad Garrett,” he said.

  “The author?” I said. I’d heard of Garrett, who’d made a profession of writing books debunking the existence of the supernatural, claiming government conspiracy about the NIH’s Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology, calling foul on every shred of evidence proving the existence of things like, oh, werewolves. The public recognition of all this was still too new—of course skeptics came forward. “So why don’t you return any of my calls?”

  “Because acknowledging you only validates your claims,” he said, straightforward, like he’d practiced the line.

  I huffed. “If you don’t believe any of us are real, what are you even doing here?”

  “That’s putting it a bit existentially,” he said. “I just don’t believe any of you are what you claim you are.”

  “Wow. Extreme state of denial,” Ariel said.

  I stared. “Seriously? Really? After everything that’s happened? After Congress held hearings and all the stuff on TV?”

  “Video footage can be faked,” he said. “As for Congress—they’re being manipulated by lobbyists. I think it’s pharmaceutical companies inventing new ‘diseases’”—he actually did the finger quotes—“in order to get research funding that they have no intention of using for research.”

  I couldn’t help it; I giggled. “Shit, you’re going to make me shape-shift right here in front of you, aren’t you?”

  “I look forward to it,” he said calmly.

  Provost raised a hand to point at the cameras. “Kitty, if you could watch the language? And please—no shape-shifting. Not just yet.”

  Lee crossed his arms. “That’s the setup for the show. We’re supposed to spend the next two weeks convincing him that all this is real. Then watch him freak out when he can’t deny it anymore.”

  “No, seriously,” I said, still stifling giggles. “It’ll only take five minutes. I’ll shift ri
ght now, take a little run—that’s some great wolf territory out there. Then we can all go home.”

  “Kitty,” Provost said with forced patience. I had a feeling I was going to be hearing that tone of voice a lot. “We’d like this to be a gradual revelation. If we do it right you won’t have to shape-shift at all.”

  “And we won’t break his little mind quite so badly, right?” Tina added.

  “Whatever,” I said, still giggling. “Is there any of that wine left? I think I could use a drink.”

  Provost introduced us to the rest of the crew—Ron Valenti and another co-producer named Eli Cabe would be doing most of the technical work on the show. They’d also brought along a trio of production assistants—Skip, Amy, and Gordon—to help. They were eager twenty-somethings, who seemed giddy to be working on a real show—any show. This was their foot in the door. They looked the part, dressed in casual jeans and funky T-shirts, with headsets permanently attached to their ears and clipboards in their hands. Skip had long, dark hair in a ponytail; Amy was petite and energetic, and she tended to shout across rooms; and Gordon was a bit heavyset and always seemed to be smiling about something. They’d also take care of the catering—the kitchen was fully stocked and we’d have three hot meals a day. This might even turn out to feel like a real vacation.

  The lodge had a back room, off the living room, normally set up as a library or reading room. The production crew had taken it over and converted it to a studio, where they parked all their cameras, monitors, and editing equipment. Here, they’d review their footage as it came in and start making the “magic.” It was off-limits to participants, of course. I was already thinking of how I could sneak a look in.

  The show hadn’t officially started taping yet; we were still missing people. The scheduled “activities”—and didn’t that sound ominous—would start tomorrow. For now, the cameras were getting footage for some kind of introductory montage, and in the meantime we could all get to know each other. Happily, the lodge had a liberally stocked wine cabinet. It would help to take the edge off whenever I had to talk to Conrad. I had a feeling it was going to be all too easy to bait this guy.