“So. You guys take the master-and-servant thing pretty seriously.”
“Dorian’s under my protection. It’s a duty I take seriously,” Anastasia said.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, moving around to the front of the sofa and taking a seat among them all. “My whole career is based on getting people to talk. Talk radio, that’s how it works. So Dorian here may be under orders not to talk, or maybe has decided not to talk, but I see that as a challenge. Because if there was some real reason for him not to talk to anyone, you wouldn’t risk him interacting with anyone and leave him in the basement instead. But I’m betting Provost and Valenti and the rest wanted to get this little relationship on camera. So at some point, when you all least expect it, I’m going to get him to talk.” I glared the challenge at them all.
“I like her,” Dorian said, with a faint precise accent that might have been English.
Pouting, I sat back. Well. So much for that little speech. “Dang. Steal my thunder, why don’t you.”
His smile was wry, and his eyes gleamed. Damn, he was hot. I said, “So now that you’re talking can I ask you a question, Dorian? You have a portrait in the attic or what?”
Dorian groaned and shook his head. Anastasia actually threw the pillow from her sofa at me. Throw pillow. Ha.
Gemma stared blankly. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, I forget how young you are,” Anastasia said to her. “Never mind, I’ll have a book for you to read later.”
I took note of that bit of information.
We talked for a while longer, mostly Anastasia asking questions about my show and how I’d gotten my start. She didn’t dig too deeply—I didn’t tell her anything I hadn’t mentioned on the air at one point or another. I expected her to ask how I’d become a werewolf—a traumatic episode on several fronts that I didn’t like talking about. But she didn’t. Almost like she knew, or suspected that I didn’t want to talk about it.
Then I really was too tired to keep my eyes open much longer. As a kid I’d been to sleepovers where if you were the first one to fall asleep you’d wake up with stuff written on your face in lipstick. I didn’t want to know what happened when you fell asleep in front of a couple of vampires. So I said good night and trundled upstairs to my room.
My room was on the second floor, in a corner, with a lovely view. I was looking forward to shutting the door and getting to sleep. Not looking forward to being in bed alone.
Odysseus Grant didn’t startle me and make me jump the way he might have. I smelled him first: the clean and quiet smell of a man who didn’t like to leave a trace. He stood at the end of the hallway, by the door to my room. “Kitty. Could I speak to you a moment?”
“What is it?”
“I only wanted to ask you to keep your eyes open. Have you heard of something vampires call the Long Game?”
My heart did a double-beat. My smile fell as my whole face went slack.
“Then you have heard of it,” Grant said, a wry curl to his lips.
I shook my bemusement away. Tried to clear my head. “Why are you asking? Cleaned up all of Vegas’s supernatural problems and need a new challenge?”
“What do you know about it?” he said.
“It’s a political thing, I think. It’s hard getting a straight answer out of them, but from what I gather there are some vampires trying to consolidate power. Trying to form some kind of monolithic vampire organization. Now, I’m not sure if this means they’re trying to take over the world—or if this is just something they play around with because after two thousand years of hanging out a guy gets bored. To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure I want to know. I just want to stay out of it.”
He raised a brow. I recognized the expression: wry disbelief. When was I ever able to stay out of anything?
“Will that be possible?” he asked.
“Not if I keep sticking my nose in it. So… you’re here because you think this has something to do with the Long Game? You think Anastasia—”
He put a finger over his lips, then said, “Just keep your eyes and ears open for me.”
“What have you heard?” I said. But he’d already walked to the other end of the hall and disappeared into his own room.
I looked around for the hidden cameras. Because damned if this wouldn’t play well on reality TV.
Chapter 5
I was right about the meadow being perfect for elk. The next morning, a herd of them were grazing there. The sun was behind the lodge, behind the hills to the east, but had risen high enough to wash the valley in golden light, which brought out all the colors of the mountains, the grass, and the forest and sparkled off the lake. The elk, about five of them, were perfectly peaceful, moving step by step, noses buried in grass. I sat at the picture window in the living room and watched, breathing in the rich fumes of a cup of gourmet coffee graciously provided by SuperByte Entertainment and Skip the PA. The house was quiet; I could hear birds chirping outside. If I went out on the porch, I’d bet I could smell the beautiful, clean mountain air, the dew on the grass, and even the elk in the meadow. But I didn’t want to move and disturb anything. I might even have been relaxed. I was almost startled by the feeling.
It couldn’t last. If I’d been here all by myself, settling in for a real vacation, the relaxation might have seeped into my bones. But I was sharing the place with a dozen other people and the production staff. Inevitably, I heard footsteps on the hardwood floor, entering the living room. I took a breath through my nose and sighed at the information.
Jerome Macy wasn’t the person I most wanted to see. Like their animal counterparts, werewolves are territorial. Competitive. They have pack structures and hierarchies. I wasn’t sure how any of that was going to play out with Jerome and me. We hadn’t had a chance to talk about it. I hoped we would talk about it instead of deciding we had to duke it out, however cinematic that would be. However much Provost was hoping we’d duke it out. I was just waiting for the request to shape-shift on camera. I might have made a show of teasing Conrad with the possibility, but I wasn’t really planning on doing it.
Macy moved up beside me and looked out the window to the meadow and elk. My back muscles stiffened, but I tried not to show it. Tried to keep my shoulders from bunching up, like hackles rising. We were all friends here, right?
“Makes me want to go hunting,” Macy said, flexing his hands like he was stretching his claws.
So much for the peaceful morning.
“They’re all healthy adults,” I said. “Too much work.”
“Not if we hunted together.” He glanced at me.
Now, that—turning wolf and going on a hunt with a guy I barely knew—was a bad idea. Even if it would give Provost some great footage.
I smiled wryly. “Why would I want to go through all that trouble when there’s a lovely staff here that wants nothing more than to feed me, and I don’t have to lift a finger?”
His lips curled. “It’s not the same.”
No, it wasn’t. Wolf was salivating at the thought, but I didn’t have to tell Macy that. “Sorry. It’s just that things around here are going to get weird enough without encouraging that side of it. I like to keep Wolf under wraps when I can.”
Being a werewolf isn’t an either-or thing. It’s not the Jekyll-and-Hyde dichotomy. It’s more like a scale, with wolf at one end and human on the other. Some days were a little more wolf than others. Some people were a little more wolf than others. The couple of times I’d met him, I’d had trouble deciding where Macy fell on that line. Did he look kind of burly and mean because he was a boxer turned pro wrestler, or because he was a werewolf who lived right on the edge, who always had a little of his wolf side seeping to the surface? He’d once been the heavyweight world champion. He was huge, solid, like a tree. He’d retain all that mass when he shifted—as a wolf, he’d be monstrous. How much of his fighting instinct came from his wolf side?
After a moment he said, “I know all about keeping it under wraps. Being able to go in
to a ring and fight it out with somebody without losing my temper, without losing myself? Yeah. But I don’t always get to see a stretch of open land like that. Before I leave, I’m going to shift and run out there. I don’t always get to have company when I run, either. Thought it’d be nice for a change.” His smile turned thoughtful. I considered that maybe there was a real guy hiding in there and not just a thug.
“You don’t have a pack at home?”
“Don’t need one. You?”
“Yes. A pack, a mate, the works. It’s kind of nice having people to watch my back.”
He looked back out the window, a cynical curl on his lips. “Too much trouble.”
A camera mounted in the corner of the room recorded the entire conversation.
I didn’t have anything else I wanted to say. Not much else I could say—I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what all went on in Macy’s head. I had another two weeks here to get his life story.
The elk were moving off, back to the woods on the far side of the meadow. The grass was so high it brushed their bellies. The idea of running through that meadow on four legs, with wind in my fur and the scent of wild in my nose, did appeal. But I’d rather do it with Ben.
One by one, the lodge’s residents woke up and drifted downstairs—except for the vampires and Dorian, who had retired to their sealed basement room before dawn. Breakfast was light—bagels, pastries, yogurt, juice—and so was the conversation. Tina caught me up on the doings of the other investigators on her TV show, Jeffrey talked about the books he’d been writing—self-help inspirational-type stuff about grief and moving on, the kind of thing I’d normally call drivel except this was Jeffrey, whose earnestness made it work. Grant was reticent, not giving any hint about the conspiracy he’d alluded to last night. Ariel sat at the edge of her seat and soaked it all in. I might have been expected to consider her the competition, except she was so darned nice about it. And she was in the business for the same reasons I was: She was insatiably curious about the supernatural, and she wanted to help people cope. She was one of the people I called when I got fed up with it all.
But the person here I was probably most curious about was Lee. He was the last one up, and I cornered him in the kitchen on the pretense of refilling my mug of coffee.
“Good morning,” I said, watching him pick through the breakfast food set out in the kitchen.
“Hi,” he said, wearing a charming smile. He wore a T-shirt and sweats, and his hair was still disheveled from sleeping. “You’re looking at me like you want something,” he said, glancing at me sideways. He didn’t sound put out. Amused, maybe. I must have had a pretty intent look on my face. I was trying to see the seal under his skin. I was still trying to figure out his smell. Not that I’d spent enough time around oceans to know, but I had the feeling he smelled like an ocean.
“Were-seal. I’m trying to imagine how that works.”
“Just the way you’d expect it to, I suppose.”
“Okay,” I said. “But how do you get bitten by a were-seal?”
His smile widened. “You’re out hunting seals by kayak, and you run into one that hunts you back.”
Well, of course. But what in that statement really got me: “Wait a minute. You hunt seals by kayak?”
He chuckled. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Fair enough. I suppose it’s as good a way as any to give the cameras what they want, right?”
I shrugged. I was trying not to pay attention to the cameras. I wanted to do this show on my own terms, which meant asking my own questions.
He said, “Alaska still has a lot of little coastal towns that depend on subsistence hunting. So yeah, I hunt seals. Sometimes I don’t use the kayak.” He raised a knowing brow.
“Are we going to get to see what that looks like?” I said. “The seal half, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” he said. He looked out the kitchen window to the meadow and mountains. Every window here had a view. “That lake is freshwater. It just wouldn’t be the same. I tried to get them to move this to Alaska. Maybe for the second season.”
“So will you hate me if I make a ‘fish out of water’ joke?”
He gave me a long-suffering roll of the eyes.
After a quick breakfast, I explored the rest of the house, which even after a day was beginning to take on the scents and moods of its new residents. It was a wild mix of smells that I wasn’t used to, male and female, human, lycanthrope, and vampire, none of them pack or family. If I thought about it too much, if I let it get to me, it wouldn’t feel safe.
According to the info I’d been given ahead of time, the lodge was a rental. Usually, it was occupied by groups on various corporate retreats or hunters during hunting season. The lake was supposed to have good fishing. A utility shed at the back of the building held not only the lodge’s gas-powered electric generator and solar batteries, but a stash of equipment: fishing poles, kayaks and paddles, snowshoes and cross-country skis. I didn’t feel the need to get that adventurous.
The basement, where Anastasia, Gemma, and Dorian stayed, was off-limits, but I wanted to contrive a way to sneak down there at some point. Prurient curiosity was killing me. I knew that actual vampires didn’t go in for the coffin thing. So did the three of them share one big bed? Did human Dorian sleep while the two undead women were comatose during the day? Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find any outside basement windows to peer into.
Upstairs, the rest of us had claimed most but not all of the dozen or so bedrooms. Two extra remained. One of them—the least inviting, stuck in the back northwest corner of the house, with no sun and no views—remained clean, crisp, and unused. The other, I couldn’t tell, because the door was locked. I rattled the knob. Still locked, and solidly. The door didn’t even wiggle against its frame.
“Huh,” I said and leaned close, pressing my ear to the wood, taking a deep breath to try and catch a scent. Nothing. Storage, I imagined.
But there was nothing like a locked door to make a place kind of spooky.
The kitchen had a back door, leading outside to a generous pile of chopped wood for the fireplace. Escape route, I thought in spite of myself.
After investigating the lodge, I took an hour to study the lay of the land around it. Jerome was right; this countryside practically begged me to shape-shift and go running. The wide, grassy meadow went on for miles, ringed in by even more impressive woods, and it all smelled like it was teeming with good things to eat. Two paths led away from the clearing in front of the house: one led to the airstrip in the middle of the meadow, the other to a hiking trail into the surrounding national forest.
I turned my face to the sun, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath of the world. I couldn’t help but relax. I’d have to remember that over the next week. If—when—I got pissed off, count to ten and step outside for a moment.
Joey Provost cornered me on my way back to the lodge. He stepped off the front porch, making a beeline for me. I tried not to let it agitate me; he was just eager, not moving in for the kill. Probably. I stopped and waited for him.
“Kitty! Can I have a word?”
So many snarky ways to respond to that. I refrained; my smile was polite and fake. “What can I do for you?”
“We’re going to get started with the meat of the show tonight,” he said. “We’ve come up with this great idea, but I need your help.”
Uh-oh. I seemed to remember this clause in the contract I signed regarding playing nice when the producers made requests like this. Then again, it was only the first day—how bad could it possibly be? My smile didn’t get any less fake as I waited for him to explain.
“We want people to start opening up, start talking about themselves. Now, I’m not expecting big revelations. But we need to at least break the ice. I figure this is right up your alley. You talk to people all the time—your callers, the people you interview. You’re good at asking the incisive questions, and that’s all I need you
to do here tonight. Just interview everyone, like it’s a mini version of your show.”
“You want me to do all your work for you,” I said.
“I wouldn’t put it like that,” he said. “I’d rather look at it as showcasing your talents to the benefit of the entire program.”
“Ooh, you’re good,” I said. That was the kind of lingo that sold shows to network executives.
“So that means you’re up for it? I’d like to see at least one question for each of the participants. And I’m sure you’ll have no trouble keeping the discussion entertaining.”
“That’s my job,” I said.
“If you could get started as soon as Anastasia and the others join you. That’d be great,” he said.
“Great,” I echoed.
After dinner, I called everyone to the living room and announced, “Okay, kids. Camp counselor Kitty has a game, so gather ’round and play nice for the cameras.” Gordon, who was manning the gear this evening, gave me a grin over his camera.
The vampire trio had joined us again, presumably after their dinner. I covertly studied Dorian for puncture wounds but didn’t find any. One blood donor for two vampires seemed a bit light. Dorian would be fainting by the end of the first week. Maybe the vampires didn’t take much. Maybe that was how they stayed so thin. Their clothing this evening was as stunningly elegant as it had been the night before. Gemma wore a different gorgeous cocktail dress, and Anastasia wore flowing silk trousers and a camisole. Still all in black.
I was starting to really like this room, with its rustic, comfy furniture, warm wood fixtures, and soft lighting. A fire burned in the big stone fireplace, making the room cozy, and I had the feeling of being protected in a cocoon of light and warmth that kept the cool night at bay. Like curling up with my wolf pack.
Sitting cross-legged on one of the big armchairs, I faced the gang spread out around me, seated on sofas, on the hearth in front of the fireplace, and in Lee’s case, on the floor. In front of me I held the sheet of paper I’d written my questions on.
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