Kitty's House of Horrors kn-7

by Carrie Vaughn

  “If he were awake, I’d apologize. And thank him.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think he expects anything like that.”

  “No,” she murmured. “He wouldn’t.” Then whatever maudlin mood she’d been in passed. She straightened, the old imperious—vampiric—stance returning. She would rebuild her life, her existence, starting now. As she’d no doubt done many times before. Eight hundred years, she’d said. “This isn’t over, Kitty. This is only the start.”

  Not this again. “I thought we decided this wasn’t a conspiracy. This was crazies out in the woods—”

  “I’m not talking about Provost and his compatriots. Not directly. But this is a symptom. There’s a war coming. And people like us can’t hide from it if we’re exposed, dragged into public. Even five years ago the police never would have considered entertaining the story we told them tonight. But now they must. This will continue. You’ve already attracted so much attention—”

  “I’ll hide,” I said. “I can go back to hiding.”

  She smiled, a sly, haunting turn of lips. She could see into the future, not because she was psychic, like Tina or Jeffrey, but because she had been watching the patterns for so long, she knew where they were leading.

  “I’ve watched you for a week now. You won’t hide. You’ll lead.”

  I didn’t want that responsibility. I didn’t want that label, and I didn’t want her cold, expectant gaze on me, demanding. But denying it didn’t make her wrong. People listened to me—I based my whole career on that. I’d worked for that. Now I had to face up to the consequences of it: People listened to me. What was I going to do with that power?

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “If no one else will.”

  “There are alliances. Some—like Roman’s—have spent a long time consolidating the wrong kind of power. Using it to tip people like Joey Provost and Eli Cabe into evil. It is far past time that people who would align against such powers form our own alliance.”

  Grant’s monitor beeped steadily. I’d have expected a more portentous soundtrack to this kind of conversation. Something epic, to mark the shifting of my world.

  “You make it sound so dramatic,” I said, my voice flat.

  “If you learn anything more about the Long Game, about Roman. About people like Cabe and his ilk, anything working to bring that kind of darkness into the world—call me.” She drew a business card from an unseen pocket and held it to me until I took it. “If you need help, call me.”

  “And you’ll do the same, I assume.”

  “That’s what an alliance is. Tell Odysseus the same applies to him. Give him the number.” She nodded at the man on the bed, then glanced at the window. “I need to go. It’s nearly dawn.” She turned to the door, like she planned on slipping out, just like that. Vanishing into shadow as vampires were wont to do.

  “Wait!” I said, standing, preparing to chase after her. Fortunately, she stopped. “Where? Where will you go? Where is it safe for you?”

  She smiled indulgently. In any other situation it would have been patronizing, but we were too tired for that. “Kitty, you don’t get to be my age without having a few contingency plans. All I need is a dark place to spend the day. There are plenty of dark places around.” Her lips thinned.

  “Be careful,” I said, which sounded stupid. Amid the million other things I could have said—thank you; was that even real; or help, because I can’t do this alone—it was the only one I could articulate.

  “Give Rick my regards when you get back to Denver,” she said.

  I watched her walk down the corridor, losing sight of her almost immediately even in the sparsely populated, early morning hospital. She blended in—she didn’t want to be seen, so just like that she was gone. Also, my view was distracted by another figure coming toward me down the same hallway. A scruffy-haired guy in khaki pants and an untucked shirt, a worried frown pulling at his features and a desperate, wolfish look in his eyes. And I knew that smell a mile away.

  “Ben!” I called, not caring how the sound echoed.

  He froze a moment when he spotted me leaving the doorway to Grant’s room. Like he didn’t believe it was me. Like he had to take a breath, just to be sure. Then we ran.

  We slammed into each other, wrapped each other up, pressed our faces against the other’s bare necks, breathing in skin. I couldn’t hold him tightly enough; my fingers kneaded his shirt.

  “It’s okay,” he said, close to my ear, and didn’t let up his embrace enough for me to draw air and reply. I just cried, leaking tears onto his skin. He murmured, stroked my hair, and that was the first time I thought maybe everything really would be all right.

  We sat outside Grant’s room. I pulled Ben’s arm over my shoulders and leaned into him. I didn’t want to stop touching him. Never again.

  I explained, in as few words as possible. “It was a trap, the whole thing was a trap. Three guys just like Cormac but psychotic. They almost got us all.”

  “I talked to the cops before I got here. I had to give them a statement before they’d tell me where you were. I don’t know what to tell you, Kitty. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”

  “But I bet it’s happened before,” I said. “Maybe not like this. But mass hunting of supernaturals?” I shook my head. Witch hunts, without the publicity. Without history taking note. Yeah, I could see it.

  “I know hunters—I know people like that. I can’t understand why they’d go after such high-profile targets. All of you’d be missed. Jerome Macy, Jeffrey Miles—” He stopped, shook his head.

  I didn’t want to think about Jeffrey. Or Jerome, Gemma, Ariel—

  So I stopped. Just for now.

  “I think maybe that was the point,” I said, voice a whisper, because I was officially out of energy. I could let Ben take care of me for a little while. “We’re all out in the open, and they didn’t like it. They wanted to make an example, take us down. They might not even have cared if they got caught.”

  “They did it on principle? Is that what you’re saying?”

  There’s a war coming, Anastasia had said. And maybe she was crazy, fanatical, paranoid—

  Or maybe she wasn’t.

  “I think that’s what I’m saying,” I said, smiling thinly.

  He squeezed me again and didn’t seem any more likely to let go of me than I was to let go of him. Good.

  “Cormac’s going to be proud of you,” he said. “When he hears about all this.”

  “Yeah? Have you talked to him? Does he know about this?” I wanted to get his opinion. Could we have done something differently? Something that would have saved a few more of us—

  Stop. Think about it later.

  “You can tell him all about it when we go pick him up from Cañon City.”

  I sat up to look Ben in the eye. Leaned on his chest, clutching his shirt. He was smiling. Grinning, even. I said, “He’s getting out? He got parole?”

  “He got parole.”

  Epilogue

  A couple of weeks passed.

  I sat in the studio, resting my head on my hand, staring at the mike, trying to concentrate. This had been going on for a couple of minutes now.

  “… then I tried leaving milk in a saucer, because one of the books I read said that works to calm brownies. But every morning the milk is gone and the house is a mess again. So then I wondered, what kind of milk? I used two percent, but maybe I should be using whole milk? Or half-and-half? But that’s closer to cream, and the book specifically said milk. And it’s pasteurized—is that going to make a difference? None of the books say anything about whether pasteurized milk works. My sister thinks I should have a priest in to exorcise the place, but that seems a little, oh, I don’t know, violent, and if I could make the brownies feel more at home they might actually help out a little, like in the stories, even though I’m not a shoemaker or anything like that…”

  I tapped my finger on the arm of my chair as I swiveled back and forth in a quarter-circle, like a kid in
detention. I’d been staring at my microphone so long it was blurring. My headphones itched. And this woman just kept talking. It was hypnotic.

  My caller had a very serious problem, surely. It just didn’t seem like it to me at the moment. Especially not after the last couple of weeks.

  Finally I interrupted, like I should have done a long time ago. “Margaret, are you sure it’s brownies that are wrecking your house every night? Maybe the saucers of milk aren’t working because it’s not brownies.”

  “Well, what else could it be? I swear, I go to sleep at night, don’t hear a thing, and when I wake up there are dishes knocked down and broken, my Beanie Baby collection is scattered everywhere, the pillows are shredded, and what else could it be?”

  Lightbulb moment. “Do you have cats?”

  “Yes. Six.”

  It wasn’t brownies. It was crazy-cat-lady syndrome. I needed a separate hotline for callers like this. “Margaret, have you considered that maybe your cats are a bit rambunctious and may be the ones wrecking your house?”

  “Well, of course I have,” she said, sounding indignant. Not that I could blame her. “But if it were the cats, wouldn’t I hear something?”

  “I don’t know. Are you a sound sleeper?”

  “Can anyone possibly be that sound a sleeper? Even medicated?”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, losing patience. “You have six cats and you take sleeping pills at night?”

  “Well… yes…”

  “Okay. That’s just asking for it. I think you need to call a different show.”

  “But—”

  I hung up on her, sorry I had only a button to slam and not a whole handset, which would have been more satisfying. Not that I wanted to lose my temper. Not that I was feeling violent.

  I couldn’t take another call right now. I couldn’t stand another call. I couldn’t deal with another not-problem. It was all I could do not to lean into the mike and yell, “Get a life.”

  But I’d get over it.

  “Sorry, people. My tolerance for bull seems to have gone way down lately. I hope you’ll understand and forgive me, but I think for tonight I’ve just about had it for calls. I’d like each and every one of you out there to consider your problems for a moment and consider that maybe they’re not as epic as you think they are. The solution may be staring you in the face. Or it may be you’ve let a mere annoyance take over your life until it’s become a problem. And while you’re considering your problems and grasping for solutions, you should also take a moment to find that one good thing that makes getting through the tough times worthwhile. Those of us who spend our nights awake and watchful need those reminders, that sunrises are beautiful and worth waiting for.”

  God, I was going to start crying again if I kept this up. No crying. I was just having a bad night. Fortunately, Matt in the sound booth tapped his watch, telling me time was up. I took a breath, reset my mental state, and managed to sound cheerful when I gave my usual wrap-up.

  “This is Kitty Norville, voice of the night. Stay safe out there, people.” The on-air sign dimmed, and I sat back, exhausted.

  The mass murder I’d managed to escape had been all over the news. I’d spent the last show talking about it, fielding questions, condemning the kinds of people who perpetrated these crimes, but mostly talking about my friends who’d died. Begging the world, or whatever part of it listened to the show, not to let anything like this happen again. Be kind to each other.

  The same message I tried to deliver every week: be kind. Not that it was helping.

  “Kitty?” Matt said.

  “I’m fine,” I said flatly, before he could ask the question.

  He hesitated, then said, “Okay.” But he didn’t sound convinced.

  And I wanted people to stop fussing over me.

  The police, working with the FBI, had pieced together most of the story, and it wasn’t pretty.

  Joey Provost really was a TV producer and really had been working for SuperByte Entertainment for several years. But he also had ties to a couple of whacked-out right-wing “clubs” that promoted various shades of fascism and gun mania, and the members all had impressive weapons collections stashed at home. Through those leads, he’d met Cabe and Valenti. Cabe was the hunter among them, with a fascination for the supernatural. He’d probably done most of the nitty-gritty planning and designed most of the traps. The three men had met, hit it off, and decided they didn’t like the way entertainment and popular culture were going. They didn’t like that monsters and the occult were being legitimized and glamorized. They wanted to strike back, so they cooked up a plan: trap the worst offenders of this movement, wipe them out, and distribute a film of the accomplishment. They were declaring their own little war. Provost pitched the front show to SuperByte, who then inadvertently funded the enterprise. The company itself was absolved of wrongdoing, except maybe for the mistake of trusting Provost in the first place. The producer hired Valenti and Cabe. During filming, they chose their moment, shut down production, and slaughtered the witnesses. Then they launched their own show. The clips they’d filmed of us talking about each other and how much we missed our families were meant to be our own obituaries.

  None of the three had prior criminal records, but their activities, known associates, and known obsessions were indicative. None of it raised flags until you put the three of them together and added lighter fluid. Individually, they never would have acted. Together as their own little army, they egged each other on to destruction. Their egos, their sense of superiority, had never let them think for a moment that they could fail. I remembered Valenti, in Anastasia’s arms, as the full realization of what was happening to him dawned. And maybe Anastasia was right, and they’d been encouraged by someone like Roman.

  They’d planned so well. They’d known so much about what they were facing. But in the end they hadn’t had a fucking clue.

  I’d called the families of Jerome, Lee, Ariel, and Jeffrey. Not that there was anything I could say. But I was one of the last people to see their loved ones alive and wanted to bear witness. My chattiness failed me, of course. All I could say was I’m sorry, which was so inadequate.

  As far as I could tell, Gemma and Dorian didn’t have families. I couldn’t track them, except through Anastasia, and she already knew how I felt.

  Like he often did, Ben picked me up after the show. I climbed in the passenger seat, and he didn’t say a word, for which I was grateful. He just leaned over, touched my face, and kissed my cheek, resting his lips there for a long time. I leaned into the touch.

  It was going to be okay.

  Tina survived. She got better. The first time I saw her back on her own show, I cheered. Her cohosts were babying her, I could tell. They wouldn’t let her carry any equipment and helped her out of their van. That she didn’t argue with them said a lot about how hurt she really was. But she was back in action, and it felt like a big middle finger to Provost and company. We talked often, but not about Jeffrey. When she was ready, she’d bring him up. Me—I had no doubt he was still around, looking out for her.

  Conrad also lived, and so did his leg. I got e-mails from him all the time. Updates, pictures of his kids—at the pool, on the beach, playing ball. Conrad was still processing. For him, the only way to believe that it had all happened was to keep in touch with our insane little survivor group. Whatever worked. He was also planning his next book—about his moment of epiphany, and about reconciling skepticism with the supernatural. I promised him an interview for it. I was happy for him, and grateful we’d been able to save him. No, not grateful—relieved. Relieved that I hadn’t had to call his wife and kids to tell them I was sorry.

  Grant came to see me at my office a couple of weeks after. He’d spent time in Montana recuperating and was on his way to Vegas to return to his magic show. Another middle finger to the bad guys. When he sat down in the chair across from my desk, he moved slowly. He still looked ill, which was disconcerting. He was one of the strongest people I k
new, but his face sagged, shadows marking his eyes. He sat unevenly, favoring his left, injured side.

  We studied each other for a long moment. Hunting for the nonvisible scars.

  “Well,” I said. “We made it.”

  Ducking his gaze, he hid a smile. “I admit, I had some doubts for a while.”

  “Naw, I never did,” I said, grinning and lying.

  “How are you holding up?” he said, when I should have been the one asking.

  I sighed. “I’m very, very angry. And I think Anastasia’s right. There’s a war brewing.”

  “But Roman wasn’t involved with this.”

  “Maybe not directly. Maybe not literally. But I think they’re both symptoms of the same thing,” I said.

  “Good versus evil?” he said, brow raised.

  I shrugged. “Let’s say order versus chaos. Kindness versus fear. No, never mind. False dichotomies, all of them.”

  His smile quirked. “You’re learning.”

  “Anastasia wanted you to have her card.” I handed him the copy I’d made of it.

  He didn’t look at it but folded the page with scarred hands and tucked it in a pocket. “So Roman is recruiting his alliance, and Anastasia is recruiting hers. Do you wonder where this is all going to end?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think it will. I think this same damn thing’s been going on for thousands of years. It’s just our turn to play the game now.”

  “Well, then. Until next time.” He stood to leave, I stood to see him out. With anyone else, I’d have stepped forward for a hug, but that wry smile was all I was going to get from him. After he left, I sat at my desk, staring at his empty chair for a long time, ignoring the nervous knot in my stomach.

  Cañon City was a small town in the foothills between the prairie and the Rocky Mountains. It was also, at least to people living in Colorado, synonymous with the several prison complexes that occupied a good chunk of land here, marked by miles of tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire and clusters of concrete institutional buildings. The Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility was in town, right off the highway. That was where we stopped. The late-summer sun baked off the blacktop and concrete, and I squinted against the glare of it. The whole prison area shone like its own little nightmare.