I regarded the gathering. “I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve called you here this evening.” I grinned, barely able to keep from giggling, because that line never got old.
Lee smirked. “Did you call us here just so you could say that?”
“No, actually. Mr. Provost put me up to getting the ball rolling tonight. So we’re going to play a little game called Kitty’s Truth or Dare. Except without the dare part, because I shudder to think what you all would actually be willing to do.”
“Maybe we can save that part for next week, when we start getting punchy,” Tina said.
“Hm. Wouldn’t that be a bad idea? And now that you’ve said it out loud, Joey is sure to go for it,” I said. “Really, this will be painless. I’m just going to ask you a few questions.”
“Wait a minute,” Tina said. “Show of hands: how many of you has Kitty interviewed on her show?” Jerome, Ariel, Jeffrey, and Tina raised their hands. To me she said, “Is this going to be anything like that?”
Hm, I’d definitely have to come up with a way to get the ones I hadn’t interviewed yet on my show. I studied them appraisingly.
“Kitty, you look like you’re hunting,” Lee said.
“Who, me? So yeah, those guys can vouch for me. It’ll be just like that. Nothing to be afraid of.” Why did they all look so skeptical? “Look, this is voluntary, and if you have a problem with it you don’t have to play along. But I think it’ll be fun. It’ll be like those office ice-breaker things.”
“Those are never fun,” Ariel said darkly.
“Right. Fair enough. So, let’s get the rote ones out of the way first. Anastasia, what year were you born?”
“You want that in Gregorian or Julian?”
“Ooh, fancy,” I said. “So did you just drop a hint or what?”
“I’m not going to answer that question, Kitty,” she said, donning a catty smile.
“Didn’t think so. But I wouldn’t feel like I’d done my job if I hadn’t asked. Gemma, how about you?”
She glanced at Anastasia, like she and Dorian always did, as if asking permission. It irritated me, but I wasn’t going to change it by bitching about it. Now, if I could get each of them alone and grill them for a couple of minutes…
I didn’t detect any sign from Anastasia, no hint that she’d spoken or given Gemma a cue, but the younger vampire turned to me and answered, “Nineteen-eighty.”
I blinked. “Holy crap, we’re the same age.” I looked her up and down, judging her all over again. She looked about twenty, give or take a couple of years. That meant about the same year I’d been attacked and turned into a werewolf, she’d become a vampire. I suddenly felt like I was looking into a “what might have been” mirror. What if it had been a vampire instead of a werewolf that had gotten me?
I wouldn’t be winning any beauty pageants, for one thing. Also, to be honest, I was glad I hadn’t frozen in time at that age. I’d grown a lot since then. I liked to think I was a much better person now, and that I wore my age well.
“You know,” Conrad said, “not claiming to be a thousand years old almost convinces me that you’re for real.”
“Hey,” I said. “Every vampire had to be brand-new at some point, right?” Gemma just smiled, and I recovered, awkwardly. “I guess I won’t be asking you any ‘wisdom of the ages’ questions, then. Next question’s for Lee. And this is a serious one, so stop smirking at me.” I was getting into a rhythm, just like I did on the show, which was kind of fun. Even more interesting was having everyone sitting here, letting me interact with a live audience. I was glad we were getting this on film.
“Lee: how many were-seals are there, and is there any kind of community? Do you hang out, have packs like werewolves do, anything like that?”
“No,” he said. “We’re loners. I don’t even know how many there are. I know a few others in Alaska; we run into each other occasionally. Usually we give each other a wide berth.”
Conrad said, because obviously he couldn’t let anything go, “You’re asking me to believe in not just werewolves, but were-seals? What about were-bears? Were-poodles? Were-rabbits? Where do you draw the line?”
He was just trying to get my goat. Best thing I could do was play it straight. “Were-rabbit? Not likely. In my experience, only carnivores manifest lycanthropic varieties. But were-bears, yeah, totally, there’s some of those.”
He gaped, but as I’d hoped, he had no other response to that.
“Moving on!” I said. “Odysseus Grant. Where the hell does your box of vanishing open to really?”
“You’re fishing. Ask another one.” Grant didn’t change his expression, didn’t miss a beat.
“Box of vanishing?” Conrad said. “Are you implying he does the vanishing-person trick and people actually vanish?”
I glared at him. “Are you going to give commentary on everything?”
“That’s my job here, isn’t it?”
“Alrighty, let’s skip forward. Here’s my question for Conrad: What’s the strangest unexplained thing that’s ever happened to you?”
“Well, I don’t know that anything like that has really happened to me. Not like you’re talking about.”
“Forget the werewolves and vampires for a minute. I’m talking just… odd. Coincidence, déjà vu, fate, any of that. The wind blew a winning lottery ticket into your hand. You got a call from someone right when you were going to call them. Anything that made you stop and wonder for a minute.”
“Let me think.” He leaned back, hand on chin. We all watched, quiet and eager. I felt sure he was going to deny that anything strange or odd had ever happened to him, not so much as a shadow in the closet when he was a kid.
So imagine my surprise when he said, “I thought I saw a ghost, once. That is, I was a kid, and I thought it could be a ghost, until I thought about it and realized there was probably a reasonable explanation. A draft from a window or something.”
Tina looked like she was about to jump up and say something, but I shot her a look and she settled back. We had something here—I didn’t want to scare him off.
“What made you think it was a ghost? What about it made it so strange?”
He shook his head, his expression turning inward, unfocused with the memory. “It was the cold,” he said. “It was a warm summer day, but there was this spot in the hallway that turned freezing. It’s like that expression, someone walking over your grave. That’s what it felt like. I could have sworn that someone was watching me. And that if I’d reached my hand out, someone standing there would have taken it.” Unconsciously, he closed his hands into fists.
If Conrad had said something about smoky figures or moving furniture, I might have written off the account to suggestibility. He was a scared kid whose imagination had reinterpreted his fear based on campfire tales. But he didn’t. My skin had goose bumps at his story.
“Whoa,” I said, in validation. This was my gift, my superpower: making people feel like they could talk about anything. Making them open up and reveal their secrets.
“It could have all been in my head,” he said quickly. “It could have all been my imagination.”
Tina said, “Radical drops in temperature in localized areas have been reported with some hauntings. That whole incident, it doesn’t sound unlikely at all.” This didn’t seem to comfort Conrad any.
“You weren’t afraid of it?” Jeffrey said.
“No,” Conrad said. “It mostly made me feel sad.”
“Had there been any deaths in your family at the time? Had you lost any friends?” Jeffrey asked. “Might someone have been trying to contact you?”
Conrad thought for a moment, and his face was a blank. “No. No, that couldn’t have been it.” His voice was stark, and I wondered if he was lying, but suggesting that would have made him turn surly and shut up. Best move on.
My victims… er, interview subjects were mostly too clever and too used to the spotlight to slip up and answer my really probing questions. I didn’t get stunnin
g confessions from any of them, except the one from Conrad. He was quiet for the rest of the evening, and I wondered what nerve I’d touched.
Around midnight, the group started jumping ship, led by Conrad. I grumbled at the mutiny, but not really, because by the end of it I was left with Anastasia, Gemma, and Dorian. Maybe they’d be more forthcoming without everyone else around.
What was I thinking? We still had cameras focused on us. Probably a lost cause, but I had to try.
I waited until Anastasia and Dorian were involved in a conversation in the kitchen, where he was pouring a glass of wine. I was sure they were trading notes and commentary on their fellow housemates and everything they’d learned. Gemma wasn’t interested and went to the window to look out at the nighttime meadow, trimmed with white from a waning moon. I sidled up to join her, not too obviously, I hoped.
“Hey, Gemma, can I ask you a question?”
“I suppose.” She had a stunning smile—of course. “Doesn’t mean I’ll answer it.”
“Why? Why become a vampire?”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s such a boring question.”
“Still. Humor me.”
She hesitated, then gave a lopsided shrug, her first unstudied gesture. “I was afraid of getting old.” She looked away, refusing to meet my gaze. Like a kid almost—twenty years old and bored by old people, meaning anyone over twenty-five. How long did it take a vampire to develop that haughty poise that was so common with them? Long enough to realize the world was growing old around them? A generation—when you stop understanding the kids who look like you?
Was that arrogance a shield?
“That’s not a very good reason,” I said.
She frowned. It damaged her poise, just a bit. “I’ve been on the pageant circuit since I was eight. It’s all I’ve ever known how to do. When I was fifteen, I went on anti depressants. I was two inches too short for the modeling agencies, and my mom acted like it was the end of the world, like I was this huge failure. My looks—it’s all I have. I don’t know how Anastasia found me. It’s like she had this crystal ball and saw me screaming, ‘Get me out of here.’ She said she could keep me young forever. Like I said, that’s all I have. She’s taken such good care of me, I never looked back. She has uses for a very beautiful woman. What she does—she can use someone like me. I’m happy to help her.”
I was almost afraid to ask what she was talking about. I thought I knew—the vampire entourage. The collection of beautiful people at a Master’s—or Mistress’s—beck and call. An alpha werewolf could gain status by showing off how many lesser wolves he—or she—could take care of. Vampires did the same thing by showing how many beautiful and powerful vampires owed them loyalty. It was almost feudal. Anastasia could bring Gemma into a room and distract everyone in it. Her adversaries wouldn’t even know they were being distracted.
Was Gemma so afraid of growing old she’d make herself into a pawn? I didn’t understand it. But then, I hadn’t chosen to become what I was. It happened, and I just dealt with it. Making lemonade out of lemons and all that. Bottoms up.
“That seems kind of sad to me,” I said. “There’s so much more that makes up a person. There’s a quote from Coco Chanel: ‘Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.’ I’m kind of curious to see what kind of face I’m going to merit.” My smile was wry.
“Oh, you’re different,” she said. “You couldn’t possibly depend on your looks. Oh—I didn’t mean it like that.” I hadn’t even had a chance to react to what she’d said. My smile only got more wry. “You’re nice-looking, really cute. But you have so much else along with your looks. That’s what I meant,” she said. “Never mind. You know what I mean.”
“You thought you didn’t have anything else to aspire to. Yeah, I think I get it.”
Anastasia joined us. Dorian had gone to the basement, I assumed. She put her hands on Gemma’s shoulders and leaned in to whisper, “Go on downstairs. I’d like to speak with Kitty.”
Ah, here it came, the smackdown for trying to weasel a confession out of Gemma, like Gemma couldn’t speak for herself. The younger vampire smiled at me, squeezed her Mistress’s hand, and retreated to the basement, leaving Anastasia and me alone.
I waited, but she didn’t say anything. She gazed out the window, as Gemma had, a faint smile on her lips, seemingly admiring the beauty. And she still didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t stand it. “Did you really just need a pretty face hanging around you? Because that doesn’t seem like the best reason to make someone a vampire,” I said.
She didn’t react; didn’t look angry, or amused. What, then? “There’s more to Gemma than her looks,” Anastasia said finally. “Even she’ll see that someday. I wouldn’t have turned her otherwise. But consider this: without the time to grow out of her old life, she might never have discovered that about herself.”
“But she’s still entering beauty pageants,” I said. “I’d have thought a stint with the Peace Corps might have done more to improve her sense of self-worth.”
“May I ask you a question now?” she said.
I couldn’t say no, even though I felt a bit cornered. I didn’t really want to be the focus of this woman’s attention. With just the two of us here, looking anywhere but her eyes was difficult. I worked to keep from fidgeting.
“This two-thousand-year-old vampire you said you met,” she said. “Who was it?”
I didn’t want to talk about this. “He was a little intimidating.”
“Let me tell you about him. He’s not so tall; average height and build, but he looks like stone. Close-cropped hair. An intense man. He was probably intense even before he turned to vampirism. And he’s concerned with power. Political, territorial. He chooses minions, binds them to him. He’s preparing allies for a coming conflict.”
Weakly, I nodded. “That’s right. That’s him.”
Anastasia leaned forward a little, her full lips in a pouting smile, her gaze searching. “What did he tell you, Kitty? What did he offer you? What did he demand?”
My thin pretense of a smile fell. “What do you know about him? Why are you asking me these things?”
“Evasion,” she said, straightening slowly, catlike. “That tells me something, as well.”
“Are you trying to figure out whose side I’m on? If Roman succeeded in buying me off?”
“Did he?”
What the hell, just lay it out there. “No.”
Her gaze still studied me, assessed me. I got the feeling she didn’t believe me, but talking about Roman made all my muscles go tense. Surely she could see that.
“So what’s your interest in him?” I said. “Are you one of his?”
She was too good, too experienced to let her expression slip. Too magnificent a poker player. But I thought I knew: if she was one of his, she wouldn’t have to ask me about him. The thought actually made me like her better. But I didn’t like being in a verbal fencing match with an obviously experienced vampire. I was so outclassed.
“Is he a rival, then?” I asked, when she didn’t answer. “How old does that make you?”
Her smile widened and for a moment seemed genuine. Like in another moment she’d laugh and we’d be like old friends. But I also felt like she’d be laughing at me.
She said, “For all our vaunted immortality, old vampires are actually quite rare. They consider each other to be rivals, and they eliminate each other. It’s best to keep a low profile.”
That so didn’t answer my question. “This isn’t a low profile.”
“Sometimes you have to step into the light to learn what you need to know.”
That was a page out of my book. She was still being evasive. “Are you working against Roman? Or are you just another player working for the same goal?”
She tilted her head. “You seem to know more about this than I’d expect from someone of your… type.”
“You going to give me the old ‘werew
olves are uncivilized heathens’ line now?”
“No, of course not, I wouldn’t insult you. I’m far too aware of how some werewolves promote that reputation so people like me will underestimate them.”
Over the last couple of years, I’d learned about the so-called Long Game in bits and pieces, like drops of water falling into a bucket. I had gathered enough of those drops to make a mess. And none of those drops suggested that werewolves ever played a part in the Long Game except as tools. As minions. Most of the werewolves I knew just wanted to be left alone, and that didn’t give us a whole lot of power in the game Anastasia was playing.
Before I could call her on it, she straightened and smoothed out her trousers, an obvious shift in tone and in topic. “And what do you know of Odysseus Grant?”
Well, shoot. Were these two plotting some sort of underworld scheme against each other? Did the show serve as a backdrop by accident, or had they ended up here by design? Anastasia might have rigged all this as a publicity stunt. Grant? Never. He didn’t do stunts. He was always in earnest.
What could I possibly tell the vampire that wouldn’t get him in trouble? I wasn’t a good liar. I couldn’t pretend like I didn’t care about him.
“He saved my life once,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s one of the good guys.”
“Good guys. I wonder what that means to you.”
“I just want to be left alone,” I said, my voice soft. I didn’t know yet if Anastasia was a good guy. I didn’t know what that meant to her.
Her gaze narrowed. “I don’t believe you. The evidence suggests otherwise.”
I looked up, because these were the big issues, and when you started trying to untangle the big issues—of philosophy, of ideology—there often were no right answers. I tended to take things day by day, by gut instinct, and hope for the best.
“Then maybe I want justice,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, with something like mocking awe. “You’re an idealist.”
“Yeah. So I’m told.”
“Well. Good luck. You’ll need it.” She gazed outside, like she had just commented on the weather, or the lovely shadows on the grass.
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