Kitty Steals the Show (Kitty Norville)

by Carrie Vaughn

  I made a call of my own. Fortunately, he answered right away, saving me those few seconds of anxiety.

  “Caleb? It’s Kitty.”

  “If this is another scheme of Ned’s—”

  “It’s not Ned. Tyler’s missing. Someone’s taken him.”

  “Taken him? Who? Where?”

  “I don’t know—if I knew I wouldn’t need help.”

  “Settle down. Is it the vampires?”

  “In broad daylight? Besides, we didn’t smell any in the room. Really, it could be anyone.”

  “If the vampires—their minions, I mean—took him out of some kind of revenge for last night, he could already be dead.”

  I shook my head. “I have to think that he’s more valuable alive.”

  “Sounds like a tracking job, then. We’ll get on it. Where was he taken from?”

  I explained the situation. Caleb and his people knew the city, would have the best idea where Tyler might have been taken. They were the best people to look for him. It was hard, though, leaving it in their hands.

  The next couple of hours went too quickly, or too slowly, depending. I changed my mind minute to minute. Either way, it was a blur. Police, uniformed and plainclothes detectives, and forensic technicians descended on the room in a swarm and herded us into yet another bare office for interviews. They asked us about the last time we saw Tyler, we told them, and they asked who we thought might have wanted to do Tyler harm. That was the problem—I had to explain how difficult doing him harm actually was, and that the perpetrator had to have known exactly how.

  The list of suspects I gave the poor overwhelmed detective was very long and ranged from foreign militaries to anti-werewolf extremists to vampires.

  “Vampires?” the detective said, unhappily. “How am I meant to look for vampires?”

  “Before sunset, in a room with no windows?” I said, and she glared at me.

  The police finished their interviews, took our phone numbers and contact information, asked us not to leave town, and let us go.

  Then we hunted.

  In the back of the hotel, at one of the service entrances, we caught Tyler’s scent, along with that human, vaguely medicinal smell from the room. They’d taken him out the door here. He was probably already unconscious. And then—nothing. The trail vanished.

  “Probably loaded him into a car,” Cormac said.

  “What do we do now?” I asked, looking back and forth down the small, empty side street, as if they had just turned a corner.

  “The security cameras had to pick up something,” Ben said.

  I paced, back and forth, over ten feet of sidewalk.

  “Kitty,” Ben said, meaning to be soothing, probably. The tone annoyed me.

  I pulled out my phone and called Caleb again. “You find anything yet?”

  He sounded growly even over the phone. “Of course I haven’t, London’s a big city. Have you even got an idea of where to start?”

  “No. They apparently drove him somewhere.”

  “Then he could be anywhere. We’re hunting, but there are a lot of strange werewolves in town just now.”

  “Okay. I know you’re trying. Thanks.”

  “Kitty. If he really was snatched, they’ve got him stashed someplace we won’t be able to smell him. You understand?”

  He was giving up before even starting. No—he was warning me. Being realistic. “I know. Thanks,” I said, and we hung up.

  We had to be able to do something. I wasn’t going to just let him go.

  I called Dr. Shumacher for an update. The police hadn’t told her anything yet, but she’d called the American embassy to report Tyler’s disappearance, and the authorities there promised to put their considerable resources into the search. We called Nick Parker again, and he did have some news. Ben and I both listened, heads together, the phone between us.

  “I’m with a friend who works in CCTV evidence, which means I’m probably looking at this footage before the DI on the case, but don’t tell anyone. A camera on the street behind the hotel shows a gray SUV with tinted windows parked by the service door you indicated, four hours ago. The car stays there for ten minutes while three men offloaded a bundle from an industrial laundry hamper. The bundle could hold a large person.”

  “Can you ID the car? The people? Can they track it?”

  “That’s just it,” he said. “We can reasonably confirm that your friend was taken from the hotel. But the men are wearing scarves over their faces, and the car’s registration plate has been covered with tape. They could very easily have driven to the next block, pulled the tape off, and blended into traffic. The make and color of the car are common enough it’ll be difficult to spot them. We’re looking at CCTV footage from surrounding areas, but it’ll take time. I’ll let you know if we find anything more.”

  He was going through a lot of trouble for us, which was kind and a little heartbreaking. “Thank you.”

  With such slim clues to follow, I tried to reconstruct what had happened. They’d caught Tyler by surprise in his room. They must have said something reasonable to convince him to open the door—there hadn’t been any sign of a break-in. Once inside, though, they must have revealed themselves, and he’d struggled, but they had some way of quickly overpowering him. Tranquilizer darts, probably—I’d seen them work on werewolves before. They’d loaded him into one of those hotel laundry bins, taken him down a service elevator with no one the wiser. And it had all happened four hours ago. What were we doing four hours ago?

  The riot. Luis and I had been struggling to the front of the crowd, and the attack on Esperanza had come right around then.

  “Was it a setup?” I said out loud, wonderingly.

  “Was what a setup?” Ben asked. “What are you thinking?”

  “Crazy conspiracy theory,” I said. “The same time Tyler was being loaded into the car, the riot was breaking out in front of the hotel.”

  “A distraction?” Ben said. “It would sound crazy if it didn’t actually make sense.”

  “What are we dealing with here?” I continued, thinking aloud. “Whoever took Tyler also has the wherewithal to instigate riots?”

  “It would have just taken the guy with the bucket of blood to tip that crowd over the edge,” Cormac said.

  I called Nick again, told him about the correlation with the riot, and suggested looking for the guy with the bucket of blood. He might be a thread back to whoever had Tyler. Nick said he’d pass the information along to the police.

  We walked back to the front of the hotel, but I didn’t know where to go from there. The police were working on it. We’d followed the leads we knew to follow. Caleb was searching—without a lot of chance of success, but still searching.

  It wasn’t enough.

  I stopped, and Ben and Cormac stopped with me, turning to look.

  “Cormac,” I said. “We have a fairy wish to use.”

  Ben chuckled. “You think that’s for real?”

  Cormac ignored him. “You sure you want to use it on this? We might be able to find Tyler without it.”

  “Alive?” I said, and Cormac didn’t answer. “Yes. I can’t think of anything better to use it on.”

  “You’re both talking like this is actually going to work,” Ben said. “There’s magic and then there’s…” He paused, a sour taste puckering his mouth.

  “And then there’s fairies. Yup,” I said.

  Chapter 21

  CORMAC SUGGESTED moving into the open, to make it easier for the Fae to hear us. We deferred to his wisdom. Hyde Park was a few blocks down the main road from the hotel. I kept touching my phone, checking for calls that I might have missed, but hadn’t. No one had called to say that they’d found Tyler and everything was okay. The sun was sinking, the shadows growing longer, twilight threatening. The vampires would be awake soon, and I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  The park was as gorgeous as ever, a startling oasis in the middle of the city. Joggers were
out, along with people walking home after work, and others playing with dogs who looked at us askance, ears flattened, knowing something was off about us. One, a bristly German shepherd, barked until his owner pulled him away, giving us a muddled apology, Bruce wasn’t normally so rude, and so on. We avoided the dogs as best we could.

  Cormac led us to an out-of-the-way glade, near a stand of trees, and—a statue of Peter Pan, depicted as a slender, elfin child playing a pipe. He might have brought us to the spot on purpose.

  Cormac pulled the scarf out of a jacket pocket and handed it over. It tingled in my hand. Was it just the shimmering texture of the fabric, or something more?

  “What do I do now?”

  “It’s the Fae. Make a wish,” he said.

  “Just like that?” Ben said.

  Coiling the scarf around my hands, I closed my eyes and thought about finding Tyler. Wished I could find him, right now, nearby, whole and unharmed. I drew a breath, smelled the grass, trees, the contained nature of the park hemmed in by the odor of city. Heard traffic, footsteps, a barking dog. Ben and Cormac standing still, breathing softly. It all felt so incongruously calm.

  Something hit me from behind, like someone shoving in a crowd. I jumped and looked.

  The young women from the conference and the restaurant, the ones who’d started the whole thing, stood arm in arm, looking at me, grinning wide, their big eyes shining. Daisy and Rose.

  “Where’d they come from?” Ben hissed, looking around in a panic.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” said a newcomer, who also seemed to have appeared from thin air, but might have walked from behind the stand of trees, except that I hadn’t heard or smelled her coming. And I’d been listening.

  Wearing a beaded skirt, a shapeless blouse, a shawl that seemed to be made of flower petals, and an annoyed expression creasing her elfin face, she was the regal woman from the other night. Now, at dusk instead of full dark, she reminded me of sunshine and distant meadows. Her clothing seemed old-fashioned but new at the same time. Her hair appeared to have flowers woven in it, but I couldn’t tell what kind. They were tiny, and shimmered.

  “I need help,” I said starkly, holding her scarf out to her.

  “You mean you’re not going to ask for a castle or a bag of gold? Hmm.”

  “Would we have waited to ask if we were?”

  “Yes, of course. You’re the clever kind. At least, you are,” she said to Cormac, who remained standing quietly with his hands in his pockets. “You and the one inside your head.”

  He narrowed his gaze and pursed his lips.

  “Can you help?” I asked.

  “Help with what?”

  Focus, had to focus. It wasn’t easy. “A friend is missing. Joseph Tyler, he’s a werewolf, he’s been kidnapped. A lot of people are looking for him, but he could be anywhere. Can you get him back?”

  “And that’s your wish? To get him back?”

  “Yes. Rescue him. Alive, safely, in one piece, and sane.” I blinked earnestly, hoping I’d covered all the bases.

  She smirked. Clearly, I was pushing.

  “Your wish is to retrieve one soul in this whole wide city,” she stated, making it sound like a done deal. I glanced at Cormac, hoping for confirmation that this was good, that I was doing it right. He hadn’t said anything, so I had to be reassured that I wasn’t inadvertently selling my soul. I could see how it would be easy to do. She seemed so nice.

  “Hand it over,” she said, holding out her hand, shaking it. I laid the scarf across her palm.

  She flourished the fabric and tossed it into a pocket—or somewhere. At any rate, it was gone. Clapping her hands, she called, “Girls. Call the troops. Werewolf in trouble. Go!”

  The two—henchwomen? Sidekicks?—ran, but I couldn’t have described exactly where they went. The woman smiled as if pleased. I hesitated to ask any other questions.

  “Shall we look at the stars?” She settled onto the grass, lying prone, looking up. The sky had darkened to a royal blue, but I couldn’t see any stars past the glow of the surrounding city.

  We hesitated, but she pointed to the ground insistently, and how could we refuse?

  We must have looked ridiculous, the three of us looking on, awkward and uncertain, with this odd woman lying in the grass, her clothing splayed around her.

  “Is this really going to work?” Ben leaned toward me to whisper.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Cormac?”

  “Hard to say. Anything can happen.”

  I took out my phone; still no calls. I had to resist calling Nick and Caleb yet again; it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes since the last time I called. They wouldn’t have found anything new.

  “Look, there! The evening star!” The fairy queen pointed off at a forty-five-degree angle.

  I wouldn’t have thought any stars would be visible in the middle of the city, but she’d found one, a single point of light, twinkling. Like a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “Actually, I think it’s an airplane,” Ben whispered.

  “Oh, fie.” She pouted.

  I lasted about five seconds before I started tapping my feet. I cleared my throat a little. “Do you have any idea how long—”

  “Everyone’s looking,” she said. “It’s hard in the city, with all its iron. We cope—it’s better than the alternative, after all. But these things take time. You know, it isn’t that we’re particularly good at granting wishes, or finding things or, well, anything. Playing tricks, maybe. But we pay attention. We find the loose thread that everyone else misses and tug. It makes us look so very clever.”

  We three humans clumped together and waited.

  “Amelia’s loving this,” Cormac said.

  “At least someone is,” I muttered.

  The sound of laughter filtered from … somewhere … and the two giggling women tumbled onto the grass next to their mistress. Again, I couldn’t have said where they came from, just that they arrived.

  The queen sat up and put her hands on her hips. “Well? Where is he?”

  One of them scrunched up her face, almost tearful. “It’s full of iron, we can’t get any closer!”

  “Fie,” the queen said. “But you found him? Show me where,” the queen said. The three of them huddled together, faces bent. I couldn’t hear a thing. When she looked up again, she seemed determined. The two junior fairies beamed with pride.

  “You couldn’t get him,” I said.

  She held her chin, eyes crinkled with thought. “There has to be a way, I can’t just leave a wish hanging like this.”

  “Um … can you tell me where they found him?” I said. “That’ll be good enough.”

  Someone jogged on the path, and I froze, wondering how I was going to explain all this, but he never turned his head.

  “You’re saying I just have to tell you where he is, not fetch him.”

  “That’s right.” Hurry, hurry …

  She said, “It’s down the river at least five hops, then you have to wiggle up a bit, to one of the places where there isn’t a single tree left—”

  Cormac pulled a map from his jacket pocket, unfolding as he went. “You think you could point to it?”

  Her gaze darted over it and she pursed her lips. “Hmm. How novel.” After a moment, she pointed. “There.”

  Well east of the city, downriver. Just a spot on a map.

  I frowned. “I don’t suppose you have an address?”

  She crossed her arms and pouted. “Addresses, bah. By the way, have you asked yourself whether or not I might be lying?” She was smiling, but it wasn’t pretty.

  “I’d be no worse off than I was before,” I said, and she slouched, the wind taken out of her sails. Wings? She didn’t seem to have wings, not that I could see anyway. I sighed. “This has to be right. Thank—” Cormac squeezed my arm and shook his head. You didn’t thank fairies. Hmm.

  “Right. This’ll work,” I said, and the queen offered a brief, mysterious bow.
>
  I called Caleb. “I think I have a location for you. A place called Creekmouth?”

  His voice sounded tinny, distant, like he was in a car. “It’s an industrial park, part of the port system. That’s not good,” he said. “Where’d you get this information? How do you know he’s there?”

  “Um … fairies told me?”

  He sounded surprised. “And you trust ’em?”

  “They owed me a wish.”

  “Ah, right,” he said.

  “You believe me? Or, you believe in fairies?” I asked.

  “I knew they were out there,” Caleb said. “Though it doesn’t do for a bloke like me to run around saying he believes in fairies. The thing you’ve got to remember about them—they’re not human, so don’t think you understand them. You, me, Ned, Marid, all of us—we all started out human and were changed. We might turn out quite different, but you can still suss us out at the heart of it. But them? They never were human.”

  “We’ve been having this conference on the paranormal and we missed this whole part of it that isn’t even human?”

  “Not my concern,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Hyde Park,” I said. “The Peter Pan statue.”

  “Typical,” he huffed. “Walk north, you’ll end up at the Lancaster Gate tube stop, we’ll pick you up in about fifteen minutes.”

  “How far away is this place?”

  “It’ll take time to get there,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of people I can send to scout ahead.”

  It would have to be enough. I shut off the phone and looked around to say good-bye to the queen and her folk, but they were gone.

  I blinked at Cormac and Ben. “Where’d they go?”

  “Vanished. Poof,” Ben said, flicking out his fingers.

  “Just like that?” I said.

  “Hard to tell,” Cormac said. “I wasn’t quite looking at them.”

  “Yeah,” Ben agreed. “I thought I just glanced away for a minute.”

  That shouldn’t have surprised me at all. “We have to get moving, Caleb’s going to pick us up.”

  Nightfall gave the mission even more urgency—we’d be dealing with vampires soon. Njal would know that Harald and his mate had left him. Other vampires would call on werewolves who were no longer there.