“Ma’am? Shouldn’t we be off?”
Leo spoke and I jumped, startled. He’d appeared in the doorway behind me, and I hadn’t heard him. He grinned wickedly; he’d known exactly what he was doing.
“All right, Leo. Thank you.” She passed me on her way to follow him, pausing a moment to look kindly on me. Like someone might look at a dog who’d had a run-in with a skunk. “Do try to get some sleep,” she said.
She’d turned down the hall, out of my sight, when Leo took the opportunity to lean in and say, “Might also try a shower there, luv.” He turned on his heel and followed his mistress.
The perfect end to the day, really.
So much for turning this trip into a working vacation. I wasn’t getting any sleep. I’d need a week off to recover from all this. Preferably some place with a hot tub and room service. At least my arm had healed quickly.
I got to the Senate office building early, despite the lack of sleep. It meant I was able to catch Duke before the session started.
He was walking down the corridor, conferring with an aide, who was holding a folder open in front of him. I stood against the wall, waiting quietly and out of sight until they reached me. Then I hurried to keep pace with them. Both him and his aide looked over at me, startled.
“Senator Duke? Could I talk to you for just a minute?”
The aide turned to shield the senator, blocking my access to him. He said, “I’m sorry, the senator is much too busy right now. If you’d like to make an appointment—”
“Really, just a couple of questions, we don’t even have to stop walking.” I hopped to try to catch sight of Duke around his aide. “Senator? How about it?”
He looked straight ahead and didn’t slow. “One question, if we can keep walking.”
“Of course. Thanks.” The aide glared at me, but shifted so I could walk next to Duke. “Why did you bring Elijah Smith here?”
“Because he understands my mission: to see these . . . diseases . . . eradicated. I’m sure you understand. And he’s a man of the cloth, which brings a respect that these hearings are sorely in need of, wouldn’t you agree?”
“A man of the cloth? Really? Of what denomination? Have you seen any kind of identification for him?”
He frowned. “I’m sure he’s a good Christian preacher who teaches that faith saves.”
“He wasn’t what you think. He wasn’t helping anyone.”
“Was?” he said. He stopped and looked at me. “What do you mean, was?”
“He, uh, had to leave town suddenly.”
Glaring, I thought he might start a fight with me right there. His aide’s eyes widened, like he was worried, too. “What have you done?”
I stood my ground. I wasn’t going to let him cow me. I had authority, didn’t I? Yeah, right.
“You believe, Senator. I know you believe: ghosts, devils, angels, good and evil, the whole nine yards. Elijah Smith was a demon, preying on the weak and helpless. I hope you’ll believe me.”
His expression was cold, but his eyes held a light—a kind of fevered intensity. “If he was preying on anything, it was your kind. Vampires and werewolves—monsters. Hardly the weak and helpless.” He gave a short laugh.
“We’re all just people at heart, Senator. I wish I could make you understand that.”
“That’ll be for the committee to decide.” He gestured to his aide and stalked down the corridor. His aide scurried to keep up with him.
I met Ben outside the Senate office building. He seemed surprised to see me coming out the door instead of arriving via the sidewalk.
“You’re up early,” he said, raising an inquiring brow.
“Um, yeah. By the way, we don’t have to do anything about Smith. You don’t have to look into it.”
He studied me closely. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” I said far too quickly. “Well, I mean, we did a spell.”
“A spell?”
“We just threw some herbs and stuff around. That’s all.”
“It’s not something you’re going to end up in court over, is it?”
Not human court, at any rate. “No, I don’t think so.”
He sighed. “Just for you, I think I’m going to raise my rates. To pay for the hair loss treatments.”
He was such a kidder.
We entered the meeting room and found our usual seats. Cormac hadn’t shown up since Duke fired him, but Ben said he was still in town. Just in case, Ben said, but wouldn’t say in case of what.
Today’s session was late in starting. Time dragged. Reporters fidgeted, Senate aides hovered in the background, wringing their hands. The senators themselves shuffled papers and wouldn’t raise their gazes. Testimony that should have taken just a few days had been dragged out to the end of the week. I quivered, waiting for something to break.
The audience was dwindling. Most of the reporters had drifted off to cover more interesting stories, and maybe a dozen general spectators remained. Even some of the senators on the committee hadn’t bothered showing up.
As expected, Roger Stockton was there, ready to stick it out to the very end. He looked like he’d been able to sleep. He invited himself into the seat next to mine. After last night he must have thought we were some kind of buddies.
Maybe we were.
He leaned close and immediately launched into questions. “So where are the aliens and what do they have to do with the vampires? Are vampires aliens?”
“Aliens?” Ben, overhearing, asked.
“A couple of really bad movies have covered that plot,” I said. “Where did you come up with it?”
“Last night, the Man In Black with the vampires, the one keeping people away like it was some kind of UFO cover-up. You seemed pretty tight with all them—what aren’t you telling me?”
I tried to smile mysteriously, which was hard to do when I really wanted to laugh. “It’s not really my place to give away secrets. Honestly, though. The ‘Man In Black’ was just a guy. There aren’t any aliens.”
“That’s what they all say,” he said, glaring. “‘It was Venus,’ my ass.”
Ben gave me a look that said, What the hell are you talking about? I gave him one back that said, Later.
Finally, the session started. I still hadn’t been called. We listened to half an hour of testimony from Robert Carr, a B-grade filmmaker who’d been praised for the frightening werewolf shape-shifting effects in his movies—had he used real werewolves, by any chance? He claimed no, he had a talented CGI artist who used a morphing technique to shift images of people into images of wolves, and if his effects were more successful this was because he pictured actual wolves, instead of the unlikely broad-chested, fake-fur-covered mutant grotesques that most werewolf movies used.
I’d seen a couple of his films, and I was sure he was telling the truth and didn’t use real werewolves. Though his effects were impressive and awfully realistic. He might have seen a real werewolf shape-shift. I’d have to tackle—er, approach—him after the hearings and get him to come on the show. We could talk about werewolves as metaphor in film.
I was a little put-out, though, that the committee decided to talk to the werewolf filmmaker before the actual werewolf. Okay, we were still in the entertainment industry portion of the testimony, and maybe some of the committee members didn’t believe I was a werewolf. But I’d been on the schedule for three days now. Impatient didn’t begin to describe it. I hadn’t been able to eat more than half an English muffin for breakfast, I was so anxious.
“Thank you, Mr. Carr, that will be all.” Duke straightened the papers on the table in front of him with an air of finality. “I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for testimony today. We’ll recess for the weekend and resume on Monday to hear from those witnesses we haven’t called yet. Thank you very much.”
The place burst into activity, people talking among themselves, getting up to leave, aides rushing to attend to the committee members. The other senators looked as confused
as I felt; they hadn’t been expecting this, either. The tension that had been there from the start didn’t dissipate.
“This is weird,” Stockton said. “Weren’t you supposed to be up there today?”
“Yeah.” I crossed my arms and pouted.
“I don’t believe it.” Ben flopped back against his chair with a sigh. “You see somebody’s name on the docket, you expect them to get called. This isn’t just annoying, it’s unprofessional. They expect us to be on time, the least they could do is run an extra hour to hear everybody.”
Maybe there was a reason. Was there anyone else due to be called after me? Or did Duke just want to postpone my testimony?
I counted forward, checking off days on the calendar I kept in my mind, confirming the day with the inner tide that felt the pull of it even if I didn’t know exactly what day the full moon fell on. I stared across the room to the table where the senators were cleaning up, heading out, conversing with each other or aides. Duke glanced up and caught my eye. He set his jaw and turned away.
Alette was right. She’d called it.
“The bastard,” I said. “He planned it. He planned it this way all along. He needs to drag the hearings out until Monday.”
“What’s Monday?”
“Full moon. He wants to make me testify the day of the full moon.”
Stockton gave a low whistle. “Sneaky,” he said with something like admiration. I glared at him. He may have thought we were great friends after our adventure last night, but he was doing a lousy job staying in my good graces. He was less like a war buddy and more like an annoying younger brother.
Ben said, “You make it sound like that’s not good.”
I shook my head, trying to call up some reserve of righteous outrage. Mostly I felt tired. “I’ll be at my worst, that’s all. Edgy, nervous. Itchy. He knows enough to know this. Maybe he thinks I’ll lose my temper and Change right in front of them all.” This put me in a foul mood.
“Can you handle it?” Ben said. “Should we put in a request to delay testimony for a day?”
The day after would be even worse than the day before. It felt like having a hangover, and I seemed to spend too much energy mentally holding the door to the Wolf’s cage shut. I’d be distracted and no good.
“No, no,” I said. “I mean, yeah. I can handle it. I think.” I hoped. No caffeine for me that day.
I had to talk to Fritz, but it was getting late; I didn’t know if I’d get to the Crescent in time to see him.
I ran from the Metro station to the club, jumped down the stairs, and grabbed the doorway to stop myself as I looked around in a panic.
I wasn’t too late. He sat at his usual table, hunched over his tumbler, staring at nothing and wrapped up in his own world.
Pulling up a chair, I sat near him, close enough to whisper but far enough away to dodge if he decided to take a swing at me. I had no idea how this would play out.
He blinked at me, startled.
“What can you tell me about Dr. Paul Flemming?” I asked.
He stared, his gaze narrowing. “I do not know this name.”
He could say that, but his expression told me otherwise. His lip twitched, his eyes were accusing. He looked like someone who had decided to lie.
“I saw your name on a list in his laboratory.”
“I know nothing,” he said, shaking his head. Quickly he drained his glass, slammed it on the table, and pushed his chair away.
“Please don’t go. I just want to talk.” This strange, lurking figure raised so many questions. At this point I didn’t even care what he told me, just as long as he said something. A flash from the past, a story, an anecdote. The sweeping words of advice and judgment the old often seemed to have ready for the young. I didn’t care. I wanted to find a crack in that wall.
He turned to me, looming over my chair, his lips curling. “I don’t talk to anyone.”
I met his gaze, my own anger rising. “If you don’t want to talk to anyone, why do you even come here? Why not drink yourself to death in private?”
He straightened, even taking a step back, as if I had snarled at him, or took a swipe at him. Then he closed his eyes and sighed.
“Here, it smells safe. For a little while each day, I feel safe.”
I resisted an urge to grab his arm, to keep him here. To try to comfort him through touch, the way I would have if we’d been part of the same pack. But we weren’t a pack. He was a stranger, behind this wall he’d built to keep the world out, and I didn’t know why I thought he’d talk to me. Just because I was cute or something.
“Why would you be afraid of anything?”
Slowly, a smile grew on his ragged features, pursed and sardonic. “You are young and do not understand. But if you keep on like this, you might.”
He brushed his fingers across the top of my head, a fleeting touch that was gone as soon as I’d felt it, as if a bird had landed on me and instantly taken flight again.
“You are young,” he said, and walked away, settling his coat more firmly over his shoulders.
His touch tingled across my scalp long after he’d disappeared out the door.
I had a show to put on tonight, like I did every Friday. I asked Jack for a cup of coffee. Something to keep me awake for the next ten hours. I took out my notepad on the pretense of planning tonight’s show—though really, the day of the show was far too late to be planning it. Good thing I’d been cornering hearing participants like Jeffrey Miles and Robert Carr and convincing them to appear on the show. The rest of it I’d have to wing. Not too different than usual, come to think of it.
“He’s right, you know.” Ahmed appeared. He slipped into the chair across from me. I hadn’t heard him, and the whole place smelled like werewolf so my nose hadn’t sensed him. He’d stalked quietly, like he was hunting. Today, he wore a woven vest over his shirt and trousers. The vest gave him that same man-of-two-worlds air that the robe had.
I didn’t want to talk to him. He might not have had any obligation to help me with the mess at Smith’s caravan, but he hadn’t even made an effort, and I wasn’t in the mood to be lectured by him now.
I just stared at him.
“There is much to fear in the world. Trouble finds you when you get too involved. That is why the Nazi keeps to himself.”
“Fritz,” I said. “His name’s Fritz.”
Ahmed had said that this was a safe place, a place with no alphas, no rivalries, and no need to fight among ourselves. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t in charge, watching. Or that he didn’t have clear ideas of how things should be run. And according to him, you stayed safe by keeping to yourself and not getting involved.
I’d stuck my neck out too many times to take that attitude. I tried to keep from tensing up defensively. He wasn’t challenging me. There was nothing wrong with what I was doing.
“He is little more than a crazy old man. He has his rituals, his drinking, because they fend off his memories. But everyone else remembers for him, and do not speak to him because of it. I tolerate him here because he is harmless. He is to be pitied for the ghosts he carries with him.”
I was about ready to scream with all the double-talk and hints of what people weren’t telling me. “What did he do? He won’t tell me. You call him the Nazi, which implies so much. But I want to know, exactly what did he do?”
He shrugged. “The time and place he comes from say much, do they not?”
“You say you remember. That everyone remembers. Do you really, or have you just made something up and figured it’s close enough?”
He was a German soldier from World War II. Everyone else just filled in the blanks. But did that really make him a war criminal? I’d probably never find out for sure.
Ahmed’s brow furrowed in a way that was admonishing. Here it came, the I’m older and wiser than you so sit down and shut up speech. It was like having a pack alpha all over again.
“Kitty.” He spread his hands in a gesture of offering. “I do
n’t want to see you get in trouble.”
“Neither do I! But I’m getting tired of everyone hiding things from me.”
“Perhaps they do not hide things from you—they hide things out of habit. Many of us would prefer to keep this world hidden. We owe nothing to anyone. That is the secret to a contented life. Don’t become indebted to anyone.”
“So you build an oasis and lock out the world, is that it? It means you don’t have to go out of your way to help anyone.” I had to get out of here before I said something I would regret later. “I’m sorry, I’d really like to talk more, but I have to get going. I’ve got the show tonight.”
“I’m sure I do not have to tell you to be careful.” I’d been hearing that a lot lately. If it weren’t for all the people telling me how much trouble I was potentially getting into, this trip would be a breeze.
“I’m being careful. There’s some hell of a tale behind Fritz, and I’m just trying to find out what it is.”
As I reached the door, he called out, “Hey, tonight, I’ll listen to your show. I’ll turn on the radio in the bar so everyone can listen.”
No pressure or anything. “Thanks. That’d be cool.”
Jack gave me a thumbs-up on my way out.
Chapter 10
Welcome back. If you just tuned in you’re listening to The Midnight Hour. I’m Kitty Norville. For the last hour I have a new topic of discussion, something I’d love to get a little perspective on. I want to learn something new, and I want to be surprised. I’m going to open the line for calls, and I hope someone will shock me. The subject: the military and the supernatural. Does the military have a use for vampires, lycanthropes, any of the usual haunted folk? Are you a werewolf in the army? I want to hear from you. Know the secret behind remote sensing? Give me a call.”
Considering how little time I’d spent on it, the show came together nicely. I’d taken advantage of the collection of interesting folk who’d gathered for the Senate hearings and spent the first hour of the show doing interview after interview. The trio from the Crescent played music, and Robert Carr came in and chatted about werewolves.
But for the last hour I opened the floodgates. I was sure someone out in radioland had some good stories to tell.