“Whether he is or he isn’t, he must have some amazing stories to tell. I wonder—” And that was all I did, because the old man tipped his glass to his mouth, drained the last bit of liquid, stood, and settled his coat more firmly on his shoulders as he stalked out of the place. That was that.
I turned to Jack. “What about you? You have any good stories?”
“Me? I’m just a cub,” he said, grinning. “Give me a few years.”
“May your life be so dull that you don’t actually collect any.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Fun? I glared at him.
I left a note for Luis. Not like I had anything to say beyond, Hi, it’s me. It felt like high school all over again, which was kind of fun in its own way. I hadn’t crushed this hard over anyone—outside of a movie screen, at least—in a long time. I felt giddy, young, and silly—and completely distracted, which meant the timing was horrible. Senate hearings were supposed to be serious, and I kept picturing Luis in bed.
Bradley got me back to Alette’s house without any further ado.
Before I’d left that morning, Emma brought me an envelope, thick stationery paper with my name written on it in fancy cursive. Inside was a square of cardstock bearing a handwritten note informing me that Alette requested the pleasure of my company for dinner that evening. It felt very old-school, like something out of Emily Post.
I’d never had dinner with a vampire, and part of me dreaded finding out what that involved. The imagination ran a little wild. But if I was going to have a chance to talk to her, this was it. Maybe I could draw her out a little.
I wondered if she expected me to dress for dinner, in the Victorian tradition, silk gowns and suits in your own parlor. I’d worn slacks and a blouse for my day at the hearings, so I didn’t look particularly ratty. But around Alette, I’d feel downright drab. Then again, no matter what I wore, I’d feel drab next to Alette.
In the end, I didn’t “dress for dinner.” If slacks and a blouse were good enough for the U.S. Senate, they were good enough for the vampire.
I hoped Leo wouldn’t be joining us.
I took a nap, washed up, and Emma brought me to a dining room in another part of the ground floor. Like the parlor, this was classically English, with wood paneling on the walls, which were hung with many paintings, rows and rows of them, landscapes and still lifes of dead birds and hunting rifles, and a few portraits of scowling old men and grim-looking ladies in opulent gowns decorated with flounces and lace. More portraits, like the ones in the parlor and the photos in the hallway upstairs. Were they old friends? Relatives?
A long table ran down the center of the room. Twenty people could have sat there easily, and for a moment I thought this was going to be like one of those comedies where two people sat at either end and had to shout at each other for the salt. But no, Alette stood by the chair at one end, and there was a place setting to her right, one chair away along the side.
“Welcome,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”
“Thanks for the invitation.” I glanced around nervously, but Alette was alone. No Leo. I relaxed a notch. “Not that you gave me much of a choice, with Bradley keeping tabs on me all day.”
She ignored the dig and indicated the chair with a graceful turn of her hand. “Please, sit.”
The table only had the one place setting. By her chair, the polished mahogany surface was empty.
I should have been relieved.
She said, “I took the liberty of asking the cook to prepare your filet rare. I assume this is acceptable.”
There was a time I didn’t much like steak, and I preferred any meat I ate ground up and well burned on a grill. The Wolf, however, liked meat to bleed. So I ate rare steaks.
“Yeah, thanks.” I gestured at the empty place on the table in front of her. “So, what are you . . .”
“I’ve already dined this evening.”
This was going to be awkward. When one of her staff brought out a plate with the steak and tastefully arranged vegetables and set it in front of me, I half expected she’d also bring out a goblet full of thick red stuff and give it to Alette. Though it was probably just as well she wasn’t going to be . . . dining . . . in front of me.
I managed to overcome a lifetime of socialization about eating in front of people who weren’t and started in on the meal, which was perfect, of course. Warm, bleeding, tender, tangy. Small bites with fork and knife; not messily devoured. The Wolf and I compromised on these points.
“Tell me how the hearings went today.”
I was supposed to be her spy, then? “I think C-SPAN was broadcasting. At least they had cameras there. You could have watched it for yourself.”
She narrowed her gaze. “I was indisposed.”
I shrugged, nonplussed. “You could tape it. Heck, you could probably download it off the Web.” I didn’t know if the old vampires even used the Internet. She probably let her minions do that.
Resting her elegant chin on her hands, she said, “I want to hear what you think.”
Did she really want to know what I thought, or was she testing my bias?
“Flemming testified today. He’s the head of the Center, and the committee has put him in the position of having to defend his project, his baby. In that respect, this could be any government research project being put under the microscope. But then there’s Duke. He wants to turn it into a witch hunt. Since this is a PC world, he can’t get Flemming to make a judgment call like ‘vampires are evil’ or ‘werewolves are hellspawn.’ Flemming’s being very clinical about the whole thing, and I think it’s pissing Duke off. I’m wondering if this isn’t all his idea in the first place. He’s always been on the fringe. He may see these hearings as a way to gain validation for his ideas.”
“Senator Duke knows very little of the matters on which he speaks so fanatically.”
“Yeah, but he’s a fanatic with political clout. That makes him scary.”
“The werewolf, afraid of the politician?”
I smirked. “As werewolves go, I’m a total coward. Give me a good alpha to hide behind any day.”
“You just haven’t found a good one, is that it?”
It was kind of like finding a good boyfriend. You kept hoping the perfect one existed, but the trial and error in the meantime could be gut-wrenching. “You’re very nosy.”
“It’s how I learn. You have some experience with that yourself, I believe.”
“Can’t argue.”
“What have they scheduled for tomorrow?”
“More grilling of Flemming, I think. If it’s anything like today they’ll end up going around in circles. This is an oversight hearing, so they could go for days, until they’ve heard everything they want to. They haven’t even announced the whole schedule of witnesses yet. It’s like the whole thing was thrown together.”
“When do you testify?”
“I don’t know.”
“Duke will postpone your testimony until next Monday, if he can.”
I paused and considered. Monday was the next full moon. Alette must have known that. Did Duke? Did he know that I’d be at my worst, the day Wolf rose so close to the surface? I didn’t want to give him that much credit. “I hope not,” I said simply.
She said, “What do you hope will result from these hearings?”
“I guess I just want everyone to say, ‘Yeah, okay, this stuff exists.’ Then I want them to leave us alone.”
“What is the likelihood of that happening?”
“I don’t know. The trouble is, I don’t think they can both happen at the same time. I keep thinking, if the government recognizes the existence of these things, it’ll want to regulate them.”
“That is my fear as well. Whatever happens, that must not be allowed to come to pass. The government—Flemming, Duke, all of them—must, as you say, leave us alone.”
“We may not have a choice what happens.”
“Oh, there are always choices. Above all, th
e conclusion of these hearings must be that we are not a threat—to the public or to the government. You know very well we are not. We have regulated ourselves for centuries to ensure our secrecy, to ensure that the mortals don’t have a reason to fear us and take action. It may be up to you to preserve that balance.”
And I was one of the reasons that secrecy was coming to an end. No pressure or anything. “I don’t think I have that kind of authority—”
“I think you sell yourself short. People listen to you, Kitty. You simply don’t see it because you stay sheltered behind your microphone.”
She was implying that it was all make-believe to me. That I didn’t believe I really had an audience.
Maybe it was true. Here, for the first time, I was meeting some of my audience. I had to face them and stand up to defend all the stuff I’d been talking about on the air for the last year.
So much easier to hide behind the microphone.
“I’m only worrying about telling them the truth. I’m not going to be able to dictate what action the committee takes.”
“The implications may run far wider than you think. Have you ever seen someone burned at the stake? I have.”
Why was I not surprised? “It won’t come to that. We’ve gotten past that.”
“Perhaps.”
Even with all the conversation, I’d managed to finish eating. The steak was good, and I’d been hungry. I tapped my fork—stainless steel, not silver, another courteous gesture from the mistress of the house—on the plate, fine china in some antique pattern. I should have been afraid of breaking it.
“Flemming’s the one who’s going to swing this,” I said. “He’s the scientist, and he’s the one who depends on the committee for his livelihood. They’ll listen to him.”
Alette reached over and took the fork out of my hand, setting it down out of my reach. I stared at my hand, startled. I hadn’t seen her coming. I hadn’t had time to flinch. She said, “Are you suggesting we should be more worried about Flemming than Duke?”
“Duke is predictable. We know exactly where he stands. But Flemming? I don’t know anything about him. Look, Alette. I have to be able to get out and travel around without your people hanging around me. You’re worried about me and I appreciate that, but I want to look around, find out more about Flemming and his research, see if I can’t follow up on a few contacts. But I can’t do that with Bradley or Leo looking over my shoulder. No one would talk to me. I’m not trying to be disrespectful of your hospitality. But I can take care of myself, at least a little, and I need some freedom.” I’d had precisely two days to earn her trust. I didn’t know if it was enough, especially since I’d already run off once. Er, twice. But if she wanted me as an ally, she had to know she couldn’t keep me on a leash and expect me to be effective.
“You aren’t saying this just so you can run off with that were-jaguar from the Brazilian embassy, are you?”
I shrank back in my seat and tried to look innocent. “Maybe just a little.”
She studied me, lips pursed in a wry smile. After a moment she said, “I don’t suppose I could blame you for that. All right, then. But I want to hear what you learn on your investigations.”
“It’s a deal.” The kitchen staff came to clear away the dishes, then brought dessert: chocolate mousse in a crystal goblet. My God, what had I done to deserve dessert? The maid was human. I’d only seen a small fraction of the house. I was getting nervous. “Alette, can I ask—where are the others?”
“Others?”
“I’ve met you and Leo. But you must have other . . .” Minions? Lackeys? “. . . companions. Vampire companions.”
She suppressed a wry smile. “You’re accustomed to Master vampires who surround themselves with followers, as reflections of their own importance.”
Vast halls filled with pouty Eurotrash vampires—yeah, that was the image.
She said, “I’m extremely selective about who I bring into this life, this existence. It’s not necessarily an easy way to be. I require pure motives. You’ve met no other vampires because there are none. Just the two of us. I would not tie someone to me for eternity lightly, Kitty.”
Then she saw something in Leo that I didn’t. She might have looked forward to spending eternity with him. I couldn’t stand being in the same room with him for a minute.
Chapter 5
The next day, I scoured newspapers and major news Web sites for mention of the hearings. I wanted to find out what the press was reporting. The only place that had any sort of major headline on the hearings was the Web site for Wide World of News: “Are Vampires Controlling the Senate?” That was so not useful. I stopped mentioning that rag entirely since they ran a “story” claiming that my show broadcast secret mind-control signals that caused teenagers to join satanic cults and run up huge debts on their parents’ credit cards.
Unless they involved epic disasters or scandals surrounding major political figures, Senate committee hearings didn’t normally make front page news. “Fact-Finding Hearing Gets Its Start,” on page four of the Washington Post, was about the extent. They ran a black and white photo of Flemming at his microphone, gazing up at the committee with his sleepy eyes. They also ran a fun little sidebar titled “What Are the Facts?” defining the scientific terminology the doctor had bandied about. It all served to make the topics seem like exactly what Flemming insisted they were: diseases. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to be afraid of, as long as we understood it. Maybe this would turn out all right.
The next session of the hearings found me in the same place, sitting in the back of the room with Ben. Roger Stockton sat on the other side of the room from me, at the edge, where he could get a good shot of the participants with his camera. I caught him filming me a couple of times. I couldn’t do anything about it without making a scene.
Flemming testified for another two hours, suffering through more questions.
Senator Deke Henderson, a Republican from Idaho, was one of those western politicians who played cowboy, to make themselves seem folksy and in touch with their roots. He wore a button-up rodeo shirt under a corduroy jacket and a big silver belt buckle. Outside the building, he’d put on the cowboy hat. He really had gotten his start in ranching, though, which gave him a hint of legitimacy. One couldn’t be sure the outfit was a costume.
Henderson said, “Now that you’ve studied these diseases, Doctor, how close are you to finding a cure? What program would you recommend for preventing the spread of these diseases?”
Perfectly natural questions when confronted with any strange new disease. I listened closely to Flemming’s answers.
He cleared his throat nervously. “As diseases go, these are quite unusual, Senator. For one, while they’re life-altering, they aren’t particularly destructive. In fact, they’re just the opposite. They confer on the patient extraordinary resilience, immunity, rapid healing. I’ve studied such aspects of these conditions in detail.”
“You haven’t found a cure?”
“No, Senator.”
“Have you even been looking?”
After a long silence, Flemming said, calmly, “I have been studying the unique characteristics of these conditions in the hopes of understanding them. For instance, if we understood the mechanics behind a vampire’s longevity, or behind a werewolf’s resistance to disease and injury, think of the application to medicine. I have a case history here of a patient who tested positive for the HIV virus, became infected with lycanthropy, and then all subsequent HIV tests had negative results.”
Duke piped in. “You’d turn everyone into werewolves to keep them from getting AIDS? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, of course not. But I think you’ll agree, the more knowledge we have about these conditions, the more power we have over them.”
Duke leaned back and smiled. I couldn’t see Flemming’s face, which frustrated me. The two of them looked like they’d exchanged one of those all-knowing glances, like they’d just made a deal under
the table in full view of everyone.
I had only assumed that the scientist and religious reactionary could never work together. I hadn’t considered that they both wanted the same thing: to prove that this was real, for good or ill.
Ben and I exited into the corridor after the hearing adjourned for the day.
I leaned close, so I’d have less chance of being overheard. Especially by Stockton, who was busy cornering Flemming.
“Flemming’s got to have an office somewhere in D.C. Can you find out where? I have his phone number if that helps.”
He pulled a sheet of paper from the outside pocket of his briefcase and handed it to me. “Already done.”
The sheet was blank letterhead with Flemming’s name on it, and an address at the National Institutes of Health medical complex in Bethesda.
I beamed. “Thanks, Ben. You’re the best.”
“That’s my job.” I’d turned to leave when he said, “Wait. I found out a little more about him. He say anything to you about serving in the army?”
“Flemming was in the army?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a request in for a copy of his service record, I’ll know more then. There’s also a CIA connection.”
I huffed. “You’re kidding. That’s just a little too outrageous to believe.” I stared at the blank sheet of letterhead, like it would offer up the truth about the real Flemming.
Ben shrugged, unapologetic. “Just watch your back.”
Too many questions and not enough time to look for answers. I tossed him a mock salute before jogging out of there.
I turned my cell phone back on when I left the building. Caller ID showed three missed calls, all from my mother. I thought the worst: there’d been an accident. Someone had died. Quickly, I dialed her back.
“Mom?”
“Kitty! Hi!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
I rolled my eyes and suppressed curses. “Did you call me earlier?”
“Yes, I had to ask you, your father says he saw you on C-SPAN this afternoon at those hearings they’re doing on vampires. You were sitting in the audience. Now, I didn’t think that could possibly be right. You weren’t on C-SPAN, were you?”