“Going, going, gone,” I muttered.
He folded his hands in front of him. “Is it half done? A quarter done?”
I turned my gaze to a spot on the far wall and kept my mouth shut.
“Tell me it’s at least started.”
I heaved a sigh. “I’m thinking about it, honest I am.”
“You know, it’s perfectly reasonable for someone in your position to hire a ghostwriter. Or at least find a co-author. People do it all the time.”
“No. I majored in English. I ought to be able to string a few sentences together.”
“Kitty—”
I closed my eyes and made a “talk to the hand” gesture. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.
“I’ll work on it. I want to work on it. I’ll put something together to show them to make them happy.”
He pressed his lips together in an expression that wasn’t quite a smile. “Okay.”
I straightened and pretended like we hadn’t just been talking about the book I wasn’t writing. “Have you done anything about the sleazebag?”
He looked up from his food and glared. “There’s no basis for a lawsuit. No copyright infringement, no trademark infringement, nothing.”
“Come on, she stole my show!”
The sleazebag. She called herself “Ariel, Priestess of the Night,” and starting about three months ago she hosted a radio talk show about the supernatural. Just like me. Well, just like I used to.
“She stole the idea,” Ben said calmly. “That’s it. It happens all the time. You know when one network has a hit medical drama, and the next season every other network rolls out a medical drama because they think that’s what everyone wants? You can’t sue for that sort of thing. It was going to happen sooner or later.”
“But she’s awful. Her show, it’s a load of sensationalist garbage!”
“So do it better,” he said. “Go back on the air. Beat her in the ratings. It’s the only thing you can do.”
“I can’t. I need some time off.” I slumped against the back of the booth.
He idly stirred the ketchup on his plate with a french fry. “From this end it looks like you’re quitting.”
I looked away. I’d been comparing myself to Thoreau because he made running away to the woods sound so noble. It was still running away.
He continued. “The longer you stay away, the more it looks like the people in D.C. who tried to bring you down won.”
“You’re right,” I said, my voice soft. “I know you’re right. I just can’t think of anything to say.”
“Then what makes you think you can write a book?”
This was too much of Ben being right for one day. I didn’t answer, and he didn’t push the subject.
He let me pay the bill. Together, we headed out to the street.
“Are you going straight back to Denver?” I asked.
“No. I’m going to Farmington to meet Cormac. He wants help with a job.”
A job. With Cormac, that meant something nasty. He hunted werewolves—only ones who caused trouble, he’d assured me—and bagged a few vampires on the side. Just because he could.
Farmington, New Mexico, was another two hundred fifty miles west and south of here. “You’ll only come as far as Walsenburg for me, but you’ll go to Farmington for Cormac?”
“Cormac’s family,” he said.
I still didn’t have that whole story, and I often asked myself how I’d gotten wrapped up with these two. I met Ben when Cormac referred him to me. And what was I doing taking advice about lawyers from a werewolf hunter? I couldn’t complain; they’d both gotten me out of trouble on more than one occasion. Ben didn’t seem to have any moral qualms about having both a werewolf and a werewolf hunter as clients. But then, were lawyers capable of having moral qualms?
“Be careful,” I said.
“No worries,” he said with a smile. “I just drive the car and bail him out of jail. He’s the one who likes to live dangerously.”
He opened the door of his dark blue sedan, threw his briefcase onto the front passenger seat, and climbed in. Waving, he pulled away from the curb and steered back onto the highway.
On the way back to my cabin, I stopped in the even smaller town of Clay, Population 320, Elevation 7400 feet. It boasted a gas station with an attached convenience store, a bed and breakfast, a backwoods outfitter, a hundred-year-old stone church—and that was it. The convenience store, the “Clay Country Store,” sold the best home-baked chocolate chip cookies on this side of the Continental Divide. I couldn’t resist their lure.
A string of bells hanging on the handle of the door rang as I entered. The man at the cash register looked up, frowned, and reached under the counter. He pulled out a rifle. Didn’t say a word, just pointed it at me.
Yeah, the folks around here knew me. Thanks to the Internet and twenty-four-hour news networks, I couldn’t be anonymous, even in the middle of nowhere.
I raised my hands and continued into the store. “Hi, Joe. I just need some milk and cookies, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Kitty? Is that you?” A woman’s face popped up from behind a row of shelves filled with cans of motor oil and ice scrapers. She was about Joe’s age, mid-fifties, her hair graying and pulled into a ponytail that danced. Where
Joe’s eyes frowned, hers lit up.
“Hi, Alice,” I said, smiling.
“Joe, put that down, how many times do I have to tell you?”
“Can’t take any chances,” he said.
I ignored him. Some fights you couldn’t win. The first time he’d done this, when I came into the store and he recognized me as “that werewolf on TV,” I’d been so proud of myself for not freaking out. I’d just stood there with my hands up and asked, “You have silver bullets in there?” He’d looked at me, looked at the rifle, and frowned angrily. The next time I came in, he announced, “Got silver this time.”
I went around the shelves to where Alice was, where Joe and his rifle couldn’t see me as easily.
“I’m sorry,” Alice said. She was stocking cans of soup. “One of these days I’m going to hide that thing. If you’d call ahead, I could make up some chore for him and get him out of here.”
“Don’t worry about it. As long as I don’t do anything threatening, I’m fine, right?” Not that people generally looked at me—a perky blonde twenty-something—and thought “bloodthirsty werewolf.”
She rolled her eyes. “Like you could do anything threatening. I swear, that man lives in his own little world.”
Yeah, the kind of world where shop owners kept rifles under their counters, while their wives lined healing crystals along the top of the cash register. She also had a cross nailed over the shop door, and more crystals hanging from the windows.
They each had their own brand of protection, I supposed.
I hadn’t decided yet if the werewolf thing really didn’t bother some people, or if they still refused to believe it. I kind of suspected that was how it was with Alice. Like my mom—she treated it like it was some kind of club I’d joined. After full moon nights she’d say something like,
Did you have fun at your little outing, dear?
A lifetime of believing that these things didn’t exist was hard to overcome.
“How do you two stay married?”
She looked at me sideways, donned a wry smile, and didn’t answer. Her eyes gleamed, though. Right, I wasn’t going to press that question any further.
Alice rang up my groceries, while Joe looked on, glaring over his rifle. I had to think of myself as a goodwill ambassador—don’t make any sudden moves, don’t say anything snide. Try to show him that just because I was a monster didn’t mean I was, well, a monster.
I paid, and Alice handed me the brown paper bag. “Thanks,” I said.
“Anytime. Now you call if you need anything.”
My nonchalance only went so far. I couldn’t turn my back on Joe and his rifle, so I backed toward the door, reac
hing behind to pull it open, and slipped out, to the ringing of bells.
The door was closing behind me when I heard Alice say, “Joe, for God’s sake put that thing away!”
Ah yes, life in a small mountain community. There’s nothing like it.
chapter 2
The front half of my cabin held a living room and kitchen, while a bedroom and bathroom made up the back half. Only part of a wall separated the two halves, giving the whole place access to the cabin’s only source of heat: a wood-burning stove in the living room. The hot-water heater ran on propane, electricity powered everything else. I kept the stove’s fire burning to hold back the winter. At this altitude I wasn’t snowbound, but it was still pretty darned cold, especially at night.
The living room also had my desk, or rather a small table, which held my laptop and a few books: a dictionary, a dog-eared copy of Walden. Shoved underneath were a couple of boxes holding more books and a bunch of CDs. I’d spent my whole adult life working in radio—I had to have something to ruin the quiet. The desk sat in front of the large window that looked out over the porch and the clearing where I parked my car. Beyond that, trees and brown earth climbed up the hill, to blue sky.
I’d spent a lot of hours sitting at that desk, staring out the window at that view. I should have at least made the effort to find some place with a nice mountain vista to occupy my long stretches of procrastination.
When twilight came, deepening the sky to a rich shade of royal blue, then fading to darkness, I knew I’d wasted another day and not written a single decent word.
But it was Saturday, and I had other entertainments. Very late, close to midnight, I turned on the radio. It was time for Ariel, Priestess of the Night. I snuggled up on the sofa with a fluffy pillow and a beer.
The front page of Ariel, Priestess of the Night’s Web site was all black with candy-apple-red lettering and a big picture of Ariel. She seemed fairly young, maybe my age—mid-twenties. She had pale skin, a porcelain smooth face, dyed black hair falling in luxurious ripples across her shoulders and down her back, and black eyeliner ringing bright blue eyes. That blue, they had to be contacts. She seemed to be in a radio studio, but for some reason the table in front of her was covered in red velvet. She draped herself suggestively across the velvet, her black satin gown exposing not a small amount of cleavage, and leaned toward a microphone as if preparing to lick it. She wore a pentacle on a chain around her neck, silver ankhs on each ear, and a rhinestone nose stud. Animated bat icons flapped in all four corners of the page.
And if all that weren’t enough to drive me crazy, the show’s theme song was Bauhaus’s “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”
After a few lines of the song, the woman herself came on the air. Her voice was low and sultry, as seductive as any film noir femme fatale could wish. “Greetings, fellow travelers in darkness. It’s time to pull back the veil between worlds. Let me, Ariel, Priestess of the Night, be your guide as we explore the secrets, the mysteries, and the shadows of the unknown.”
Oh, give me a break.
“Vampires,” she continued, drawing out the word, pronouncing it with a fake British accent. “Are they victims of a disease, as some so-called experts would have us believe? Or have they been chosen, serving as undying ambassadors from the past? Is their immortality a mere quirk of biology—or is it a mystical calling?
“I have with me in the studio a very special guest. He has agreed to emerge from his sanctum to speak with us tonight. Gustaf is the vampire Master of a major U.S. city. He has asked me not to say which, to protect his safety.”
Of course she wasn’t going to say which.
I pouted a little. I’d never gotten a vampire Master to be a guest on my show. If this Gustaf really was a Master. If he really was a vampire.
“Gustaf, thank you for being here tonight.”
“The pleasure is all mine.” Gustaf had a low, melodious voice, giving a hint that he might burst out laughing at a joke he wasn’t going to share. Very mysterious.
“Hm, I bet it is,” Ariel purred. “Tell me, Gustaf, when did you become a vampire?”
“In the year 1438. It was in the Low Countries, what people call the Netherlands today. A very good time and place to be alive. So much trade, commerce, art, music— so much life. I was a young man, full of prospects, full of joy. Then I met… her.”
Ah, her. Standard dark lady of the night fare. She was exquisite, more intelligent and worldly than any woman he’d ever met. More brilliant, more attractive, more everything.
She’d swept him off his feet, yadda yadda, and here he was, some six hundred years later, and all this time they’d played a game of seduction and mayhem that read like something out of a bodice-ripper.
It was quite the tale of danger and suspense. Out here, alone in a cabin in the woods, with a fire burning in the stove and wind shushing through the pine trees outside, I should have been shaking in my booties.
I’d sure love to give Ariel a real scare.
That gave me an idea. A really bad idea.
I retrieved my cell phone from my desk. I dialed the number that Ariel’s aggravating voice had seared into my memory.
“You’ve reached Ariel, Priestess of the Night,” said a man. A regular, nonmysterious-sounding man.
“Hi,” I said. Oh my God, not a busy signal. I was talking to someone. Was I actually going to get on the show?
“Can you give me first your name and where you’re calling from?”
Shit, I hadn’t really thought this through. “Um, yeah, I’m… Sue. And I’m from… Albuquerque.”
“And what do you want to talk about?”
What did I want to talk about? My brain froze. Was this what happened when people called my show? My big mouth took over. “I’d like to talk to Ariel about fear,” I said.
“Are you afraid of vampires?” the screener asked.
“Sure.”
“All right, if you could please turn off your radio and hold on for a minute.”
Crap. Double crap. I turned off the radio.
Instead of hold music, the phone piped in Ariel’s show, so I wouldn’t miss anything.
Gustaf was talking about the inherent selfless nobility that vampirism conferred upon its victims. “One begins to feel a certain stewardship for humankind. We vampires are the more powerful beings, of course. But we depend on you humans for our survival. Just as humanity has learned it cannot wipe out the rain forests or destroy the oceans without consequence, we cannot rule over humankind with impunity. As we would certainly be capable of doing were we less conscientious.”
So people were nothing more than a bunch of endangered monkeys? Was that it? No, vampires would never be able to take over the world because their heads were generally stuck too far up their own asses.
Finally, Ariel made the announcement I’d been waiting for: “All right, listeners, I’m going to open the line for calls now. Do you have a question or a comment for Gustaf? Now’s your chance.”
I desperately wanted Ariel to put me on the air so I could call bullshit on the guy. She took another call instead. A desperately awestruck woman spoke.
“Oh, Ariel, thank you, and Gustaf, thank you so much for speaking with us all. You don’t know how much it means to hear such an old and wise being as yourself.”
“There, there, my dear, it’s my pleasure,” Gustaf said graciously.
“I don’t understand why you—I mean you as in all vampires—aren’t more visible. You’ve seen so much, you have so much experience. We could learn so much from you. And I do think the world would be a better place if vampires were in a position to guide us—”
Ariel butted in. “Are you saying, then, that you think vampires would make good world leaders?”
“Of course—they’ve seen nations rise and fall. They know better than anybody what works and what doesn’t. They’re the ultimate monarchs.”
Great. A freakin’ royalist. Ooh, what I would say to this woman if this were my show…
/> Ariel was maddeningly diplomatic. “You’re a woman with traditional values. I can see why the ageless vampires would appeal to you.”
“Since the world would clearly be a better place if vampires were in charge—why aren’t they? Why don’t they take over?”
Gustaf chuckled, clearly amused in a detached, condescending manner. “Oh, we certainly could, if we wanted to. But I think you underestimate how shy most vampires are. We really don’t like the harsh light of publicity.”
Could have fooled me.
Ariel said, “I’d like to move on to the next call now. Hi, Sue, you’re on the air,” Ariel said.
Sue—that was me. Wow, I made it. Back on the air— in a manner of speaking. Ha. Here I go—
“Hi, Ariel. Thanks so much for taking my call.” I knew the script. I knew how to sound like a fan. I’d heard it enough from the other side. “Gustaf, I don’t think all vampires are quite as sensitive and charitable as you imply. Are they stewards watching over the rain forests, or shepherds fattening the sheep for market?”
Gustaf huffed a little. “Every vampire was once a human being. The best of us never forget our roots.”
Even if they had to suck those roots dry… “But you give the worst human beings the power and immortality of a vampire, and what do you get? The Third Reich— forever. See, you know why I think vampires haven’t taken over the world?”
God, I sounded snotty. I always ha ted it when people like this called into my show. Crabby know-it-alls.
“Why?” Ariel said.
“Theatrics.”
“Theatrics?” Ariel repeated, sounding amused, which irritated me.
“Yeah, theatrics. The posing, the preening, the drawn-out stories of romance and seduction when the reality is Gustaf here was probably just some starry-eyed kid who got screwed over. You take all those petty, backstabbing, power trippy games that happen when you get any group together, multiply it by a few centuries, and you end up with people who are too busy stroking their own egos and polishing their own reputations to ever find the motivation to take over the world.”
Aloof, Gustaf spoke. “Have you ever met a vampire?”