Kitty Rocks the House

  “At least you weren’t staking us out last night,” I muttered.

  “Last night was the full moon, right?” Hardin said. “Were you expecting trouble? Anything I need to know about?”

  I didn’t even want to go there. “No. Nothing at all.” Back to Cormac. “You found something?”

  “I fell and landed wrong. That’s it.” So he didn’t want to talk about it in front of Hardin, either.

  A woman wearing a lab coat and a professional air came around the curtain holding an oversized manila envelope. “It’s definitely broken,” she said, and Cormac blew out a breath.

  I’d spent the last couple of years being so worried that Cormac would get himself killed or thrown back in jail or a million other things, a broken arm was almost anticlimactic. Cormac seemed embarrassed more than anything. He wouldn’t look up.

  A doctor and nurse bustled in, making ready with needles and bandages to set the arm. They politely herded us out. This time, I had to pull on Ben’s arm. He didn’t want to leave his cousin alone, but Cormac himself told us to leave. Didn’t need the moral support—or didn’t want witnesses to his vulnerability? Almost wolflike, not wanting to show weakness.

  Hardin walked with us to the waiting room. “I know cops aren’t your favorite people in the world,” she said. “But we’re on the same side here. I’m not out to get anyone. I just want to keep the bad guys out of Denver, same as you.”

  Everything she said was true. We’d worked together often enough in the past, sharing information, chasing down supernatural villains, pooling our experiences when neither one of us had enough on our own to go on. But this time, she didn’t even know who the bad guys were. How far this went. She’d met Roman once, sure, when he came to Denver before to size us up and test our weaknesses. She’d had brushes with the Long Game and had been there when Rick killed his predecessor. But she didn’t know anything about the Long Game. The details, the alliances. How it was closing in on us …

  I didn’t know how to explain it all to her now. I didn’t want to without talking to Rick, first. We should explain it to her together, if at all. She either wouldn’t believe us, or she’d try to take the battle out of our hands. She’d think she could oppose the Long Game via official channels. It wouldn’t work.

  “I’m not trying to be difficult,” I said. “But this … I can’t just tell you everything. I’m not even thinking straight right now.” Ben and I were still dressed in our post–full moon finery, jeans and T-shirts, our rattiest sneakers without socks. My unbrushed hair was crammed into a wild-looking ponytail; Ben needed a shave. Surely she could see we weren’t at our best.

  She said to Ben, “You’re the lawyer, can you talk some sense into her?”

  “I agree with her,” Ben said, offhand. “I think you’re in over your head.”

  She studied us, not afraid to meet our gazes—she had enough experience with us to know it meant a challenge. “I’ll be in touch,” she said finally and walked out of the emergency room into the midmorning light.

  Ben and I took up places in the waiting room on hard plastic chairs as far away from everyone else as we could get. I leaned on his shoulder, and he put his arm around me, and even though we were in a hospital emergency room, it was nice getting to rest for a moment. We waited until the doctors turned Cormac loose with a big orange bottle of pills and a blue ice pack. His arm was in a sling, encased in an off-white fiberglass cast that went past his elbow. I couldn’t tell if he was in any pain. He had a serious, stoic expression, same as always.

  Ben took the pills and ice packs from the nurse, and that Cormac didn’t argue about the help told me something about his state of mind.

  “Where’d you leave your Jeep?” Ben asked.

  “By the church,” he answered.

  “Right. Kitty, if you drop me off I can pick it up before it gets towed, and meet you back at the condo.”

  “You can just take me home,” Cormac said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Nope,” Ben said. “I’m not leaving you alone with a broken arm and a bottle of codeine.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  But he couldn’t do a thing about it. He only had one arm, and whatever they’d doped him up with to set the break left him shockingly docile as we guided him to the backseat of the sedan and strapped him in.

  “Give it up,” I said, smiling at him where he sprawled out in the backseat. “You’ve got family, might as well enjoy it.”

  He grumbled, but he stopped arguing. By the time we all got back to the condo, he was asleep, and we had to wake him up to get him upstairs. Once inside, he parked himself on the sofa and promptly fell asleep again.

  We let him alone.

  * * *

  IT WAS a little like having a bear in the living room.

  The following morning, I ate toast and juice at the kitchen table, watching him, waiting for something to happen. In the painkiller fog, did he remember us bringing him here? How pissed off was he going to be when he woke up?

  Ben emerged from the bedroom. “He still asleep?” he whispered.

  “Yup,” I whispered back.

  Ben joined me at the table, where we both sat staring at him.

  “This is a territory thing,” I observed. I joked that Cormac was part of our pack, but he wasn’t wolf. He was sleeping in our den. He’d been to our place before, but he’d never slept over.

  We watched him. He snored, faintly.

  Ben said, “We really need to work on getting a house sooner rather than later.”

  “A house with a guest room,” I said.

  “Exactly.” Ben stood. “I’m going to make some coffee.”

  “Think that’ll wake him up?”

  “Dunno. I just need coffee.”

  The smell hit the condo’s open living room as soon as the brew started dripping. Not much longer after that, Cormac squirmed and groaned. He tried to sit up, but his stiff muscles didn’t cooperate.

  For a moment he lay still, blinked at the ceiling. Then he looked at his arm. “Fuck.”

  “How you feel?” Ben asked.

  “Stupid,” Cormac said. “Thirsty?” He sounded uncertain.

  “Does it hurt? You want some of that medication?” I asked.

  He thought about it. “Yeah, I’d better.”

  Which surprised me. I expected him to tough it out, broken bone or no. Cormac-in-pain was an entirely new phenomenon. While I fetched a glass of water and the bottle of pills, Cormac managed to haul himself off the sofa and head to the bathroom. I didn’t bother offering to help; neither did Ben. He’d only snarl back. If he collapsed, then we could help. But he managed, somehow, and stumbled back to the sofa where he returned to horizontal and sighed.

  I dragged a chair to the sofa to play nurse. Ben brought over another chair, his cup of coffee, and a second for me. With his good hand, Cormac popped the medication and took a drink from the glass I offered. We waited for him to say something; he scowled.

  Finally, Ben said, “So. What happened?”

  “I fell.”

  I would have yelled, but Ben knew him better. “Oh no, that’s not going to cut it. What were you doing at the church?”

  He adjusted his arm in the sling, grimacing at the awkwardness. “You know those magical protections? I wanted to see what it would take to set them off.”

  “You poked the hornet’s nest,” I said flatly.

  “Guess so.”

  “And how did that work out for you?” Ben asked.

  “Found the hornets,” he answered, grinning sleepily. “Any kind of offensive magic crosses the line, zap. The protections retaliate with some kind of fire-based magic. Anything else, mundane attack or passive magic, nothing. This tells us something.”

  “That you shouldn’t poke hornet’s nests?” I said.

  “This guy’s worried about something specific. He’s not worried about guys with stakes, or Girl Scouts selling cookies. He’s worried about a certain kind of magical attack, something that can
be stopped with fire, and that’s what he’s defending against. I’m guessing he’s got a stalker out there who’s tangled with him before.”

  “And that stalker is probably going to follow him to Denver,” I said, heart sinking.

  “If he hasn’t already,” Cormac said.

  “I need to tell Rick about this.”

  Ben said, “I think we can assume that Rick knows, if he’s been talking to this priest guy.”

  Maybe I just wanted to talk to Rick, to find out more about Columban. To find out what Columban knew about his stalker.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much,” Cormac said. “It’s between the priest and whoever he pissed off. Shouldn’t bother the rest of us.”

  “Back to your arm,” Ben said. “I’m assuming that when the magic went zap, that’s when you fell.”

  Cormac gave his head a frustrated shake. “Stuck my arm out and bam. Hardin saw the whole thing. She’s asking way too many questions—she’s after the vampire, and she was following me to get to him. She could have just asked.” His words were starting to slur, the medication taking effect. He sank back against the mound of pillows under his back.

  “Would you really have agreed to work with her if she did?” I said.

  “Hell, no.”

  “And what does Amelia think?”

  “The word ‘idiot’ might have come up. Idiot, clumsy, oaf…”

  “Easy for her to say, she doesn’t have a body,” Ben said.

  “That’s what I told her.”

  I said, “I meant about the magic, the boundary, the stalker?”

  “Amelia’s the one doing most of the work. We don’t know anything about the stalker—just that the vampire’s worried about something, something he can beat with fire.”

  And he was wanted for arson in Hungary, which meant he’d faced down this thing before. When he came to Denver, had he brought his enemy with him? It would be wishful thinking to say no.

  “Do we need to worry?”

  “Always need to worry,” he said, voice fading to a mushy whisper.

  Ben patted his cousin’s good shoulder. “Get some rest, we’ll talk more later.”

  Cormac was already asleep, slouched against the pillow on the sofa.

  “It’s weird, seeing him knocked out,” Ben said.

  “Yeah. But at least he’s okay. He’ll be okay.” No matter how bad things got, it always seemed like they could be so much worse. Had to keep that in mind.

  “What are the odds he’ll let it go after this?”

  I huffed a laugh—quietly, to not disturb our invalid. “The best we can hope is that the arm will slow him down.”

  “I can’t believe he broke his arm. All the crap we got into as kids, everything he’s done since, he’s never even smashed a toe. And then he fell?”

  I frowned. “I need to talk to Rick.”

  “He taking calls now?”

  “He’d better be.”

  * * *

  RICK WAS not, in fact, any more diligent in answering his phone or returning calls than he’d been the week before. Whatever was keeping him busy, Father Columban or otherwise, must have been fascinating.

  I decided to track him down at Obsidian, assuming I didn’t get distracted like I had last time. And who in their right mind walked into vampire lairs and knocked on the door? Me, that’s who.

  One of the younger vampires—young being under a hundred—answered. She had pale tan skin, which meant she’d probably started life brown, probably Latina. I’d met her once or twice—Christina.

  “Hi,” I said brightly. “Rick here?”

  “No,” she said and moved to close the door.

  I stuck my foot in the way. She kept pushing, and I leaned forward to keep it open, just enough to talk. If we got into a battle of brute force, I’d lose, so I talked fast.

  “Where is he, then? I really need to talk to him. We’ve got a meeting with that Argentine vampire set up for Friday, and we need to strategize. Not to mention some weird stuff going on out at the Auraria campus, and he’s not answering his phone—”

  “He’s not here.” Her expression was so neutral, so still, she might have been painted on wood.

  “Is everything okay?” I said.

  She gave an extra hard shove to the door, and I fell back as it slammed shut.

  Okay, fine. I had another spot to check.

  Some stereotypes were stereotypes because of the seed of truth at the heart of them. Psalm 23 was a vampire nightclub to its core. Filled with beautiful people in startlingly hip clothing drinking from sleek martini glasses. Tailored jackets, skintight sequined cocktail dresses, very high heels. Not a beer bottle or pitcher of margaritas in sight. I was always a tiny bit shocked to realize that former cow town Denver had—had always had, really—this kind of club scene. I didn’t go to places like this before I became a werewolf and started hanging out with people like Rick.

  There was a method to the madness of a vampire club. Make it hip and beautiful, and people would swarm, flies to sugar. Why go hunting, when you can set a trap that your prey gladly walks into? The vampires made themselves attractive, and the club gained a reputation as a glorious place to seduce and be seduced. By the time morning rolled around you’d never remember what exactly happened the night before, only that you’d had a great time, even if you did feel a little light-headed, and you wanted to go back.

  Psalm 23: the one about walking in the valley of shadows and not fearing evil, that was read at my grandmother’s funeral. The previous master of Denver’s idea of a joke no doubt. The reminder of the funeral made me sad.

  A bouncer stopped me at the front door. Normally, someone wearing jeans and a wrinkled blouse wouldn’t be let past the rope, but the bouncers—all of them either vampire minions or human servants of Rick’s—knew me. We’d had the argument before.

  “I’m here to see Rick,” I told the guy, big and burly, wearing sunglasses.

  He smiled, showing a bit of fang. “He’s not here.”

  “Yeah, I thought you’d say that. Mind if I head in and look around for myself?”

  “I’m telling you, he’s not here.”

  “Is Angelo? Stella? Someone else who can tell me he isn’t here, too?”

  Scowling, he unhooked the rope and let me in.

  Even compared to the nighttime outside, the interior was dark, with mood lighting of various dim colors tucked in aesthetic locations. Couples and small groups sitting at chrome tables around the edges of the dance floor seemed like shadows come to life, flashes of movement between sparks of light. The music was techno, something upbeat and remixed to within an inch of its life. No one was dancing yet.

  I let my vision adjust, scanned the room, and found my target sitting in the far corner, on the other side of the bar. Rick’s usual spot. Seeing Rick’s lieutenant there instead of Rick made my heart trip for a moment. If anything ever happened to Rick, this was what I’d see all the time.

  Angelo was young, full of himself, but many vampires were. Nice clothes, perfect hair, and so on. He often served as Rick’s doorkeeper—chief minion. Nice enough guy I supposed, for a vampire. But he wasn’t Rick, and he didn’t look at all pleased to see me when I approached. He sat straight in his chair, studied me up and down, sneered. He fit the atmosphere here better than Rick ever did. The Master of Denver had inherited the place from his predecessor, a very different kind of vampire. One more like Angelo, who played the part and cared about appearances. Who bought into the mystique and made sure to behave as aloof and alluring as all the stories said he should. Unlike Rick, who was just Rick. A few hundred years ago, Rick would have been the kind of nobleman who kept a music room because he liked music, not because it was the stylish thing to do.

  Angelo, like most vampires, didn’t much like werewolves, and wouldn’t deign to speak to me if he didn’t have to. Not even to tell me to leave.

  “I’m looking for Rick,” I said, standing directly in his line of vision so he couldn’t ignore me. ??
?I hoped he’d be here.”

  “He isn’t,” Angelo said, a dismissive curl to his lips.

  “If he’s not here, then where is he?”

  “That’s not any of your concern.”

  Rick would have offered me a drink by this time. “You think you could pass a message on or something? I really need to talk to him. About this meeting coming up, with the Mistress of Buenos Aires?”

  He gave a wave of his hand that might have meant, consider it done, or why must I converse with peons? It was all posing, and I told myself to be patient.

  “If I didn’t know better,” I said, “I’d say that he was avoiding me and you all are covering for him.”

  “It does sound like a reasonable explanation, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” I said, “it doesn’t. Not with Rick.”

  “All you need to know is that he isn’t here, and if he wished to speak with you, he’d contact you. It’s undignified, you chasing after him like this.”

  “I was never much for dignity.” I pointed a thumb over my shoulder. “You mind if I look around a little?”

  “I’d prefer you didn’t. You’re not particularly welcome here.”

  I grinned. “You just bitter because I can come in here without an invitation but you can’t come into my place?”

  “I hadn’t noticed.” He turned away, which left him staring at the next wall over, but never mind.

  Glancing around, I let my nose take in the air, catching scents of people, their perfume and deodorant, the thick rush of alcohol, and underlying tint of commercial floor cleaner. And vampires, of course. I wouldn’t be able to pick Rick out of the crowd, even if he was here, which he probably wasn’t.

  “Right. Well. I guess I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

  “Yes, you have,” he said curtly.

  “Angelo—is something wrong? Seriously. You’re all acting uptight, even for you guys.”

  “Nothing is wrong,” he said. “Again, lovely to see you, but you really ought to be going.”

  Dismissed. Got it.

  Getting back on the street, in the fresh air and away from the people, felt good. I tipped my nose up and took deep breaths of the city air, studying it as if it could give me answers. I kept coming up with the same one—Rick’s Family wasn’t having any more luck getting in touch with him than I was.