Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand (12 page)

“Moving on, I wouldn’t even think of hosting a show in Vegas without introducing you to my next guest, who is a member of a fine and noble breed of men. Say hello to Arty Gruberson. Arty?”

Arty Gruberson, Elvis impersonator, resplendent in a rhinestone-encrusted polyester bell-bottomed jumpsuit, jogged out from behind the curtain stage right. He had the sideburns, he had the sneer. He joined me in the guest chair, with its own microphone. I still had my radio audience—they’d hear everything.

“Arty, tell me: why do you believe that you’re the King reincarnated?”

“Well, you know, it’s just a matter of fate. And mathematics. And a little astronomy. And some basic meteorology.” He might have had the look pretty much nailed, but he had an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. Closer to Barry Manilow maybe.

“How so?”

“Well, first of all, I had a feeling growing up. When I listened to the King’s music, something came over me. It was more than liking the songs or being a fan. It’s like they made me understand who I was, know what I mean? So I started doing some research. I figured out a few things. See, I was born right in Memphis, just an hour after the King himself passed on. The hospital where I was born is sixteen miles from Graceland, where the King left his mortal shell behind.” He started drawing a map in the air. I nodded helpfully, trying to be encouraging. He went into a convoluted explanation involving the locations of the buildings, the barometric pressure of the atmosphere, the direction of the wind, and the angle of light cast by the sun. “If you believe—and I certainly do believe—that a body’s soul is made of pure energy, then if you calculate the time it would take for a soul to travel the speed of light from Graceland to heaven, which based on my calculations is somewhere near the asteroid belt”—huh?—“and back to this here hospital, it’s the exact amount of time between the King’s death and my birth.”

You know, it almost made sense. “That’s. . . awesome. I think. You certainly did a lot of work to, ah, establish your credentials.”

“I did. And I’ve got it all written down in a book I sell at my show—Friday and Saturday nights at the Hideaway, downtown off Fremont Street.”

“Another question: why you? There had to have been other babies born at that hospital that day. Why did the King choose you?”

“I think he knew I had the moves. He found a willing vessel in my little baby body.” He sat back, looking smug.

“And that’s the fate part of it?”

“You bet.”

“Do you ever have doubts?”

True believers always responded to that question exactly the same way. Arty said, “What do you mean?”

“If this is really the right path for your life. You’ve basically spent your whole life becoming someone else. That has to be. . . weird.”

“I’m dedicated to keeping his memory alive,” he explained.

I didn’t know quite how to put this. “Do you think that maybe if you’re Elvis Presley reincarnated you’d be happier, I don’t know, working on something original? Starting a new music career?”

“You think anything’ll top the last one?”

He had a point.

“Arty, would you do a song for us? What you do you guys say?” I asked the audience, which roared encouragement. Bet that sounded cool over the radio. Of course we’d planned this out ahead of time; we had a mike set up and music on cue.

Arty trotted off to the performance space we’d set aside at the edge of the stage. He had the moves down—he was, in fact, a pretty good Elvis impersonator. Grabbing the mike, he said, “Kitty, this one’s just for you.”

The bastard sang “Hound Dog.” And the crowd went wild.

In the back of my mind I worried that the cameras weren’t working right, that the microphone wasn’t picking up my voice, that something little was going to go wrong to ruin the whole broadcast. But that was why we had techs. It was their job to worry about it. I just had to keep the show moving.

How did Oprah do this every single
day?

Besides having my parents in the audience, which gave the evening a sort of school-play undertone (before the show, Mom had insisted on giving me a hug and telling me that I’d do just fine, she was sure of it), I spotted Dom. He was standing in the back, exuding his elegant post-Mob gangster aura and surveying the theater like he owned the place and had set up the show himself. It gave me an urge to call him up to the microphone, just to see if it would shake that smug expression. But I’d promised.

I didn’t smell any other lycanthropes in the theater. There were a few vampires besides Dom. But nothing animal, nothing that suggested lycanthrope. I was disappointed. I liked to think that I did the show for them. That me talking about my own experiences helped them. But none of them had come. Dom had said there weren’t any outside of the show at the Hanging Gardens. Maybe I’d hoped that at least one of them would be in the crowd.

After saying farewell to Arty, I alternated between taking questions over the phone and from the audience. During commercial breaks, I had to keep my crowd entertained—no chance to sit back and stretch during station ID like I could on the radio. I did giveaways, raffle drawings using ticket stub numbers, CDs, T-shirts, copies of my book, all kinds of things. They loved it, which was all that really mattered. If the audience—whether it’s in front of you or listening on the radio—loves you, it’ll follow you anywhere. I had fun—in the same way that bungee jumping must be fun. Not that I’d ever wanted to try it.

I took another call. “Hello, I’ve got our next caller on the line. What’s your question?”

“Hi! Would sunscreen work for a vampire who really wanted to go out in daylight?”

I looked quizzically at the microphone. “I’m not sure anyone’s ever asked that question. And I’m not really sure I know the answer. Except I don’t think I’d want any of the vampires I actually like to try it.”

“I’m talking about sunblock. The really heavy-duty SPF 60 stuff.”

“They make SPF 60? Wow. But for it to work, I think that would assume that the UV radiation is what causes the damage to vampires. I’m not sure that’s a valid assumption. I’ll tell you what, I’ve got some vampires here in the audience—any of you guys want to take a stab at answering Dan’s question?”

And there was Lisa, coming toward the microphone below the stage where people came to ask their questions. She was wearing a kicky red dress today, and her hair was up in a ponytail, which bounced when she moved. She grinned and waved at me. Definitely the perkiest vampire I’d ever met.

Murmuring carried through the audience, heads bent together, whispering. Normal people who’d maybe come here for just this chance—to see a real live, sort of, vampire. The thing was she’d been sitting there the whole time, and people who didn’t know what to look for would never recognize her. But
now
she was spooky. Lisa glanced over them with a sly smile on her lips and a glint in her eye, encouraging all their ideas about what her being a vampire meant, before turning back to me.

“Hi, Kitty!”

“Hello! And what can you tell us?”

“I’ve only been a vampire for like five years, but I can totally tell you it doesn’t matter how much gunk you put on, it won’t help. It’s just like you said, it’s not the UV radiation, it’s something else. Something about the light. I mean, what makes people vampires in the first place? It’s the same kind of weird things that can hurt them. It doesn’t make much sense, but there it is.”

“Okay, caller, I think that’s your answer. The miracles of modern chemistry aren’t enough to combat the supernatural. At least not yet, but I know some people who are working on that. Thanks for that answer, Lisa.”

She beamed so hard I thought her face might break, then returned to her seat.

We were entering the last half hour of the show, about the time I started feeling like I’d been running a marathon, usually. This time, I’d felt like that from the start, but adrenaline kept me going. Wolf had settled down. I was still on high alert, but the situation hadn’t changed—hadn’t become any more dangerous—so she trusted me that we weren’t going to get ambushed.

Thank God the evening’s really weird question came over the phone. I had no idea what I’d have said to this person face-to-face.

“You’re on the air.”

“Yeah, hi, thanks for taking my call.” It was a woman, serious in a school librarian kind of way. The not-cool school librarian who told you to be quiet rather than the cool school librarian who slipped you Stephen King books when no one was looking.

“What’s your question?”

“I wanted to know: do you find dog shows to be offensive?”

I raised my eyebrows at the microphone as I took a moment to decide what to say. The audience twittered slightly.

“You know,” I said. “I never really thought about it, but now that I have, I’m going to say no, they don’t offend me. Not on the surface. I suppose if I thought about what inbreeding does to some of those show dogs, I might be. But I’ve never spent any brain energy on it at all.”

Now
she
was offended. She spoke in a huff. “It doesn’t bother you that your canine brethren are being paraded around show rings like slaves?”

“My canine brethren?” I said. “I don’t
have
any canine brethren.”

“How can you say that! You’re a werewolf.”

“That’s right. I’m a werewolf, not a poodle. What makes you think I have any kinship with dogs?”

“Well, I thought—”

“No, obviously you didn’t. I can’t get within twenty feet of my sister’s golden retriever without it barking its lungs out. We’ve got no brethren going on there. Show dogs are pets, while I’m a sentient human being. Do you see the difference?”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. Don’t you think that the very existence of werewolves, of all lycanthropes, proves that there really isn’t much difference between us at all, and that maybe we should think about extending human rights to
all
creatures?”

I had a flash of insight. “Oh my God, are you from PETA or something?”

A long, ominous pause. Then, “Maybe. . .”

I leaned forward and bonked my head on the table, just like Matt was afraid I would do. And the audience laughed, and I blushed, because while I tried to tell myself they were laughing
with
me, I was pretty sure they were laughing
at
me.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not supposed to do that where people can actually see me. All right. Equal rights for animals. What can I say? If I say no, absolutely not, that opens an argument for claiming I’m not human and denying me my civil rights.”

“Right, exactly,” said PETA lady, sounding like she’d won a point.

“Okay. So I’m not going to do that. But I’m sure as hell not going to lobby for voting rights for beagles. Here’s the thing: a werewolf isn’t a half-person, half-wolf cousin of the AKC grand champion. I’m a human being with a really whacked-out disease. Apples and oranges. Got it?”

“But—”

I clicked her off. “I always get the last word. Ha.”

During the PETA lady call, one of the doors in the back of the theater opened. That didn’t catch my attention in itself. We didn’t have an intermission, so people had been slipping in and out all evening, usually during the commercial breaks. This time when the door opened, I caught a scent—the smell I’d been missing. Human and animal, merged, inseparable. Lycanthrope.

A man strode down the far left aisle, making his way to the microphone near the stage. Beside him stalked a hip-high leopard. The animal was sleek, muscles sliding under fur and skin. His tail flicked behind him. His head held low, he glared forward with yellow-green eyes. Some human awareness glinted in those eyes—a lycanthrope. A couple of people screamed, in short bursts of shock. Others tried to push away, leaning back in their seats, crowding into the people next to them, an instinctive reaction, trying to get away from this uncaged predator. The cat ignored the ruckus; the man beside the cat smiled.

He was medium height, with rich brown hair, like mahogany, and a wicked, I’ve-got-a-secret expression on his tanned, boyishly gorgeous face. He was a lycanthrope, some variety I hadn’t encountered before. It wasn’t just the smell, it was the stance. He moved like a feline, muscles shifting under his almost-too-tight black T-shirt and just-tight-enough jeans. Graceful, poised, ready to pounce. He had a cat-that-ate-the-canary look about him. Literally.

When the pair reached the microphone, the cat leapt to the stage. This elicited another round of gasps from the audience, and a couple of security guys pounded forward from the wings. I jumped from my chair to intercept the guards.

“No, wait!” I held my arms out, stopping them, and the two burly guys hesitated, straining forward, ready to do their jobs, glancing at me with uncertainty. But the very last thing I wanted was for them to tangle with a were-leopard, possibly getting scratched or bitten in the process.

The leopard stalked along the edge of the stage, tail flicking thoughtfully. Still watching me, he sat primly, a few feet away from his companion. We regarded each other, and I resisted an urge to stare, though my heart was racing and Wolf’s hackles were stiff. I suppressed a growl—find out what this was about first.
Then
get pissed off at the invasion. I couldn’t believe the nerve, bringing a fully shifted lycanthrope into a crowded room like this. My Wolf would have fled, fighting her way clear if she had to. But I had to admire this one’s control. He stood in front of a crowd and hardly seemed to notice. Maybe they just had a question for the show.

The leopard started licking its paws, like a big old cat, after all. The human half of the pair looked up at me; his stare didn’t quite challenge me, but he was definitely sizing me up. Wanting to see if I’d blink first.

I never blinked first. Mostly. But I kept glancing at this huge cat, perched a couple of yards away from me. He could shove me over in a single leap.

I gave the man a hunter’s smile. “Aren’t there laws against letting wild animals out of their cages?”

“You mean Kay here? He’s perfectly safe,” he said. The leopard blinked at me. He really was a beautiful animal; I wondered about the person inside.