Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand (13 page)

“How do you know I was talking about him?” I said, raising a brow. The guy actually winked at me. Oh, I hoped the cameras were picking this up. Ratings
gold.
“And what brings you to
The Midnight Hour
?”

“I’ve got a secret. Wondered if you’d be interested.” He had a clear male voice to go with his handsome body. He might have fronted a boy band.

“I just bet you do. You sound like someone who’s about to make me an offer.”

He pulled something out of his back pocket and held it up—a pair of tickets. “These are you for you, if you want them.”

“Front-row seats to see Wayne Newton?”

“No, not quite,” he said, turning the smile on full force. It was pouty and sultry.

I moved to the edge of the stage to take his offering, which made the security guys—still lurking behind me, ready to tackle the leopard—twitch, but oh well. I didn’t get any overt aggression from either one of them. Just posturing. I could do posturing.

Close to him, his smell washed over me like strong aftershave. The lycanthropy on him was thick, like his animal was close to the surface, more fur than skin. He spent a lot of time in animal form, I guessed. The leopard was now close enough to take a swipe at me, but I stayed calm. Kept my breathing steady. Worked very hard to pretend like I wasn’t nervous around him.

I wasn’t surprised when I looked on the tickets and saw the name of the show printed.

Smirking, I announced to my audience, both TV and live, “Two tickets to see Balthasar, King of Beasts, at the Hanging Gardens. Trying to make me feel at home, are you?”

“Oh, there aren’t any werewolves in this show.”

“But there are. . . something else?”

He winked. “It’s a secret.”

“I get it,” I said, playing to him, the audience, the cameras. “It’s a publicity stunt. You’re here with tickets to Vegas’s hottest animal show, acting all mysterious and talking about a secret, so I will
naturally
want to check it out. And in the meantime you get a free plug.”

I almost said something. I almost pointed to them and called,
Lycanthrope!
But I was sensitive to revealing the lycanthropic identities of people who didn’t want to be revealed. Until this guy announced the fact himself, I wasn’t going to blow their cover. As far as the audience was concerned, this was a guy and his very well-trained leopard.

“You really should come see for yourself.”

This was sure making me wish I’d been able to get Balthasar on for an interview. “So I see the show. Then what?”

“Then we’ll talk.” He gave me another wink, turned, and walked away, stalking up the aisle like, well, a king of beasts. The leopard sprang off the stage and trotted after him. Most of the people here would assume he was just a trained cat. But didn’t anyone notice that not a single word or hand signal had passed between them?

I stared after him probably a little longer than I should have. Shaking my head, I brought my attention back on task.

“Well, it’s just like getting hung up on, except in person. Story of my life.” A few people in the audience made sad, sympathetic noises on my behalf.

The teleprompter said I had five minutes left. After a moment of panic wondering how I was going to wrap everything up after that bit of excitement, I returned to my chair and got to work.

“It looks like we’re about out of time this evening. Thank you all so very much for joining me in this great experiment.” And everyone cheered. Victory.

I closed the show by thanking everyone, introducing everyone, letting the crew and stage managers have their moment in the spotlight, because I thought it would be fun. I finished downstage, front and center, letting the applause crash over me. A person could get addicted to this sort of thing. Live TV. I’d done it and survived, and it felt good. This was the rush that made all the anxiety worthwhile.

Once the cameras were off, I gave away the rest of the T-shirts and sat on the edge of the stage for half an hour to sign autographs, which was fine, because I had so much nervous energy bubbling in me I wouldn’t have been able to do anything but stand there and shake if I hadn’t had a job to do.

In the midst of the post-show chaos and winding down, Erica handed me a cordless phone. Through it, Ozzie’s voice greeted me. “It was fabulous. I told you this was a good idea. You’re a natural. How did it feel?”

“Like I’d fallen from twenty thousand feet and was building my parachute on the way down,” I said. As in airless and desperate. Yet exhilarating. He just laughed.

We wrapped up a short debriefing. Finally, the only people left were crew breaking down equipment and cleaning up, Dom the vampire with some of his hangers-on, my parents, and Ben. I sat on the edge of the stage to talk to them.

Dom came to shake my hand and offer congratulations. “Thanks for inviting me, Kitty. That was a lot of fun.”

“Glad you liked it. Hey—do you know who that guy was with the tickets to Balthasar’s show?”

“One of the people from the act, I assume,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t keep up with them all.”

“Really? Every other vampire Master I’ve met has kept files on the local lycanthropes. Total spy crap.”

“But this is Las Vegas. They leave me alone, I leave them alone. Better that way, don’t you think?” He winked at me before sauntering off with his entourage. The vampires looked like any other night owls crawling around Vegas.

“Oh, Kitty, we’re so proud of you!” Mom and Dad joined me next, leaving their front-row seats. Big hugs all around.

“Did you like it? Did you have fun?”

They said yes, and I had to admit that no matter how old I got, I would still be happy at my parents’ approval. So much for being a rebel.

Dad nodded at the door Dom had just left through. “Who was that guy?”

“That was a real live vampire. A real undead vampire, I mean. Friend of a friend.”

He donned a thoughtful “well, isn’t that something” expression. “Hmm. How about that?”

Sometimes I thought my parents really hadn’t registered the fact that their daughter was a werewolf and made a living delving into the realm of supernatural horror movies made real. They seemed to regard it all as a rather strange hobby that I’d taken up—they didn’t understand it, but they’d be supportive. That was okay, because I didn’t want them to have to understand it any more than necessary. I wanted them to stay safe. As safe as possible. The world didn’t need supernatural badness to be a scary place. It already had things like cancer.

Ben joined me, sitting next to me on the edge of the stage.

“Hello, Ben, how are you?” Mom said, beaming at her soon-to-be son-in-law.

“Fine, thanks.”

“You two all ready for tomorrow?”

The getting-married thing. I kept forgetting. Not really forgetting, but I’d been so focused on the show, it had faded to the background.
No, I’m not,
I wanted to say. That was post-show nerves talking. “I guess I ought to get some sleep or something. I think I need a drink.”

Mom took Dad’s hand. “It’s past our bedtime, so we’ll leave you two to it.”

I said, “This is Las Vegas. You can’t have a bedtime in Vegas.”

Mom just gave me a look. “Good night, dear.”

Oh. Right. Bedtime. I didn’t want to know.

I hugged them each one more time. Then it was just me and Ben.

We sat for a long time. I took a deep breath through my nose. The familiar scent of him steadied me. He smelled like pack, like home. Safety. I shifted closer, took his arm, and leaned my head on his shoulder.

“What was that all about?” he said.

“I think my mom and dad are having too much fun.”

“Not that. That guy. The were-whatever. And I can only assume that the leopard is from the Balthasar, King of Beasts Show.”

Ah, yes. I’d have to look at the recording of the show to even guess what that must have looked like from Ben’s point of view.

“I think he might be a tiger.”

“So is he cute? Good-looking, I mean? Because I can’t really tell with guys, and it looked like you two might have hit it off.”

I grinned at him. “Jealous?”

He grinned right back. “That’s a trick question. If I say yes you’ll accuse me of being paranoid and unreasonable, and if I say no you’ll make some defensive crack about how I don’t think you’re worth getting jealous over.”

This was what I got for hooking up with a lawyer.

“They were here to get my attention,” I said. “They
want
me to go check out their show and ask questions.”

“Maybe they want to go public.”

“Then they should have called me earlier,” I grumbled. “I don’t see how I even have time to go talk to them. We’re going to be in the middle of a lot of celebrating tomorrow.”

He raised his brows and clearly didn’t believe me. “But you’re curious. You want to know what a troupe of performing lycanthropes is really like.”

“What I really want to know is if they’re there because they want to be, or if something funky is going on. To be part of his act, they’d have to shape-shift every night. That’s not normal, it’s not right.”

“I’m still having a little trouble finding a baseline normal with this whole situation,” he said.

He hadn’t been a werewolf for even a year yet. We’d grown so comfortable, I forgot that. At least, I’d grown comfortable. I almost took him for granted. Almost.

“There’s something weird about the whole thing.”

He put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. “You always manage to find the weird stuff, don’t you?”

I whined. It wasn’t like I went out looking for weird. Much. It just found me.

“Now, what about that drink you mentioned?” he said.

When Ben steered me toward the Olympus Hotel’s main bar—right across from the gun show—my feet started dragging. “This wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

“This is where all your fans congregated. Think how popular you’ll be.”

The place was also filled with people from the gun show who looked like Boris.

“My fans or your fans?” I muttered.

In fact, we’d only just found places at the bar when someone called, “Ben! Hell, it really is you!”

A guy with Asian features, short dark hair, a long face and hard gaze, wearing a leather jacket—not a biker leather jacket, but a designer jacket in brown leather with lean, slimming lines—came over from one of the tables. In his thirties, he had polished good looks and the confident stance of someone who was successful in his line of work and proud of it.

Unlike the meeting with Boris, they engaged in a burly old-pal handshake. “Evan, how you doing?” Ben said.

“Not bad,” said the suave and smiling Evan. “Yourself?”

Ben gave a noncommittal shrug. “You here for the exhibition?”

“You know how it is, it’s a good place to meet up with people. Catch up on all the gossip.”

“Hear anything good?”

“I heard about Cormac. That must have been a rough scene.”

“It could have been worse.”

Wives who went to their husbands’ business conferences must feel like this. I didn’t even have a drink to hide behind yet. I sat there smiling. In five seconds, I was going to jump in and introduce myself.

I must have been vibrating or something, because they both looked at me. Ben might have been about to introduce me, but Evan beat him to it.

“And you’re Kitty Norville. Good to finally meet you,” he said, and we shook hands. He focused his gaze on me like he was taking aim. My shoulders tensed up. Then it clicked.

I glared. “You were at the show. I saw you! Left-hand side, third row back—you were spying on me!”

He didn’t try to deny it, and he didn’t seem bothered by it. His laid-back, amiable expression didn’t change. “I wanted to see what a performing werewolf looked like.”

“Well, I hope you had a grand old time at the freak show—”

Ben put a hand on my arm. “Kitty. Calm down.” My teeth were bared. I crossed my arms and snarled.

Evan continued, “Not to sound
too
rude, but I didn’t expect to see the two of you having a drink together.”

“We hear that a lot,” I said. I wondered if he could see it. If I wasn’t so publicly known, would he be able to tell I’m a werewolf? Could he tell about Ben?

“Kitty’s my client,” Ben said. Again with the client thing. What was he going to say when we were both wearing matching rings?

“I have to say, that’s pretty funny,” he said.

“We hear that a lot, too,” I said. Evan laughed politely.

“You in town long?” he said to Ben.

“Just for the weekend.”

“Maybe we could have lunch or something, if you have time.”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll call you. Your number still good?”

“Last time I looked.”

The hair on my neck tingled, and the muscles in my shoulder tightened. A woman entered the bar. We all turned to look.

She was my height, but she had a presence that seemed to take up the room. Dark hair, short and full-bodied, bouncing around her ears. Spiky earrings, red lipstick. Dark sunglasses that she took off, folded, and slipped into a pocket of her leather jacket as she scanned the bar. And her outfit. That was mainly why everyone stared: knee-high leather boots with four-inch spike heels, perfectly shaped legs, a leather skirt that would have had me tugging at the hem, yet she wore it as naturally as skin, a form-fitted top of silk and lace, and a cropped leather jacket—all of it in black, of course. I might have seen her picture on a flyer taped to a street sign out on the Strip. Every straight man in the place left his jaw hanging open, and every straight woman clung a little tighter to her boyfriend.

Except me, ’cause I’m more secure than that. Mostly. I might have inched a little closer to Ben. But then, his jaw wasn’t open. He arced a brow and pursed his lips.

She looked at us, and those scarlet lips turned a smile. She marched over. Though she looked supernatural—in one sense—she smelled human. Basic, even. No perfume, no extras. Leather, clean soap, and gun oil. I’d bet an awful lot that that she carried a gun in a holster under that jacket. Maybe another tucked in the back waistband of the skirt. And probably a knife in her boot, stilettos up her sleeves, throwing stars in her pockets, and God knew what else. Everyone in the place might have stared, but no one sauntered up to offer to buy her a drink, because she was the scariest-looking person here.