Carrie Vaughn - Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

“This whole town’s a show, Kitty. Haven’t you figured that out? You’re not supposed to see the props and rigging backstage. Now why don’t you clap nicely at the spectacle and then go home, like everyone else.”

I stared. “So that’s it. Nothing happens.”

“Kitty, come on,” Ben said at my ear, then kissed my cheek. I hardly felt it. Hand on my arm, he urged me back toward the foyer.

Holding back a moment, I nodded to the woman on the sofa. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I take care of my people, Kitty. She’ll be fine.”

Oddly, I believed him. That was how vampires went unnoticed, how they’d existed for centuries as little more than legend and rumors. Like he’d said, bodies were bad for tourism. Hand in hand, my mate and I left.

At the elevator door, Sven held out his hand. I didn’t even have to ask what he wanted; I put the key card in it.

On the ride down, I wrapped my arms around Ben and hugged him tightly. I’d need another shower to get the smell of Dom’s place out of my nose. The smell of this whole town out of my nose.

Ben held me, tucked his chin over my head, and said, “You can’t have expected that to go any different than it did.”

I sighed. “I don’t know what I expected. I keep expecting people to be decent. Sometimes people are actually decent.” I thought about Evan, Brenda, and Odysseus Grant blazing to my rescue. And realized I still wasn’t sure I could trust any of them, that I couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t turn on me to serve their own purposes. “Does that make me really naive?”

“I think it makes you a good person.”

“Well, bully for me,” I grumbled.

Ben rumpled my hair, and I thought, well, at least we were both in one piece. We walked very quickly away from the Napoli, never looking back.

We managed to sleep for a few hours, and when we awoke, the sun blazed through the window, edging the curtains in light. I wanted to bask in that sunlight—I almost hadn’t made it to morning. I sat in bed, amid rumpled sheets, pleased that I was actually feeling better. Ben was still sleeping. We were together, and all was well.

Except the phone rang. Of course it did. The first time was Detective Gladden, informing me that they still hadn’t found Ben.

“Er,” I started, chagrined. In all the excitement, I hadn’t thought to call him back. “Detective? He’s right here.”

Gladden hesitated a moment. “What?”

“He’s right here. He showed up at the hotel late last night. He got away from Faber’s place during the ruckus. Slipped right out.” I didn’t have to mention him getting shot.

The detective paused again. I couldn’t imagine the look on his face. Finally, he said, “May I speak to him?”

Our blissful morning peace couldn’t last forever, I supposed. I nudged Ben awake and handed him the phone. The conversation was short, and Ben didn’t do much talking. Mostly made vague agreeing noises. Almost guilty. Gladden was probably chewing him out for not going to them first. Personally, I was glad he’d come to me.

Ben said, “Okay. I can do that. Thanks, Detective.”

Sighing, he handed the phone back to me. “He wants me to come in this afternoon for a debriefing. They want to know what happened. I don’t know how I’m going to explain it.” He ran a hand through his already-mussed hair. It didn’t help smooth it out at all.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing about that, too. Can I sit in?”

My phone beeped, indicating a message waiting—from my parents. Oh, yeah—I probably ought to call them.

Mom answered in the middle of the first ring. “Kitty! What’s happened? Have the police found him yet? Where are you, are you all right?”

I definitely wasn’t going to explain to them what I’d been doing all night. The important thing, the only thing they needed to know: “Ben’s right here, Mom. He’s fine. Everything’s fine.” And didn’t that feel wonderful to say?

“Oh, that’s great! Thank goodness!” she gushed. “So when are you getting married?”

I looked at Ben. He looked at me. I sighed. “I don’t know, Mom. I’ll give you a call when I find out what’s going on with that.”

“All right. Kitty, I’m glad Ben’s safe.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” I shut off the phone. “She wants to know when we’re getting married.”

“That turned out to be a little more complicated than we expected, didn’t it?” he said.

Frowning, I looked away. “It does seem like the universe is conspiring against us.”

He regarded me a moment, holding my left hand, rubbing a finger over the engagement ring, pondering. Then he smiled.

“I have a plan. Meet me out front in, oh, let’s say an hour.”

“You think I’m going to let you out of my sight after everything that’s happened?”

“I know. But I’ll be careful. I have an idea.” He smiled and looked at me with the gaze of a predator.

“An idea?”

“It’s a good idea.” He dressed, slipping on boxers, jeans, shirt, and socks, and running fingers through his hair in lieu of a comb.

“What idea?”

“Do you trust me?”

We’d already had this discussion, and the answer wasn’t any different now. I nodded.

“Just meet me outside in an hour.”

He kissed me, deeply and fiercely, then walked out.

Rather than sitting around waiting, I got dressed and took a walk. I was curious, so I went back to the Hanging Gardens.

The police cars were all gone, though I suspected yellow crime-scene tape still wrapped the theater and stage. A couple of TV news vans had replaced the squad cars, but I didn’t see any reporters. I wasn’t going to go near them to find out what was happening.

I only went as far as the lobby, where the poster for Balthasar’s show had changed.

The photo was the same, showing the big cats perched in their Babylonian temple setting, and the name of the show was the same: “Balthasar, King of Beasts,” blazoned across the top. Another sign, attached to the side, announced a new opening date set for sometime next week. But a picture of Nick had replaced Balthasar in the center of the poster. There he stood, hands on his hips, smiling haughtily, brown hair swept back, looking like the cover of a romance novel. His eyes seemed to follow me as I moved around the lobby.

Nothing had changed.

Outside the hotel, even the Las Vegas desert heat couldn’t dispel the chill in my spine.

But I had a date, so precisely one hour after Ben left, I arrived on the sidewalk in front of the Olympus. A minute later, a huge white Cadillac convertible pulled into the drive. All it needed was a longhorn hood ornament. Ben—in the driver’s seat, his shirtsleeves rolled up, one hand on the steering wheel, the other elbow resting on the door—looked out at me over his sunglasses.

“Hey,” he drawled.

The rest of the weekend receded to a pinpoint of distant memory. This was all about here and now, Ben’s crazy plan, and all the reasons I never wanted to be without him.

I almost cackled. “Oh my God. It’s perfect. ”

“Get in,” he said, a glint in his eye and curl to his lip.

Squealing like a teenage groupie, I clambered into the front seat. Fortunately, the bellhop had opened the door first. I was all ready to just leap into the boat of a car.

“ Where did you get this?” I asked as he pulled out of the drive.

“You know you can rent anything in this town?”

“Where are we going?”

“Just you wait.”

The front seat was big enough for a whole family. I slid all the way over, squishing right up next to Ben. He smiled indulgently, and I couldn’t stop grinning. I didn’t care what the plan was, tooling around Vegas in this monstrosity seemed the perfect way to spend the afternoon.