Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Rocks the House

Cormac lived in a studio apartment north of town, along the Boulder Turnpike. Not a great neighborhood, but I usually didn’t worry. Cormac could take care of himself, and he didn’t exactly give off the vibe of someone who could be taken advantage of. But that was when he didn’t have a broken arm. Over the last couple of years he’d worked a series of warehouse jobs he’d gotten through his parole officer. Point of pride—he wanted to be self-sufficient. I didn’t know how he’d manage work with a broken arm, but he didn’t seem bothered.

I parked in front of the building next to the Jeep and helped Ben help Cormac up the stairs. Mostly by hovering. Cormac winced when the arm got jostled, turning a corner and bumping into the wall. For him to show even that much pain meant he was in bad shape. Good thing I’d made sure the bottle of pills was tucked in his jacket pocket. I’d sit on him to get him to take a dose, if I had to.

The apartment’s interior belonged to both Cormac and Amelia. The sparse furnishings—table, chair, futon—and bare walls were Cormac’s. The books piled everywhere—table, floor, kitchen counter; basket full of dried herbs; skein of yarn; locked and weathered mahogany box; and various maps and diagrams drawn on rolls of paper, held down by candles, statuettes, and other various weighted items—those were Amelia’s, the tools of the wizard’s trade. I could have pawed through it for hours, looking for meaning.

Ben guided his cousin to bed, while I went to the kitchenette for a glass of water and ice packs. We watched him until he took a painkiller. In the end, I had a suspicion it was Amelia who made him do it.

Pulling a chair near the bed, Ben sat and glanced around the apartment. “I think you’ve checked out more books in the last year than most people do in a lifetime.”

Cormac chuckled. “I guess I like to read. Who knew?”

I’d taken to sending him books during his stint in prison. It started as a joke, but turned earnest. He really seemed to have read everything I’d sent him.

“I think he’s reading for two, now,” I said, noting some of the titles. Churchill’s multivolume history of World War II; Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men; Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. I wondered what Victorian Amelia was making of that one.

“Think about it,” Cormac said. “If you went to sleep and woke up a hundred years later, what would you do?”

This wasn’t a hypothetical question—Amelia really had been out of the world for that long. “I suppose I’d freak out for a little while. Everything I knew would be gone. But then—I’d want to find out what I’d missed. I’d want to explore everything.”

He said, “These last couple years—I’m seeing the world in a whole new way. She’s never seen anything like it, and all she wants to do is … take it all in.”

I sat in another chair while we kept watch. Just when we thought he was drifting off, he sat up, propping himself on his good elbow, wincing yet again. He still wasn’t used to favoring the hurt arm. He adjusted the pillow he’d propped the cast on, trying to get comfortable. “You get ahold of Rick yet?” he said.

I leaned back. “No. His Family won’t admit it, but they don’t know where he is, either. He’s not at Obsidian, so I’m pretty sure that means he’s with Columban.”

“At St. Cajetan’s?”

“If they haven’t already left on some crusade.”

“Rick wouldn’t leave town without telling you,” Ben said.

“I hope he wouldn’t,” I said, my uncertainty plain.

“I’m going to figure it out,” Cormac said.

Ben looked at him. “Figure what out?”

“Those protections he’s got up. If we get to the thing that’s after him, we can get to him. Can’t be that hard.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Really. Just get some rest.”

“You want to know what he’s really up to, I’ll figure it out.” With that, he closed his eyes, snugged down into his pillow, and sighed. In another minute he was asleep.

Ben and I left him to it. I considered taking the keys to the Jeep with us, so he wouldn’t be tempted to run off on some epic scheme, but Ben talked me out of it.

“Are you sure he’ll be okay?” I said as we got in my car.

“Yeah. I think so. Probably. Seriously, he survived two years in prison, and we’re worried about this?”

He had a point.

STILL, I had a feeling. At dusk, on the way home from work, I took a detour to the Auraria campus and swung by St. Cajetan’s. Just to see.

I found the Jeep before I found Cormac. Parked on the street at a meter, a block or two away from the church, it was definitely his Jeep, with dried mud on the wheel wells, chips in the windshield, scratches in the paint that might have been normal wear and tear, or might have been, with enough imagination, claw marks. Thing had been around the block a few times. A few dozen times. He’d managed to drive the stick shift, broken arm or no. I parked in a spot nearby and went in search of the man himself, letting my nose guide me. He’d managed a shower sometime during the day, but he still smelled like Cormac, like his leather jacket and the muddy Jeep. He’d left a faint trail through the air he traveled through, and the steps his rough boots tracked on the pavement.

I found him on the church’s north side, and Detective Hardin was with him. Her smell was touched with the stale scents of nicotine and breath mint. They stood side by side, looking up at the roofline. His broken arm was held close to his body by the sling; otherwise, he looked normal. He wasn’t lighting candles or drawing Greek letters on the sidewalk. I supposed that would have looked suspicious with people still walking around.

“This isn’t resting,” I said. Hardin glanced over. Neither seemed surprised to see me, and neither said anything. I tried to sound polite, but it came out frustrated. “What are you guys doing ?”

Hardin wore a satisfied smile. “I think Mr. Bennett is right. My suspect is hiding out here, and I have a warrant for his arrest and extradition. A couple of officers and I scoured the building earlier today and didn’t find anything—”

“And you’re not going to,” Cormac said. “He’s a vampire, using magic to hide himself. You could walk right past him and all the holy water in the world isn’t going to flush him out.”

“Which is why we’re here,” Hardin said. She was definitely pleased with herself.

“And why are you here?” I said, trying again to make sense out of this.

Cormac said, “Figure the best way to get a reaction out of the guy is to break his protections.”

“I’ve hired Mr. Bennett as an independent contractor,” Hardin said. “He’s going to help me nail my suspect.”

What happened to hell, no ? “When Ben said you should go into business for yourself, I don’t think this is what he meant,” I said.

“Yeah, well, he should have thought of that.” Cormac pointed along the roof. “The protection spell forms a sphere, not just a circle,” he said. “Or maybe a dome. I haven’t been able to get into the basement yet, to see if it extends underground.”

“Maybe you should check out the dinosaur museum?” I pointed around the corner where I’d seen the door.

“It’s closed,” he said.

Well then. “This still isn’t resting.”

“I’ll rest better once I’ve figured this thing out.”

“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?” I appealed to both of them. “If your information is right, Columban burned buildings fighting this thing in Europe. People died. ”

“And that’s why we want him in custody and out of Denver,” Hardin said.