Carrie Vaughn: Kitty Rocks the House

A COUPLE of weeks later, Cormac called and said he’d found something.

The first time he came over to the new house, he never really said whether he liked it. He looked around at the spacious living room, out the sliding glass door to the great outdoors, and said, “Awfully domestic of you.”

“I thought that was the point,” I said. Cormac had never been very domestic, and I couldn’t imagine him ever choosing a house in the suburbs. I felt a little bit of a pang at that thought, at the long lost might-have-beens. We’d traveled a long way since then.

“And next time you break your arm, we have a guest room for you,” Ben said.

“I hope I never break a damn thing again.”

By this visit, his arm was out of the cast and sling and in a neoprene brace. He still kept it close, favoring it. He was supposed to be going to physical therapy to get it back to its former strength and usefulness. I bugged him about it, asking if he was actually going, and he never gave me a straight answer. I hoped that Amelia was making him go. It was her arm, too, in a way.

Times like these, it was almost like they were married, which was an odd thought. I didn’t dwell on it.

We sat on stools around the island counter in the kitchen and ate pizza. That had been another consideration in choosing this house—wilderness was nice and all, but we had to be in range of pizza delivery. After eating and small talk, Cormac pulled a book from a jacket pocket—a thick hardcover with a fraying cloth binding. I couldn’t see a title.

“I’ve been reading up on that thing that attacked the church. What I have isn’t real satisfying,” he said. He looked down, watched his fingers tap the edges of the cover. “It’s a demon, but that’s a catchall term. Lots of supernatural beings get called demons if people don’t know what else to call them, or the name is untranslatable. This one didn’t do much to identify herself—she might even have been a human magician if it weren’t for the smoke, and the way she escaped—”

“Wait, she escaped? She’s not … gone?” I didn’t say dead, which might not have meant much, depending on her origin.

“She got pulled back to wherever she came from,” he said.

Ben asked, “So what is she?”

Cormac pursed his lips like he didn’t want to answer. Then he said, “Amelia thinks she was one of the fallen.”

“Fallen what?” I said.

“Fallen angels.”

We stared at him, absorbing that little tidbit.

“You’re serious,” Ben said finally.

Cormac opened the book to a page he’d marked and started reading, following the line with a finger. “‘Such place Eternal Justice had prepared for those rebellious, here their prison ordained in utter darkness…’”

The tinted goggles she wore, because even the nighttime glow was too bright for her. Disbelieving, I said, “That’s Paradise Lost. Milton.”

“It’s just an idea,” he said.

“She was from hell? Actual, real, capital H hell?”

He said, “You like to talk about how a lot of the stories are real, or at least have a seed of truth that inspired them. Maybe it was something like her and wherever she came from that started the stories. Not sure it really matters. Whoever summoned the demon to go after the vampire priest—some brand of ceremonial magician most likely—is probably the one holding Roman’s leash. That’s your Caesar.”

The rabbit hole got a little deeper. “And who is that?”

“I did some hunting around at the church. Didn’t find anything.”

“You hire an assassin so no one can trace you,” Ben said.

“Yeah,” Cormac said. “I’d have assumed it was Roman who’d summoned her, if she hadn’t said anything.”

“There’s really nothing we can do but keep on keeping on, is there?”

“You can be damn careful is what you can do,” Cormac said. “Amelia’ll put up protections around the house, your cars, the restaurant, the radio station.”

“I’ll let Angelo know—his places will need protecting, too.”

“Angelo,” Cormac said. “Then Rick really did leave?”

I looked down, studying abandoned pizza crusts left in the cardboard box. From the outside, nothing in Denver would look like it had changed. But the vampires I talked to, Angelo and his minions, were subdued. Wounded, almost. From their perspectives, they’d been abandoned. It didn’t matter if Rick had a mission. Me, I just missed my friend. I assumed he’d arrived in Italy all right, but I hadn’t heard from him yet. I wasn’t sure I would.

Taking the silence as his answer, Cormac shrugged, ultimately unconcerned. “See if this guy wants my help first. What are the odds?”

Angelo probably wouldn’t want Cormac’s help any more than Cormac wanted to give it. “So much for the great alliance,” I muttered and took a long drink of beer.

Cormac said, “I’m not sorry for what I did.”

“I’m not expecting you to be,” I said.

“Does anyone want another beer?” Ben said, getting up and heading to the fridge. A diplomatic interruption.

Cormac leaned back and picked at the seam on his wrist brace, turning inward as he often did—having a discussion with his resident spirit, most likely. Maybe she could talk some sense into him. I had a thought: if I asked her what he was really thinking, would she tell me? At least he didn’t walk out. He would have, not so long ago. Back when he thought he didn’t have anything to lose.

That may have been the most terrifying part of this war I insisted that we all fight: we had so much to lose. Would it be worth it? Would I ever know?

Ben returned from the fridge, and after popping bottlecaps and distributing the goods, held up his bottle. “Here’s to achieving victory by the seat of our pants.”

“And kicking ass,” Cormac said, clinking bottles.

I considered them. For now, the moment was quiet. I had to let the future take care of itself. Smiling, I raised my own bottle.

“Here’s to family.”

Kitty Goes to War

Kitty’s Big Trouble

Kitty’s Greatest Hits

Kitty Steals the Show

Kitty Rocks the House

Kitty in the Underworld (forthcoming)

Discord’s Apple

After the Golden Age

CARRIE VAUGHN had the nomadic childhood of the typical Air Force brat, with stops across the country from California to Florida. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the Kitty Norville books, and she lives in Boulder, Colorado. Her website is at www.carrievaughn.com.