Carrie Vaughn: Kitty Steals the Show

“Can we trust them? Really?” Ben said. He’d gone tense, and I rested a calming hand on his knee.

“You’re right not to trust vampires,” Alette said, not appearing the least bit offended. “Especially in the Old World. I had many reasons for leaving Europe—the Masters there are a big one. I find them … frustrating.”

“But Ned’s not like that?” I asked.

“Ned is, as you like to say, one of the good guys. But he’s a character—don’t let him charm you.”

Ben’s expression had turned sour—he generally had the same attitude about vampires that Cormac did. And yet, they kept listening to me when I insisted on calling them my friends.

“We’ll be careful,” I said. I always said that, and yet, I could only keep an eye out for the dangers I knew about. What would the conference throw at me that I couldn’t possibly expect?

Alette asked, “Do you know, will Dr. Flemming be at the conference? This seems exactly his milieu.”

“He wouldn’t dare show his face,” I said. “He’s notorious.” Dr. Paul Flemming had once headed up the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology. If this conference had happened a few years ago, he would have been one of the people running it. Then his predilection for experimenting on unwilling human subjects came to light. The last time I saw him was the night he locked me in a cell during the full moon and trained a camera on me to broadcast my transformation live to the world. The video had five million views on YouTube, baby. He’d skipped town rather than face kidnapping charges. If the two of us ever ended up in a room together, I might get violent.

She said, “But it wouldn’t surprise you if he did make an appearance, would it?”

“No. I’m afraid not.”

The night and conversation wore on after midnight, until Alette agreed that we ought to sleep, in preparation for the flight tomorrow. I took her up on her offer of guest rooms, and a ride to the airport bright and early.

Before we went upstairs, she took hold of both my hands and beamed. “Kitty, you’ve come so far since I first met you. I thought then that you might do well, but you have exceeded my expectations.”

“Thanks, I think. I just hope…” I thought a moment, then shook my head. “I just hope it all works out.”

“Oh, my dear, you live as long as I have you realize it never all works out. You’re giving the keynote address at the conference, aren’t you? Do you know what you’ll be speaking about?”

I wasn’t able to suppress a groan. “I wish people would stop asking me that. I’m going to work on it on the flight over.” I had to change the subject before she offered me suggestions. “How is Emma?”

“You’ll hardly recognize her. Give her a kiss for me, won’t you?”

“I will. Thanks, for everything.”

IN THE end, the trans-Atlantic flight wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting. We just had to grit our teeth and settle in for a few hours. Like Tyler said, you had to not concentrate on being locked in a metal tube flying at an insane height and speed—you focused on going to London. I ate, slept, watched movies, slept some more.

Then night fell, and I was in London. We gathered our things and stumbled off the plane.

I hardly knew what to think. I was euphoric, exhausted, glassy-eyed all at the same time. I’d never been out of the U.S. before. I’d just flown across the Atlantic. I was in England. I’d just spent eight hours surrounded by people in a little metal box and wanted to run as far and fast as I could. I wanted to see a castle. I wanted to sleep.

Once off the plane, a wide corridor filtered us toward immigration. The crowd filed along like cows being herded to the slaughterhouse, making me twitch. Heathrow’s international terminal, a modernist structure of glass and girders, gave a deceptive impression of space, light, and freedom, until we reached the side room with a maze of barriers separating the lines of people into different areas, signage directing the lines, and a general air of resignation. The place smelled antiseptic and tired, wholly unnatural. Wolf tensed.

My new goal in life was to become wealthy enough to own a private jet and never have to travel like this again. What were the odds? Just another hour and maybe I could have a nice soft bed. A hot meal and a bed. A hot meal, shower, and bed. No, a drive around Trafalgar Square first, then a hot meal, shower, a cuddle with Ben—I’d never had sex in a foreign country before—and bed …

Ben was actually paying attention and directed us to the sign labeled NON EU COUNTRIES, but before we could join the line, a uniformed official, a stout man in his late thirties, round face and serious expression, approached. Shaking myself awake, I tried to seem calm and collected rather than defensive.

He glanced at a sheet of paper before addressing me. “Are you Katherine Norville?”

But we hadn’t done anything wrong, we had all our ducks in a row, we’d worked so hard making sure we had the paperwork, that Cormac wouldn’t be held at the border for his felony conviction—and how did they know, we hadn’t even had our passports checked yet.

I wet my mouth and tried to think through the fog of jet lag that said it was seven in the morning rather than seven in the evening. “Yes. Is there a problem?”

“And Benjamin O’Farrell? Cormac Bennett?” He looked at each of us.

He could see we were, he had our pictures on the page in front of him. I caught Ben’s gaze, trying to ask him what this was about. Hold on, wait and see, he seemed to reassure me.

The official gestured toward a closed door labeled RESTRICTED at the back of the room. “If you’d come with me, please? Right this way.”

He was so agonizingly polite, and yet his manner invited no argument. My stomach flipped; I didn’t want to have to deal with this, not now.

“I’m sorry, but what’s this about? Is something wrong?”

“Just step along, please. It will only take a moment.” His expression hardly changed—just a guy doing his job.

“Ben—” I murmured.

“Wait,” he said. “If we were in trouble there’d be more than one of them.”

Him and his logic. Sullen, I followed the immigration officer. Rumpled and glassy-eyed people in line stared after us, radiating curiosity and schadenfreude. This trip couldn’t have gone completely smoothly, could it? But for heaven’s sake I’d hoped to at least get out of the airport without any trouble.

The officer held the door open for us and we filed inside. The tile-floored room held a table and chairs, for interviews. None of us sat. I turned on the officer, questions ready to burst, when the door on the opposite side of the room opened and Emma stepped in.

We’d taken a flight that arrived after dark; of course she’d come to the airport to meet us.

The last time I’d seen Emma she’d been cute—a ponytailed college student in jeans and a sweatshirt, her whole life ahead of her. She’d worked as a part-time housekeeper for Alette to pay tuition. Then Emma had been turned, and it had been the end of that world. She hadn’t wanted it, had even considered opening the curtains at dawn on herself. But that would have been an even bigger tragedy. Instead, she learned how to be a vampire, and she seemed to have developed a talent for it. She wore a flowing skirt in a trendy print, a gray shirt, purple high-heeled shoes, and a black silk wrap draped around her shoulders, too fine to be anything but decorative. She didn’t need shielding from the cold. Her brown hair was swept back and held by a sparkling clip. Her makeup was subtle and perfect. She was gorgeous.

She saw me and grinned. “Kitty!”