Carrie Vaughn: Kitty Steals the Show

I grinned back, and we came together in a girly hug. “You look amazing,” I said.

Pulling apart, we regarded each other. “I’m so glad you’re here, I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks,” she said.

“Yeah, me, too. What’s with this?” I tipped my head to the immigration officer, standing politely out of the way.

“Ned has connections,” she said. “He thought you’d appreciate not having to stand with the crowds. So—shortcut.”

“This is the power that comes with being Master of London?” I said.

Her eyes—her whole face, really—sparkled with glee. “Neat, huh? He can’t wait to meet you.”

Yeah, I could just bet. What kind of vampire was he, then? Haughty and arrogant? Permanently amused and detached? Something else entirely? At least Emma seemed happy here, which was a point in his favor. He couldn’t be all bad if she liked him.

I pulled Ben and Cormac into our circle and introduced them. They’d actually seen her before, in Washington, D.C. She’d been technically dead at the time, though, attacked by Alette’s traitorous lieutenant and still three days from rising again.

Ben smiled and shook her hand, and Cormac did likewise, grudgingly.

“Welcome to London. You ready to see the sights?”

My energy roared back, the travel fog slipping away. I could have bounded.

The officer stepped forward. “If I could just check your passports, then?”

We weren’t completely getting out of procedure—it was, as Emma had said, a shortcut. He looked at our passports, glanced at our immigration forms, and produced a visa stamp, which he punched into our passports.

My passport was no longer virginal.

“Welcome to Britain,” he said when he’d finished.

Indeed.

EMMA LED us through another restricted door to an exit, which opened to a curb outside the airport, where a black cab was waiting for us. A real honest-to-God London black cab. Mom would want me to take a picture, so I pulled out my camera and did. Ben looked at me. “Really?” I just grinned.

Our luggage had been fetched for us. The driver was loading it into the trunk. Boot, rather. I’d been studying. He wore a smart black suit with a conservative striped tie. Young, dark-haired, and clean-shaven, he stood at attention and nodded smartly to Emma. He was human—one of the Master’s human servants. Not a cab driver, of course, and the car wasn’t marked TAXI. We were getting chauffeured.

When he’d finished with the luggage, he opened the back door for us.

“Thanks, Andy,” Emma said, smiling, and he tipped his head.

Emma sat in front with Andy, and we climbed into the spacious back of the car, which had wide seats and lots of legroom. Our wolves would have been happy in here, even. Ben and Cormac put me between them—I’d meant to get a window seat. I gave up arguing about it.

“You really do look great,” I said to Emma.

Leaning on the back of the seat to talk to us, she bit her lip and ducked her gaze. “Thanks. It’s been a pretty wild ride these last few years.”

No doubt. I thought back to my own first couple of years as a werewolf and the way the world turned upside down. I couldn’t imagine what becoming a vampire would be like.

“And now you’re in London living the high life,” I said.

“I’m thinking of it as grad school,” she said. “Alette wanted me to get out and see the world, or at least see how a different Family works, and Ned was happy to take me in.”

“What’s Ned like?” Ben asked.

Emma’s expression melted and turned downright dreamy, her eyes going wide and her smile going soft. “He’s amazing. You’ll just have to meet him—I don’t want to give anything away.”

“Hmm, just like a vampire to keep secrets,” I said, then wished I hadn’t because her smile fell. I’d meant it as a joke, but I could have kicked myself. Emma hadn’t asked for this; she was making the best of a bad situation—the only thing she could do.

“Good God,” Cormac murmured, leaning forward to press himself to the window. “This is London?”

“We’re in the suburbs,” Emma said. “It’s still about fifteen miles or so to the city center.”

“But it’s all city,” he said.

That wasn’t Cormac speaking, I realized. During his time in prison, he’d acquired a ghost: Amelia, the Victorian wizard woman living in his head. He insisted it was a partnership, not a possession. Sometimes, though, she was in control. It was weird, hearing another person’s words spoken in Cormac’s voice. A big reason he’d wanted to come along was so Amelia could see home again, after more than a hundred years as a ghost trapped in a prison’s stone walls. She’d probably been at the front, the driver’s seat so to speak, since we landed, ready for a glimpse.

Emma looked to me for a cue, and I didn’t know how to explain.

To Cormac/Amelia I said, “It’s changed a lot, I imagine.”

He/she glanced at me, lips pursed. “It’s just a bit of a shock to see it for myself.”

He sat back and stayed quiet the rest of the trip, watching out the window. I put my hand on Ben’s knee, and he squeezed it.

“You guys must be wiped out,” Emma said, regaining her previous cheerfulness. “Maybe we should go straight home and save the sightseeing for later? Ned’s main house is in Dulwich, south of London. We’ll be in Mayfair for the conference but I really want to show you the Dulwich house, if that’s all right.”

The car turned south before heading into London proper. We passed over a bridge, and Emma confirmed that the river below us was the Thames. Orange lights flickered on the surface of rippling black water, and the shores were an almost solid wall of buildings. We never did encounter anything like the rolling green hills and meadows of a stereotypical English countryside, not that we could see any of it at night. I wondered if that was what Amelia was looking for.

Eventually, we passed a sweeping, well-groomed park bounded by reaching, gnarled trees, then approached a brick wall supporting a tall iron gate. Beyond that lay a magnificent manor house—colossal, redbrick, with filigree accents carved in white granite, neo-Gothic towers and cupolas, and ornate windows opening into what seemed to be a vast main hall. How could I expect anything else from the Master of London?

“Pretty swanky,” I said.

“This isn’t Ned’s house,” Emma said. “Not directly, anyway. This is actually a boys’ school, Dulwich College. We’ll end up a little farther on.”

The cab passed the impressive school and a minute later turned up the drive of a much more modest, but even more venerable and beautiful house, with a brick façade, painted accents, and warm light showing through the mullioned windows.

“Here we are,” she said. “Fortune House.”

The car pulled into a gated yard, letting us out before continuing on to a building that might have been a small stable in another age. Now it was the garage—same purpose, different context. Emma took us through a mudroom that was nicer than Ben’s and my whole condo, with slate tile on the floor in a checkered pattern, shelves made of some expensive polished wood, and brass fixtures. This opened into a hardwood foyer. A kitchen lay through a doorway, and a maid came toward us—an honest-to-goodness maid in a black uniform dress and apron.

“He’s in the library waiting for you, miss,” the young woman said to Emma.

The house must have been bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside. We went from the foyer through a long hallway with a fancy carpet runner, antique sideboards and accent tables that held stunning porcelain vases, a row of paintings on the wall showing everything from hunting dogs to light-suffused cityscapes. The hallway let out into a parlor with a big fireplace, marble mantelpiece above it, more antique furniture, more paintings. Tall windows had heavy drapes drawn over them. Over the fireplace was what seemed to be a life-sized portrait of a man in late-Renaissance attire: a starched white ruff, long black coat lined with fur, a glimpse of doublet and knee-length trousers, shoes with buckles. He was tall and stately, brown hair going to gray, a full beard hiding his expression, and he looked down on us with some amount of pride. The Master, maybe? Next, Emma opened a set of heavy double doors, polished wood, simply carved, and ushered us into the library.