Carrie Vaughn - Kitty's House of Horrors

“I haven’t even been here a day—how can I be going stir-crazy?”

He chuckled. “Maybe because I am.”

Aw, wasn’t that sweet? We carried on like a couple of saps for far too long. Mainly, he kept prompting with questions and I kept talking about the scenery. The show’s editors weren’t going to get anything juicy out of this conversation.

“How’s Cormac’s hearing shaping up?” I said. “Is everything on track?”

“Everything’s on track,” he said. “There’s really nothing I can do until the hearing itself. I’d rather not think about it—I’ll get even more nervous.”

“I’m rooting for you guys.”

“I’ll let him know,” he said.

“I should get going,” I said finally, realizing how late it was and how tired I was from traveling. “I’ll call again as soon as I can.”

“Okay. I’ll try to survive.”

“You do that. But the next time I go to a remote mountain lodge, you’re coming with me,” I said.

One by one, the others had all gone to bed, leaving the vampires and their human servant on the sofas in front of the fireplace. It was just them and me now. They looked at me with that sultry, sidewise glance that seemed to come naturally to vampires. The hypnotic gaze that made you want to look at them and made it easier for them to trap you. I frowned back.

“Aren’t you guys going to get kind of bored, sitting up all night while everyone else is asleep?”

Anastasia’s gaze narrowed. “I’m sure we’ll find ways to amuse ourselves.”

That made me a little nervous for some reason. “Should I be worried?”

Gemma giggled, and Anastasia’s smile grew indulgent. “No more so than usual.”

“Though Tina’s hung a garlic clove on the inside of her door,” Gemma said, still giggling.

Great—the psychic was worried. Did that mean I should be?

I looked at Dorian, the fabulous specimen of manhood sitting on the armchair across from Gemma and Anastasia. He hadn’t said a word yet, but we could change that. “What about you, Dorian? Are you enjoying yourself?”

He didn’t answer. Smiling, he looked at Anastasia, who said, “I think he’s enjoying himself just fine.”

Maybe this was going to be a little more of a challenge than I thought. I moved around the room, closer to him, and leaned on the back of the sofa. Not too close. Close enough to look him in the eye. He watched me calmly, a smile playing on his lips. Not bothered, not threatened. Just unworried. I studied him obviously, peering one way or another.

“So. You guys take the master-and-servant thing pretty seriously.”

“Dorian’s under my protection. It’s a duty I take seriously,” Anastasia said.

“Here’s the thing,” I said, moving around to the front of the sofa and taking a seat among them all. “My whole career is based on getting people to talk. Talk radio, that’s how it works. So Dorian here may be under orders not to talk, or maybe has decided not to talk, but I see that as a challenge. Because if there was some real reason for him not to talk to anyone, you wouldn’t risk him interacting with anyone and leave him in the basement instead. But I’m betting Provost and Valenti and the rest wanted to get this little relationship on camera. So at some point, when you all least expect it, I’m going to get him to talk.” I glared the challenge at them all.

“I like her,” Dorian said, with a faint precise accent that might have been English.

Pouting, I sat back. Well. So much for that little speech. “Dang. Steal my thunder, why don’t you.”

His smile was wry, and his eyes gleamed. Damn, he was hot. I said, “So now that you’re talking can I ask you a question, Dorian? You have a portrait in the attic or what?”

Dorian groaned and shook his head. Anastasia actually threw the pillow from her sofa at me. Throw pillow. Ha.

Gemma stared blankly. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, I forget how young you are,” Anastasia said to her. “Never mind, I’ll have a book for you to read later.”

I took note of that bit of information.

We talked for a while longer, mostly Anastasia asking questions about my show and how I’d gotten my start. She didn’t dig too deeply—I didn’t tell her anything I hadn’t mentioned on the air at one point or another. I expected her to ask how I’d become a werewolf—a traumatic episode on several fronts that I didn’t like talking about. But she didn’t. Almost like she knew, or suspected that I didn’t want to talk about it.

Then I really was too tired to keep my eyes open much longer. As a kid I’d been to sleepovers where if you were the first one to fall asleep you’d wake up with stuff written on your face in lipstick. I didn’t want to know what happened when you fell asleep in front of a couple of vampires. So I said good night and trundled upstairs to my room.

My room was on the second floor, in a corner, with a lovely view. I was looking forward to shutting the door and getting to sleep. Not looking forward to being in bed alone.

Odysseus Grant didn’t startle me and make me jump the way he might have. I smelled him first: the clean and quiet smell of a man who didn’t like to leave a trace. He stood at the end of the hallway, by the door to my room. “Kitty. Could I speak to you a moment?”

“What is it?”

“I only wanted to ask you to keep your eyes open. Have you heard of something vampires call the Long Game?”

My heart did a double-beat. My smile fell as my whole face went slack.

“Then you have heard of it,” Grant said, a wry curl to his lips.

I shook my bemusement away. Tried to clear my head. “Why are you asking? Cleaned up all of Vegas’s supernatural problems and need a new challenge?”

“What do you know about it?” he said.

“It’s a political thing, I think. It’s hard getting a straight answer out of them, but from what I gather there are some vampires trying to consolidate power. Trying to form some kind of monolithic vampire organization. Now, I’m not sure if this means they’re trying to take over the world—or if this is just something they play around with because after two thousand years of hanging out a guy gets bored. To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure I want to know. I just want to stay out of it.”

He raised a brow. I recognized the expression: wry disbelief. When was I ever able to stay out of anything?

“Will that be possible?” he asked.

“Not if I keep sticking my nose in it. So… you’re here because you think this has something to do with the Long Game? You think Anastasia—”

He put a finger over his lips, then said, “Just keep your eyes and ears open for me.”

“What have you heard?” I said. But he’d already walked to the other end of the hall and disappeared into his own room.

I looked around for the hidden cameras. Because damned if this wouldn’t play well on reality TV.

Iwas right about the meadow being perfect for elk. The next morning, a herd of them were grazing there. The sun was behind the lodge, behind the hills to the east, but had risen high enough to wash the valley in golden light, which brought out all the colors of the mountains, the grass, and the forest and sparkled off the lake. The elk, about five of them, were perfectly peaceful, moving step by step, noses buried in grass. I sat at the picture window in the living room and watched, breathing in the rich fumes of a cup of gourmet coffee graciously provided by SuperByte Entertainment and Skip the PA. The house was quiet; I could hear birds chirping outside. If I went out on the porch, I’d bet I could smell the beautiful, clean mountain air, the dew on the grass, and even the elk in the meadow. But I didn’t want to move and disturb anything. I might even have been relaxed. I was almost startled by the feeling.