Carrie Vaughn: Kitty's House of Horrors

“You’re not scheduling this over a full moon, are you?” I said.

“Oh, no, certainly not,” Provost said, way too seriously.

“Just one more question,” I said. “Have you signed on Mercedes Cook?”

Provost hesitated, as if unsure which answer would be the right one. I knew which answer was the right one: if the Broadway star/vampire/double-crossing fink was on the show, I was staying as far away as possible.

“No,” he said finally. “She turned us down flat.”

Wonders never ceased. But they’d asked her. And she’d said no, so that was a point in the show’s favor. “Ah. Good,” I said, and Provost relaxed.

We managed polite farewells and handshakes. Ozzie and I walked the two producers outside to their rented BMW. Provost continued to be gracious and flattering. Valenti stayed in the background. Sizing me up, I couldn’t help but think.

After they’d driven away, we returned to the building. The summer sun beat down. It had been a beautiful day, a recent heat spell had broken, and the air felt clean. Smelled like rain.

I turned to Ozzie. “Well?”

He shrugged. “I think it’s a great opportunity. But it’s up to you. You’re the one who’s going to have to go through with it.”

“I just wish I knew what kooky tricks they have up their sleeves. What are going to be the consequences if I do this?”

“What’s the worst that could happen?” he said.

I hated that question. Reality always came up with so much worse than I could imagine. “I could make an idiot of myself, ruin my reputation, lose my audience, my ratings, my show, and never make a living in this business again.”

“No, the worst that could happen is you’d die on film in a freak accident, and how likely is that?” Trust Ozzie to be the realist. I glared at him.

“Who knows? At best it’ll draw in a whole new audience. To tell you the truth, with people like Tina and Jeffrey involved, it kind of sounds like fun.”

“You know what I’m going to say,” Ozzie said. “Any publicity is good publicity.”

So far in my career, that had been true. I was waiting for the day when it wasn’t. “Let me call Tina and Jeffrey and find out why they signed on.”

Ihad Tina’s cell phone number stored on speed dial—she was one of my go-to people on all things weird—and called her as soon as I got back to my office and shut the door. I expected it to roll over to voice mail but was pleasantly surprised when she answered on the second ring.

“Kitty!” she said, before hello even. Caller ID made everyone psychic, at least with phone calls.

“Hi, Tina. How are you?”

“It’s so good to hear from you! Is everything okay?”

People always sounded worried when I called them. Maybe because I only ever called a lot of them when I was in trouble and needed help. I needed to set up more lunch dates or have more parties, to cure people of the idea that a call from me automatically equaled danger. Then again, that was probably a lost cause.

“Everything’s fine for once, I think.”

“I love how you never sound sure when you say that,” Tina said cheerfully.

I sighed. “I’m afraid if I relax at all the universe will decide I need a challenge.” Which brought me to the business at hand. “I’ve just had a visit from a couple of guys with SuperByte Entertainment.”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “ Those guys. What a couple of freaks, huh?”

I agreed; I’d found them eerily plastic, like they’d been pressed from a mold: Hollywood sleazebag. “This show they’re putting together? They said you were on board, and I wanted to ask you why you agreed to it. Do you think it’s a good publicity opportunity? Did you… I don’t know… get a good vibe from those guys or what?”

She paused for long enough I thought we’d lost the connection. “Tina?”

When she finally spoke, she sounded confused. “Um… I mostly signed on because they said that you’d already signed on.”

“What?”

“They told me you’d already agreed to do the show. I figured if you’d decided it was okay, it was a good idea, and I thought it’d be fun hanging out with you again.”

“Tina—I heard about this for the first time this afternoon. I hadn’t agreed to anything.”

“God, they lied to me. I shouldn’t be surprised.” I imagined her planting her hand on her forehead.

I tried not to sound angry. “You’re psychic! Can’t you tell when somebody’s lying?”

“I’m psychic—that doesn’t mean I can read minds,” she shot back. “Kitty, you met those guys. They were really convincing!”

“You didn’t think to call me to talk about it first?”

“No. I mean, face it—this show totally sounds like something you’d do.”

Any more arguing stalled in my throat. Because she was right. I had a few crazy publicity stunts of my own under my belt. And why did I get the feeling Jeffrey Miles would give me a similar story? Those bastards had used me. Flung my name around like so much currency. I ought to be flattered.

“That’s it,” I said, grumbling. “I’m not doing a show run by lying Hollywood scumbags.”

“Kitty, please, you have to sign on. You can’t leave me all alone with this thing. You owe me.”

Crap. That was a pretty compelling argument. If I left Tina high and dry with this, I’d feel guilty about it for the rest of my life.

“Did you sign anything? Surely if you did you can get out of it.”

“Well,” she started, and I waited for the other shoe to drop. “Here’s the thing: this really could be great publicity.” That was going to be everybody’s excuse for anything, wasn’t it? She continued, “And the other thing is I figure this is the only way we can counter some of the real wackos they’re bound to recruit for this. Right?”

“The fake psychics and emo vampires?” I said. I knew exactly what she was talking about: the kind of crap that gave people like us a bad name, that we had to spend half of our time apologizing for.

“Right,” she said.

“You’ve got a point.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do, Kitty. But please think about backing me up on this thing.”

“All right. I’ll think about it.”

“Thanks, Kitty. Come on, it’ll be fun!”

Maybe we could make it fun. We’d be like two girls at summer camp.

We clicked off, and I dialed another number. Joey Provost had left KNOB only an hour before; he might not even have arrived at the airport yet.

He answered his phone with, “Hey, Kitty, tell me you’ve decided to say yes. Don’t let me get on the plane without hearing yes.”

I suddenly wanted to punch him. Sometimes I really hated caller ID. “Why did you lie to Tina and Jeffrey and tell them I’d already agreed to do the show?”

He hesitated only a beat. “Who told you that? Who said I told them that?”

“I called Tina! She told me!”

“Well, yes. Okay,” he said, barely stumbling on the words.

“Explain,” I said.

“All right. I’ll level with you. We need names for a production like this, and I had to start somewhere. You were at the top of our list—you were always at the top of the list. With you on board, half our other names didn’t hesitate.”

“Why didn’t you talk to me first? Why did you have to lie about it?” I said.

“I had to have some way of convincing you, didn’t I? Once I got the others signed up, I could do that.”

The trouble was, he made sense, in a weird corporate-logic way. I understood why he did it; but he wouldn’t admit there was anything wrong with it.

I tamped down on my anger. “Well, now you have to convince me why I should agree to work with a scheming liar.”