Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

thinking awfully hard about something. He acknowledged my arrival with a glance.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

He straightened, and the studious expression grew even more intent, like he was trying to figure out how to explain something. “That poker game I played? It turned out to be kind of... interesting.”

We weren’t even married yet and I could already recognize the tone of guilt. I sat next to him on the bed. “How much did you lose?”

“That’s just it,” he said. Now his brow furrowed, confused. He’d failed to figure out how to explain this. “I won.”

My eyes bugged. “You what? Oh my God. That’s great!” I had visions of him winning enough to pay for the wedding and then some. All those Vegas dreams come true. I sat down next to him. “So you can take me out to a really nice dinner, right?”

He held my hand. “That’s just the thing, it was a fifty-dollar buy-in satellite tournament. I haven’t won any money yet, but I did win a spot in Saturday’s tourney. First place is half a million.”

I was glad I was sitting down. “You’re a poker genius. I had no idea.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I can usually break even in a home game. I did this on a whim, because it was a way to play a lot of poker for not too much money. I’d lose the fifty bucks, then walk away. But I didn’t lose.”

“So you got lucky. That’s great.” But there was more to it than that, or he wouldn’t be sitting here looking like he’d been hit on the head with a hammer.

He shook his head. “No. There was... something. I could read people. Totally read them. I knew what they were going to do, I could tell when they were bluffing. Everything. And I was never wrong.”

“So you got suddenly, conveniently psychic?”

He looked at me, and this time he smiled, a sneaky, wry smile. “I could smell it. I could hear their heartbeats speed up. Sense their muscles twitch when they squeezed their cards just a little harder. It was... incredible. Amazing. That’s part of poker, you always look for tells, you try to hide your own. But these are things most people wouldn’t even be aware of, much less be able to hide. And I could sense them all.”

“It’s the wolf. The wolf sensed all that.”

“It was like hunting,” he said.

I knew exactly what he was talking about. As wolves, we hunted. Every full moon we went into the wild and searched for prey. Our senses—smell, hearing, taste—let us follow the smallest track, let us know when a rabbit flinched before it ran. Our human selves retained some of those senses.

Apparently, Ben had used those senses to win at poker.

“That’s really funny,” I said.

“I know, I almost gave the whole thing away by cracking up at the table. I think the other players wrote it off to my being a crazy tourist with an incredible winning streak.”

“Well, congratulations. Hey, wait a minute—you said the tournament’s Saturday? What time on Saturday?”

Now he really looked like he’d tasted something sour. “Two p.m.”

The same time as the wedding. That didn’t quite register. He was ditching our wedding for poker?

He talked fast. “I already called the chapel, they can move us to six p.m. It’s just a couple of hours. If it’s okay with you. Is it okay? I’m really sorry. Kitty—say something.”

If this was happening to someone else, it would be funny. Let that be a lesson. I leaned over and kissed him, muffling his next sentence. He blinked in surprise. Nice to see I could still keep him on his toes. Then he put his arms around me, like a good boyfriend.

“You’re not angry?” he said, when we came up for air.

I draped my arms over his shoulders. “I could get angry and look like a petty, spoiled girlfriend, or I can deal with it. I’ll deal with it. Because hey, if you have a chance to win half a million, who am I to argue a little thing like a wedding? But I might make you explain it to my mother.”

“I’m probably not even going to win. I’m sure I won’t even last that long. I’ll be out of the running in the first half hour. Then I’m all yours.”

“You’re already all mine. I’m just loaning you out for a little while.” I tightened my embrace around him, pulled myself close until I straddled him, and kissed him as I tipped him back on the bed.

We were a little late heading out for dinner.

Chapter 6

I’d made reservations at the steakhouse at the Napoli, supposedly one of the best in Vegas. My tastes weren’t that refined—a good steak was a good steak, but I appreciated a good rare steak a lot more now than I did before becoming a werewolf.

The real reason we were going there was so I could talk to Dominic, Master vampire of Las Vegas, after dinner. I hadn’t told Ben that part yet. I was waiting for the right moment. Funny how I hadn’t quite found the right moment yet.

Ben had pulled out his polished mode, very GQ in a suit and power tie. I wore a knee-length flowery, flowing skirt, a red fitted blouse, and heels. I left my hair down. We both cleaned up pretty good.

The Napoli was a couple of blocks down the Strip, and we decided to walk, thinking the fresh evening air would be nice. Ha. I had thought the night would be more cool and pleasant that the day had been. That was how the summer climate worked in Colorado. But here the heat only cooled from “excruciating” to “barely tolerable.”

Now that it was dark I discovered that Erica was right about the vampires.

I could smell vampires in casinos and bars, even walking on the street outside. Not a lot of them, and not all together, but they were everywhere, scattered here and there. A woman sitting at a bar, a man surveying a set of blackjack tables, another woman attached to a high roller at the craps table, blowing on his dice for luck and gazing at him with hungry eyes. I could smell them, cold islands in seas of living, sweating, breathing people.

They were looking for prey. A drunk businessman at a trade show might not even remember the sultry brunette taking him back to his room—then biting his neck. Vampires didn’t have to kill when they took blood, and I was guessing they didn’t. For all its lurid reputation, Vegas didn’t have one as a murder capital, CSI notwithstanding. Bad for tourism. And the vampires knew that.

They fed on the tourists just like everyone else in this town.

I didn’t smell any other lycanthropes. I thought I might, but I couldn’t blame others of my kind for staying out of this mess, the crowds and the constant feeling of near-panic. Maybe I had this sense of being overwhelmed not because I was new to town, but because I was a werewolf. Maybe it never went away. Lycanthropes didn’t like it, so they stayed out.

A couple of times, the vampires we passed paused and looked at us, following me and Ben with their gazes. Each time, I looked back to see their eyes widen in mild surprise. Like they weren’t used to seeing werewolves around here.

“First the gun show and now vampires,” Ben whispered at me as we entered the Napoli lobby. “Vegas isn’t supposed to be this creepy.”

“So you admit it. The gun show is creepy.”

“The vampires are creepy,” Ben said. “The gun show is just a gun show.”

“I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree about which of those is creepier,” I said. And now was definitely not the moment to bring up visiting Dominic.

The decor at the Napoli was faux Italian Renaissance. Ceiling paintings of pastel cherubs and women in flowing togas arced overhead: gold and crystal chandeliers dripped light over red marble tiles. Through an archway resting on Ionic pillars lay the casino with a billion more flashing lights and clanking slots and electronic poker machines. In the middle of the islands of slots, marble fountains dripped water, which sparkled in the chaos of lights. The whole place screamed wealth and decadence. And all this could be yours, with a little luck.

On the way to the restaurant, we walked past one of the casino bars, where a woman accosted us. Or rather me, because she clearly hurried straight for me after spotting me across the room. She’d been leaning on a ledge to show off the cleavage revealed by her low-cut dress to the two men she was talking with. She abandoned them when she spotted me, however.

She was a vampire. It wasn’t just her pale skin, when every other woman of fashion had a bronze patina. She smelled cold and undead. I could smell a vampire across a room, and she was it.

“Speak of the devil,” Ben muttered, an anxious edge to his voice. His hand closed around mine.

Suddenly feeling cornered, I braced at her approach, looking around for an escape route. I was already tired of feeling panicked. If nothing else, we could bolt into the casino area. Nobody could do anything with a crowd of people and a million security cameras watching, right? Through Ben’s hand I could feel him tense, probably thinking the same thing.

Then she said, “Oh my God, are you really Kitty Norville?” She gave Ben a quick, awkward glance of acknowledgment, but all her attention focused on me.

Wait a minute. She was beaming, an unabashed smile lighting up her whole face. She’d recognized me, and she was a fan. Vampires were part of my audience, too, after all.

Smirking, Ben dropped my hand.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “That’s pretty good, spotting me across the room like that.”

“I’m such a big fan of your show, I knew you were going to be in Vegas, but I didn’t think I’d actually see you walking across the lobby like a normal person. Are you staying here? I’m totally going to be at the show tomorrow, I can’t wait.”

She was almost bouncing. I’d never seen a vampire get this enthusiastic about anything. Most of them cultivated an attitude of arrogant detachment. She probably hadn’t been a vampire long.

I couldn’t help but smile. This really was flattering. For the first year or so of my show, no one knew what I looked like. I was still getting used to the public-notoriety thing. “Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the support. What’s your name?”

“Lisa,” she said, offering her hand to shake, which I did. It was cold.

“Nice to meet you. It’ll be good to see a familiar face during the show tomorrow.”

“Oh, this is so cool, I’m bringing everyone I know.”

Aw, she was adorable. I beamed right back at her. “Lisa, I’m sorry, we have reservations and really should be going.”

“Oh, of course, I don’t mean to interrupt. Have a really good time, okay?” We all said goodbye, and she went back to her quarry.

“That was kind of surreal,” Ben said. He was still smirking.

“See,” I said. “Vampire, but not creepy. Sylvia sneaking up on me outside the gun show? That was creepy.”

He just chuckled.

It turned out the Napoli steakhouse did serve an excellent rare steak, with a fabulous cabernet, topped off with a chocolate raspberry torte for dessert. His expression amused, Ben watched me devour this orgasmic dish. “You know why I really want to marry you? You’re so easy to please.”

“My needs are simple,” I said, licking every last crumb of chocolate off my fork.