Kitty Steals the Show

“We’ve only had twenty outright cancellations,” Ozzie said, looking more harried and middle-aged than usual. Only. As if that wasn’t an actual, measurable percentage of our market. “We’ll probably have more, depending on how you follow up. Do you know how you’re going to follow up?”

“I’m not going to apologize, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m not looking for an apology, I’m looking for an explanation,” he said.

“I told the truth.”

He began pacing, gesturing broadly, lecturing in a tone of frustration. “You’re supposed to be the one calling bullshit on the conspiracy theories, and here you are, drinking the Kool-Aid—”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t believe it.”

Ozzie put his hands on his hips and sighed. Neither one of them would look at me now. I stared at Matt, trying to get him to glance up. He’d always been on my side. He’d seen some of this firsthand. I thought he would trust me.

They didn’t believe me. My Wolf side bristled, crouching in a figurative corner, teeth bared in challenge, growling. My body tensed, my gaze narrowed. They couldn’t read the signs.

I didn’t belong here.

Ozzie continued, oblivious. “Kitty. This show is your baby. You made it what it is, no one’s going to argue about that. No one else could have done what you’ve done with it. I’ve never told you what to do, what to talk about, how to run things. I’ve never suggested an agenda. But I’m telling you now—you have to backpedal. Get back to basics. Bring on some cream puff interviews. Because if you keep on, if you turn The Midnight Hour into a paranoid soapbox—no one will listen to you.” No one but the real crazies, he meant.

“It’s not paranoid—” I stopped. I’d been about to say, if they’re really out to get you. I thought I knew what this looked like from the outside—crazy, ranty, unbalanced. I thought if I could just convince them, if I could prove to them that I wasn’t crazy … Maybe I didn’t know what it looked like. Maybe I really had turned a corner. How would I ever know?

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said finally. “I have to think about it.”

“Take a couple of weeks off if you need to,” Ozzie said. “We can always rerun old episodes.”

“That won’t look bad,” I muttered.

“Then come up with something,” he said. “Come back Friday and do something about it.” He marched out of the room, his lips pursed with pity and disappointment.

I waited for Matt to do the same. He was my age, stout, cheerful, with dark hair and faded T-shirt and jeans. He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and finally regarded me like he was listening to a new album and trying to decide if he hated it.

“Well?” I finally asked because I couldn’t stand it anymore.

He ducked his gaze, hiding a smile. “Kitty. I’m with you. I’ve been with you since you sat in that studio”—he pointed down the hall—“and said you were a werewolf. I can’t say I understand any of this. I can’t say I ever did. But I’m not going to quit on you now.”

If he had … I don’t know what I would have done. Found someone to replace him, I supposed, but it wouldn’t have been the same.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice cracking.

“You’re welcome.”

* * *

THURSDAY NIGHT, I was at New Moon. Cormac had checked in with his parole officer—no harm done there—and was back at his warehouse job, playing the good citizen. He was getting pretty good at it. Ben had had a client call him from the county jail. The client wouldn’t talk over the phone about why he’d been arrested, so with a long-suffering roll of his eyes, Ben had run to the rescue. Life was getting back to normal.

Shaun was managing the restaurant tonight. He’d been hovering, crestfallen when I snapped at him to leave me alone. I was reading a popular history of London I’d picked up at the airport on the way home, and had a pen and notepad to make notes. I was trying to think of some innocuous anecdote to focus the show on, but I found myself wanting to talk about Ned, the convocation of vampires, Flemming, what had happened to Tyler, and every encounter I’d had with Roman and Mercedes. Maybe I could come up with a compromise.

The e-mail comments I’d gotten through my Web site—not to mention blog posts, forum comments, op-ed pieces, essays, and rants—gave me an idea of what to expect when I opened the line for calls next time. Half the commentary was some form of, “Are you crazy?” Had I finally gone around the bend? Was I even really a werewolf or was this all an elaborate hoax? I hadn’t heard that one since my Senate testimony. I expected all of that. The problem was the other half of the comments, which assured me that I was exactly right, there was a mysterious global conspiracy, and here was the lengthy detailed explanation. My favorite so far described the baby-eating lizard aliens who made their home in a tunnel system deep below Denver International Airport. Awesome.

When I said, “But I’m right, my conspiracy is real,” I sounded just like the baby- eating lizard alien people.

Ben and I had started looking at houses in the western foothills. He was right, it was probably time. The condo felt too temporary for our increasingly settled lives. If I wanted to start a family like I kept talking about, more space would be useful. The trouble was, lost market share meant lost income. Even if I could put a book proposal together and sell it tomorrow, I couldn’t count on seeing the money for months. Ben was confident we could scrape together enough for bigger mortgage payments. I wasn’t so sure. I seemed to have lost my optimism somewhere along the way.

When my phone rang, the sound startled me. I’d been lost in my own world, and I hadn’t expected anyone to reach into that world to grab hold and yank me out.

Caller ID said Rick, which was a relief. He couldn’t possibly be disappointed in me. “Hello?”

“Kitty. Do you have time this evening to stop by Obsidian? I’d like to show you something.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“No. At least not more so than usual.” The distinction didn’t seem to bother him; he sounded as easygoing as he always did.

“Yeah. I can be there in an hour or so.”

When I arrived at Obsidian, the art gallery he owned, I went to the basement stairs. Rick was waiting at the door for me, so I didn’t even have to argue with any flunkies about letting me in. He and his Family kept a lair here, an office and apartments, though I’d never seen any part of it other than the main hallway and the office and living room in back. Just like Rick had never seen where the pack spent full moon nights. We had our separate realms. It was a wonder any of us ever worked together.

Rick politely ushered me into the wide living room, which had sofas and a coffee table on one end and a desk and shelves on the other. The place was simple, functional, livable.

“Have a seat,” he said, indicating the comfortable chair on the other side of the desk.

“What’s this about?”

I resisted looking over my shoulder for the practical joke. He opened a drawer and produced a padded shipping envelope, already opened. I didn’t see the return address or stamps, but it looked battered, as if it had traveled some great distance. Turning it upside down, he shook, and a packet fell onto his desk. Thick, heavy, made of some expensive, cream-colored paper, it looked like a wedding invitation, or a medieval deed.

His smile was cryptic. Mischievous, even. He turned it right side up, showing me the wax seal, the thick red blob imprinted with an ornate crest. Medieval deed it was, then.

The seal had already been cracked. I unfolded the thick paper to reveal writing, ornate and curling, in dark ink that seemed to glow against the rich paper. I could make out letters, put some of them together into words, but the language was Latin, which I recognized but couldn’t read.

“What’s it say?” I asked Rick.

“It’s from Nasser, who is the Master of Tripoli. He’s requesting a meeting to discuss ways in which we might oppose Dux Bellorum and…” He picked up the page again and read a phrase. “… terminamus ludum longum.”

“Which means…”

“‘We end the Long Game.’ Once and for all. End it without finishing it. He saw a video of your speech in London and wants to meet you. He didn’t know there was anyone else in the world opposing Roman, and now he does. Should I invite him to visit?”