People were sitting on the sofas, looking up at us with interest. One of them was Joey Provost.
He stood and came toward me, hand outstretched for shaking. Another attack, Wolf growled. We were never going to appreciate aggressive human friendliness, were we? I gritted my teeth, smiled, and shook his hand.
“Hi! Welcome, all of you!” He shook each of our hands in turn. His smile was ferociously pleasant.
“Thanks,” I said, glancing around, taking it in. I smelled old soot and the smoke of many fires from the immense fireplace; dinnertime cooking smells from the kitchen, red wine in glasses, and people. Different kinds of people—not entirely human people. My nose was working overtime, trying to take it all in.
“Why don’t we come in and make some introductions?” That smile never dimmed, and I sensed an edge of anxiety to it. I didn’t envy Provost his job here; he wasn’t just going to be producing a TV show, he was going to be playing mediator and camp counselor.
Provost gestured to a large, aggressively muscled black man with a hooded glare sitting on a chair, a little ways from the others.
“Jerome Macy,” Provost said.
“Yeah, we’ve met,” I said while the others nodded greetings.
The pro wrestler nodded at me. I nodded back, and we didn’t meet gazes—wolf body language that said, Hey, we’re cool, nothing wrong here. He was another werewolf and understood how weird this all was. I might spend the next couple of weeks being more comfortable around him than anyone else.
“Finally, we get some eye candy,” said a guy I didn’t know, scoping out Tina, Ariel, and me with a definite leer. I had to admit, we did sort of look like Charlie’s Angels standing together.
He smelled weird. Definitely not human, but a flavor of not-human I hadn’t encountered before—and I was racking up quite the scent catalog. Not a vampire, not a werewolf, were-tiger, or were-jaguar. I’d even met a were–African wild dog, but this wasn’t any of those. He had a human and something-else smell, like all lycanthropes had. But the something else was kind of… fishy. Salty. Wild without the fur. Weird.
“Lee Ponatac,” he said in response to my inquiring glare. He had dark hair, and his features were square, young, his eyes brown and shining. He had the scruffy appearance of someone who spent a lot of time outside and didn’t care much about polish. It was a nice look, and he pulled it off well. My inquiring glare didn’t go away, and he just kept his charismatic smile. “Were-seal. Children of Sedna, we call them back home,” he said finally.
My eyes widened. “Really?”
Provost said, “Lee is a state legislator in Alaska. He may be the first publicly acknowledged lycanthrope elected to office in the country. I’m a little surprised we discovered him before you did.”
“Yeah. But hey, happy to meet you now. Were-seal? Really? And you don’t think this gig will come back to haunt you if you ever decide to run for president?”
He smirked. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
I didn’t think there’d ever come a time when I couldn’t be surprised, and he seemed pleased at my astonishment. Oh, this was going to be a fun couple of weeks.
The other man, a guy in his thirties, a little overweight and a little balding but not more than average, sat back in an armchair, arms crossed, frowning slightly as he regarded us all. He smelled human. But so did more than half the people in the room.
“And you are?” I asked.
“Conrad Garrett,” he said.
“The author?” I said. I’d heard of Garrett, who’d made a profession of writing books debunking the existence of the supernatural, claiming government conspiracy about the NIH’s Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology, calling foul on every shred of evidence proving the existence of things like, oh, werewolves. The public recognition of all this was still too new—of course skeptics came forward. “So why don’t you return any of my calls?”
“Because acknowledging you only validates your claims,” he said, straightforward, like he’d practiced the line.
I huffed. “If you don’t believe any of us are real, what are you even doing here?”
“That’s putting it a bit existentially,” he said. “I just don’t believe any of you are what you claim you are.”
“Wow. Extreme state of denial,” Ariel said.
I stared. “Seriously? Really? After everything that’s happened? After Congress held hearings and all the stuff on TV?”
“Video footage can be faked,” he said. “As for Congress—they’re being manipulated by lobbyists. I think it’s pharmaceutical companies inventing new ‘diseases’”—he actually did the finger quotes—“in order to get research funding that they have no intention of using for research.”
I couldn’t help it; I giggled. “Shit, you’re going to make me shape-shift right here in front of you, aren’t you?”
“I look forward to it,” he said calmly.
Provost raised a hand to point at the cameras. “Kitty, if you could watch the language? And please—no shape-shifting. Not just yet.”
Lee crossed his arms. “That’s the setup for the show. We’re supposed to spend the next two weeks convincing him that all this is real. Then watch him freak out when he can’t deny it anymore.”
“No, seriously,” I said, still stifling giggles. “It’ll only take five minutes. I’ll shift right now, take a little run—that’s some great wolf territory out there. Then we can all go home.”
“Kitty,” Provost said with forced patience. I had a feeling I was going to be hearing that tone of voice a lot.
