“If you could get started as soon as Anastasia and the others join you. That’d be
After dinner, I called everyone to the living room and announced, “Okay, kids. Camp counselor Kitty has a game, so gather ’round and play nice for the cameras.” Gordon, who was manning the gear this evening, gave me a grin over his camera.
The vampire trio had joined us again, presumably after their dinner. I covertly studied Dorian for puncture wounds but didn’t find any. One blood donor for two vampires seemed a bit light. Dorian would be fainting by the end of the first week. Maybe the vampires didn’t take much. Maybe that was how they stayed so thin. Their clothing this evening was as stunningly elegant as it had been the night before. Gemma wore a different gorgeous cocktail dress, and Anastasia wore flowing silk trousers and a camisole. Still all in black.
I was starting to really like this room, with its rustic, comfy furniture, warm wood fixtures, and soft lighting. A fire burned in the big stone fireplace, making the room cozy, and I had the feeling of being protected in a cocoon of light and warmth that kept the cool night at bay. Like curling up with my wolf pack.
Sitting cross-legged on one of the big armchairs, I faced the gang spread out around me, seated on sofas, on the hearth in front of the fireplace, and in Lee’s case, on the floor. In front of me I held the sheet of paper I’d written my questions on.
I regarded the gathering. “I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve called you here this evening.” I grinned, barely able to keep from giggling, because that line never got old.
Lee smirked. “Did you call us here just so you could say that?”
“No, actually. Mr. Provost put me up to getting the ball rolling tonight. So we’re going to play a little game called Kitty’s Truth or Dare. Except without the dare part, because I shudder to think what you all would actually be willing to do.”
“Maybe we can save that part for next week, when we start getting punchy,” Tina said.
“Hm. Wouldn’t that be a bad idea? And now that you’ve said it out loud, Joey is sure to go for it,” I said. “Really, this will be painless. I’m just going to ask you a few questions.”
“Wait a minute,” Tina said. “Show of hands: how many of you has Kitty interviewed on her show?” Jerome, Ariel, Jeffrey, and Tina raised their hands. To me she said, “Is this going to be anything like that?”
Hm, I’d definitely have to come up with a way to get the ones I hadn’t interviewed yet on my show. I studied them appraisingly.
“Kitty, you look like you’re hunting,” Lee said.
“Who, me? So yeah, those guys can vouch for me. It’ll be just like that. Nothing to be afraid of.” Why did they all look so skeptical? “Look, this is voluntary, and if you have a problem with it you don’t have to play along. But I think it’ll be fun. It’ll be like those office ice-breaker things.”
“Those are never fun,” Ariel said darkly.
“Right. Fair enough. So, let’s get the rote ones out of the way first. Anastasia, what year were you born?”
“You want that in Gregorian or Julian?”
“Ooh, fancy,” I said. “So did you just drop a hint or what?”
“I’m not going to answer that question, Kitty,” she said, donning a catty smile.
“Didn’t think so. But I wouldn’t feel like I’d done my job if I hadn’t asked. Gemma, how about you?”
She glanced at Anastasia, like she and Dorian always did, as if asking permission. It irritated me, but I wasn’t going to change it by bitching about it. Now, if I could get each of them alone and grill them for a couple of minutes…
I didn’t detect any sign from Anastasia, no hint that she’d spoken or given Gemma a cue, but the younger vampire turned to me and answered, “Nineteen-eighty.”
I blinked. “Holy crap, we’re the same age.” I looked her up and down, judging her all over again. She looked about twenty, give or take a couple of years. That meant about the same year I’d been attacked and turned into a werewolf, she’d become a vampire. I suddenly felt like I was looking into a “what might have been” mirror. What if it had been a vampire instead of a werewolf that had gotten me?
I wouldn’t be winning any beauty pageants, for one thing. Also, to be honest, I was glad I hadn’t frozen in time at that age. I’d grown a lot since then. I liked to think I was a much better person now, and that I wore my age well.
“You know,” Conrad said, “
“Hey,” I said. “Every vampire had to be brand-new at some point, right?” Gemma just smiled, and I recovered, awkwardly. “I guess I won’t be asking you any ‘wisdom of the ages’ questions, then. Next question’s for Lee. And this is a serious one, so stop smirking at me.” I was getting into a rhythm, just like I did on the show, which was kind of fun. Even more interesting was having everyone sitting here, letting me interact with a live audience. I was glad we were getting this on film.
“Lee: how many were-seals are there, and is there any kind of community? Do you hang out, have packs like werewolves do, anything like that?”
“No,” he said. “We’re loners. I don’t even know how many there are. I know a few others in Alaska; we run into each other occasionally. Usually we give each other a wide berth.”
Conrad said, because obviously he couldn’t let anything go, “You’re asking me to believe in not just werewolves, but were-seals? What about were-bears? Were-poodles? Were-rabbits? Where do you draw the line?”
He was just trying to get my goat. Best thing I could do was play it straight. “Were-rabbit? Not likely. In my experience, only carnivores manifest lycanthropic varieties. But were-bears, yeah, totally, there’s some of those.”
He gaped, but as I’d hoped, he had no other response to that.
“Moving on!” I said. “Odysseus Grant. Where the hell does your box of vanishing open to
“You’re fishing. Ask another one.” Grant didn’t change his expression, didn’t miss a beat.
“Box of vanishing?” Conrad said. “Are you implying he does the vanishing-person trick and people actually
I glared at him. “Are you going to give commentary on everything?”
“That’s my job here, isn’t it?”
“Alrighty, let’s skip forward. Here’s my question for Conrad: What’s the strangest unexplained thing that’s ever happened to you?”
“Well, I don’t know that anything like that has really happened to me. Not like you’re talking about.”
“Forget the werewolves and vampires for a minute. I’m talking just… odd. Coincidence, déjà vu, fate, any of that. The wind blew a winning lottery ticket into your hand. You got a call from someone right when you were going to call them. Anything that made you stop and wonder for a minute.”
“Let me think.” He leaned back, hand on chin. We all watched, quiet and eager. I felt sure he was going to deny that anything strange or odd had ever happened to him, not so much as a shadow in the closet when he was a kid.
So imagine my surprise when he said, “I thought I saw a ghost, once. That is, I was a kid, and I thought it could be a ghost, until I thought about it and realized there was probably a reasonable explanation. A draft from a window or something.”
Tina looked like she was about to jump up and say something, but I shot her a look and she settled back. We had something here—I didn’t want to scare him off.
“What made you think it was a ghost? What about it made it so strange?”
He shook his head, his expression turning inward, unfocused with the memory. “It was the cold,” he said. “It was a warm summer day, but there was this spot in the hallway that turned freezing. It’s like that expression, someone walking over your grave. That’s what it felt like. I could have sworn that someone was watching me. And that if I’d reached my hand out, someone standing there would have taken it.” Unconsciously, he closed his hands into fists.
If Conrad had said something about smoky figures or moving furniture, I might have written off the account to
