Kitty's House of Horrors

“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.”

He took a deep breath, and the edge of desperation in his voice made him sound honest and heartfelt. “Look, Kitty, I know I shouldn’t have lied, I should have been upfront. I know that, and I’m sorry. But this is my big chance. This is SuperByte’s big chance. We probably look like a bunch of bottom-feeders—and I freely admit that’s what we’ve been until now. But we’re trying to rise above all that and get out of the late-night cable gutter. We have our sights set on A-list cable, maybe even network prime time. We want to go upscale, and this is our vehicle. Having you on board will help us do that.”

The guy gave a good pitch, I had to give him credit for that. I had to admit, I was a tiny bit flattered—me, A- list? Really? This wasn’t to say the whole thing still didn’t sound as exploitative as hell.

But I was always saying I wanted the supernatural out in the open. Didn’t I want to have a hand—or claw—in this? If it turned out well, yes, I did. If it didn’t turn out well… maybe I just had to take that gamble.

“All right,” I said.

“All right, you’re in?” Provost said hopefully.

“All right I’ll think about it. Seriously.”

“That’s all I can ask for,” he said, back in Hollywood deal-making mode. “Call me if you have any more questions.”

Hanging up, I felt like the decision had already been made. But there was still one person I had to talk to about it.

Home was a condo near the Cherry Creek area. I’d spent the whole drive there arranging the coming conversation in my head. Maybe it would even go a little like how I planned it.

The other person I had to talk to was Ben. My husband. We’d been married for a year. And we hadn’t killed each other yet, which I was pretty proud about. Not that we would literally do that, but we were both werewolves, and we could—if we didn’t depend on each other so much.

Ben was a lawyer with his own practice. He worked from home, which meant he was already in the living room watching evening news on TV when I came in, wincing and looking guilty, sure he’d suspect something was going on.

But he hardly noticed. “Good, you’re home,” he said. “I have some news.”

He seemed positively bubbling. I blinked at him. Wow—my conversation was already derailed and it hadn’t even started yet.

“So do I,” I jumped in. “I need some advice, actually. I just need to talk this over with someone a little more objective than I am.”

“You first,” he said. “Let’s get yours out of the way so we can get to the exciting part. ’Cause mine’s better.”

Now I was intrigued. I almost argued, but I wanted to have this talk before I chickened out. I slid next to him on the sofa.

“I’ve got an invitation to appear on a reality TV show—” I held up my hand to stop him because he’d already opened his mouth to argue. “They’re inviting a bunch of supernatural celebrities. Remember Tina McCannon from Paradox PI? She’s signed up, and so has Jeffrey Miles, and I don’t know who else they’ve got. But it looks like they’re trying to do this with a little credibility. It’ll tape over two weeks in Montana. They’ve got this hunting lodge or something, and they say they want it to be educational. Consciousness-raising. You know?” I realized I was trying to make it sound good. I wanted him to think it was a good idea.

He sat back, brows raised, looking at me like I was a little bit crazy. I’d thought he was long past being surprised by anything I got mixed up in.

“It sounds like the setup for a horror movie to me,” he said.

“God, please don’t say that. I’m already anticipating nightmares over this.”

“Then why are you even thinking about it?”

“Publicity,” I said, and I could feel the wild gleam in my eye.

“You show-business people are weird,” Ben said.

I liked to pretend I wasn’t exactly part of show business. Sure, I was in the business of entertaining people, but I was on radio. On the fringe. And I was even on the fringe as far as radio was concerned. It wasn’t like I was in the thick of the Hollywood madness of real show business, right? At least, not yet.

But you know? He was right. Show business was weird.

“It pays pretty well. And. Well. What I’m really worried about is being away from you for two weeks.”

Ben and I were a pack. Even if we hadn’t been the alpha werewolves leading the Denver pack, the two of us were a pair. A matched set. The idea that wolves mate for life isn’t accurate—in the wild, wolves will find a new mate if one of their pair dies, and an alpha male will mate with several females if the pack is prosperous. But Ben and I were pretty solid, and since we’d hooked up we hadn’t been apart for more than a couple of days. That was the worst part of this whole deal. I’d gotten used to having him in my life, and I didn’t like the prospect of being without. Of not having my guy watching my back.

I saw some of my own thoughts reflected back at me: hesitation, uncertainty. The conflict between human and wolf.

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “If we were a normal couple and you really needed to do this for your career, it wouldn’t even be a question, would it?”

We tried to be normal. We tried not to let our wolf sides overrule us. It was a dominance thing, just like being part of a wolf pack. Every time the wolf side won an argument, we felt a little less human.

“I think I’d still miss you.” I leaned my head on his shoulder.

“Thanks.” He kissed the top of my head, and I could have stopped talking about anything and just cuddled for the next hour or so. “But you still want to know if I think it’s a good idea or a bad idea.”

“Yeah.”

“It sounds… interesting.”

“That is such a loaded word,” I said.

“And you said Tina’s agreed to it? She’s cool.”

“Yeah, and Jeffrey Miles—you remember him, from the hearings in D.C.? He’s cool, too.”

He pulled back just enough to look at me. “Do you know what I think? I think it’ll be good for you to get away for a little while. Since I came along and you took over the pack, you haven’t had a chance to do your own thing. You should go. Think of it as a vacation.”

I hadn’t looked at it that way. “Most men would get suspicious if their wives wanted to go on vacation alone for a couple of weeks. Come to think of it, most women would get suspicious if their husbands suggested they go on vacation alone.”

“Honey, I can’t hide anything from you. You’d smell it on me.”

“Hmm, true.” I turned my face to his neck and took in his scent, distinctively his, soap and sweat, spice and wolf.

He kissed me—a quick peck on my forehead. “I still have my news.”

“Is it really better than mine?”

He picked up a letter from the coffee table, marked with some kind of state government seal at the top. Ben was a lawyer; he had dozens of official-looking papers fanned out on the table.

Then he said, “Cormac has a parole hearing.”