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,
“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
“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. “
“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. “We’d like this to be a gradual revelation. If we do it right you won’t have to shape-shift at all.”
“And we won’t break his little mind quite so badly, right?” Tina added.
“Whatever,” I said, still giggling. “Is there any of that wine left? I think I could use a drink.”
Provost introduced us to the rest of the crew—Ron Valenti and another co-producer named Eli Cabe would be doing most of the technical work on the show. They’d also brought along a trio of production assistants—Skip, Amy, and Gordon—to help. They were eager twenty-somethings, who seemed giddy to be working on a real show—any show. This was their foot in the door. They looked the part, dressed in casual jeans and funky T-shirts, with headsets permanently attached to their ears and clipboards in their hands. Skip had long, dark hair in a ponytail; Amy was petite and energetic, and she tended to shout across rooms; and Gordon was a bit heavyset and always seemed to be smiling about something. They’d also take care of the catering—the kitchen was fully stocked and we’d have three hot meals a day. This might even turn out to feel like a real vacation.
The lodge had a back room, off the living room, normally set up as a library or reading room. The production crew had taken it over and converted it to a studio, where they parked all their cameras, monitors, and editing equipment. Here, they’d review their footage as it came in and start making the “magic.” It was off-limits to participants, of course. I was already thinking of how I could sneak a look in.
The show hadn’t officially started taping yet; we were still missing people. The scheduled “activities”—and didn’t that sound ominous—would start tomorrow. For now, the cameras were getting footage for some kind of introductory montage, and in the meantime we could all get to know each other. Happily, the lodge had a liberally stocked wine cabinet. It would help to take the edge off whenever I had to talk to Conrad. I had a feeling it was going to be all too easy to bait this guy.
I started in right away, of course. “Conrad, tell me something: you do believe that astronauts have walked on the moon, right?”
“Of course,” he said.
“And Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone when he shot Kennedy?”
“Probably, yes.”
“Good, you’re not a complete conspiracy nut.” Just a partial one. “Hey, I have it on good authority from a vampire in Las Vegas that Oswald used silver bullets. What do you say to that?”
Various skeptical responses followed that announcement. I just grinned. I still hadn’t done the research—like did Kennedy use the White House silver when he was in office?—to back that one up. I wasn’t sure I believed the vampire who told me this. But I still wondered.
Lee said, “You’re even more of a loudmouth in person than you are on your show. I thought it was all an act.”
“I became a DJ because I’m a loudmouth, not the other way around,” I said.
An artificial noise intruded—the drone of an airplane descending into the valley. Provost stood and looked out the living room’s big picture window that gave a view over the porch and into the valley.
“Ah, that’s the last shuttle in, I think,” he said. He actually rubbed his hands with glee.
Moments later, the front door opened. The man who stepped through it was quite possibly the last person I expected to see here. Oh, the list of people I’d never expect to take part in a show like this was long, and he might not have been quite the last. But he was close.
“Grant!” I said, setting down my wineglass and standing to meet him. My smile grew wide.
Odysseus Grant was a stage magician who fronted an old-fashioned Vaudevillian-style magic show in Las
