Kitty Goes to Washington

KITTY GOES TO WASHINGTON

By

Carrie Vaughn

Copyright

Copyright © 2006 by Carrie Vaughn

Excerpt from Kitty Meets the Band copyright © 2006 by Carrie Vaughn.

Cover design by Don Puckey

Book design by Stratford Publishing Services, Inc.

Warner Books

1271 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing: July 2006

To Robbie

The Force will be with us, always.

Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank my beta testers: Daniel Abraham, Brian Hiebert, and Jo Anne Vaughn (a.k.a. Mom). Thanks to Sandy Karpuk for an awesome day job and for letting me use the printer; to Professor Kelly Hurley for the fascinating and useful Dracula discussions; to Ian Hudek for coming up with V.L.A.D.; to Jaime Levine for helping make this a much better book; to Chris Dao and the crew at Warner who've made the whole process easier; and also to my family, Max, and all the usual suspects. And of course, thank you to everyone who was so darned excited about Kitty and The Midnight Hour . The confidence boost really helped.

My agent, Dan Hooker, sold this book for me but passed away before he could see the finished product. My gratitude for his work on my behalf, and sadness at his loss are immense.

The Playlist

The Watchmen, 'Together'

Peter Gabriel, 'Games Without Frontiers'

Oingo Boingo, 'No Spill Blood'

The Clash, 'Know Your Rights'

Suzanne Vega, 'Tombstone'

Shriekback, 'Nemesis'

Pet Shop Boys, 'DJ Culture'

Pink Floyd, 'Us and Them'

Aqua, 'Doctor Jones'

Prince, 'Kiss'

Too Much Joy, 'You Will'

The Clash, '(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais'

The Beatles, 'Across the Universe' Let It Be… Naked version)

New Order, 'True Faith-94'

Chapter 1

'We have Beth from Tampa on the line. Hello.'

'Hi, Kitty, thanks for taking my call.'

'You're welcome.'

'I have a question I've been wanting to ask for a long time. Do you think Dracula is still out there?'

I leaned on the arm of my chair and stared at the microphone. 'Dracula. As in, the book? The character?'

Beth from Tampa sounded cheerful and earnest. 'Yeah. I mean, he's got to be the best-known vampire there is. He was so powerful, I can't really believe that Van Helsing and the rest of them just finished him off.'

I tried to be polite. 'Actually, they did. It's just a book, Beth. Fiction. They're characters.'

'But you sit there week after week telling everyone that vampires and werewolves are real. Surely a book like this must have been based on something that really happened. Maybe his name wasn't actually Dracula, but Bram Stoker must have based him on a real vampire, don't you think? Don't you wonder who that vampire was?'

Stoker may have met a real vampire, may even have based Dracula on that vampire. But if that vampire was still around, I suspected he was in deep hiding out of embarrassment.

'Even if there is a real vampire who was Stoker's inspiration, the events of the book are sheer fabrication. I say this because Dracula isn't really about vampires, or vampire hunting, or the undead, or any of that. It's about a lot of other things: sexuality, religion, reverse imperialism, and xenophobia. But what it's really about is saving the world through superior office technology.' I waited half a beat for that to sink in. I loved this stuff. 'Think about it. They make such a big deal about their typewriters, phonographs, stenography—this was like the techno-thriller of its day. They end up solving everything because Mina is really great at data entry and collating. What do you think?'

'Um… I think that may be a stretch.'

'Have you even read the book?'

'Um, no. But I've seen every movie version of it!' She ended brightly, as if that would save her.

I suppressed a growl. 'All right. Which is your favorite?'

'The one with Keanu Reeves!'

'Why am I not surprised?' I clicked her off. 'Moving on. Next caller, you're on the air.'

'Kitty, hey! Longtime listener, first-time caller. I'm so glad you put me on.'

'No problem. What's your story?'

'Well, I have sort of a question. Do you have any idea what kind of overlap there is between lycanthropes and the furry community?'