Kitty Raises Hell

“You lead this pack. They trust you to decide for them.”

“I don’t lead my pack that way.”

“Ah, one of these newfangled modern werewolves.”

I managed a thin smile. “That’s me.”

“I’m baffled by this city’s leaders’ refusal to take decisive action,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said. “But not really. Is there some way I can get in touch with you when I’ve made a decision?”

“No need. I’ll find you.”

I didn’t like that at all.

His face was angular, full of shadows in the odd nighttime lights from porches, from streetlights shrouded by bare trees. His eyes gleamed, and he frowned.

“You’ve seen what this thing can do. You don’t have a lot of time to decide.”

The hard sell, like this was buying a used car. But he almost had me cowed. I didn’t want to argue with him anymore. “I know,” I said.

He marched away, shoulders square, arms straight, tails of his coat rippling behind him. His steps were like drumbeats. Entranced by this image of determination, I watched. He never turned a corner. He was a small shadow, far ahead, when I went back to my car.

Chapter 14

I didn’t have a lot of time to spare, so I didn’t wait until morning to call Jules to get an update on the Paradox crew. For half a second, I worried about waking him up.

“Yeah?” he said curtly but not at all sleepily. These guys were used to keeping nocturnal hours.

“Are you guys still in town?” I said.

“What? Kitty? What’s wrong?”

I hadn’t considered how I must sound: desperate, angry, fierce. Panicked. “I really need you not to leave town. I need your help.”

He let out a sigh. “We’re still here. Gary’s out of the hospital, but he’s still resting. We’re supposed to take a flight out tomorrow.”

“I’ve gotten some information,” I said, aware of how much I would have to leave out. But I didn’t want to have to explain Roman to him. And I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk about Mick. Or maybe I didn’t want to scare Jules off. “I’ve been told it’s a demon.”

“Are you joking?” he said, half laughing.

“Oh, yeah, because I would totally joke about something like this,” I said, spitting out the sarcasm.

“It’s just that... demons. That’s really getting into the lunatic fringe. But I think maybe your local Catholic priest can help you out. Do up a nice little exorcism for you.”

“That’s funny. I never really thought of Catholics as lunatic fringe. I thought that was you guys.”

“You’re not exactly middle-of-mainstream yourself.”

And I liked it that way. “It’s just that we’ve been trying to figure out what this thing is, and I got a lead that said demon. Thought you’d like to know.”

“But what are we supposed to do about a demon?”

We scoff at what we don’t understand. I had clearly stepped outside Jules’s comfort zone. “Jules, let me talk to Tina.”

“I’m sure she knows ever so much more about demons than I do.”

“Maybe she doesn’t, but I bet she doesn’t talk at me like I’m an idiot.” I smiled when I said it. Made me sound like a bitch. It was my radio-show voice.

The phone shifted, and then Tina said, “Yeah?”

“Here I was thinking Jules was starting to like me,” I said.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s pretty invested in keeping up his front. What did you say to get him riled up?”

“Demon.”

“Demon?” she said with a nervous chuckle.

“So. Do you know anything about repelling demons?”

“Don’t demons usually possess people? Spinning heads, projectile vomiting, that sort of thing,” she said.

“I don’t know anything about it. That’s why I’m calling you.”

“I don’t know anything about it, either.”

“But you talked to it! Or it talked to you, through the board. Didn’t that tell you anything?”

“It told me that this is way too big for me to deal with.”

Deep breath. Keep it together. “Okay. You guys had your equipment monitoring the séance at New Moon, right? Have you looked over the recordings at all? Were you able to collect any data from the fire?”

“We gave copies of the video footage to the fire investigator,” Tina said.

“But they’re not looking for the things you’d be looking for. Didn’t it occur to you to look for anything weird in the footage, anything to explain what happened?”

“Mostly we were worried about Gary,” she said.

Fair enough. “There’s got to be something, and we can cross-reference anything having to do with demons—”

“The chances are really slim we’ll even find anything. They always are.”

“I don’t have a choice. It’s getting worse.”

“Did something else happen? What?”

I hesitated before saying, “It killed someone.”

“Oh, my God. And after that you’re asking us to help you?”

“I can’t make you stay, but could you please review the video? Let me know if you find anything? I’m running out of ideas here.”

“Kitty, it was just a fire. A normal kitchen fire—”

“You of all people can tell me that?” I said.

“I can convince myself of that. Kitty, I don’t want to touch this thing again. It felt wrong.”

“I need evidence, Tina. And I need a plan.”

“I’ll talk to the others,” she said. She sounded tired, but I couldn’t afford to feel any sympathy. I couldn’t let them off the hook. “I’ll let you know what we decide.”

Reminding myself that screaming demands wouldn’t get me what I wanted, I clamped my jaw shut and took a breath before I was ready to say, “Thank you. Just think about it. Please.”

The next day, Ben and I made our weekly pilgrimage to Cañon City, about a hundred and fifty miles south of Denver. The timing was bad. I was afraid to leave town, in case something happened; on the other hand, it would be nice to get away. To run away. Ben wouldn’t let any excuse short of lying in the hospital in a coma cancel this visit. I found I didn’t want him to go alone, or I’d spend the whole day worrying about him.

Behind the glass at a visitors’ booth of the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, Cormac Bennett rubbed his forehead in a long-suffering manner. “I don’t know why you guys insist on telling me about a problem like this when there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Ben and I slumped in the chairs across from him, sharing an intercom phone, talking to a man serving time for manslaughter. Cormac—bounty hunter of the supernatural, Ben’s cousin, and my friend—had saved our lives with that manslaughter. We’d sort of gotten used to him arriving in the nick of time, guns blazing, to save our asses. He couldn’t do that much anymore.

Like we usually did on our visits, we asked how he was doing, and he said fine, as well as could be expected, and he asked how we were doing. I hadn’t meant to tell him. We were supposed to be cheerful and keep up a good front so he wouldn’t worry. He had enough to worry about. Then I’d said, “Oh, everything’s great except for the demon.”

Then I had to tell him the whole story, which left him rubbing his forehead like he suddenly had a headache.

“I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m just venting,” I said.

“And fishing for advice, right? Just in case I know anything about hunting demons.”

“Well, yeah, okay, if you know anything,” I said, squirming. “So—you ever hunt down a demon before?”

Even Ben was looking amused.

Cormac glared at me. “Can’t say that I have. I’d talk to a priest.”

“People keep telling me that,” I said.

“Interesting image,” Ben said. “You’ve never even been inside a church, have you?”

He shrugged. “I’ve dodged a couple of vampires by going into churches.”

Which was exactly the sort of answer I’d come to expect from him. That sufficiently changed the subject so that we didn’t talk again about demons and how Cormac couldn’t help us much from behind bars.

Before our hour was up, Cormac leaned forward. His expression was stonelike, unemotional. His voice was flat, but the words were fraught.

“I don’t want to get too cheesy, but knowing you two are rooting for me is about the only thing that’s getting me through this. So be careful. Don’t get yourselves killed by whatever’s going on out there.”

It was a heavy responsibility. But it was also incentive. When, I reflected absently, had I collected so much responsibility? Since when had this many people been depending on me? This time last year, I was all on my own.

Strangely, I didn’t miss those days.

We answered him with thin, strained smiles.

Straightening again, Cormac said to Ben, “Can I talk to Kitty alone for a minute?”

Without a word, Ben stood to leave, giving Cormac a grim smile and touching me on the shoulder as he did.

Alone now, we spent a long moment looking at each other. Reading too much into each other’s gazes. For as short a time as we’d known each other, we’d managed to work up a lot of history between us. A lot of missed chances. I couldn’t make either one of us stop regretting them.

“What is it?” I said. “What can you say to me that you can’t say to him?”

“You really want me to answer that?”