Kitty's House of Horrors (8 page)

“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
really?
”

“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
vanish?
”

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 suggestibility.
He was a scared kid whose imagination had reinterpreted his fear based on campfire tales. But he didn’t. My skin had goose
bumps at his story.

“Whoa,” I said, in validation. This was my gift, my superpower: making people feel like they could talk about anything. Making
them open up and reveal their secrets.

“It could have all been in my head,” he said quickly. “It could have all been my imagination.”

Tina said, “Radical drops in temperature in localized areas have been reported with some hauntings. That whole incident, it
doesn’t sound unlikely at all.” This didn’t seem to comfort Conrad any.

“You weren’t afraid of it?” Jeffrey said.

“No,” Conrad said. “It mostly made me feel sad.”

“Had there been any deaths in your family at the time? Had you lost any friends?” Jeffrey asked. “Might someone have been
trying to contact you?”

Conrad thought for a moment, and his face was a blank. “No. No, that couldn’t have been it.” His voice was stark, and I wondered
if he was lying, but suggesting that would have made him turn surly and shut up. Best move on.

My victims… er, interview subjects were mostly too clever and too used to the spotlight to slip up and answer my really probing
questions. I didn’t get stunning confessions from any of them, except the one from Conrad. He was quiet for the rest of the
evening, and I wondered what nerve I’d touched.

Around midnight, the group started jumping ship, led by Conrad. I grumbled at the mutiny, but not really, because by the end
of it I was left with Anastasia, Gemma, and Dorian. Maybe they’d be more forthcoming without everyone else around.

What was I thinking? We still had cameras focused on us. Probably a lost cause, but I had to try.

I waited until Anastasia and Dorian were involved in a conversation in the kitchen, where he was pouring a glass of wine.
I was sure they were trading notes and commentary on their fellow housemates and everything they’d learned. Gemma wasn’t interested
and went to the window to look out at the nighttime meadow, trimmed with white from a waning moon. I sidled up to join her,
not too obviously, I hoped.

“Hey, Gemma, can I ask you a question?”

“I suppose.” She had a stunning smile—of course. “Doesn’t mean I’ll answer it.”

“Why? Why become a vampire?”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s such a boring question.”

“Still. Humor me.”

She hesitated, then gave a lopsided shrug, her first unstudied gesture. “I was afraid of getting old.” She looked away, refusing
to meet my gaze. Like a kid almost—twenty years old and bored by old people, meaning anyone over twenty-five. How long did
it take a vampire to develop that haughty poise that was so common with them? Long enough to realize the world was growing
old around them? A generation—when you stop understanding the kids who look like you?

Was that arrogance a shield?

“That’s not a very good reason,” I said.

She frowned. It damaged her poise, just a bit. “I’ve been on the pageant circuit since I was eight. It’s all I’ve ever known
how to do. When I was fifteen, I went on anti depressants. I was two inches too short for the modeling agencies, and my mom
acted like it was the end of the world, like I was this huge failure. My looks—it’s all I have. I don’t know how Anastasia
found me. It’s like she had this crystal ball and saw me screaming, ‘Get me out of here.’ She said she could keep me young
forever. Like I said, that’s all I have. She’s taken such good care of me, I never looked back. She has uses for a very beautiful
woman. What she does—she can use someone like me. I’m happy to help her.”

I was almost afraid to ask what she was talking about. I thought I knew—the vampire entourage. The collection of beautiful
people at a Master’s—or Mistress’s—beck and call. An alpha werewolf could gain status by showing off how many lesser wolves
he—or she—could take care of. Vampires did the same thing by showing how many beautiful and powerful vampires owed them loyalty.
It was almost feudal. Anastasia could bring Gemma into a room and distract everyone in it. Her adversaries wouldn’t even know
they were being distracted.

Was Gemma so afraid of growing old she’d make herself into a pawn? I didn’t understand it. But then, I hadn’t chosen to become
what I was. It happened, and I just dealt with it. Making lemonade out of lemons and all that. Bottoms up.

“That seems kind of sad to me,” I said. “There’s so much more that makes up a person. There’s a quote from Coco Chanel: ‘Nature
gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.’ I’m kind of curious to see what
kind of face I’m going to merit.” My smile was wry.

“Oh, you’re different,” she said. “You couldn’t possibly depend on your looks. Oh—I didn’t mean it like that.” I hadn’t even
had a chance to react to what she’d said. My smile only got more wry. “You’re nice-looking, really cute. But you have so much
else along with your looks. That’s what I meant,” she said. “Never mind. You know what I mean.”

“You thought you didn’t have anything else to aspire to. Yeah, I think I get it.”

Anastasia joined us. Dorian had gone to the basement, I assumed. She put her hands on Gemma’s shoulders and leaned in to whisper,
“Go on downstairs. I’d like to speak with Kitty.”

Ah, here it came, the smackdown for trying to weasel a confession out of Gemma, like Gemma couldn’t speak for herself. The
younger vampire smiled at me, squeezed her Mistress’s hand, and retreated to the basement, leaving Anastasia and me alone.

I waited, but she didn’t say anything. She gazed out the window, as Gemma had, a faint smile on her lips, seemingly admiring
the beauty. And she
still
didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t stand it. “Did you really just need a pretty face hanging around you? Because that doesn’t seem like the best reason
to make someone a vampire,” I said.

She didn’t react; didn’t look angry, or amused. What, then? “There’s more to Gemma than her looks,” Anastasia said finally.
“Even she’ll see that someday. I wouldn’t have turned her otherwise. But consider this: without the time to grow out of her
old life, she might never have discovered that about herself.”

“But she’s still entering beauty pageants,” I said. “I’d have thought a stint with the Peace Corps might have done more to
improve her sense of self-worth.”

“May I ask you a question now?” she said.

I couldn’t say no, even though I felt a bit cornered. I didn’t really want to be the focus of this woman’s attention. With
just the two of us here, looking anywhere but her eyes was difficult. I worked to keep from fidgeting.

“This two-thousand-year-old vampire you said you met,” she said. “Who was it?”

I didn’t want to talk about this. “He was a little intimidating.”

“Let me tell you about him. He’s not so tall; average height and build, but he looks like stone. Close-cropped hair. An intense
man. He was probably intense even before he turned to vampirism. And he’s concerned with power. Political, territorial. He
chooses minions, binds them to him. He’s preparing allies for a coming conflict.”

Weakly, I nodded. “That’s right. That’s him.”

Anastasia leaned forward a little, her full lips in a pouting smile, her gaze searching. “What did he tell you, Kitty? What
did he offer you? What did he demand?”

My thin pretense of a smile fell. “What do you know about him? Why are you asking me these things?”

“Evasion,” she said, straightening slowly, catlike. “That tells me something, as well.”

“Are you trying to figure out whose side I’m on? If Roman succeeded in buying me off?”

“Did he?”

What the hell, just lay it out there. “No.”

Her gaze still studied me, assessed me. I got the feeling she didn’t believe me, but talking about Roman made all my muscles
go tense. Surely she could see that.

“So what’s your interest in him?” I said. “Are you one of his?”

She was too good, too experienced to let her expression slip. Too magnificent a poker player. But I thought I knew: if she
was one of his, she wouldn’t have to ask me about him. The thought actually made me like her better. But I didn’t like being
in a verbal fencing match with an obviously experienced vampire. I was so outclassed.

“Is he a rival, then?” I asked, when she didn’t answer. “How old does that make you?”

Her smile widened and for a moment seemed genuine. Like in another moment she’d laugh and we’d be like old friends. But I
also felt like she’d be laughing at me.

She said, “For all our vaunted immortality, old vampires are actually quite rare. They consider each other to be rivals, and
they eliminate each other. It’s best to keep a low profile.”

That so didn’t answer my question. “This isn’t a low profile.”

“Sometimes you have to step into the light to learn what you need to know.”

That was a page out of my book. She was still being evasive. “Are you working against Roman? Or are you just another player
working for the same goal?”

She tilted her head. “You seem to know more about this than I’d expect from someone of your… type.”

“You going to give me the old ‘werewolves are uncivilized heathens’ line now?”

“No, of course not, I wouldn’t insult you. I’m far too aware of how some werewolves promote that reputation so people like
me will underestimate them.”

Over the last couple of years, I’d learned about the so-called Long Game in bits and pieces, like drops of water falling into
a bucket. I had gathered enough of those drops to make a mess. And none of those drops suggested that werewolves ever played
a part in the Long Game except as tools. As minions. Most of the werewolves I knew just wanted to be left alone, and that
didn’t give us a whole lot of power in the game Anastasia was playing.

Before I could call her on it, she straightened and smoothed out her trousers, an obvious shift in tone and in topic. “And
what do you know of Odysseus Grant?”

Well, shoot. Were these two plotting some sort of underworld scheme against each other? Did the show serve as a backdrop by
accident, or had they ended up here by design? Anastasia might have rigged all this as a publicity stunt. Grant? Never. He
didn’t do stunts. He was always in earnest.

What could I possibly tell the vampire that wouldn’t get him in trouble? I wasn’t a good liar. I couldn’t pretend like I didn’t
care about him.

“He saved my life once,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s one of the good guys.”