Low Midnight (Kitty Norville Book 13) (24 page)

Kitty continued: “Here’s the thing, and this goes for everyone out there: if having a boyfriend you can take home to meet your parents is important to you, and your parents are very traditional, then maybe you shouldn’t date vampires. Trust me, I’ve had experience with this sort of thing.”

Cormac had not met Kitty’s parents, or her sister and her family. He had no intention of meeting them, because it would be too weird. What would he say? Hi, I met Kitty when I tried to kill her, and I had a thing for her for a while, but now we’re just friends, but there still might be some feelings, and what? No. This was another reason she was better off with Ben, who went to her parents’ house for dinner on a regular basis. He was a lawyer, he could talk about his job. He knew how to make small talk.

Cormac had the number for Kitty’s direct line at the studio, one that would bypass the screening queue and go directly to her monitor. Which meant he shouldn’t have gotten a busy signal when he called, but he did.

“Next caller, you’re on the air, what have you got for me?”

“Hi, Kitty, longtime listener, thanks so much for taking my call, I just want to know what you think about vampire couples adopting children. Since they, you know, can’t biologically have kids, do you think it’s reasonable for them to want to adopt? And, you know, would you expect them to turn that child into a vampire when it got old enough? You know how some people say ‘Don’t you wish they could stay little forever?’ Do you know if anyone’s ever actually made their baby a vampire, to keep it from growing up?”

Maybe a third of the people who called in needed serious advice and made reasonable contributions to the discussion. The rest of her callers were like this: people who didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about but sure had a lot of crazy going on.

Kitty sounded like she was in physical pain when she answered. He pictured her with her eyes closed, head in her hands. “There’s so much wrong with everything you said that I don’t even know where to start. First off, when we talk about vampire Families, we’re not talking Mom and Dad and two-point-five kids. In all my years, I’ve never met a vampire who has expressed an interest in having children—some of them have had children
before
becoming vampires, and continue to care deeply for those children. But those children are usually already grown. I’ve never met a vampire with, you know,
children
children. Mostly because I imagine arranging day care would be a bitch. Also, I’ve never met a non-adult vampire. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I imagine it’s possible. But you do know that people who wish babies could stay little forever are crazy, right? As the proud aunt of two adorable rugrats myself, I was so happy when they got to be old enough to take
themselves
to the restroom, you know? Anyway. From a purely biological perspective, vampires don’t reproduce by having children, they reproduce by infecting others with vampirism.…”

He tried her number again, and again. The third call got through, and a man’s flat, professional voice answered. “You’ve reached
The Midnight Hour.
What’s your question or comment?”

The screener. Somehow, the direct line had shunted him over to her regular call-in line. She didn’t have a screener in the early days of her show. She’d gotten a lot bigger since then. His frustration grew.

“It’s Matt, isn’t it?” he said. “I thought this was the direct line—I need to talk to Kitty, now.”

“Who’s this?” the guy said. “Where are you calling from?”

“Just put me through to Kitty.”

“You can’t just talk to Kitty, she’s in the middle of—”

“It’s Cormac. She’ll talk to me. Put me through.”

“No! Wait a minute, Cormac—aren’t you that guy who wanted to kill her?”

People kept harping on that. He’d never live it down. “Tell her I’m on the line.”

“I don’t think—”

“Just do it.” He did not have the patience for this shit. “Tell her it’s important.”

“Please hold,” Matt spat at him. He probably didn’t have the patience either, but at least he had a button to push to pass the buck. “And you’ll need to turn your radio off.”

He did. He knew Kitty had a monitor, that she picked what calls to answer based on the screener’s listing. He wanted Matt to just
tell
her he was on the line. The lack of control was aggravating.

Then Kitty picked up. He was kind of surprised. “Cormac. What the hell?”

“What happened to your direct line?”

“Wait, what?”

“Your direct line, the emergency number—”

She groaned. “We’ve been having problems since we added a couple more lines. I’m sorry. I’ll get Matt to look at it after the show. Wait a minute … are you having an emergency?”

Was he? Probably. “No. I just need to tell you something.”

“Can’t it wait? I’m in the middle of the show!”

“Yeah. I’m kind of in the middle of something, too; it can’t wait.”

“Maybe I can make us both happy—can I put you on the air? Just for a couple of—”

“No. Hell no.”

“Just a couple of questions, people will love it!”

“Kitty—”

“Please?”

He sighed. Why did he even bother? “Fine.”

You really are a big softy at heart, aren’t you?
Amelia said teasingly.

Yeah, or something.

A sound in the background clicked and the quality of the line changed to a more open tone, with more interference.

Sure enough, her next words were, “And I’ve got a sudden visit from a special guest. My very longtime listeners will know exactly who I’m talking about. It’s my great pleasure to introduce sometime bounty hunter and man of mystery, Cormac. Cormac, welcome!”

He ought to just hang up on her. “Norville. Make it quick.”

“Right. So, Cormac, what have you been up to since the last time we talked?”

He didn’t say a word. Not necessarily because he was trying to be difficult. He just couldn’t think of anything he’d want to say to Kitty’s nationwide audience.

Kitty only let the dead air linger for a second or two. “I think I’ve mentioned that Cormac is the strong and silent type, yes? Maybe he’ll be up for a game of twenty questions. Cormac, twenty questions, yes or no.”

“No,” he stated.

“Are you on a job right now?”

He wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that. Or if he should. “Yes. And I need to talk to you about it.
Privately.
”

“I can’t believe this, I’m being coerced on my own show. You know you’re one of the few people who could get away with this,” she muttered. “All right, don’t go anywhere, because after a short break for local messages, we’ll get right back to your calls on
The Midnight Hour.
”

He listened closely for the click and change in tone that meant they were off the air. Not that he didn’t trust her, but the reassurance was nice.

“Cormac, what are you doing?” she said.

“If something happens to me, if something goes wrong, you need to go to Judi and Frida and tell them you know how Milo Kuzniak killed Crane. It’s a spell attached to some kind of Maltese cross amulet. Tell them that, and get them to help you with Amy Scanlon’s book.”

“What do you mean, if something happens to you? Why can’t you tell them yourself?”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong. I’m going after that amulet and I have to go through some not-very-nice people to get it. It’ll be fine.”

“Except, just in case, you had to tell me? Because you’re meeting not-very-nice people at midnight? There is nothing about this situation that sounds not-dangerous.”

“Amelia’s looking out for me.”

“No offense, but that doesn’t reassure me.”

“You trust me or not?”

She didn’t say anything, which he supposed was the best he could expect in response to that question.

“You know I’m going to call Ben right after this, right?”

“Better it comes from you than me.”

“That’s so dysfunctional. Do you even listen to the show? You know how many problems come from people not telling each other things?”

“Kitty—”

“Call me when it’s all over. Let me know everything’s fine.”

“I’ll call.” He hung up before she could say anything else.

“Dysfunctional” is one of those eminently useful modern words that serves as a catchall for so many otherwise complicated issues. It tends to lose meaning, doesn’t it?

“Well. She’s not wrong.”

Amelia didn’t argue.

Chapter 24

H
E DIDN’T
park in the same turnout; he figured Layne would have someone watching it and wouldn’t be above just shooting him as he stepped out of the car. Instead, he parked a couple of miles away and left himself enough time to hike to the plateau. He had a flashlight, held it low and out to show his path, but otherwise preserved his night vision.

A wind was blowing, a front moving in. The overcast sky reflected ambient light from the city, giving the world a weird, shrouded glow. A bite in the air threatened snow. Another frustration to add to the list, since the weather forecasters couldn’t decide if the storm was going to produce a mere dusting or a real blizzard. Didn’t matter one way or another, but it would be nice to know what to expect. He could say that about his whole life, he supposed.

Cormac didn’t see any other cars in the turnout; Layne must have had his own parking spot staked out. Cormac knew he couldn’t get to the plateau first. Layne was closer and had a head start. The guy had the high ground, nothing Cormac could do about it. If Layne didn’t shoot him as he left his car, he might lie in wait and shoot Cormac in the back as he made the climb.

He won’t do that. He wants the standoff. He wants to face you and prove how powerful he is.

Either way, Cormac was going to be very careful.

And that’s why we packed ahead of time.

She had a spell, one she’d wanted to use back when they made their foray at Layne’s place, and she was gleeful to be using it now. This wasn’t an amulet or a ritual like many of her other spells—this was a potion, ingredients mixed, boiled, infused in alcohol, and kept in a little perfume bottle. Saffron, dried hemlock, and powdered cuttlefish—which, shockingly, he’d been able to find at an Asian market downtown. Like the Maltese cross–shaped amulet that had brought them out here in the first place, this was more of a charm than a spell. No preparation or ritual needed, no saying the right words in the right order or drawing the right patterns. It was the kind of thing anyone could do, if they knew how. Charms and potions like this would have been passed down in families, from grandparents and parents to children, back when the world was darker and the shadows bigger. Amelia had learned it from an old woman in England’s Lake District.

It seems to me the shadows are just as large as they’ve ever been. But people have forgotten to look for them.

Or new shadows replaced the old. A person could only worry about so many things at a time.

Let’s just worry about the next hour, yes?

One step at a time, same as it had always been.

He poured out a single drop of the potion, used it to anoint himself, a circle on his forehead. And that was that. Walking through the nighttime woods with the charm in place didn’t feel any different than walking without it. He’d expected invisibility magic to act like a cloak, muffling his senses, making the world indistinct around him even as it made him indistinct to the world. Or maybe he watched too many movies.

The charm doesn’t confer invisibility. That’s very powerful magic, too much to waste on this. This—it simply involves perception. It encourages observers to look away. They don’t see you, not because you’re invisible, but because they
don’t see you.

Magic by semantics. Sure, why not?

He stopped hiking when he heard something. Snap of a twig, a rustle against a tree branch, a murmured voice. Layne brought friends. The voices only spoke a word or two, but they seemed to be looking for someone. Whoever was here, they hadn’t seen him. Cormac moved as quietly as he could. When he reached the end of the deer path and emerged from the trees, the plateau opened before him, a dried-out stretch. The wind had stopped and the air was still. Sound carried, and he heard a pair of voices calling to each other in stifled whispers. They were among the trees, on the other side of the slope. He wiped his forehead, erasing the spell’s mark, and waited.

“Hey! Where’d he come from!”

“I thought you were watching!”

Layne’s two goons emerged from the trees across the flat space, staring at him, their jaws dropped. They had guns in holsters but hadn’t drawn yet. Whether things stayed that way depended on how much control Layne actually had over them.

Layne himself moved up from behind them to the middle of the plateau, hands at his sides. He wore a sly smile.

“Wasn’t sure you’d actually have the guts to show up,” he said, a predictable bit of bluster. Cormac smirked back.

Flakes of snow started falling, picturesque white spots drifting slowly, as if independent of gravity.

Oh my goodness. I’ve read about gunfights at high noon in the Old West. I never thought to see one.

You ready to draw, then? Cormac asked her.

I don’t know. I don’t like the way he’s smiling at us, as if he knows something we don’t.

That’s the mind game. He’s being intimidating, trying to throw us off. I’m doing the same thing. Remember, winning a shootout isn’t about just being fast, it’s about being accurate.

I’m not sure I can—

You’ve done this before. Against the demon, against Harold Franklin.

But that’s just it, I knew exactly what they could do, exactly where they drew their powers from. I knew what spells to use against them. This—we only have one chance, and I don’t know the right spell. We still don’t know what the amulet does, only that it exists.

The answer popped into his head—you use the strongest one, of course. Just like you used the most powerful weapon you had, and you hit as hard as you could. Make sure you only need to strike once and don’t give the enemy a chance to stand back up.