Kitty Rocks the House (28 page)

“This is going to be weird,” Cheryl said, not sounding at all convinced that it would also be
fun.

“We don’t have to stay long,” I said. “I’ll put a couple of drinks in you, we’ll listen to the music, and you can not think about kids or getting a job or anything for an hour. Okay?”

She gave a decisive nod. “Okay.”

I followed Matt’s directions to find the club, in the basement of a much hipper bar. We entered through a door in the back. I paid our cover, we got our hands stamped, and I dragged Cheryl inside.

The DJ had just put on “99 Luftballons.” I couldn’t have timed our entrance better for pure emotional nostalgic hit than if I’d done it on a Hollywood soundstage.

“Oh my God,” Cheryl said, stopping at the edge of the room, a cramped dance floor ringed by white vinyl booths, with a well-stocked bar at the far end. Candy-colored lights broke the darkness. “It’s tenth grade all over again.”

Except we were old enough to drink without fake IDs, now. “Rum and Coke?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sure.” Her mouth was open, astonished, like she really had traveled through time back to high school. I guided her to an empty booth and made her sit.

For the most part, the music was a few years before my time. But it hit Cheryl’s adolescent sweet spot exactly. In hindsight, she might have indirectly set me on my path. We were far enough apart in age that she hadn’t wanted much to do with me when she hit her teen years, but I thought she was a goddess and tried to follow in her footsteps. Mostly by listening to her music, which led to me listening to
my
music, then to deejaying at the college radio station, then to KNOB. And, well, everything else.

Yeah, the music here was a little like time travel.

I got her a drink, me a plain Coke, and headed back to the booth.

Matt must have known I’d like the place, the minimalist design in monochrome, white-and-black checks painted on the walls, just a couple of lighting effects in play. The crowd here was a mix of a dozen different cliques that I could spot right off, and nobody hassled anybody. Goths in black vinyl, some bachelorette party in cocktail dresses and feather boas, young kids laughing at the theme, middle-aged former punks who’d been dancing to this music for twenty-five years. And plenty just like me and Cheryl, in jeans and T-shirts, looking for a good night out.

Everyone here but me was human, as far as I could tell. The smells were all normal—sweat, alcohol, drywall that needed repairs, a floor that needed to be cleaned. No fur under the skin, no chilled blood on the air, no weird magic. I hadn’t felt this mainstream in years.

I could watch people all night, leaning back in the booth and sipping my soda, Wolf resting contentedly for once. Half the people on the floor were dancing and texting at the same time, which made for a pretty neat trick. More songs followed, and it didn’t seem possible but each seemed more iconic and nostalgia-inducing than the one before it. Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Blondie …

Next to me, Cheryl wiped at her cheek and sniffed. More tears followed.

“Hey,” I said, leaning in.

Her face grimaced in a vain attempt at a smile. “This is making me maudlin.”

I hadn’t meant to make her cry. I just wanted to get her out of the house. “We can go—”

She kept talking. “You know I think it’s been twenty years since I heard this song? How did that happen? What have I been doing all this time?”

“Living?”

“It seems like I should have done …
more.
”

I put my arm across her shoulders and pulled her close. We sat like that through the next dozen songs, until around midnight, when the music starting turning harsher, more industrial and less New Wave, and Cheryl was ready to go home.

*   *   *

A
COUPLE
of weeks later, Cormac called and said he’d found something.

The first time he came over to the new house, he never really said whether he liked it. He looked around at the spacious living room, out the sliding glass door to the great outdoors, and said, “Awfully domestic of you.”

“I thought that was the point,” I said. Cormac had never been very domestic, and I couldn’t imagine him ever choosing a house in the suburbs. I felt a little bit of a pang at that thought, at the long lost might-have-beens. We’d traveled a long way since then.

“And next time you break your arm, we have a guest room for you,” Ben said.

“I hope I never break a damn thing again.”

By this visit, his arm was out of the cast and sling and in a neoprene brace. He still kept it close, favoring it. He was supposed to be going to physical therapy to get it back to its former strength and usefulness. I bugged him about it, asking if he was actually going, and he never gave me a straight answer. I hoped that Amelia was making him go. It was her arm, too, in a way.

Times like these, it was almost like they were married, which was an odd thought. I didn’t dwell on it.

We sat on stools around the island counter in the kitchen and ate pizza. That had been another consideration in choosing this house—wilderness was nice and all, but we had to be in range of pizza delivery. After eating and small talk, Cormac pulled a book from a jacket pocket—a thick hardcover with a fraying cloth binding. I couldn’t see a title.

“I’ve been reading up on that thing that attacked the church. What I have isn’t real satisfying,” he said. He looked down, watched his fingers tap the edges of the cover. “It’s a demon, but that’s a catchall term. Lots of supernatural beings get called demons if people don’t know what else to call them, or the name is untranslatable. This one didn’t do much to identify herself—she might even have been a human magician if it weren’t for the smoke, and the way she escaped—”

“Wait, she escaped? She’s not … gone?” I didn’t say
dead,
which might not have meant much, depending on her origin.

“She got pulled back to wherever she came from,” he said.

Ben asked, “So what is she?”

Cormac pursed his lips like he didn’t want to answer. Then he said, “Amelia thinks she was one of the fallen.”

“Fallen what?” I said.

“Fallen angels.”

We stared at him, absorbing that little tidbit.

“You’re serious,” Ben said finally.

Cormac opened the book to a page he’d marked and started reading, following the line with a finger. “‘Such place Eternal Justice had prepared for those rebellious, here their prison ordained in utter darkness…’”

The tinted goggles she wore, because even the nighttime glow was too bright for her. Disbelieving, I said, “That’s
Paradise Lost.
Milton.”

“It’s just an idea,” he said.

“She was from hell? Actual, real, capital H hell?”

He said, “You like to talk about how a lot of the stories are real, or at least have a seed of truth that inspired them. Maybe it was something like her and wherever she came from that started the stories. Not sure it really matters. Whoever summoned the demon to go after the vampire priest—some brand of ceremonial magician most likely—is probably the one holding Roman’s leash. That’s your Caesar.”

The rabbit hole got a little deeper. “And who is that?”

“I did some hunting around at the church. Didn’t find anything.”

“You hire an assassin so no one can trace you,” Ben said.

“Yeah,” Cormac said. “I’d have assumed it was Roman who’d summoned her, if she hadn’t said anything.”

“There’s really nothing we can do but keep on keeping on, is there?”

“You can be damn careful is what you can do,” Cormac said. “Amelia’ll put up protections around the house, your cars, the restaurant, the radio station.”

“I’ll let Angelo know—his places will need protecting, too.”

“Angelo,” Cormac said. “Then Rick really did leave?”

I looked down, studying abandoned pizza crusts left in the cardboard box. From the outside, nothing in Denver would look like it had changed. But the vampires I talked to, Angelo and his minions, were subdued. Wounded, almost. From their perspectives, they’d been abandoned. It didn’t matter if Rick had a mission. Me, I just missed my friend. I assumed he’d arrived in Italy all right, but I hadn’t heard from him yet. I wasn’t sure I would.

Taking the silence as his answer, Cormac shrugged, ultimately unconcerned. “See if this guy wants my help first. What are the odds?”

Angelo probably wouldn’t want Cormac’s help any more than Cormac wanted to give it. “So much for the great alliance,” I muttered and took a long drink of beer.

Cormac said, “I’m not sorry for what I did.”

“I’m not expecting you to be,” I said.

“Does anyone want another beer?” Ben said, getting up and heading to the fridge. A diplomatic interruption.

Cormac leaned back and picked at the seam on his wrist brace, turning inward as he often did—having a discussion with his resident spirit, most likely. Maybe she could talk some sense into him. I had a thought: if I asked her what he was really thinking, would she tell me? At least he didn’t walk out. He would have, not so long ago. Back when he thought he didn’t have anything to lose.

That may have been the most terrifying part of this war I insisted that we all fight: we had so much to lose. Would it be worth it? Would I ever know?

Ben returned from the fridge, and after popping bottlecaps and distributing the goods, held up his bottle. “Here’s to achieving victory by the seat of our pants.”

“And kicking ass,” Cormac said, clinking bottles.

I considered them. For now, the moment was quiet. I had to let the future take care of itself. Smiling, I raised my own bottle.

“Here’s to family.”

TOR BOOKS BY CARRIE VAUGHN

Kitty Goes to War

Kitty’s Big Trouble

Kitty’s Greatest Hits

Kitty Steals the Show

Kitty Rocks the House

Kitty in the Underworld
(forthcoming)

Discord’s Apple

After the Golden Age

About the Author

CARRIE VAUGHN
had the nomadic childhood of the typical Air Force brat, with stops across the country from California to Florida. She is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the Kitty Norville books, and she lives in Boulder, Colorado. Her website is at
www.carrievaughn.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

KITTY ROCKS THE HOUSE

Copyright © 2013 by Carrie Vaughn, LLC

Cover art by Craig White

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

e-ISBN 9781429955973

First Edition: April 2013