Kitty Steals the Show (Kitty Norville) (33 page)

“Hey. Susan. I didn’t wake you up, did I? I don’t even know what time it is there. No … no, I’m okay. I just wanted to hear your voice.” The woman’s response sounded pleased, and she chatted happily at him. Tyler was in bliss.

That … that was
awesome.

Chapter 23

W
E CALLED
Shumacher to let her know everything was all right and delivered Tyler safely to the hotel for a hot shower and sleep. Then Caleb dropped us off at Ned’s for showers and sleep of our own. When I really looked at the grizzled werewolf, he seemed the most tired of any of us. His face sagged, and his shoulders were rigid with the effort of keeping them straight.

“Get some sleep,” I told him before shutting the car door.

“You giving me orders now?” he grumbled, and I smiled and let him go.

Emma waited in the parlor for us, even had hot tea and food ready. She didn’t ask what had happened—Ned had probably called her already.

The tea felt amazing. Like a warm blanket on the inside. Emma watched us, wringing her hands.

“You know that Flemming’s dead?” I said. She was another of his victims, albeit indirectly.

“Alette will be glad to hear that,” she said, flattening her hands to smooth out her skirt. “It feels like the end of an era.”

“Maybe just the end of a chapter,” I said. “There always seem to be more jerks to take the place of people like that.” Not to mention Mercedes and Roman were still on the loose. This seemed a strangely muted victory.

*   *   *

I
STILL
had that speech. That I hadn’t written. My worry about it seemed so petty. How many people had died in the battles we’d fought over the last two days? How many more would die?

What had I really thought this conference would accomplish?

Ben waited with me at the front of the auditorium, clinging to the side wall, looking over the crowd that filled the seats. Full house. And everyone was staring at
me,
which made Wolf want to growl. I had tried to dress nicely without being too formal. I wanted my outfit to say “hip talk-radio host.” I don’t know if my jeans, gray jacket, and red silk T-shirt managed it. I mostly felt like I was trying too hard. I’d scratched some notes and held the sheets of paper in front of me, for all the good it would do.

“Have you decided what you’re going to say?” Ben asked. He stood at my shoulder, looking out like a bodyguard.

“Well, sort of. I know what I want to say. I just don’t know if I should.”

He took my hands, folding both of them inside his, and kissed my forehead. I leaned forward until I rested against his chest, my head nestled on his shoulder, my body pressed against his. He wrapped his arms around me.

“I’ve never known you to hesitate about saying anything, whether you should or not.”

I could have just stayed there, wrapped up in him, filling my nose with his scent, skin, and sweat, a touch of aftershave, the hint of fur under the skin. He was civilized and wild at once, an anchor in a rolling sea.

“You’ll be here when I’m finished? Right here?”

“Are you okay?” He pulled away and touched my face, brushing light fingers along my jawline.

I nodded, but my lips were pursed.

“I won’t move an inch,” he said.

“Okay. Thanks.”

The rumble of a hundred murmured conversations carried over the auditorium. The crowd waited. I squeezed his hand, letting it go only after I’d turned away.

Nell Riddy, the conference director, waited at the edge of the stage with us. “If you’re ready, Ms. Norville, I’ll introduce you.”

“Yes, that’s fine. I’m ready.” I folded my pages to keep from crumpling them. I was increasingly coming to believe that preparation was impossible—only agility, so that one might hope to remain upright while scrambling.

Standing at the podium now, Riddy beamed while she talked about me in hyperbolic terms, describing me as a “pioneer for paranatural rights and recognition,” and “a thoughtful commentator on the shape of new identities.” I wanted to push her aside and yell,
you know I’ve been faking it, don’t you?

“Now, may I present this afternoon’s keynote speaker, Kitty Norville!” She gestured toward me, smiling.

A waterfall roar of applause followed, and I felt detached from it. That couldn’t be for me—the noise was a polite reflexive response, a bit of punctuation between one sentence and the next. I ought to be enjoying this—I was rarely on stage to enjoy my notoriety firsthand. Instead, I felt like I was floating toward the podium, drifting on air made of molasses.

At the podium, I gripped its edges before gazing out over the auditorium. A thousand people turned toward me, and many of those stares were challenging. Wolf rose up, trying to match all those challenges in return. We were cornered, we could fight, we could run—but Wolf wasn’t in charge here. We would stay.

The podium had a microphone. A slender flimsy thing, it didn’t look like
my
microphone, my familiar antiquated lump at KNOB. But it was a microphone, and I knew what to do with it. This was just like the show, and I could handle it. I set my pages on the podium’s slanted surface and let myself smile.

“Thank you,” I said, and the applause faded. “I very much appreciate the honor of being asked to speak to you all. I hope I can live up to your expectations.” That got a few chuckles.

I could still change my mind. I could keep it light, tell my story, be rousing and inspirational. That was what they’d come to hear, after all. I took a breath to settle myself, and imagined I was in the KNOB studio.

“I think I’ve been lucky, which may come as a surprise to a lot of you. After all, I’m living with a chronic, life-altering disease, which I contracted in a violent attack. But I’ve had the most interesting conversations since then, and I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t what it’s all about.

“I’ve met so many people, so many different kinds of people. Even just this week I’ve met so many people, as if this conference is a microcosm of my life. Or this conference has brought these disparate parts of my life together. I’ve made friends, learned a little history. I’ve discovered family I didn’t know I had. I’ve learned a lot.

“Over the last few years, I’ve met people infected with vampirism who’ve been alive for hundreds of years, who can tell me stories about Shakespeare and Coronado. I’ve met people who were only infected with vampirism in the last year, and learned about how they’re dealing with it. I’ve met all flavor of lycanthropes, and learned about how they’re different from me, and how we’re the same. I’ve learned that some of those fairy stories I grew up with really did happen. I’ve met djinn and wizards, medicine women and skinwalkers, scientists and philosophers. I’ve met the ghost of a woman who was wrongfully executed for murder a hundred years ago, and I’ve met her descendents. A lot of these people I’m honored to call my friends. Because of that, I don’t just believe we can all coexist, I
know
we can. Which is why seeing the protests outside the hotel this week has been so difficult. Because it makes me worry.

“I try to resolve conflicts by talking. I’ve built my career on it. Actually, I try to avoid conflicts entirely by talking. Usually it even works. But I don’t know if it’s going to be enough.

“History is filled with groups of people slaughtering each other over their perceived differences. For me to make a list of such atrocities would belabor the point, and be woefully incomplete. I’d end up leaving out someone who doesn’t deserve to be ignored.

“It usually seems like the first step on that path happens when one group defines another as not like them—not human. That opens a floodgate. I worry that we’re seeing a new floodgate, and that we’re watching it open, just a crack. Just a little trickle of excess water is coming through—nothing to get too worried about, right? But I worry. When someone out there says that I’m not really human—what are they giving themselves permission to do to me?”

How much could I get away with saying? What did I have to say so that people would take me seriously, and not write me off as crazy? I didn’t know. But I had to say something; I would never get another chance to declare.

“So yes, I have a lot of stories, I’ve met a lot of people. Some of them are my friends, some aren’t. Some think I’m human, some think I’m not. As long as I can keep talking about it, I feel like I have a little control over my destiny. There are, of course, people who want to take that control away. From all of us.

“Of all the stories I could tell, the one I really want to talk about features a man named Roman. I met Roman about three years ago, back home in Colorado. He’s a vampire, about two thousand years old, which is astonishing, I know. One of the things I’ve learned is that the old ones get that way by keeping quiet, staying hidden. Working from the shadows. Roman was originally called Gaius Albinus and was a centurion in the Roman military. These days, he calls himself Dux Bellorum. It means leader of wars. Just to make clear, Gaius Albinus is not my friend. He’s one of the people who would create divisions, who would separate us into factions and then pit us against each other. Who has decided that since we are different, we don’t deserve the same access to freedom, to respect. Dr. Paul Flemming, and those who adhere to his philosophies, is another one of these people.” I felt weird, speaking ill of the dead, but if I was going to name names, I couldn’t stop now. People had to know.

“I think we’re going to see more of this rather than less. I think we have more violence ahead of us. Maybe even a war. But I think we can do something about it. Moving forward, each of us—all of us—may have to choose sides in a conflict we don’t even know is happening, and we may have to fight for that choice against forces we can’t even see.

“As always, I turn to conversation as a solution. I ask you to stay in touch with each other. Talk to each other, tell each other your problems, get help. Isolation is dangerous, because when we’re isolated our enemies take advantage of us, make us afraid, and use that fear. They will divide us and label us. Together, though—together, we’re a fortress. Communication—the basic act of talking—has always been my most powerful weapon, and I believe it can save us. Thank you.” I turned a weak and weary smile to the audience.

The applause was polite at best. The faces looking back at me showed confusion in pursed lips and furrowed brows, and even smirks. Derisive frowns. Some heads shook in what seemed to be disgust. Half the crowd was already out of their seats and filing out of the auditorium, and the conversation grew loud.

That was all okay. I wasn’t here to make friends or win any popularity contests. I delivered my warning. I’d accomplished my goal. And now I wanted to go home. I strode back to the edge of the auditorium, and to Ben, who was right where he said he’d be.

Riddy was waiting there as well. She was one of the confused ones; her smile had turned stiff. Still, she offered her hand to shake, which I did, and thanked me. “I must admit, Ms. Norville, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting.”

“Yeah, I had a feeling,” I said, apologetic.

“But it’s an excellent message. That was meant to be the whole purpose of the conference—fostering communication. I do hope that’s what people take away from all this.”

I had to smile at her optimism. “I’m very glad I could be a part of it all.”

She thanked me again and excused herself, leaving Ben and me together, watching the auditorium empty out. Part of my hesitation came from not knowing how he would react to my rant. I hadn’t consulted him, and maybe I should have. He might have talked me out of it—and that was probably why I hadn’t talked to him first. But after all this, if he was angry at me, too, I wasn’t sure I could bear it.

His smile was crooked, but it was there. His gaze was steady, and his hands were in his pockets, casual. He seemed amused. I just stood there.

“I love you,” he said.

It all came down to that, and I was happy.

“Really?” I said. He opened his arms and gathered me close. We stood like that, holding each other, for what seemed a long time.

Reporters found me in the lobby. I knew there’d be questions. I’d be answering questions for a long time. If I gave them a few sound bites, maybe they’d leave me alone.

“When you say war, do you mean that literally? Or is it some kind of culture war?” Of course that was the word the press would latch onto. The guy was an American with press credentials from one of the big science magazines.

“Um, yes?” I said. “Both? I can handle a culture war. But I’m pretty sure this is bigger than that.”

“But you don’t know?”

“I know there’s something out there, and it’s not pretty.”

The guy sounded frustrated. “If you don’t know what’s going on why make a big stink about it? You trying to start a panic?”

“It wouldn’t do any good to keep it to myself,” I said.

“But you have to admit the possibility that you may be deluded,” said another reporter, this one British.

Yes. I supposed I did.

“I think we’re done here,” Ben said, and shouldered his way between them and me, guiding me to the side hallway. A few of them followed, still calling out questions, until Ben threw a glare over his shoulder. I wished I could have seen it, because it stopped them.