Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand (Kitty Norville 5)

The box office was open and staffed by a perky young woman. “Can I help you? We have a few seats left for tonight’s show.”

“Actually, I have a few questions,” I said. I leaned on the counter in front of her while Ben paced a few steps away and pretended to be fascinated by what were probably the doors to the theater itself. I picked up a brochure from a stack. The front had the same picture as the placard at the end of the hall. Inside were more pictures: leopards jumping through flaming hoops, Balthasar putting his hand in the lion’s mouth, animals standing on one another’s backs in unlikely pyramids. Standard fare.

But the lion was too small. And the leopards were too big.

Lycanthropes transformed into animals—not monsters, not monstrous version of animals. Werewolves in wolf form looked like wolves, except for one thing: size. The law of conservation of mass held true. Werewolves turned into very large wolves, since a two-hundred-pound man becomes a two-hundred-pound wolf.

Natural lions were big, heavy, something like four hundred pounds. Balthasar’s hand should have disappeared in that mouth. It didn’t. The lion had to stretch its mouth to fit over it. Balthasar could have slung the body over his shoulders. And the leopards were about the same size as the lions. But if I hadn’t been looking closely, I might not have noticed. I could still write it off to a bad Photoshop job.

The clerk waited for my questions.

“What’s the show like? It looks like the usual circus tricks.”

“Oh, no, it’s much more than that.” Her eyes grew wide and admiring. “Trust me, you’ve never seen anything like this. The tricks those animals do—they’re complex. Really difficult stuff. It’s like they listen to him. I don’t mean hand signals or the usual training. It’s like they’re really talking to each other.”

“Are they on display? Sometimes with shows like this, you can see the animals during the day, in their habitats.”

She shook her head. “The show takes a lot out of them, so Balthasar insists on letting them rest.”

“What about Balthasar? What’s he like?”

This woman’s face was so expressive. This time, she rolled her eyes and melted into an ecstatic smile of admiration. “He’s so amazing. He’s gorgeous. You don’t realize it until he’s standing right there, but oh, my God. We have people who keep coming to the show over and over again just to see him.”

“Does he give interviews? My name is Kitty Norville, and I host a radio show. I’m always looking for interesting stories, and this might be right up my alley—”

Her expression shut down, becoming that of a professional gatekeeper. A loyal gatekeeper who would protect her employer to the end. “I’d have to forward you to the press office for that. But really, Balthasar is far too busy and private a person to be able to talk to you.”

“Private? He’s the front man for a Vegas stage show,” I said. “I can get him some great publicity—”

“I’m sorry, I really can’t help you. Call the press office.”

I recognized a brick wall when I saw one. I pulled out a business card and set it on the counter. “Maybe you can give this to the stage manager or someone who can pass it along to him. I really do hope to catch the show this weekend.”

She looked at the card distastefully but took it. The card had the KNOB logo on it, so at least she knew I was telling the truth. Not that I’d bet that the card would actually get to Balthasar. That was okay. There was always more than one way to skin a cat. Whatever the cat.

I joined Ben by the theater doors and lingered, taking in slow breaths to smell every piece of the place.

The area was public, well traveled. Under the odor of carpet cleaner I smelled people, lingering perfume and aftershave, hundreds of warm bodies passing through these doors, and under it all lurked a musky feline scent. Feline, but different. Distinctive, including both fur and skin.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ben said. “This is making me nervous.”

We didn’t speak until we were back outside, on the sun-baked pavement and in the fuel-tainted air. I took a deep breath of it and smiled. After the close environment of the Hanging Gardens, even the crowded, traffic-filled Strip felt like wide-open territory. We walked back to the Olympus.

“I’m not sure I want to see their show,” Ben said, after taking a deep breath right along with me. “It would just be weird.”

“And nobody knows about it. They’ve kept it secret. Of course Dom knows—but wow. What a story.” But I wouldn’t be the one to break it unless Balthasar wanted me to. I had too much respect for the kind of effort it took to keep any lycanthropic identity hidden to blow it for someone else. Kind of like my identity was blown. But that was why I really wanted to talk to Balthasar, to find out how this had started, why they did this—and how.

My face pursed with concentration. “I wonder. . .”

“Hm?”

“Does the group of them work like a pack? If Balthasar’s also a lycanthrope”—and with that look in his eyes, even in the picture, I was betting he was—“is he the alpha? And if both those things are true, do you think the performers are there voluntarily? Or are they being coerced?”

“How? Like someone’s holding a gun to their heads or something?”

“We’ve seen what a dysfunctional pack of lycanthropes can do. If the alpha’s got them cowed, yeah, they might not want to do this. I just can’t imagine a lycanthrope shape-shifting and performing like that voluntarily.”

We walked another half block, dodging a crowd of what had to be a bachelor party. Young men, loud, cans of beer in hand. The group swarmed around one guy in the center; they might have been egging him on, or dragging him with them. He looked a little spaced out. Ben and I moved as far to the edge of the sidewalk as we could, and they surged past, like a pack on the prowl.