Kitty Steals the Show (Kitty Norville 10)

Ben was actually paying attention and directed us to the sign labeled NON EU COUNTRIES, but before we could join the line, a uniformed official, a stout man in his late thirties, round face and serious expression, approached. Shaking myself awake, I tried to seem calm and collected rather than defensive.

He glanced at a sheet of paper before addressing me. “Are you Katherine Norville?”

But we hadn’t done anything wrong, we had all our ducks in a row, we’d worked so hard making sure we had the paperwork, that Cormac wouldn’t be held at the border for his felony conviction—and how did they know, we hadn’t even had our passports checked yet.

I wet my mouth and tried to think through the fog of jet lag that said it was seven in the morning rather than seven in the evening. “Yes. Is there a problem?”

“And Benjamin O’Farrell? Cormac Bennett?” He looked at each of us.

He could see we were, he had our pictures on the page in front of him. I caught Ben’s gaze, trying to ask him what this was about. Hold on, wait and see, he seemed to reassure me.

The official gestured toward a closed door labeled RESTRICTED at the back of the room. “If you’d come with me, please? Right this way.”

He was so agonizingly polite, and yet his manner invited no argument. My stomach flipped; I didn’t want to have to deal with this, not now.

“I’m sorry, but what’s this about? Is something wrong?”

“Just step along, please. It will only take a moment.” His expression hardly changed—just a guy doing his job.

“Ben—” I murmured.

“Wait,” he said. “If we were in trouble there’d be more than one of them.”

Him and his logic. Sullen, I followed the immigration officer. Rumpled and glassy-eyed people in line stared after us, radiating curiosity and schadenfreude. This trip couldn’t have gone completely smoothly, could it? But for heaven’s sake I’d hoped to at least get out of the airport without any trouble.

The officer held the door open for us and we filed inside. The tile-floored room held a table and chairs, for interviews. None of us sat. I turned on the officer, questions ready to burst, when the door on the opposite side of the room opened and Emma stepped in.

We’d taken a flight that arrived after dark; of course she’d come to the airport to meet us.

The last time I’d seen Emma she’d been cute—a ponytailed college student in jeans and a sweatshirt, her whole life ahead of her. She’d worked as a part-time housekeeper for Alette to pay tuition. Then Emma had been turned, and it had been the end of that world. She hadn’t wanted it, had even considered opening the curtains at dawn on herself. But that would have been an even bigger tragedy. Instead, she learned how to be a vampire, and she seemed to have developed a talent for it. She wore a flowing skirt in a trendy print, a gray shirt, purple high-heeled shoes, and a black silk wrap draped around her shoulders, too fine to be anything but decorative. She didn’t need shielding from the cold. Her brown hair was swept back and held by a sparkling clip. Her makeup was subtle and perfect. She was gorgeous.

She saw me and grinned. “Kitty!”

I grinned back, and we came together in a girly hug. “You look amazing,” I said.

Pulling apart, we regarded each other. “I’m so glad you’re here, I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks,” she said.

“Yeah, me, too. What’s with this?” I tipped my head to the immigration officer, standing politely out of the way.

“Ned has connections,” she said. “He thought you’d appreciate not having to stand with the crowds. So—shortcut.”

“This is the power that comes with being Master of London?” I said.

Her eyes—her whole face, really—sparkled with glee. “Neat, huh? He can’t wait to meet you.”

Yeah, I could just bet. What kind of vampire was he, then? Haughty and arrogant? Permanently amused and detached? Something else entirely? At least Emma seemed happy here, which was a point in his favor. He couldn’t be all bad if she liked him.

I pulled Ben and Cormac into our circle and introduced them. They’d actually seen her before, in Washington, D.C. She’d been technically dead at the time, though, attacked by Alette’s traitorous lieutenant and still three days from rising again.

Ben smiled and shook her hand, and Cormac did likewise, grudgingly.

“Welcome to London. You ready to see the sights?”

My energy roared back, the travel fog slipping away. I could have bounded.

The officer stepped forward. “If I could just check your passports, then?”

We weren’t completely getting out of procedure—it was, as Emma had said, a shortcut. He looked at our passports, glanced at our immigration forms, and produced a visa stamp, which he punched into our passports.