Kitty and the Midnight Hour (Kitty Norville 1)

“Is this really sporting, Cormac? You know I’m unarmed. I’m a sitting duck in the booth here, and I have half a million witnesses on the air.”

“You think I haven’t had to deal with that kind of shit before?”

Okay, wrong tack. I tried again. “If I shut down the broadcast, would that void the clause in your contract saying this has to be on the air?”

“My client believes you’ll stay on the air as long as possible. That you’ll take advantage of the ratings this would garner.”

Damn, who was this client? Whoever it was knew me too well. Maybe it wasn’t the usual list of fanatics. Somebody local who had a grudge.

Arturo.

Carl hadn’t made me quit the show. Maybe Arturo decided to take care of me himself. He couldn’t do it directly. A vampire attacking a werewolf like that would be an act of war between the two groups. Carl and the pack would take it as a breach of territory at the very least. Then Arturo would have to deal with them.

But Arturo could hire someone. He wouldn’t even have to do it himself. He’d work through an intermediary and Cormac would never know he was working for the vampire. Arturo had the means to get photos of me during full moon nights. He knew where the pack ran.

I heard elevator doors hiss open. Boot steps on linoleum.

“I can see the window of your booth, Norville.”

“Hey, Cormac, do you know Arturo?”

“Yeah. He’s in charge of the local vampires.”

“Did he hire you?”

“Hell no. What do you think I hunt when I’m not after werewolves?”

So he hunted lycanthropes and vampires. I really wanted to get on this guy’s good side, as impossible as that seemed at the moment.

I had to figure out how I could prove that Arturo had hired Cormac through an intermediary. Maybe that would get the bounty hunter to back off.

Then I heard the sirens. A window looked from my studio to the street outside. I didn’t have to move to see the red and blue lights flashing. The police. The last few minutes had dr

agged, but even if an intrepid listener had called the cops as soon as Cormac announced his intentions, they couldn’t have gotten here this quickly.

“You hear that, Cormac?”

“Shit,” he muttered. “That’s too quick.”

Hey, we agreed on something. “It’s almost like someone called ahead of time, that they knew you were going to be here. Are you sure you don’t want to rethink my patsy theory?”

Arturo could get me via Cormac, and with the cops downstairs he could get Cormac, too, if he had it in for the bounty hunter. The cops wouldn’t buy the werewolf story. They’d get him for murder.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Arturo, the local vampire Master, wants me off the air. Can I assume you’ve pissed him off recently?”

“Um, yeah, you could say that.”

There was a story behind that. I’d have to wait until later to pry it out of him. “Let’s pretend he hires you through a third party, calls the cops as you’re doing the job, so there’s no way you have time for an escape. You may have it in for werewolves on principle, but you can’t justify killing me. The minute you pull that trigger, the cops bring you down. How does that sound for a theory?”

A pause, long enough for my palpitating heart to beat a half-dozen times. “You’re insane.”

I couldn’t hear footsteps, couldn’t hear weapons. He’d stopped moving. Was I nervous? I hadn’t seen those guns yet. I didn’t have to; I could smell Cormac’s body odor, taut nerves with a spicy underlay of aftershave. I could smell the gun oil. I could smell—silver. He had silver bullets. Any doubts about the truth of his claims and intentions vanished. He hunted lycanthropes and vampires, and if he was alive enough to use the plural on that, he knew what he was doing.

I was still on the air. I was getting the show to end all shows, interviewing my own potential killer live on nationally syndicated radio. So was I nervous? I talked faster. Words were my weapons, like Cormac’s guns were for him. I could only hope my aim was as deadly.

“Hey, Cormac. You ever have to deal with a PMSing werewolf?”