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

“Detective Gladden? It’s Kitty Norville.”

“Finally,” he said. “I figured you’d be waiting by the phone.”

“I was. Then I fell asleep or something. I’ve been really worn out.” And none of that was a lie, exactly.

“I got your message, but I think your lead must have been a bust, because a couple of hours ago we got an anonymous tip and found Faber’s base of operations. He’s definitely been running poker scams out of there, not to mention what looked like a couple of illegal high-stakes private games. Lots of good stuff for the Gaming Commission to get their claws into.”

“What about Ben? Did you find Ben?”

His sigh told me everything I needed to know. “We didn’t. I have to be honest with you, Ms. Norville. It looks like there was a fight of some kind. Some shots were fired, and there’s blood. Forensics is testing it now, and when we get a copy of Mr. O’Farrell’s medical records we’ll look for a match. In the meantime, the police are searching.” For a body, was what he didn’t say.

Gunshots. It didn’t mean anything. Ben was a werewolf, almost invulnerable. Normal bullets would make him bleed a little, yeah, but that was about it. He was okay, he had to be. But where was he?

“Isn’t there anything else you can do?” I said.

“We’re doing everything we can.”

“Ben only wanted to help catch the bad guys.”

Gladden said, “I don’t suppose I have to tell you that if he contacts you, if you hear anything, please let me know?”

“Yeah. Okay.” I switched off the phone. I stared at it for a long time. I even forgot that Grant was still leaning in the doorway.

“If he’s anything like you are, I’m sure he’s fine,” he said.

I chuckled quietly. “He’s better than I am.” And I had no idea where he was. Back to square one.

“I’ll drive you back to your hotel, after you get dressed,” he said, then softly closed the door.

He’d left one of his dress shirts for me to wear in lieu of my shirt that had been shredded. I gave myself a once-over in the mirror. I was a wreck: my hair was a tangled nest, the too-big shirt hung over my jeans and kept slipping off one shoulder, I didn’t have shoes, my face was pale, and my eyes were red. I looked like a woman who’d lost her fiancé in Las Vegas.

And what kind of car did a guy like Odysseus Grant drive? An average car: white four-door, late-model sedan. A car you’d never notice.

The sky was still dark, still night. I hadn’t even reached dawn, though it seemed like a week had passed. For the first time since I’d been in Vegas, the air felt cool. Nice, almost. That would vanish as soon as the sun rose, probably in an hour or so.

During the drive, I tried to figure out how to ask Grant to come with me back to Balthasar’s stage. I wanted to see the place again. Reassure myself that it was real, that I hadn’t imagined it. Try to figure out who the woman was and what had really been going on there. It was all fuzzy.

“Can I ask you something? The lycanthropes, Balthasar’s pack. The woman with the knife, and the altar. They were chanting Tiamat. What does it mean?”

“Tiamat was worshipped in ancient Mesopotamia. In the mythology she was one of the original deities who helped create the world. But as often happens in these stories, the children rose up to destroy the parents. They killed Tiamat, and out of her body they created the earth and heaven. According to the true believers, we are all part of Tiamat, and she must be appeased if we want life to go on as it has. According to the stories, she had a band of demons. The Band of Tiamat, they were called, who defended her in the last battle with Marduk.”

“So Balthasar re-created the Band of Tiamat.”

“Or the priestess recruited them to re-create it, to preside over her own cult tucked away where no one would notice.”

“Except for you. You’ve been watching them all along.”

“Yes.”

“But—what does it all mean?”

“Tiamat is a goddess of chaos.”

“Is? I thought she died. Her body is heaven and earth, all that jazz.”

“Those stories are metaphors. You know that, yes?”

“I majored in English. I’m all over metaphor. But what does a four-thousand-year-old metaphor have to do with a freaky retro cult in modern Las Vegas?”