"No you aren't. You enjoyed it."
"I'd hate to lose my knack for it."
"I thought you couldn't come in here unless I invited you."
"That doesn't apply to commercial property."
"So. What brings you here?" The question came out tense. He could only be here because I hadn't quit doing the show and Arturo wasn't happy about it.
His expression didn't waver. "What do you think I'm here for?"
I glared, in no mood for any more mind games tonight. "Arturo told Carl to make me quit the show. I haven't quit. I assume His Mighty Undeadness is going to start harassing me directly to try and get me off the air. He sent you to deliver some sort of threat."
"That's a little paranoid, isn't it?"
I pointed. "Not if they're really out to get me."
"Arturo didn't send me."
I narrowed my gaze, suspicious. "He didn't?"
"He doesn't know I'm here."
Which changed everything. Assuming Rick was telling the truth, but he had no reason not to. If he was seeing me behind Arturo's back, he must have a good reason.
"Then why are you here?"
"I'm trying to find some information. I wondered if you could help me." He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, smoothed it out, and handed it to me. "What do you make of this?"
It was a flyer printed on goldenrod-colored paper. The production value was low. It might even have been typewritten, then photocopied at a supermarket. It read,
Do you need help? Have you been cursed? Vampires, lycanthropes, there is hope for you! There is a cure! The Reverend Elijah Smith and his Church of the Pure Faith want to save you. Pure Faith Will Set You Free.
The bottom of the flyer listed a date a few weeks old.
The site was an old ranch thirty miles north of town, near Brighton.
Reading it over again, my brow wrinkled. It sounded laughable. I conjured an image of a stereotypical southern preacher laying hands on, oh, someone like Carl. Banishing the demons, amen and hallelujah. Carl would bite his head off—for real.
"A cure? Through faith healing? Is this a joke?"
"No, unfortunately. One of Arturo's followers left to join them. We haven't seen her since. Personally, I smell a rat and I'm worried."
"Yeah, no kidding. Arturo must be pissed off."
"Yes. But it's been next to impossible to learn anything about this Smith and his church. Arturo's too proud to ask for help. I'm not. You have contacts. I wondered if you'd heard anything."
"No." I flipped the page over, as if it would reveal more secrets, but the back was blank. "A cure, huh? Does it work?"
Every hint of a cure I'd ever tracked down had turned out to be myth. Smoke and folklore. I could be forgiven for showing skepticism.
"I don't know," he said simply.
"I've never heard of a cure actually working."
"Neither have I."
"Arturo's follower thought it was for real. And she never came back. So—it worked?"
"Some might be attracted by such a possibility. Enticing bait, if someone wanted to lure people like us."
"Lure why?"
He shrugged. "To trap them, kill them. Enslave them. Such things have happened before."
The possibilities he suggested were downright ominous. They incited a nebulous fear of purposes I couldn't imagine. Witch hunts, pogroms. Reality TV.
He was only trying to scare me so I'd get righteously indignant enough to do something about this. It worked.
"I'll see what I can find out." Grist for the mill. I wondered if Smith would come on the show for an interview.
"Thank you."
"Thanks for the tip." I pursed my lips, suppressing a grin. "It's a good thing the humble subordinates keep running around their leaders' backs, or nothing would get done around here."
Rick gazed innocently at the ceiling. "Well, I wouldn't say anything like that to Arturo's face. Or Carl's."
Things always came back to them, didn't they? The Master, the alpha. We were hardwired to be followers. I supposed it kept our communities from degenerating into chaos.
More somber, I said, "Do you think Arturo's going to do anything about the show?"
"That depends on what Carl does."
As in, if Carl did nothing, Arturo might. I winced. "Right."
"I should be going."
"Yeah. Take it easy."
He nodded, almost a small bow that reminded me that Rick was old. He came from a time when gentlemen bowed to ladies. Then he was gone, as quietly as he'd arrived.
Phone. Business cards. Secretary. Maybe I also needed a receptionist. And a bodyguard.
Chapter 4
Dressed in sweatpants, sports bra, and tank top, I stood on the mat, and at the instructor's signal, kicked at dust motes. Craig, an impossibly fit and enthusiastic college student who looked like he'd walked straight out of an MTV reality show, shouted "Go!" and the dozen of us in the class—all of us women in our twenties and thirties—kicked.
Rather than teaching a specific martial art, the class took bits and pieces from several disciplines and combined them in a technique designed to incapacitate an assailant long enough for us to run like hell. We didn't get points for style; we didn't spend a lot of time in mystical meditation. Instead, we drilled moves over and over again so that in a moment of panic, in the heat of an attack, we could move by instinct and defend ourselves.
It was pretty good exercise as well. Breathing hard, sweating, I could forget about the world outside the gym and let my brain go numb for an hour.
We switched sides and kicked with the other leg a dozen or so times. Then Craig put his hands on his hips.
"All right. Line up so we can do some sparring."
I hated sparring. We'd started with a punching bag the first few sessions. Where most of the women hit the bag and barely budged it, I set it swinging. I got many admiring compliments regarding my upper-body strength. But it had nothing to do with upper-body strength. Something about werewolves made them more powerful than normal humans. Without any training at all, by just being myself and what I was, I could outfight all my classmates, and probably Craig as well.
That wouldn't help me with vampires.
What the episode with the punching bag taught me was that I had to be very careful sparring against humans. I didn't know how strong I was or what I was capable of. I had to pull every punch. I didn't want to hurt anyone by mistake.
I didn't want to hurt anyone at all. The Wolf part of me groveled and whined at the thought of fighting, because she knew Carl wouldn't like it. Wolf, ha. I was supposed to be a monster. Ferocious, bloodthirsty. But a monster at the bottom of the pack's pecking order might as well be as ferocious as a newborn puppy.
Dutifully, I lined up with the others and gritted my teeth.
We practiced delivering and taking falls. Tripping, tackling, dropping, rolling, getting back up and doing it all over again. I fell more often than not, smacking on the mat until my teeth rattled. I didn't mind. My sparring partner was Patricia, a single mom on the plump side who'd never even thought about sports until it looked like her eight-year-old son, a Tae Kwon Do whiz, was going to be able to beat up Jackie Chan soon (she claimed), and she wanted to keep up with him. Patricia seemed gleeful at the idea that she could topple a full-grown adult with a couple of quick moves. A lot of these women had to overcome cultural conditioning against hurting other people, or even confronting anyone physically. I was happy to contribute to Patricia's education in this regard.
"You're holding back, Kitty."
I was flat on my back again. I opened my eyes to find Craig, six feet of blond zeal, staring down at me, weirdly foreshortened at this angle. He was all leg.
"Yeah," I said with a sigh.
"Come on, get up." He offered his hand and helped me to my feet. "Now I want you knock me all the way across the gym."