“Yeah, just a minute,” she said, and a rustling signaled her handing over the phone.

“Yeah?” came Tyler’s familiar, curt voice.

“Hey, it’s Kitty.” His enthusiastic greeting followed. “So who’s the girl?” I asked.

I could almost see him blushing over the phone line. “Um, yeah … that’s Susan. She’s … I guess she’s my girlfriend.” He said it wonderingly, like he was amazed by the situation.

“Is she a werewolf?”

“Yeah—I met her just a little while after I moved here. And, well, we hit it off. She … she’s been really good for me.”

I grinned like a mad thing. “That’s so cool. I’m really happy for you—and her.”

“Thanks.”

“Not to distract from the much more interesting topic of your relationship status, but I have a question for you. Really long trans-Atlantic flights—how do you do it without going crazy?”

He chuckled. “I’m about to find out—I’m headed to London for the Paranatural Conference, too. Dr. Shumacher asked me to be there for her presentation on werewolves in the military.”

The conference was sounding better and better. “Oh, that’s great! But wait a minute, you flew to Afghanistan—”

“On military transports, with no civilians around.”

“I don’t think I can get a military transport to London,” I said, frowning. “I don’t suppose it’s realistic for us to see about chartering a private jet, just for werewolves?”

“Shumacher’s springing for first-class tickets,” he said. “That and a sleeping pill to take the edge off should do it.”

First-class tickets—what an elegant solution. More space and free cocktails. I wondered who I could convince to spring for first-class tickets of my very own. “You’re sure it’ll work? It’d suck getting a couple of hours into the flight and finding out the sleeping pills don’t work.”

“I don’t expect them to work—it takes a lot of drugs to knock one of us out. But it should help. It’s like you’re always saying—you just work on keeping it together. I really want to go to London. This’ll work.”

If Tyler could do it, we had to try. I thanked him for the advice and congratulated him again on Susan. I wanted pictures. I wanted to fawn over them. It was adorable.

Then I called my producer, Ozzie, to ask how we could foot the bill for a first-class upgrade.

Chapter 2

I DIDN’T KNOW that some organizations offered grants for people like me to travel to scientific conferences. On the other hand, Ozzie did, and as a result we—Ben, Cormac, and I were all going—got first-class tickets to London. Ozzie sold me as “a socially conscious journalist breaking new ground in the emergent arena of paranatural research.” He made me sound good. I told him this, and he grumbled, “That’s my job. Somebody has to do it.”

We had a week of hectic preparation getting ready for the trip—checking passports, reassuring Shaun and the pack, squaring away Ben’s law practice, packing, and wrapping up my own work. I still hadn’t written my keynote speech for the conference. I could get a start on it on the flight. Maybe it would distract me. Ben kept having to reassure me, tell me that everything would be fine, that we weren’t going to have any trouble. Cormac looked at us like we were crazy.

Then I had to deal with my mother. My endearing, chatty, cancer survivor mother was incredibly hard to say no to. She was just so darned enthusiastic. She called me every day of the week leading up to the trip. She usually only called on Sunday.

“Take lots of pictures. You got that link I sent you about the walking tours, right? They’re supposed to be really good—”

“Mom, I’m just not sure how much time I’m going to have for sightseeing.”

“I looked at the map and you’ll practically be right in the middle of London, surely you could pop out and see something.”

“I’ll try. You’ve done all this planning on my behalf—when are you and Dad going to London?”

“Oh, we’re talking about it … You’ll have such an amazing time, Kitty. And be careful.”

Yeah, that was Mom.

* * *

FINALLY, THE day of the trip arrived.

We solved part of the problem of the long flight by stopping for a night-long layover in Washington, D.C. I wanted to visit with Alette, the vampire Mistress of the city.

The living room—parlor, rather—in her Georgetown town house was filled with Victorian elegance. Lush carpets, perfectly kept antique furniture, curio cabinets, shelves full of books, polished silver tea service on display on the mantel. Heavy velvet drapes were drawn over the windows overlooking the street.

Alette herself waited in a wingback chair by the fireplace. She wore a tailored suit jacket with a calf-length skirt, a cream-colored blouse, and ankle boots, an outfit that recalled a bygone style without seeming old fashioned. An ebony clasp held back her chestnut hair, and a single pearl on a chain around her neck was her only decoration.

When we arrived, she rose and reached for my hand, clasping it. Her skin was cool. She spoke in a crisp British accent. “Kitty, it’s very good to see you.”

“How are you, Alette?”

“Enduring,” she said with more than a little pride. I wondered if that was a vampire inside joke. Her apparent age was around thirty—no longer girlish, her beauty came from her dignity, her haughtiness. She stood with her chin up, gazing at us appraisingly.

“I know you met them briefly before. But, well—this is my husband, Ben O’Farrell, and our friend Cormac Bennett.” Ben came forward to shake her offered hand; Cormac did not, moving instead to the back of the room, away from us. In fact, he was wearing his sunglasses, at night and indoors. Not like that was real obvious. But Cormac was Cormac. Alette only glanced at him, her smile wry.

She had tea brought for us, and gestured for us to sit on the sofa across from her. Tom, who’d driven us from the airport, stood at attention at the doorway. Smartly turned out in a tailored suit and tie, he might have served the role of butler, waiting for a command from Alette. But he was more than that—he kept most of his attention turned toward Cormac rather than Alette. Tom was as much bodyguard as butler.

Alette kept above it all and said conversationally, “You weren’t a lycanthrope the last time you visited my city, Mr. O’Farrell. I don’t suppose you had anything to do with that, Kitty—”