Kitty Raises Hell
Page 41

“Did something else happen? What?”
I hesitated before saying, “It killed someone.”
“Oh, my God. And after that you’re asking us to help you?”
“I can’t make you stay, but could you please review the video? Let me know if you find anything? I’m running out of ideas here.”
“Kitty, it was just a fire. A normal kitchen fire—”
“You of all people can tell me that?” I said.
“I can convince myself of that. Kitty, I don’t want to touch this thing again. It felt wrong. ”
“I need evidence, Tina. And I need a plan.”
“I’ll talk to the others,” she said. She sounded tired, but I couldn’t afford to feel any sympathy. I couldn’t let them off the hook. “I’ll let you know what we decide.”
Reminding myself that screaming demands wouldn’t get me what I wanted, I clamped my jaw shut and took a breath before I was ready to say, “Thank you. Just think about it. Please.”
The next day, Ben and I made our weekly pilgrimage to Cañon City, about a hundred and fifty miles south of Denver. The timing was bad. I was afraid to leave town, in case something happened; on the other hand, it would be nice to get away. To run away. Ben wouldn’t let any excuse short of lying in the hospital in a coma cancel this visit. I found I didn’t want him to go alone, or I’d spend the whole day worrying about him.
Behind the glass at a visitors’ booth of the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, Cormac Bennett rubbed his forehead in a long-suffering manner. “I don’t know why you guys insist on telling me about a problem like this when there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Ben and I slumped in the chairs across from him, sharing an intercom phone, talking to a man serving time for manslaughter. Cormac—bounty hunter of the supernatural, Ben’s cousin, and my friend—had saved our lives with that manslaughter. We’d sort of gotten used to him arriving in the nick of time, guns blazing, to save our asses. He couldn’t do that much anymore.
Like we usually did on our visits, we asked how he was doing, and he said fine, as well as could be expected, and he asked how we were doing. I hadn’t meant to tell him. We were supposed to be cheerful and keep up a good front so he wouldn’t worry. He had enough to worry about. Then I’d said, “Oh, everything’s great except for the demon.”
Then I had to tell him the whole story, which left him rubbing his forehead like he suddenly had a headache.
“I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m just venting,” I said.
“And fishing for advice, right? Just in case I know anything about hunting demons.”
“Well, yeah, okay, if you know anything,” I said, squirming. “So—you ever hunt down a demon before?”
Even Ben was looking amused.
Cormac glared at me. “Can’t say that I have. I’d talk to a priest.”
“People keep telling me that,” I said.
“Interesting image,” Ben said. “You’ve never even been inside a church, have you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve dodged a couple of vampires by going into churches.”
Which was exactly the sort of answer I’d come to expect from him. That sufficiently changed the subject so that we didn’t talk again about demons and how Cormac couldn’t help us much from behind bars.
Before our hour was up, Cormac leaned forward. His expression was stonelike, unemotional. His voice was flat, but the words were fraught.
“I don’t want to get too cheesy, but knowing you two are rooting for me is about the only thing that’s getting me through this. So be careful. Don’t get yourselves killed by whatever’s going on out there.”
It was a heavy responsibility. But it was also incentive. When, I reflected absently, had I collected so much responsibility? Since when had this many people been depending on me? This time last year, I was all on my own.
Strangely, I didn’t miss those days.
We answered him with thin, strained smiles.
Straightening again, Cormac said to Ben, “Can I talk to Kitty alone for a minute?”
Without a word, Ben stood to leave, giving Cormac a grim smile and touching me on the shoulder as he did.
Alone now, we spent a long moment looking at each other. Reading too much into each other’s gazes. For as short a time as we’d known each other, we’d managed to work up a lot of history between us. A lot of missed chances. I couldn’t make either one of us stop regretting them.
“What is it?” I said. “What can you say to me that you can’t say to him?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
I ducked my gaze and shook my head.
“I don’t want him to worry.” He tipped his chair back, and his gaze turned slightly away from me, into space, into nothing. “Kitty, do you believe in ghosts?”
I wasn’t in a good state of mind to answer that question rationally—I’d spent the last week hanging out with paranormal investigators and being hunted by a fire-breathing demon. My first reaction was emotional, maybe even screechy, with the thought, Oh, not him, too! Cormac wouldn’t be asking this if something wasn’t going on here.
I managed to answer calmly, “Of course I do.” Didn’t a werewolf have to believe in ghosts?
He leaned forward. “Can you do some of that research you’re so good at?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I need to know the names of any women who were executed here. Let’s say right around 1900, give or take a decade. And any history you can find on them.”
I narrowed a suspicious gaze at him. I almost hated to ask, “Are you being haunted or something?”
Absently, he shook his head, his mind in a totally different place. “I don’t know. It’s a hunch. It may be nothing.”
I hadn’t considered the kind of trouble Cormac could get into in prison. Prison was supposed to keep him out of trouble.
“Is everything okay?”
The smile turned grim. “Hanging in there. Sometimes by my fingernails. But hanging in there.”
I had a hunch, as well. “Would this make a good story for Paradox PI ?”
“Just don’t tell them it came from me.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”