“Hi, yeah—is Ahmed there?”
“Who?”
A sinking feeling attacked my stomach. “Ahmed. The guy who owns the place.”
“Oh! Just a moment. May I tell him who’s calling?”
“It’s Kitty.”
She set the phone aside. I could hear the murmur of generic restaurant noises—voice talking, tableware clinking— in the background. The moment stretched on. I started tapping my foot. I didn’t have a lot of time here.
A familiar, robust voice picked up the line. “Kitty! How are you?”
Situations like this made it so hard to answer that question. “I need some help, Ahmed. What would you do with a couple dozen vampires and lycanthropes who’d lost it and you wanted to get them under control so they didn’t get hurt?”
I grit my teeth. When I said it out loud like that, this mess sounded ridiculous.
He hesitated for a long time, so that I had to listen to the restaurant white noise again. Then he said, “I would leave the area, and wait until morning to return to see what was left.”
“But the vampires will die without shelter.”
“That would not be my concern.”
No, it wouldn’t, would it? “Then what about the lycanthropes? I know you’d want to help the lycanthropes.”
“If you can bring them here, to the club, I can shelter them.”
“But I have no way of getting them there.”
“Kitty, what have you gotten yourself into?”
I sighed. He wasn’t going to be any help. He probably never even left the Crescent, his little domain. “It’s a long story. I’ll have to talk to you later. Bye.”
“Goodbye?” He sounded confused. I hung up anyway.
That left one other option.
I called Alette to ask her if she could help. Bradley answered the phone, put me on hold, and returned to say that she could. She’d meet me at Smith’s caravan in an hour.
An hour later, we drove back by the site. The police had already arrived in squad cars, along with a sedan I recognized as the one Bradley drove, and a large, windowless van.
Stockton pulled onto the shoulder. A cop came forward and tried to wave him away. I rolled down the back window.
“I’m with Alette,” I called. The cop hesitated, then let Stockton park.
While a trio of cops moved alongside the road setting out flares and obviously standing guard, Alette and Leo stood at the edge of the grassy field. A group of people approached them from the caravan. Leo held something out to them, and they moved slowly, cautiously toward him.
“Stay here, lock the doors,” I said as I climbed out of the car. I didn’t stick around to see if they listened to me.
I didn’t get too close. I had my limits. The people drawn to Leo were thin, wan, cold—vampires. Leo held a jar of blood, open to the air, so that the smell drew them.
The vampires in Smith’s caravan hadn’t eaten in months, some of them. As they approached, Leo spoke softly to them. He touched their chins, their hair, and they bowed their heads and followed docilely. He led them to the van and guided them inside. Tom waited by the back door.
Bradley approached me, clearly on an intercept course to keep me from interrupting Alette and Leo.
“What’s happening?” I asked, before he could chastise me or start issuing orders. “It looks like some kind of vampire hypnotism.”
He said, “The ones who joined Smith aren’t very old, only a few decades. Easy to control. Older vampires aren’t going to go looking for a cure. If they’ve made it to a hundred without getting killed, it usually means they like it. But these—they’re looking for guidance.”