Kitty's House of Horrors (kn-7) by Carrie Vaughn (christmas read aloud txt) 📕

they’re putting together? They said you were on board, and I wanted to ask you why you agreed to it. Do you think it’s a good publicity opportunity? Did you… I don’t know… get a good vibe from those guys or what?”

She paused for long enough I thought we’d lost the connection. “Tina?”

When she finally spoke, she sounded confused. “Um… I mostly signed on because they said that you’d already signed on.”

“What?”

“They told me you’d already agreed to do the show. I figured if you’d decided it was okay, it was a good idea, and I thought it’d be fun hanging out with you again.”

“Tina—I heard about this for the first time this afternoon. I hadn’t agreed to anything.”

“God, they lied to me. I shouldn’t be surprised.” I imagined her planting her hand on her forehead.

I tried not to sound angry. “You’re psychic! Can’t you tell when somebody’s lying?”

“I’m psychic—that doesn’t mean I can read minds,” she shot back. “Kitty, you met those guys. They were really convincing!”

“You didn’t think to call me to talk about it first?”

“No. I mean, face it—this show totally sounds like something you’d do.”

Any more arguing stalled in my throat. Because she was right. I had a few crazy publicity stunts of my own under my belt. And why did I get the feeling Jeffrey Miles would give me a similar story? Those bastards had used me. Flung my name around like so much currency. I ought to be flattered.

“That’s it,” I said, grumbling. “I’m not doing a show run by lying Hollywood scumbags.”

“Kitty, please, you have to sign on. You can’t leave me all alone with this thing. You owe me.”

Crap. That was a pretty compelling argument. If I left Tina high and dry with this, I’d feel guilty about it for the rest of my life.

“Did you sign anything? Surely if you did you can get out of it.”

“Well,” she started, and I waited for the other shoe to drop. “Here’s the thing: this really could be great publicity.” That was going to be everybody’s excuse for anything, wasn’t it? She continued, “And the other thing is I figure this is the only way we can counter some of the real wackos they’re bound to recruit for this. Right?”

“The fake psychics and emo vampires?” I said. I knew exactly what she was talking about: the kind of crap that gave people like us a bad name, that we had to spend half of our time apologizing for.

“Right,” she said.

“You’ve got a point.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do, Kitty. But please think about backing me up on this thing.”

“All right. I’ll think about it.”

“Thanks, Kitty. Come on, it’ll be fun!”

Maybe we could make it fun. We’d be like two girls at summer camp.

We clicked off, and I dialed another number. Joey Provost had left KNOB only an hour before; he might not even have arrived at the airport yet.

He answered his phone with, “Hey, Kitty, tell me you’ve decided to say yes. Don’t let me get on the plane without hearing yes.”

I suddenly wanted to punch him. Sometimes I really hated caller ID. “Why did you lie to Tina and Jeffrey and tell them I’d already agreed to do the show?”

He hesitated only a beat. “Who told you that? Who said I told them that?”

“I called Tina! She told me!”

“Well, yes. Okay,” he said, barely stumbling on the words.

“Explain,” I said.

“All right. I’ll level with you. We need names for a production like this, and I had to start somewhere. You were at the top of our list—you were always at the top of the list. With you on board, half our other names didn’t hesitate.”

“Why didn’t you talk to me first? Why did you have to lie about it?” I said.

“I had to have some way of convincing you, didn’t I? Once I got the others signed up, I could do that.”

The trouble was, he made sense, in a weird corporate-logic way. I understood why he did it; but he wouldn’t admit there was anything wrong with it.

I tamped down on my anger. “Well, now you have to convince me why I should agree to work with a scheming liar.”

He took a deep breath, and the edge of desperation in his voice made him sound honest and heartfelt. “Look, Kitty, I know I shouldn’t have lied, I should have been upfront. I know that, and I’m sorry. But this is my big chance. This is SuperByte’s big chance. We probably look like a bunch of bottom-feeders—and I freely admit that’s what we’ve been until now. But we’re trying to rise above all that and get out of the late-night cable gutter. We have our sights set on A-list cable, maybe even network prime time. We want to go upscale, and this is our vehicle. Having you on board will help us do that.”

The guy gave a good pitch, I had to give him credit for that. I had to admit, I was a tiny bit flattered—me, A-list? Really? This wasn’t to say the whole thing still didn’t sound as exploitative as hell.

But I was always saying I wanted the supernatural out in the open. Didn’t I want to have a hand—or claw—in this? If it turned out well, yes, I did. If it didn’t turn out well… maybe I just had to take that gamble.

“All right,” I said.

“All right, you’re in?” Provost said hopefully.

“All right I’ll think about it. Seriously.”

“That’s all I can ask for,” he said, back in Hollywood deal-making mode. “Call me if you have any more questions.”

Hanging up, I felt like the decision had already been made. But there was still one person I had to talk to about it.

Home was a condo near the Cherry Creek area. I’d spent the whole drive there arranging the coming conversation in my head. Maybe it would even go a little like how I planned it.

The other person I had to talk to was Ben. My husband. We’d