No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong

  I asked him about the twins' birthday and he told me about Elena's misadventures with the baking, how she'd tried to sneak the failed cake outside for the birds, but Clay, smelling food, had rescued it and shared it with the twins, reasoning that they needed to get accustomed to bad food in case Jeremy ever cooked them dinner. I watched him tell the story, his face animated, relating even the jibe at his cooking with a wry smile.

  We sat there for over an hour, just talking. A cool wind blew off the water, bringing a fine mist as it slid over us and into the trees, rustling the leaves, then departed with a sigh. Beneath my fingers, the grass was growing damp. Jeremy's legs were outstretched, mine bent, our shoulders brushing when we moved.

  "Thanks for tonight," I said. "For taking me out. You have no idea how nice it is to eat without a dead man hanging over the table."

  His brows shot up and I explained. "But on the upside, I'm pretty much guaranteed to lose those few pounds my stylist keeps nagging about."

  He shook his head. "I don't know how you do it, Jaime."

  "Don't have much choice."

  "Yes, you do. You could hide from it. Take your meals elsewhere and make some excuse to the others. But you never do. You'll sit there, smile and chat--with a ghost hanging a foot from your nose--and no one will ever be the wiser."

  "It's a residual, not a ghost. And it's more like two feet."

  He smiled and shifted, moving the arm stretched behind me to my back. His hand went to my waist, his face turning, lips a scant inch from mine, the look in his dark eyes sending a shiver through me.

  I waited through five long heartbeats, but he didn't move, neither coming toward me nor pulling back. It was up to me.

  The kiss started firm yet gentle, sweet yet strong, everything I'd expected from Jeremy. Then, as I pressed against him, an edge crept into it, an urgency and a passion that maybe...wasn't quite what I'd expected. Like being hit with a blast of hot air when I was anticipating a gentle breeze. I threw myself into it like someone who's been plucked from an icy river, lapping up the heat.

  After several intense minutes, he pulled back.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "That wasn't--"

  "You don't need to apologize. I started it."

  "Ah, yes, right."

  He sat there for a moment, hair hanging forward, then gave it an impatient brush back. I resisted the urge to put my arms around his neck and bury myself in another kiss. His expression told me he wouldn't argue, but that this wasn't a step he was entirely ready to take.

  I settled for resting my hand on his thigh. He laid his hand on mine, fingers sliding under my palm and squeezing.

  "I love it when you're indecisive," I said.

  A pause, as if he wasn't sure he'd heard right, then a laugh so abrupt it was almost a bark. "Oh?"

  I eased closer, leg against his. His hand slid from my waist to my hip, bringing me closer still.

  I said, "When I first met you in Miami, you were so sure of yourself, so...in charge. You spoke; everyone listened. Even Benicio Cortez. Hell, even Cassandra lets you tell her what to do."

  "I'm not so sure about that."

  "She just likes to pretend it's her idea. A vampire can't seem to be obeying a werewolf--it's just not done."

  He laughed, rubbing my hip.

  "It's a bit daunting, you know, being around someone that self-assured. So it's nice, now and then, to get a hint that the armor isn't as impenetrable as it looks."

  "The armor is full of chinks, I'm afraid. The trick is to keep it polished to such a brilliant shine that everyone is blind to the holes."

  "Is that it?"

  He looked down at me, his crooked grin almost boyish. "Yes, that's it."

  He stayed there, head angled, lips slightly parted. My heart started thumping. But he turned away.

  "That's one problem of being Alpha. You have to act with complete confidence. It's the wolf in us. Uncertainty makes us nervous. Smacks of weakness. An Alpha must be resolute in all things. He should have no misgivings, no second thoughts, no doubts."

  "But sometimes you do," I said softly.

  He met my gaze. "Most times I do." He turned to look out at the lake. "I've always been happy being Alpha. It's a lot of responsibility, but I love that--not the power, but the ability to affect change. Sometimes though...lately..." He took his hand off mine and brushed back his hair. "Under certain circumstances, the restrictions can be...not what I'd choose, if I had the choice. Like coming here. For most people, a simple matter. Make travel arrangements and go."

  "But you have responsibilities."

  "Not just that. To come here alone, without backup, without a bodyguard..." He shook his head. "To explain to you how much work it took would make the whole thing sound ridiculous. But I am the Alpha. I cannot do as I like, go where I like. Even an outside werewolf who has no particular grudge against me would consider attacking me if I crossed his path. To kill the Pack Alpha would solidify his status in our world. For the rest of his life, every werewolf he met would clear out of his way. The Alpha before me--Antonio's father--was inarguably the best fighter of his time, but he never left Pack territory without a guard. To do otherwise is to threaten the stability of the Pack for something as petty as privacy."

  My cheeks got hot. "I'm sorry. I never thought--"

  He squeezed my leg. "No one expected you to. I didn't come to L.A. to be polite, Jaime. I came because I wanted to spend time with you. Alone."

  His gaze met mine and held, making sure the words sunk in. "The area is as safe as we could make it. I even managed to convince them that I didn't need Antonio lurking in San Diego, awaiting an emergency call, though I suspect Karl isn't in Arizona this week by accident. Elena probably sent him there, hoping--being Karl--it wouldn't seem suspicious."

  I nodded.

  "I won't be Alpha forever," he said. "But I will be for longer than I planned."

  "Because of the babies."

  He nodded.

  I said, "Elena needs to concentrate on them, on being a mom, not an Alpha."

  "Which doesn't mean I can't continue to train her. Antonio and I will keep nudging her into leadership, getting her accustomed to the idea, but we can't push."

  "And you shouldn't." I paused. "Does she know yet?"

  He shook his head. "I don't plan to tell her for some time. If I did, she'd suspect I want out, and she'd do everything she could to help me achieve that. And, as you said, her priority should be her family, not her Pack. At least for a few more years."

  I wanted to say, "That's okay. I'll wait," but I knew that wasn't what he was asking.

  "That's best," I said. "It'll give Clay more time to recover too. How's his arm?"

  "As good as it will get. He knows that. Whatever that zombie did to him, it's beyond what medicine can fix. The trick now is to learn to compensate. And to regain his confidence, get him back to a place where he feels he can defend his family, his Pack, his Alpha. If that Alpha is Elena, he's going to need to be in top fighting condition."

  "Because other werewolves, outside the Pack, will see a female Alpha as a sign of weakness."

  "Or, at least, of change and, as I said, we don't respond well to change. Elena's used to being in danger. It comes with being Clay's mate. His enemies might not dare take on Clay himself, but there are other ways to hurt him."

  "Through Elena."

  "Most werewolves will not believe that a woman, even a werewolf, poses a threat, and therefore Elena is seen as an easy target." He smiled at me. "Fortunately, she isn't." His smile faded. "But she's always been in danger, just by being his lover."

  Another message for me.

  "Having a female Alpha will be an adjustment for all. It took a long time for me to accept Elena as a werewolf. Logically, I was fine with it, but deep down?" He shook his head. "It wasn't easy. To Clay, having a mate was the most natural thing. The wolf in him is so strong it rules out everything else. But for me? Being raised as a werewolf means being raised to keep your distance from roma
ntic entanglements. Pack werewolves weren't allowed to form long-term relationships, let alone marry. Open yourself up to someone and you might be tempted to tell her everything. Now that the werewolves are back in the supernatural fold, there are women who can safely know my secret. I still have trouble accepting that."

  We sat there for a while, staring at the water.

  I knew now that Jeremy hadn't come to L.A. to declare himself--or to let me down easy--but to give us both a chance to explore the possibilities and weigh them against the consequences. We could spend time together, away from being "werewolf Alpha and necromancer delegate." Time to decide whether it was better to stay friends or risk becoming lovers.

  Becoming lovers would come with risks. He was letting me know what I'd be in for. A lover who couldn't fly to meet me for romantic getaways. A lover whose priority would always be his family and his Pack. A lover who would put my life in danger just by being with me, making me a target for anyone who wanted to get at the Alpha. Even if I was fine with all this, after a lifetime of one-night stands, avoiding emotional attachments, Jeremy might never be comfortable in a relationship.

  My impulse was to say: "Put my life at risk for a difficult, long-distance relationship that might never work? It's Jeremy. Sign me up." But I had to approach this with my head, not my heart. It wasn't something I could just leap into.

  "We should get you back to the house," Jeremy said finally. "I presume you have a segment to film tomorrow?"

  "In the afternoon, plus an interview midmorning."

  He helped me to my feet. "When things settle down with your costars, I'd like to watch a segment or two. I'm looking forward to that."

  "It's not nearly as much fun as you'd think. It's a lot of standing around doing nothing."

  "I'm not here to be entertained, Jaime."

  He put his hand on my back and led me from the park.

  SPIRITUALIST BIG BROTHER

  BACK AT THE HOUSE, I grabbed a cold drink from the kitchen before heading to bed. I was backing away from the fridge when something moved along the far wall. I turned and braced myself, waiting for a ghost to materialize. Another flicker--just a flashlight beam from a guard doing a walk-around outside. As I'd stared at the wall, though, something else caught my eye. Resting above the chair rail was a dark dot, smaller than a dime. I walked over. The dot became a hole, and recessed within the hole was the lens of a camera.

  There could be a logical explanation for this. Maybe the family that lived here suspected the cook of spitting in their food. Or they had a dieter with a midnight fridge-raiding habit. But tiny wood shavings still clung to the hole, meaning it'd been drilled recently.

  Time to take a tour of the house.

  I FOUND four pinhole cameras in the shared rooms where we spiritualists were most likely to congregate. The crew-only areas were surveillance-free.

  So we were being taped. By whom? My first thought was the crew. But if someone hoped for an ugly photo he could sell to a tabloid or a compromising video to post on the Internet, he'd be filming in the private areas.

  I thought of Todd Simon. Beer-commercial director turned reality-show producer.

  Becky said we were all in this house for budget reasons. Entirely plausible, and I was sure she believed that. But someone was hoping for Big Brother-style footage. Was it legal? That depended on our contracts.

  I went upstairs, pulled out my contract and gave it a good read. I never sign without studying the contract and consulting with my lawyer. I don't care if it looks just like the boilerplate I've signed a hundred times--I don't take chances. But Hollywood contracts are notorious for their legalese and for their sheer size, and this one had covered every eventuality from Death of Innocence: The Musical to Jaime Vegas action figures.

  I found the clause about agreeing to be filmed at the Brentwood house. Seemed obvious--I was going to the house to tape segments, so naturally I'd agreed to be filmed. When I reread that clause after finding the pinhole cameras, it took on a whole new meaning.

  I'd run this past my lawyer, but even if I had grounds for raising a fuss, I'd be labeled difficult, and my hopes for my own show would fly out the window. Better to tuck the knowledge into my back pocket and use it to my advantage. If I knew I was being taped, I could put on a good performance. And I could make damned sure I didn't pick my nose, scratch my ass or badmouth anyone in the common rooms. As long as they weren't taping me in my bedroom...

  I put down the contract and searched. No cameras. Whew.

  AS I headed to breakfast the next morning, Becky called to me from the living room. When I caught up with her, she was already vanishing into the study that now served as a communal office.

  "I wanted to thank you for helping us out with Grady yesterday," she said as she shut the door. "I really appreciate it, and I want you to be the first to hear Mr. Simon's amazing new idea for the show. I just know you're going to love this."

  I braced myself. In Hollywood, the words "you're going to love this" are more plea than assurance.

  "Rather than pepper our show with random seances, why not make it a theme?" She lifted her hands, punctuating her words with a jab as if pointing to them on a marquee. "One final curtain call for the tragic dead of Brentwood."

  "You want us to contact more dead movie stars?" I said.

  "Not just movie stars. Brentwood stars. Those killed under mysterious circumstances, like Tansy Lane. A theme, leading to the grand finale with Marilyn Monroe."

  "It's an...interesting concept," I said carefully. "Certainly ambitious--"

  "We don't expect you to do as well with every ghost as you did with Tansy. You can ask how they died, but we won't expect any real revelations. We'll intercut with some talking heads giving their theories, some old detectives reminiscing about the cases, and by the end of the segment, no one will even notice that we didn't actually find out anything new."

  "It sounds...interesting."

  Becky crumpled, bracing herself against the desk. "It's horrible. I'm so sorry. We're still having issues with Grady, and this is Mr. Simon's solution, knowing how much Grady loves working with mysterious deaths."

  "I'm not comfortable with changing the format at this point. It's been changed once, when they set it in this house, and I was very understanding about that."

  Terror filled Becky's eyes. Part of me wanted to stand my ground and tell her that if she wanted to make the show she envisioned, then she'd better grow a backbone and stand up to men like Bradford Grady. But another part of me remembered being young, ambitious and overwhelmed, and I wanted to be the one person not making this shoot a living hell for her.

  "I'll consider a change of format, but on several conditions."

  "Name them."

  "I want a written guarantee of equal screen time in the final production and equal preshow promotion. Is the Tansy Lane segment in danger of being cut?"

  "Definitely not. I'll get Mr. Simon to put that in writing. No matter how much weight Grady throws around, your success with Tansy stays."

  Her cell phone rang. A few quick words, then she hung up. "I need to run. The next seance will be after lunch. We're keeping the locations and subjects a secret. Yes, I know--Grady is an expert and by tonight his team will be faxing him dossiers on every semifamous person who died in this neighborhood. But I have a plan."

  She headed for the door, then stopped. "Oh, and before you leave, there's a release form on the desk. Just an addendum to your contract. It's in the blue folder. Take it with you to read over. No rush."

  I OPENED the blue folder she'd left on the desk. Inside was a single printed sheet. On first glance, it looked more like a memo than a release form.

  Subject: Gabrielle Langdon.

  The name sounded familiar, but I had to read a few lines before I realized what I was looking at: a detailed summary of the life and death of arguably Brentwood's most famous murder victim.

  I slapped the folder shut and scanned the desk, but there were no more blue folders. No fo
lders of any color.

  Becky said she had a plan, and now I knew what it was.

  I HAD lunch and the early afternoon off, so Jeremy picked me up. He'd already checked in with Robert and a second potential source: Clay. Like Jeremy and Elena, Clay worked part-time and primarily from home--the advantage to having a healthy communal bank account and little desire for material goods. From Jeremy and Elena, I knew Clay was passionate about his work, but he rarely talked about it with anyone outside the Pack.

  While Robert Vasic looked like the stereotypical professor, no one looked--or acted--less like one than Clay. Yet that's what he was: an anthropologist. His specialty was religions with animal deities. There's a name for it, which I can never remember, and it's not like he's about to discuss it with me anytime soon.

  "Any luck?" I said, shutting the car door.

  "Very little," he said as he pulled from the curb. "According to Clay, we're barking up the wrong tree. Of course, he said it in far more colorful language, but the point he made was that the link between pagan religions, like Wicca and Druidism, and sacrifice is significantly overemphasized in popular culture."

  "You mean they aren't out there slaughtering babies every full moon? Bradford Grady would be mightily disappointed. And probably out of a job."

  "Wiccans and satanists don't practice human sacrifice, whatever the tabloids might say. But even the more mysterious religions are far more benign than I assumed. Animal sacrifice, yes. But not human. Those that did practice it did so only in the very distant past and have since found substitutes more acceptable to contemporary mores. One sect Clay did mention was tantraism."

  "That's related to Buddhism, isn't it?"

  Jeremy shook his head. "This is different. It's a religion based in India that practices sacrifice. Usually animal sacrifice, but reports of human sacrifice do arise, sometimes child sacrifice. Then there are 'muti' murders, primarily in southern Africa. Not necessarily human sacrifice per se, but the killing of people, often children, for medicine."