Especially this associate, I thought. I comforted myself that this time nobody had died.
Pizer wasn’t backing down. “If they don’t want press, then they shouldn’t have opened an office in Los Angeles and taken on a high-profile industry case.” I thought Pizer had a point, and I nodded in agreement. That had David rounding on me.
“Linnet, you need to stay in the background. Okay?”
“I just went out to dinner,” I said. “Short of wearing a burqua or never leaving my room, I’m not sure what more I can do.”
“Well, just…” David looked frustrated. “Just let me take point in this opening session.”
“Fine,” I snapped.
“And don’t talk to Montolbano. Now, could we please get back to the case,” David said, and he sounded really exasperated.
Pizer was still grinning. Clearly he loved to tweak David. “Sure. I assumed you want to start with a general meeting, so I had all the parties come in.”
David nodded. “Good, yes, excellent.”
“Do you want them brought in one at a time or in a big scrum?” I asked.
David considered, then said, “Bring them all in together. How they interact with each other should be interesting, and it may help us start to get a fix on these people.”
“Remember, they are actors,” Pizer warned. “They’ll show you what they think you want to see.”
The idea that a bunch of actors could fool him had David assuming the full-on vampire. “They can try,” he said. “I’ve had some experience with human subterfuge.”
Pizer shook his head, but said nothing. He went away to summon the various parties. While he was gone, assistants hurried in with coffee, tea, soft drinks, and a platter of donuts. Yellow legal pads and pens were arranged on the big oval table.
“Can you be charmed, bedazzled, whatever you want to call it by the Álfar?” I asked. “My foster father warned me about them, but I thought that had to do more with my being female.”
“You’d be correct. Magic or whatever the Álfar use isn’t effective against vampires. It seems to only work on humans and other Álfar.”
“But you were human once,” I argued.
“But we’re not any longer,” came the short answer. It did rather say it all.
Jeff Montolbano ambled in and gave me one of the famous lopsided smiles that had devastated audiences for ten years. He was dressed casually in khaki slacks, a polo shirt, and a sports jacket.
I sidled over to him. “Well, you fed the beast, but I really don’t appreciate being made a prop.”
He looked contrite. “That really wasn’t my intention. I thought they’d be more interested in your colleague.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “And are you and your wife really having marital difficulties?”
“No,” he said. “We’re just trying to get some ink. This weekend you’ll hear about her being seen with Mark Wiley on the set of her movie in Italy.”
“Under the theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity?” It came out more acerbic than I’d intended.
“That’d be it.”
We had to break it off because people began entering the room. Up until now these people had just been names in the documents, so I was interested to meet them.
The human actors were represented by Sheila LeBlanc. She was midfifties, fit and tan, with flint gray eyes, too black hair, and designer glasses that sported bling and harkened back to the batwings of the 1950s. I recognized her because every time there was a high-profile case in California she ended up on CNN or some other cable station, either representing some side in the issue or commenting on the case.
The client of record on the human side was Missy (short for Melissa) Able. She was on the shady side of forty; her eyes seemed odd, and then I realized part of her face wasn’t moving. The wonders of Botox. She didn’t look much like the younger ditzy sister she had played on a twenty-year-old sitcom that I had caught in reruns on Nick at Night during my college years. All the Botox in the world couldn’t hide the downturned mouth and angry expression. Especially when she looked over at Jeff.
Even if there were no Álfar, I’m betting you wouldn’t be getting parts, I thought, then tried to forget I’d ever had the nasty little thought because we were the arbitrators and we were supposed to be impartial.
Representing the studios and networks was an enormously fat man with luxuriant light gray hair that set a sharp contrast with his black skin, a lazy smile, and a southern accent that poured honey over you. This was Gordon McPhee, and when he enfolded my hand in his own pillow-soft hand I took note of an antique signet ring and the suit vest crossed with an elaborate watch chain and fob. I looked up and meet his basset hound eyes, and caught the sharp glint of calculation beneath the sleepy demeanor. Yeah, cunning as a fox, I thought. He’s the one to watch.
His clients were a gaggle of sharp men in expensive suits, the heads of various studios and networks, and two women. One was young and self-effacing, Valerie Frank, who was the newly appointed head of Paramount Pictures, and the other woman made Sheila LeBlanc look like Mother Theresa. Ginjer Balkin was the head of the NBC network and all its cable subsidiaries. She was sharp-featured, with perfectly coiffed, highlighted hair, super-high-heeled Christian Louboutin shoes, a pencil skirt, and an inhuman coldness in her eyes that made me wonder if she was a vampire even though I knew that to be impossible.
The various talent agencies—William Morris, CAA, etc.—had hired Stan Brubaker. Midforties, gray-blond hair, a megawatt smile, surfer’s tan, and a hard-charging werewolf litigator. I didn’t want to be a bigot, even in the privacy of my own head, but after what had happened last year when a dispute over ownership of a powerful werewolf company had led to no fewer than six werewolves trying to kill me, it didn’t matter that they had all ended up dead and I was fine: I wasn’t real comfortable being around them.
And there were three more hounds among his clients. Like the studio executives the agents tended to be male and intense but with readier smiles, and their attire was more casual than the network and studio executives.
Representing the Álfar was Barbara Gabaldon, a very pretty woman in her thirties with tawny skin, liquid dark eyes, and black hair that showed what natural black hair should look like. She was very stylishly dressed, with lots of gold jewelry that looked great with her Latin looks. The Álfar actor who was the client of record for that side was Palendar, who had made a career out of turning Japanese anime into live action movies. There was no question that the look of anime characters had been affected by the advent of the Álfar into our world, and Palendar looked like he could have modeled for those early comics and movies. Like many Álfar he had multicolored hair; his tended toward an unusual lavender mixed with white and silver. He had narrow features with upturned eyes and a pointed chin, and he was so thin I wanted to offer him a donut. Like his human counterpart, Palendar glared at Jeff and ignored the human’s outstretched hand.
I had about reached the conclusion that actors tended to act like bratty kids when they weren’t inhabiting a role. Then another Álfar entered, accompanied by Pizer, and he stopped me in my tracks because he actually looked old. I knew from John that the Álfar aged very slowly, so I couldn’t begin to guess his age. He was dressed in a bespoke suit of silver gray with blue highlights that picked up the color of his eyes. His hair, which hung to the middle of his back, was nearly pure white with a few dramatic streaks of black and red. He was handsome in the way of all Álfar, but wrinkles lay like cobwebs across his skin.
“Qwendar,” he said softly, and shook hands with the various principles.