“Ryan and Istas are going to be joining us in a minute, and then I’ll be happy to explain everything,” I said. “I don’t want to start without them.”
Kitty paused again, this time for substantially longer. She looked from me to Dominic and back to me before she asked, “How bad?”
“Bad enough that I’m standing in front of your office an hour before closing time with a man from the Covenant of St. George in tow,” I said. “Seriously, it would be best if we could go inside and shut the door. I’m trying not to start a panic.”
“I remember a time when your boyfriend could start a panic by breathing,” said Ryan, walking up behind us. Istas was with him. The only sign that she’d gone off duty was her apron, which was now frilly lace, rather than industrial canvas. “I guess you’re a bad influence.”
“I knowshe’s a bad influence,” said Dominic. Now that it was him, me, and three cryptids, he was starting to look less sure about what he was doing.
I grabbed his wrist before he could change his mind. “Into the office. It’s conference time.”
It took Dominic less than ten minutes to explain what was going on, and what was important enough to bring us back to the Freakshow. It took me another twenty minutes to get everyone to stop yelling. Kitty was demanding answers. Ryan was demanding someone’s head on a platter. Istas was just yelling because everyone else was yelling, and it seemed like the thing to do.
Eventually, everyone calmed down. A few questions were asked. A few answers were given. And things proceeded to take a turn for the weird, which is like taking a turn for the worse, but doesn’t necessarily involve cleaning your knives afterward.
See, the Covenant of St. George did get one major thing right when they wrote their files on the world’s cryptids: all cryptids are essentially different from humans, because they’re entirely different species. We may be similar enough to work in the same places, watch the same TV shows, and complain about the same tax increases, but we’re not the same. We can’t be.
So it only goes to reason that cryptids will occasionally have reactions that any reasonable human would view as completely and unequivocally batshit crazy. “You can’t be serious,” said Dominic, staring at Kitty.
“I’m dead serious,” said Kitty.
“Possible stress on the ‘dead’ there,” said Ryan.
Kitty ignored him. “Look. You say the Covenant is sending people to check on you, and that when they find out how little progress you’ve made, they’re probably going to purge Manhattan. Great. Do you have any idea what kind of cryptid population this city has?”
“No, he doesn’t, and you’re not going to tell him,” I said hurriedly. Dominic raised an eyebrow. I patted him on the arm. “You’re earning a lot of points tonight, but there are still some things I don’t think we should be sharing just yet.”
Dominic sighed. “Much as I’d like to argue, with my fellows coming to town, I’m afraid that Verity is correct. If they suspect that I’ve been . . . compromised . . . they have ways of getting me to reveal any information that they desire.”
“You know where the club is located,” noted Istas. “We should kill you to preserve that information.” She smiled. Somehow, that didn’t help.
“There will be no killing of my boyfriend,” I said firmly. “I’m not killing yours, you’re not allowed to kill mine.”
Istas considered this for a moment before allowing, “That seems fair.”
“If we could get back to the point here?” said Kitty. “I meant what I said. There are too many cryptids in this city for even the Covenant to kill. I will not run. I will not let them win. And the Freakshow will notbe closing its doors.”
“Kitty—” I began.
“Boss—” Ryan began.
“Surely—” Dominic began.
“QUIET!”Kitty’s time as a wanna-be rock star served her well; when she shouted in an enclosed space, you knew damn well and good that somebody was shouting at you. “Everybody who doesn’t own this club, shut the hell up and listen to me. You,” she thrust a finger at Dominic, “had no trouble finding this place even before you started fooling around with Verity. You know why? Because my uncle wouldn’t know discretion if it bit him on the ass. He advertised too widely, and we got a reputation for having freaky girls. All I’ve done is build on that reputation.”
“Which is why you need to close for the duration,” said Dominic.
“Which is exactly why I don’tneed to close for the duration,” said Kitty. “Too many people know we’re here. If we close, we might as well be putting up a big sign that says, ‘Oh, hey, that club that had the fake monsters? They were real monsters.’ We’ll become the all-you-can-kill cryptid buffet. But if we stay open . . .”
“Hiding in plain sight,” I said, finally grasping what she was trying to say. “I’m an idiot. You want to do exactly what I did on TV.”
Kitty tapped the side of her nose with one over-long finger. “At last, Miss Verity Price decides to join the party!”
“It’s been a long night.” Before I came to New York, I went to Los Angeles. Not to study the local cryptids: to appear on reality television. I was a contestant on the nation’s highest-rated dance competition show, Dance or Die, under the name “Valerie Pryor.” I put on a red wig and green contact lenses, and I cha-cha’d my way into America’s hearts. Far enough into their hearts to take second place anyway, and while that wasn’t as good as winning, it was pretty decent.
“May I have an invitation to this ‘party’ that you’re talking about?” asked Dominic.
“It’s important that you guys—the Covenant, I mean—continue thinking that my family died out two generations ago,” I said. “That’s why when you’ve seen me at dance competitions, I’ve been wearing a wig and using a fake name. It’s hiding in plain sight.”
“We slap some latex on the girls who look mostly human, and we give the girls who look too inhuman to pass a few weeks off,” said Kitty. “More importantly, we give people a place to run if they need to.”
“And if the Covenant comes looking for cryptids in a place where they have been known to gather?”
“They’ll find a bunch of humans in prosthetics and stage makeup.” Kitty looked at him calmly. “Bogeymen have a reputation. I’d have to be blind not to see that you expect me to cut and run because my uncle did. But the thing most people forget is that we run from yourhomes. We run from yourplaces. We don’t run from our own. We stay.”
“Perhaps there will be the opportunity for carnage,” said Istas.
I sighed. “See, that’s what I was hoping to avoid. Carnage is bad for business.”
“My business,” said Kitty. “If they want to bring the carnage to us, let them. We’ll be ready.”
Judging by the looks on their faces—Istas anticipatory, Ryan grim, and Kitty just determined, like there was nothing in the world that could sway her—if the Covenant decided to come to the Freakshow, they were going to get a lot more than they had bargained for. I just hoped that the right people would be the ones standing at the end of it all.
Seven
“When everything else fails, smile big, shoot sharp, and remember that a lady never needs to say she’s sorry.”
A semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village, about twenty minutes later