“The restraining order against our friend Nick and the Band is filed. There’s not much more we can do until something happens.
Maybe this—this emotional harassment—is all there is.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Nick, a were-tiger, was the leader of the Band of Tiamat. He also led an animal and magic act in Las Vegas—only the animals
were all feline lycanthropes. The whole act was a front for the Tiamat cult, and when they weren’t using the Babylonian-themed
stage and sets in their show, they were using them to conduct sacrifices. Their preferred victims? Werewolves. Dogs and cats,
at it again. Nick himself was certainly hot and sexy enough to front a Vegas show. He was also an evil son of a bitch. I got
chills just thinking about him.
Ben moved his arm over my shoulder, and I snuggled into his embrace. “I wish I could just go back there and . . . beat them
up,” I said.
“We’ve been over that. They didn’t manage to kill you last time. It’s best if we don’t give them a next time.”
Especially since I wouldn’t have quite the same backup if I faced the Band of Tiamat again. Evan and Brenda, the rather uncomfortably
amoral bounty hunters who’d saved my ass, had had to leave Vegas in a hurry to avoid awkward questions from the police. They
couldn’t help me.
And the one supernatural bounty hunter in the world I actually sort of trusted was still in jail.
“Grant’s keeping an eye on things for us,” Ben continued. “If they do anything funny, we’ll know it.”
Odysseus Grant was a stage magician in Las Vegas, a niche act who’d made his reputation with a retro show featuring old vaudeville
props and reviving classic tricks that had gone out of fashion in the age of pyrotechnics and special effects. That was the
public face, at least. I still didn’t entirely understand the persona underneath. He was a guardian of sorts, protecting humanity
from the forces of chaos. It sounded so overwrought I hesitated to even think it. But, having encountered some of those forces
firsthand, I was grateful for his presence.
I had allies. I should have felt strong. I had a whole pack behind me, and a vampire, and a magician. The Band of Tiamat didn’t
stand a chance against all that.
It had to be enough for whatever they threw at us. It just had to be.
W
hat did people ever do before the Internet? Could you really go to the library to find out that the hit TV show
Paradox PI
was coming to Denver to film a couple of episodes? Because the show’s producers certainly hadn’t chosen to let me know.
I found this information after searching on Harry Houdini, trying to learn more about him. What I found, I liked. He traveled,
did thousands of performances and demonstrations of stage magic and escapism. He loved debunking fakes. He claimed that he
wanted to believe—he was desperate for proof that the mediums and séances he discredited could actually reach the “other side”
and communicate with the dead. But every one he encountered used tricks and stagecraft. When Houdini was alive, the supernatural
was still hidden. It kept to shadows and refused to draw back the curtains. I had a theory: You could tell who the real mediums
and psychics were because they didn’t advertise, they didn’t brag, and they certainly weren’t going to look for attention
from someone like Houdini. Ironically, in his search for the real deal, Houdini drove the real deal away, deeper into hiding.
He’d have loved this day and age.
As Professor Olafson had said, Houdini promised that if it was possible, he would deliver a message after his death. Despite
hundreds of mediums and séances attempting to help him to do that, the world was still waiting.
Paradox PI
did an entire episode on the search for Houdini’s message from beyond and didn’t find anything. Now they were coming to Denver.
I’d seen a few episodes of the show. They specialized in paranormal investigation, especially haunted houses. Went in, set
up all kinds of cameras, microphones, infrared scanners, motion detectors, seismographs, and so on, hoping to record some
evidence of spectral activity. They usually found something small and indeterminate—heavy breathing in a room where no one
had been, the flash of a shadow on a camera, or a drop in temperature in a hallway. The on-camera team—two men and a woman
(the woman had beautiful, flowing raven hair and tended to wear tight shirts and jeans)—would stand around, regarding the
“evidence” and nodding sagely, and happily inform the haunted establishment’s owner that while they couldn’t
prove
the place was haunted, this looked pretty cool. The whole thing had a reality-TV aesthetic, lots of shaky video footage of
people talking, the occasional expletive bleeped out. It promoted a sense of artificial urgency. They’d never come up with
something as definitive as an image of Jacob Marley rattling his chains, but they always pretended that they might. Bottom
line: It was a TV show, not paranormal investigation.
Since the emergence of the supernatural—the government acknowledging the existence of vampires and werewolves, my own show
exploiting the topic mercilessly, dozens of others jumping on the bandwagon—the fakes had been having a field day. When you’d
seen a werewolf shape-shift on live TV, the psychic hotline somehow seemed a lot more reasonable.
I wanted to know what side of the line
Paradox PI
fell on: sensationalist TV show exploiting interest in the supernatural, or genuine paranormal investigators? I wasn’t necessarily
going to try to expose them as fakes. But getting a story out of them would be icing.
Now I just had to figure out how I could crash the party.
I
brought all my powers as a prominent media figure to bear in my quest. Well, basically, I sweet-talked a production assistant
at the company into giving me the Denver filming schedule. It took me about three tries, calling at different times of the
day, before I hit on the right person, but it worked.
They’d already been in the area three days, covering some of the more famous locations like the Brown Palace Hotel in downtown
Denver, and the Stanley Hotel sixty miles north in Estes Park. On day four, the PI gang was scheduled to examine Cheesman
Park. Of course they were. This was the classic haunting that had supposedly inspired the movie
Poltergeist,
not that the latter bore any resemblance to the former. About a hundred years ago, a cemetery had been cleared of its headstones
and spruced up to make way for a park and fancy neighborhood. And no, the bodies hadn’t been moved. Or they had, but by cut-rate
labor that had dumped them together and swept them under the carpet, so to speak. Since then, reports of angry spirits flourished:
headless women in Victorian gowns searching for their skulls, ghosts rattling shutters and doors, that sort of thing. No little
girls getting sucked into TVs, though.
I arrived at the park before the TV crew did, so I waited, parked along the winding street in my hatchback.
A half hour later, with about an hour to go before dusk—very scenic and photogenic considering the subject matter—a functional
white van pulled alongside the curb and parked some fifty yards behind me, near the picturesque fountain area. They might
have been plumbers on a dinner break, but a couple of guys got out, opened up the back, and lugged out a camera, a high-end
video job. They spent about fifteen minutes setting it up, then one of them spoke on a cell phone. Ten minutes later, a shiny
black van with the show’s logo painted on it pulled up and parked on the street, and the cameraman filmed it all. Stock footage,
the PIs’ arrival, with the lovely backdrop of golden westering sun slanting across the park. Rapt, I watched.
The guys filmed the
Paradox PI
team getting out of the vehicle. Then they lowered the cameras, and everyone milled for a moment.
I made my move.
I jumped out of my car and strode toward the cluster of people and vehicles. I had my sights on Gary Janson, the show’s front
man both in front of and behind the camera. Tall, maybe six-five, and burly, he had an intimidating presence, but his dark
trimmed beard hid a bit of paunch. He’d probably spent more of his life in front of computers than running from poltergeists.
If I had gotten all the way to Janson without anyone stopping me, that would have told me something about how this show was
run. But I didn’t, which told me that this wasn’t a bunch of amateurs. They had a professional production staff. One of the
techs climbed out of the white van and intercepted me, jogging slightly, a bit of panic in his eyes.
He held his hand out at me. “I’m sorry, we’re filming a TV show. Can I ask you to stay on that side of the park?”
“I know you’re filming. I was hoping I could talk to Gary and the gang. I’m Kitty Norville.” I gave him my biggest “gosh,
gee” smile and offered my hand.
His eyes went round and a little shocky.
“Hey, I recognize you! You’re that werewolf!” This came from a woman by the dark van—the show’s raven-haired hottie, Tina
McCannon. Seeing her in person, I was even more convinced she’d been chosen for her model-quality looks, measurements, and
preternaturally tight T-shirts rather than any of her other abilities. She pointed at me with the same urgency someone might
have when saying, “She’s a witch! Burn her!” I gritted my teeth behind my smile. Being the country’s first celebrity werewolf
had its more interesting moments.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the tech guy had signaled to the cameraman to film this. Groovy. If I could be charming
enough, they might end up with a very special episode of
Paradox PI,
guest starring Kitty Norville. The publicity opportunity was mouthwatering. Their audience was bigger than mine.
“Hi!” I said cheerfully. “You’re Tina, right? You’re much taller in person.”
She blinked at me, confused.
The third member of the on-camera team, Jules Simpson, came around from the other side of the van, watching with interest.
He was dark-skinned, with short-cropped hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He dressed in a sweater and slacks, an intelligentsia
hipster. He was British, and his accent played as well on TV as Tina’s figure.
“What are you doing here?” Tina said, still confused. She didn’t seem to know what to make of me, which was pretty funny considering
she was supposed to be a paranormal investigator.
“I was hoping I could interview you, maybe have you come onto my show. I know I probably should have called first.” My shrug
was perhaps exaggerated. “But I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by.”
Gary, who’d been regarding me more studiously, arms crossed, back to the van, said, “And how did you know where we’d be?”
“Psychic?” I said, not very convincingly.
Donning a determined expression, the head of the group came to some decision. “Tell you what: Let us interview you, and then
we’ll return the favor. Deal?”
Of course he gave me no time to think about this. But I wasn’t one to turn down camera time. Not anymore.
“Sure. Sounds great.” I gave him a wolfish smile. He probably didn’t interpret it as anything but friendly.
Turned out they didn’t have anything exciting planned for this session of filming. The Paradox team wandered through the park,
followed by the camera, collecting atmospheric stock footage. Gary talked about the history of the park, a canned speech that
had been written beforehand outlining the more lurid details while gesturing across the expanse of lawn.
There’s where a hundred headstones were ripped from the earth and tossed aside, there’s where cut-rate gravediggers dumped
a dozen skeletons into one undersized coffin . . .
It seemed more like a tale of bureaucratic terror than a ghost story. I stayed out of the way and watched.
Tina kept looking at me like she expected me to growl and sprout fangs. It made me nervous. The more I glanced back at her,
the more nervous
she
got, which created something of a feedback loop. I finally just tried to ignore her.
If Gary was the leader and did most of the talking and directing of cameras, and Tina was support crew and eye candy, Jules
seemed to be the brains of the outfit. He paid little attention to me, the cameras, or even Gary and Tina, focusing instead
on a handheld device, a little metal box with some kind of dial on the front. He moved slowly, careful not to jostle it, and
seemed to be making a circuit of the area.
Tina was looking at me again. Instead of ignoring her this time, I faced her directly. “What’s Jules doing?”
“EMF readings. You need me to explain that?” Her tone was suspicious.
I seemed to remember something about it and thought I could show her up. “Some people believe an increase in electromagnetic
activity in an area might indicate evidence of supernatural activity. Some people . . . don’t.” I smiled with fake sweetness.
Jules certainly seemed very serious about it.
“So you have done some research. Nice.” Thoughtful, she walked away to join Gary and the cameras, before I could get the last
word in.
To the naked eye, the only thing haunting the place were a couple of unsavory-looking kids with skateboards and a guy with
a dog running across the sloping lawn. I returned to the vans and waited, watching.
When the cameras were off and everyone had gathered again by the parking lot, the sun had almost set. Gary and crew would
return tomorrow during daylight hours to set up an array of high-tech gadgetry and sensor equipment. Tomorrow night, the fun
would begin, or so they hoped.
“So, is it haunted? You picking up any creepy vibes?”
I’d done enough reading on the topic to not be surprised when Gary didn’t give me a straight answer. None of these guys ever
came right out and said yes or no.
“ ‘Creepy vibes’ aren’t a very reliable indication. But the history of activity in this location is so well documented, over
such a long period of time, it’s difficult to ignore that kind of pedigree.”
“But do
you
think it’s haunted?” I tried again.