“Or maybe the conference is so they can get their stories straight about the cover-up.”

“Excuse me?” I said. I heard a new one every show, it seemed like.

“You don’t really think anybody actually wants answers, do you?” my caller said brusquely. Here was someone so wrapped up in her conspiracy-laden worldview that the truth was obvious to her. “These ‘researchers’ are only pretending to be researching anything. They can keep putting out half-baked theories forever. In the meantime, anything they discover they can keep to themselves and use against the rest of us.”

“Anything like what?” I said, truly curious.

“The secrets of mind control, of immortality. The rest is a smoke screen. That’s what they’re looking for, and they’re not going to tell the rest of us when they find it. They don’t even care about the real questions, like where we came from.”

We—she was some brand of lycanthrope, I guessed. Vampires didn’t tend to get this intense about anything—they were used to sitting back and watching events take their course. Whatever she was, she was feeling lost and helpless in a world gone out of control. I could understand her position.

“I know some of these scientists personally,” I said in what I hoped was a soothing voice. “Most of them are more worried about their funding than about taking part in any kind of cover-up. But I’ll tell you what—I’ll ask as many people as many questions as I can about the origins of vampires and lycanthropes. I’ll bring the answers back to the show. How does that sound?”

“You say that now, but they’ll rope you in,” she said, as if I’d already personally betrayed her. “They’ll get to you, threaten you or bribe you, and then you’ll be in on it, too. Just watch.”

“So little faith,” I said, put out. If she could act like she’d been betrayed, I could act offended. “You said it yourself, I’ve been doing this for years, and no one’s stopped me yet. I don’t see this conference changing that, no matter how weird things get. Moving on.”

I clicked off Jane’s call and punched up the next. The caller didn’t waste time with so much as a hello.

“There’s no mystery where you all come from,” said a flat male voice. “It’s not even a question.”

“Oh? And where do we come from?”

“The devil! You’re all from the devil!”

I fielded one of these calls about every fourth show. The fanatics had learned to say what they needed to say to scam the screening process, and when they finally got on the air they’d give The Speech—the supernatural was the spawn of Satan and the world was racing toward Armageddon on our backs. Blah blah blah. Sometimes, we’d let the calls through on purpose, because the best way to counter these jokers was to let them keep talking.

“You can dress it up in all that science double-talk, but science is the devil’s tool! This conference is another sign of the End Times, the new world order. There’s a reason it’s called the number of the beast. That’s the best thing about this, once you’re there you’ll all be stamped with the number, so the rest of us can see you, and you won’t be able to hide anymore.”

I leaned into the microphone and used my sultry voice. “I wasn’t aware I’d been hiding.”

“There’s a war coming, a real war! You may sound all nice and sweet, you may have brainwashed thousands of people, but it’s a disguise, a deception, and when the trumpet sounds, Lucifer will call his own to him, even you.”

“I like to think I’ll be judged by my deeds rather than what some crazy person says about me.”

“All your good deeds are a trick to hide your true nature. I’ve listened to you, I know!”

“So what does that make you? A media consumer of the beast?”

The caller hung up before I did, which was a pretty good trick. The game of “who gets the last word” meant that no matter how badly I mocked them, no matter how agitated they got, they kept on the line, thinking I’d somehow, eventually, admit that they were right. They always seemed to think that they were different than the last guy I hung up on. Suckers.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if I’m the spawn of Satan someone sure forgot to tell me about it. And I believe we have time for one more call. Hello, you’re on.”

“Uh, hi, Kitty. Thanks.” He was male, laid back. He sounded kind of stoned, actually.

“You have a question or comment?”

“Yeah. So, this thing’s in London, right? You’re going to London?”

“I think that’s what I’ve said about a dozen times over the last hour in a shameless bid for self-promotion.”

“Right.” He sniggered, like he was suppressing giggles. “So, that’ll make you”—more sniggering—“an American werewolf in—”

I cut him off. “I’m sorry, I seem to have lost that call. And I’d better not hear any Warren Zevon references, either. Sheesh, people. Let’s break for station ID.”

I had a feeling I was going to be hearing a lot of cracks like that over the next few weeks, I didn’t need to start now.

* * *

THE BIGGEST issue about me attending the conference wasn’t time, expense, or inclination. It certainly wasn’t whether or not the conference wanted me there—they’d invited me, after all. The problem was whether or not Ben and I, as werewolves prone to a bit of claustrophobia, could reasonably survive the flight to London, sealed in a metal tube with a few hundred people our lupine selves classified as prey, and no escape route. My longest flight since becoming a werewolf had been to Montana, an hour or so away. Ben hadn’t been on an airplane at all since becoming a werewolf.

I called a friend for advice.

The last time I’d talked with Joseph Tyler, formerly of the U.S. Army, he’d become part of the Seattle werewolf pack and was rooming with a couple of the other bachelor werewolves. I liked the idea of him having people to look after him—he suffered from post-traumatic stress related to his service in Afghanistan in addition to being a relatively new werewolf.

So I was a little surprised when a woman answered his phone. “Hello?”

“Um, hi. May I speak to Joseph Tyler?”