* * *

THURSDAY NIGHT, I was at New Moon. Cormac had checked in with his parole officer—no harm done there—and was back at his warehouse job, playing the good citizen. He was getting pretty good at it. Ben had had a client call him from the county jail. The client wouldn’t talk over the phone about why he’d been arrested, so with a long-suffering roll of his eyes, Ben had run to the rescue. Life was getting back to normal.

Shaun was managing the restaurant tonight. He’d been hovering, crestfallen when I snapped at him to leave me alone. I was reading a popular history of London I’d picked up at the airport on the way home, and had a pen and notepad to make notes. I was trying to think of some innocuous anecdote to focus the show on, but I found myself wanting to talk about Ned, the convocation of vampires, Flemming, what had happened to Tyler, and every encounter I’d had with Roman and Mercedes. Maybe I could come up with a compromise.

The e-mail comments I’d gotten through my Web site—not to mention blog posts, forum comments, op-ed pieces, essays, and rants—gave me an idea of what to expect when I opened the line for calls next time. Half the commentary was some form of, “Are you crazy?” Had I finally gone around the bend? Was I even really a werewolf or was this all an elaborate hoax? I hadn’t heard that one since my Senate testimony. I expected all of that. The problem was the other half of the comments, which assured me that I was exactly right, there was a mysterious global conspiracy, and here was the lengthy detailed explanation. My favorite so far described the baby-eating lizard aliens who made their home in a tunnel system deep below Denver International Airport. Awesome.

When I said, “But I’m right, my conspiracy is real,” I sounded just like the baby-eating lizard alien people.

Ben and I had started looking at houses in the western foothills. He was right, it was probably time. The condo felt too temporary for our increasingly settled lives. If I wanted to start a family like I kept talking about, more space would be useful. The trouble was, lost market share meant lost income. Even if I could put a book proposal together and sell it tomorrow, I couldn’t count on seeing the money for months. Ben was confident we could scrape together enough for bigger mortgage payments. I wasn’t so sure. I seemed to have lost my optimism somewhere along the way.

When my phone rang, the sound startled me. I’d been lost in my own world, and I hadn’t expected anyone to reach into that world to grab hold and yank me out.

Caller ID said Rick, which was a relief. He couldn’t possibly be disappointed in me. “Hello?”

“Kitty. Do you have time this evening to stop by Obsidian? I’d like to show you something.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“No. At least not more so than usual.” The distinction didn’t seem to bother him; he sounded as easygoing as he always did.

“Yeah. I can be there in an hour or so.”

When I arrived at Obsidian, the art gallery he owned, I went to the basement stairs. Rick was waiting at the door for me, so I didn’t even have to argue with any flunkies about letting me in. He and his Family kept a lair here, an office and apartments, though I’d never seen any part of it other than the main hallway and the office and living room in back. Just like Rick had never seen where the pack spent full moon nights. We had our separate realms. It was a wonder any of us ever worked together.

Rick politely ushered me into the wide living room, which had sofas and a coffee table on one end and a desk and shelves on the other. The place was simple, functional, livable.

“Have a seat,” he said, indicating the comfortable chair on the other side of the desk.

“What’s this about?”

I resisted looking over my shoulder for the practical joke. He opened a drawer and produced a padded shipping envelope, already opened. I didn’t see the return address or stamps, but it looked battered, as if it had traveled some great distance. Turning it upside down, he shook, and a packet fell onto his desk. Thick, heavy, made of some expensive, cream-colored paper, it looked like a wedding invitation, or a medieval deed.

His smile was cryptic. Mischievous, even. He turned it right side up, showing me the wax seal, the thick red blob imprinted with an ornate crest. Medieval deed it was, then.

The seal had already been cracked. I unfolded the thick paper to reveal writing, ornate and curling, in dark ink that seemed to glow against the rich paper. I could make out letters, put some of them together into words, but the language was Latin, which I recognized but couldn’t read.

“What’s it say?” I asked Rick.

“It’s from Nasser, who is the Master of Tripoli. He’s requesting a meeting to discuss ways in which we might oppose Dux Bellorum and…” He picked up the page again and read a phrase. “… terminamus ludum longum.”

“Which means…”

“‘We end the Long Game.’ Once and for all. End it without finishing it. He saw a video of your speech in London and wants to meet you. He didn’t know there was anyone else in the world opposing Roman, and now he does. Should I invite him to visit?”

Stunned, I turned the words over in my mind, trying to parse what they meant. Someone had heard me. A knot of hope settled in my chest. Terminamus … had a nice ring to it.

“Then it worked,” I said softly. “The speech—it wasn’t for nothing.”

“Oh, no,” Rick said, and the smile turned wide and pleased. “I think it worked very well. I think it did exactly what it was supposed to. Assuming you meant it as a call to arms.”

I leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and covered my face with my hands. It was like I’d been holding my breath since London, and the releasing sigh reached every nerve. I couldn’t even move.

“Kitty?” Rick prompted.

“I just keep telling myself it’s going to be all right.”

He cocked his head, a bemused furrow marking his brow. “I think it will. Eventually.”

“You’ve been saying that for five hundred years, haven’t you?”

He just smiled.

* * *

“GOOD EVENING, and once again you’re listening to The Midnight Hour, talk radio with teeth. We’ve been talking about conspiracy theories. Especially supernatural conspiracy theories. There are an awful lot of them out there, and I’ve got some of my own as most of you well know.”