Free Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand by Carrie Vaughn Page B

the room and ducked back as we passed by. A bodyguard, I was sure. Just in case Ben and I tried something. Yeah, right. Hadn’t even crossed my mind.
    Like the foyer, the living room was rich without being decadent: a pair of brown leather sofas around a mahogany coffee table formed the room’s centerpiece. In the corner was a fully stocked bar. Dom probably held parties here. Windows along one wall looked out over the Strip. The view was incredible.
Ma, I can see Paris from here
. . . Well, fake Vegas Paris.
    Dom, as it turned out, made a pretty good martini. We enjoyed the drinks, admired the view, then settled back on the sofas.
    “This your first time in Vegas?” Dom asked. I said yes, Ben said no but didn’t elaborate. Dom said, “There’s no other town like it in the world. I just love it.”
    That made me warm to him. I’d met only a couple of Masters in my time. The good ones loved their cities. They had to want to protect their cities, if they were going to be anything but tyrants.
    I took the note out of my purse. “Rick wanted me to give this to you.”
    Dom waved me off. “No-no-no, do it official. ‘I carry greetings from Ricardo, Master of Denver,’ et cetera.”
    “Ah. You’re old-school.”
    He chuckled. “I have to admit, there are things I miss about the old days.”
    “You’ll have to forgive me, then. I’m kinda punk about the whole thing.”
    “Not even a little ceremony? Didn’t Ricky say anything besides, ‘Here, give him this’?”
    Ricky? “I’m not his lackey.”
    “You sure about that?”
    I handed him the note. “Here.”
    Glancing at me as he opened the envelope, he still looked like he was chuckling to himself at my expense. It didn’t take him long to read the letter.
    He tossed it on the coffee table when he’d finished. “I’d never have guessed that Rick would finally settle down with his own city. And you helped him, I take it? That’s why he wanted me to meet you, look you over?”
    Ben and I perched at the edge of our sofa, side by side, tense and ready to run. I didn’t know how to read Dom at all. The only thing I could do was trust that Rick knew this guy, and he wouldn’t have asked me to come here if he was dangerous.
    “He seemed to think it would be good for me to have a contact here. But I’m sure you’ve got much better things to do with your time, and we really ought to be—”
    “No, this is no trouble. I’ve got all the time in the world.”
    Vampires. Huh.
    He looked away, leaning back against the sofa, changing his posture from eager and forward to back and relaxed. It was wolf body language, a gesture of peace rather than aggression. It made me—my wolfish instincts—feel a little better.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “We don’t have werewolves in Vegas. I sometimes forget how to deal with them. I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”
    I wasn’t going to admit that I was nervous at all, so I didn’t say anything.
    He continued. “This, Rick sending you here, it’s all about gossip. Rumor. We all talk to each other. Maybe not very often, but it doesn’t have to be very often. If I can make noise on Rick’s behalf, tell the others that yes, he’s in charge, and a couple of strong alphas are in charge of the wolves there, other elements will be less likely to make a move on Denver.”
    “I had a feeling it was something like that.”
    “Maybe our boy’s finally growing up, settling down,” he said.
    “Growing up? He’s five hundred years old.”
    “He tell you that?”
    “Yeah. Sort of.”
    “Well. Being old and growing up are two different things.”
    “Where’d you meet him?” I asked. “How long have you known him?” I’d had a hard time getting stories about Rick’s past from Rick himself. Dom made it sound like they’d known each other for a long time. Since Rick claimed to have known Coronado, that might have been a
really
long time.
    “That’s always a tricky question with people like us.”
    “I know.