Kitty in the Underworld

Chapter 3

BACK TO work, then. It wasn’t the end of the world—not yet, anyway—so we had to keep on with our lives. This was better, I knew. The alternative was freezing in place and never moving again.

Angelo came through on finding me a vampire stripper to interview on the show. Or stripper vampire. I still wasn’t sure which way to go on that one. Her name was Colette, and when I asked if that was her real name or her stripper name, she just arced a neatly plucked brow at me and smiled.

I had to admit, I hadn’t ever known any for-real strippers, and I didn’t know what to expect. No expectation at all was better than defaulting to TV stereotypes. She arrived at the studio before the start of the show, and when I met her in the lobby, my first impression was to think, yup, she’s a vampire. She had mahogany hair, light brown skin, wore a real rabbit fur stole over a stylish black silk dress and knee-high leather boots, and held herself with a poise that made me swoon a bit. She’d walk into a nightclub and turn heads, and I tried to remember if I’d ever seen her at Psalm 23, the club the Denver vampire Family ran and used as hunting grounds. I didn’t think so.

In the studio, I offered her a chair and showed her how the headset worked. She was polite, smiling wryly when I avoided looking directly into her hypnotic gaze.

I watched the clock; we were seconds from go, and through the booth window I saw Matt staring, frozen. I’d warned him that she was coming, and that he shouldn’t look directly into her eyes. But it was pretty hard not to, I supposed, when somebody like that walked into the room. The vampire gave him a smile that made him blush. Wrapped him around her finger with nothing more than a glance, and the thing was, that was her vampire nature, and had nothing to do with her profession.

But I could totally believe that she made really good tips.

I found a stray pen resting on my table and threw it at the booth window. Matt started at the thunk it made, shook his head clear, and got to work, or acted like he was working, flipping switches and cuing up the show’s opening.

He counted down, the on-air sign lit, and CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising” started playing through my headset. Show time. “Greetings! You’ve tuned into The Midnight Hour, the show that’s not afraid of the dark or the creatures who live there. I’m your host, Kitty Norville, and I hope you’re ready for another evening of spooky delights and tales of the uncanny. I have a special guest with me tonight. Colette is a vampire with a job you might not expect to find a vampire doing. Then again, I’ve been meeting vampires for years, and they’re always surprising me, which is why I keep talking about them. Colette, welcome to The Midnight Hour, thank you for agreeing to this interview. And can you please tell our audience what you do for a living?”

“I’m an exotic dancer. That is, I strip,” she said straight-up, with a knowing smile.

“Is this something you did before becoming a vampire, or did you take it up after?”

“Before, which is part of why I keep doing it—it’s something I know, and I’m pretty good at it if I do say so myself. It’s a lot more fun knowing I won’t ever have to worry about competing with the younger girls, as far as looks go.”

“That’s a perk I certainly hadn’t thought of. And dare I ask how long you’ve been at it?”

“You mean, how long have I been a vampire? Angelo warned me you’d ask me that.”

“It’s standard,” I agreed. “So, how about it? How old are you?”

“Oh, not that old, not compared to someone like Angelo or Rick. I’m just a baby, really.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. Right. Moving on, I’ve encountered anecdotal evidence that stripping as a vampire is more lucrative than stripping as a mortal human. Can you confirm or deny this?”

“I can understand why someone might think that’s the case. But really, there are so many factors involved, as anyone in the business can tell you. The time of day, location, the joint’s policies, local ordinances. Being a vampire turns out to be the least of it. In fact, I try not to use my … influence too often. It starts to look suspicious, you know what I mean? I may be one of the immortal undead, but the girls in the dressing room can use a bottle of holy water just as well as anyone if I start poaching.”

That made a frightening amount of good sense. “Did I promise a peek into a hidden world, or what? So Colette, are you up front with your status as a vampire, or do you keep it secret? Is it a marketing point for you? ‘Come see the vampire stripper’?”

“It would be, if I actually advertised it, but I don’t. Some of my friends know, and that’s it, really. I don’t want to turn this into more of a freak show than it already is by advertising I’m a vampire. I mean, look what happened to you when you came out.”

“Freak show?” I asked, grinning. “It’s worked out pretty well for me.”

“I suppose, if you like being a target.”

Ouch. I kind of did feel like I’d painted one on myself some days. Well, I’d held on this long, hadn’t I? Without the benefit of vampire immortality, even.

Moving on, then. “So it’s safe to say that becoming a vampire didn’t change your ability or desire to be a stripper?”

“Like I said, I do this because it’s what I know, it’s a way I know I can make some money, and I like to have my own money rather than depending totally on the Family. The Family knows what I do, they’re okay with it. It’s good to have diverse resources, don’t you think?” She purred on this last.

“Remember folks, you heard it here first: vampires have their sticky little fingers in everything, don’t they?” I’d probably hear about this from Angelo later. Really, though, if he hadn’t wanted Colette to talk, he wouldn’t have introduced her to me. “Colette, how do you feel about taking a few calls?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she said. “I know how this works.”

“All right, I’m opening the line for calls.” I checked the monitor very, very carefully and picked what sounded like a reasonably intelligent question, hoping against hope that however likely this episode was to end up in the gutter, we wouldn’t actually start there. “Nancy from Hartford, you’re on the air.”

“Hi, Kitty, thanks for taking my call.”

“You’re very welcome, Nancy. Do you have a question for Colette?”

“Omigosh, yes, what an opportunity to talk to a real, live vampire.” I could have quibbled with the terminology there, but I didn’t. Nancy continued, “I know you can’t say exactly how long you’ve been a stripper, but you must have an interesting perspective, and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how the field has changed over the course of your career?”

Intelligent and academic, even. For my first question of the night, I chose wisely. Even better, Colette was happy to talk about changes in work environments, music, and traditions. “But in the end, it’s always been about watching women take their tops off, and that’ll never change,” she concluded. “Actually, you know what’s changed the most? Male strippers. Equal-opportunity stripping. Maybe a little more high end than what most of us do, but I’m not going to knock it.”

I switched lines. “On to the next call, now. Jen, you’re on the air.”

“Um, gosh, wow. Okay. My question, yeah. If becoming a vampire didn’t change anything about how much you made stripping, why do it at all?”

Colette sat back in her chair, legs crossed. “Why strip, or why be a vampire?”

“Well, yeah,” Jen said.

“Really, becoming a vampire had nothing to do with whether or not I was stripping. But what would you say if I told you I’ve found wonderful pickings at my places of employment.”

“You mean … oh,” Jen said. The phone clicked off.

“And I think we’ve lost Jen,” I said, suppressing an urge to chortle. “Next caller, you’re on the air.”

The caller was male, brash, and I’d lay money that he’d been drinking. “Yeah, Colette, great talking to you. Do you do private parties?”

“You couldn’t afford me.”

“But what if—”

“Really,” she said. That purr again.

I cut the caller off before he could embarrass himself further. “And how about we break for station ID? This is The Midnight Hour, and we’ll be back in a sec.” I waved at Matt thought the window, but he was a step ahead of me, cuing up the PSAs. The on-air sign dimmed—a reprieve.

I sat back and regarded my guest. “What do you think?” I asked.

“Angelo said this would be fun, and he was right. Certainly shakes things up.”

“You’re a natural at this,” I said. “I have to prod some people to get them to talk.

“Show business is show business.”

I could argue about that, but I’d lose. “Maybe you could convince Angelo to come on the show for an interview.”

“And how likely do you think that is?”

None. None likely. “You putting in a good word for me couldn’t hurt, could it?”

She narrowed her gaze. “Why are you so interested in interviewing Angelo?”

“I don’t know much about him. I’d love to know more. If I’m going to ask him stuff anyway, I might as well get a show out of it.”

“Just knowledge and entertainment, then? No ulterior motive?”

“Well, more like stories. Vampires have the best stories. That’s why I wanted to talk to you—I never would have expected a vampire to work as a stripper. Most of them are so … private. Or what’s the word I’m looking for…”

“Elitist?”

Nailed it. “But here you are, and the Family approves. So what does the Family get out of having one of their own working as an exotic dancer?”

Her smile shined. “It’s not always about the Families, Kitty. Sometimes there’s no secret agenda, no conspiracy. Not even much of a story. Sometimes there’s a stripper who just happens to be a vampire. A radio host who happens to be a werewolf.”

She might have had a point. I’d been trying to unwrap Roman’s conspiracy for so long, I’d started to see everything as a thread leading back to it. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

“And Angelo really is just a guy who was unexpectedly put in charge when he’d rather sit the whole thing out.” She shrugged, neither confirming nor denying.

“So you think he’s a nice enough guy,” I said, not sure I trusted her opinion on the matter.

“To tell you the truth, I miss Rick. But Angelo’s not a bad guy.”

And that had to count for something I supposed.

We came back on the air, she answered another round of questions. All in all, this show was turning into one of my better efforts.

During the next break, she unfolded from her chair. “This has been fun, but I really need to get going. Thanks for inviting me.” She offered her hand, and I shook it, and she gave me a charming little wave before stalking out of the studio.

Matt had to knock on the glass to get me to notice his countdown. On the air in five, and me without my guest. Right. Seat of my pants, here we go.

“All right, welcome back to The Midnight Hour. A little change of plans. My guest, Colette, has turned into a bat and flapped away. Not really, vampires don’t really turn into bats. They only want us to think they do. Never mind. But I want to thank her for stopping by and giving us some insight into her world. But this has brought up an issue I’d love to discuss next. So, a question for the peanut gallery: Once they turn sixty-five, how long should working vampires be able to collect social security? The rest of their lives, like the rest of us? Are you a vampire collecting social security? I want to hear from you…”