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“You jerk!” Ariel screamed after the now-distant seal. She stomped her feet, splashing in the water. Fuming, she turned to the rest of us. “That was awful! Ooh, I’m going to get him back. I’m so going to get him back for that!”
Tina started laughing. A tad hysterical, but still. All of our hearts were racing. If we didn’t laugh, we’d have heart attacks. But I agreed with Ariel—we’d certainly have to find a way to get back at him, wouldn’t we?
We were missing someone. I looked around, didn’t see him.
“Where’s Conrad?” I said. “Where’d he go? He had to have seen this.”
“He went back to the house for a minute. Said he had to use the bathroom,” Jerome said.
“Are you kidding me?” I screeched. Honest-to-God lycanthropic shape-shifting right in front of him—sort of—and he was off using the bathroom? I could have cried.
“Murphy’s Law,” Grant said. “The most powerful force in the universe.”
“Goddammit,” I muttered.
Just to make the scene even more cinematic, Conrad came wandering down the path from the lodge then. He stopped when he found us all staring at him with posttraumatized, half-amused, half-murderous looks on our faces.
“What are you all looking at?”
“Were-seal,” I said, pointing over my shoulder to the lake. “Lee gave us a show, but he’s gone now. Probably off hunting trout or whatever the hell swims in lakes in Montana.”
Conrad looked uncertain a moment, then chuckled. “Nice try. But Lee’s just hiding in the woods. Right?”
I turned to Skip and the camera. “You can show him the playback, right?”
“Um, we’re not really allowed to do that,” he said.
I cursed Lee for his bad timing. We just needed Conrad to see the seal—so totally not native to freshwater lakes in landlocked Montana—to chip away at his smug skepticism. Was that too much to ask?
So that was the end of the picnic.
Every reality show had to have a bit where they got you alone and filmed you talking trash about everyone else on the show. It was too much to hope that we’d get through Supernatural Insider without it. So there I was, sitting in front of a camera, held by Gordon this time, with the great outdoors as a backdrop. Provost watched from behind the camera, egging me on. I fiddled with the personal mike clipped to my collar.
“Do I have to?” I said for the third time.
“It’s in the contract,” Provost said, also for the third time.
I sighed and pointed at the camera. “Is that thing on?”
“It’s been rolling for a minute now.”
There was no getting out of this. I wasn’t supposed to want to avoid this—face it, I was one of the biggest attention whores on the show. This bit was designed to give the stage to the attention whores, to give them ample opportunity to make idiots of themselves. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? No matter what I said, Provost and his crew would edit it to make me look like an idiot.
Being an attention whore was only fun when I was in charge.
“What exactly are you looking for with this?” I said. “If you give me some idea what you want me to say, I can just say it and save you some time trying to edit it all together.” I smiled with teeth.
He grimaced right back. “What do you think about some of your housemates? Anastasia, let’s say. Or Jerome.”
Predictable.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, leaning forward, making like I was going to dispense some gem of juicy gossip. “You want me to sit here and be catty about everyone else. See if I have any juicy bits of gossip to share. But I’m not going to do that, because the only chance I have of looking good when this thing airs is to be as nice as I possibly can. So you know what? I love everybody. I love them all. We all get along great. This is like summer camp.”
Provost gave me a level glare. I didn’t expect him to like what I said; but he couldn’t argue, because at least I’d said something. He finally said, “Is that how you really feel?”
I thought a minute, then said, “I think Conrad is stubborn.”
Gordon giggled but quickly shut up when Provost glared. But I’d decided that Provost didn’t have much of a sense of humor.
“Okay,” the producer said. “If we can’t go for dirt, how about blatant sentimentality? You miss your family? Anything you’d like to tell them? Your family’ll love it when they watch the show and know you were thinking of them.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to get that sappy any more than I wanted to be a gossipy jerk. My family knew I loved them—I didn’t have to say it on national TV. In the end, though, I did miss my family. I missed Ben especially. Things kept happening that I wanted to tell him about, ask him about. On this subject, at least, I couldn’t find sarcasm to throw at Provost. Maybe the guy deserved a straight line for once.
Again, I looked at the camera. “Being away from my family is the hardest thing about being here.” I pursed my lips and didn’t have to pretend to look sad.
I hoped that would play well enough on TV for Provost. He seemed happy enough and let me loose from the camera’s eye.
Chapter 9
Toward di
The cameras tracked him, and the editors would probably have a great time fuzzing out the interesting bits.
Conrad said, “If I knew this was going to be that kind of show, I might have thought twice about participating.”
“The whole thing seems one-sided to me,” Jerome said. “When’s your turn, Kitty?”
“I keep offering, and you all keep saying no,” I said. “You can’t change your mind now. With you guys letting it all hang out, I can be a little discreet.”
In what had become routine, right around the time we finished eating di
“Have we missed anything interesting?” Anastasia said, striding up to take one of the extra chairs. Gemma settled in beside her. Dorian remained standing, close to the wall, looking over them in a bodyguard stance that probably wasn’t just for show.
“You missed a great su
“You can’t miss what you don’t want,” Anastasia said.
“Lee shape-shifted and scared the bejeezus out of everyone,” Tina said.
“I am sorry I missed that.”
“It seemed like the thing to do,” Lee said. He’d rejoined the group after putting on clothes and seemed to be beaming, like he was proud of the escapade.
“And is our resident skeptic convinced yet?” Anastasia said.
“He walked away for five minutes and missed it.”
She chuckled. “How perfect. We’ll be able to draw this out for days.”
From the kitchen, where he was opening another bottle of wine and pouring drinks, Conrad said, “I haven’t seen anything yet that can’t be explained by perfectly normal means.”
“Hey Conrad,” I called. “You know the principle that in a given situation, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one?”
“Occam’s razor. Yes.”
“What’s simpler: that we imported a live seal, brought it a thousand miles inland, and set it loose in an environment that might kill it, for the purpose of playing a joke on you; or that Lee’s a lycanthrope?”
He said, “If one of your options is impossible, it doesn’t matter how outlandish the only probable one sounds. It has to be the correct one.”
“I won’t argue with your logic,” I said. “Only your assumptions.”
“I don’t think you imported a seal. I think you’re making it all up,” he said.
Almost angrily, Tina said, “Is someone paying you to be this stubborn?”
Now, there was an idea. I hadn’t considered that Conrad might also be part of some conspiracy. Hell, maybe we had more than one conspiracy afoot. Wouldn’t that be exciting?