A subtle shopfront sign, silver lettering on a blue background, lit by a small exterior light, announced the Crescent. Tinted windows didn't offer much of a view of the interior.
"Upstairs is a Moroccan restaurant. Decent, a little pricey, but don't tell Ahmed I said that. We're going downstairs."
Sure enough, we bypassed the brick stairs leading up and took the set winding down to a garden-level door. "Ahmed?"
"He owns the place. You'll meet him if he's here tonight."
I heard the music before Luis opened the door. Once he did, the sound opened up with all its richness and rhythm. Live music, not a recording. A Middle Eastern drum, a string instrument of some kind, and a flute. They weren't playing an identifiable song, but rather jamming on a traditional-sounding riff. It was fast, joyous, danceable.
Once inside, I saw the trio of musicians seated on chairs near the bar: one was white, one black, the other Arabic-looking. The whole place had an international feel to it, and I heard conversations in a few different languages. Cloth hangings decorated the walls, and while the area inside the door looked like any other bar, farther inside there weren't any chairs, but large cushions and pillows surrounding low tables. Oil lamps and candles provided light. I smelled curry and wine in the air.
A guy who couldn't possibly have been old enough to serve drinks was behind the bar, drying glasses. A few patrons sat nearby on bar stools, tapping their feet or nodding along to the music. A woman in a full skirt and peasant blouse danced—I supposed it was belly dancing, but my image of belly dancing was totally different. She was all about grace and joy of movement, not the I Dream of Jeannie fantasy. Her dark hair trailed in a braid that swung as she turned, and she wore a distant smile.
Another dozen people sat at the tables, watching the dancer or the musicians, talking among themselves, reclining on cushions, eating, and drinking. It was a calm, leisurely party, a nightclub of sorts, drawing people for conversation and atmosphere.
All of them were lycanthropes.
I stopped, shocked into immobility. I hadn't sensed this many lycanthropes in one place since I was with the pack. I had never seen this many in one place without them glaring at each other, stalking, picking fights, jockeying for position within the pack hierarchy. At the very least, if they weren't fighting they were cowering before the leader who kept them in line, who made peace by force. There was no leader here, not that I could see.
"Is something wrong?" Luis said.
"No, it's just—I wasn't expecting this. All of them in one place. It's overwhelming."
"You have always been alone, then?"
"I used to have a pack. But it was nothing like this."
He said, "Can I get you a drink?"
I probably needed one. "Wine. White. I think."
Two filled wineglasses in hand, Luis led me to the back half of the club, where we could sit in relative quiet. His face lit when he came to a small group gathered in a corner.
"Ahmed! You are here."
"Luis!" A large man rose to his feet more gracefully than I would have given him credit for. He displaced his friends to one side, who amiably continued their conversation without him. He managed to clap Luis on the shoulders without making him spill a drop of wine. He had a faint accent, thoroughly Americanized. "Good to see you, I was beginning to think you'd abandoned us at last."
"I've been busy."
Ahmed turned to me. He had olive features, black hair and dark stubble, a good deal of paunch without the impression of softness. It made him seem round and jovial. Over his shirt and trousers, he wore a flowing, pale-colored robe, which made him fit perfectly with the atmosphere of the place.
He was wolf. I pictured a great, grizzled old hulk of a wolf standing in his place. The image made me want to whine in terror and be on my best behavior. I suppressed an urge to inch closer to Luis and take shelter behind him.
Ahmed's gaze flashed, as if he knew exactly the effect he had on other werewolves.
"Luis, you seem to have gotten lucky tonight. Welcome, welcome!"
He offered his hand. Gratefully, I took it. I clung to normalcy when I could. He covered my hand with both of his and smiled warmly.
"Who might you be?"
"Kitty."
"Kitty. Kitty Norville? The Midnight Hour ?"
Heaven forbid there should be more than one werewolf named Kitty loose in the world. I grinned, stupidly pleased at the recognition. "That's right."
Luis stared at me. "You're that Kitty? You didn't say anything."
"It didn't come up. You guys listen to the show?"
Ahmed shrugged noncommittally and Luis ducked his gaze.
"Of course I've heard it," Ahmed said. "A couple of times. But I have friends who are great fans, trust me."
I wrapped my arm around Luis's and took a glass of wine from him. The evening was looking much less bleak than it had a couple of hours ago. In fact, it was looking positively glorious.
"It's okay. I'm used to people not admitting they listen to it. Let's sit, you guys have to tell me about all this." I looked around at the room, the musicians, and the lycanthropes gathered together.
"Excellent idea!" Ahmed said.
Becoming a lycanthrope usually happened by accident, and it often didn't change the ambitions a person may have had before. The need to travel for a career, the desire to see the world, these things didn't just vanish. Lycanthropy often made them problematic, but people learned to deal with it. It was easier for some than others. Many of the other lycanthrope varieties weren't tied to packs, like werewolves typically were. But even solitary beasts had the problem of territory. Our animal instincts sometimes got the better of us, and travel meant the possibility of infringing on someone else's space, especially during full moon nights, when those instincts were most powerful. As I had quickly learned myself, the one thing a traveling lycanthrope needed more than anything was a safe place to Change and run during the full moon.
As home to the federal government, a bunch of embassies, and a couple of major universities, Washington, D.C., had a vibrant international community, and the lycanthropes were part of it. The Crescent gave them a safe place to gather.
Ahmed explained all this. "We who travel know there is no time for fighting. Death comes to us all and it is a tragedy to hasten it. We have much better things to do than continually fight over who among us is strongest. So, here we are. There are places like this in many large cities: New York, San Francisco, London, Istanbul."
If T.J. had had a place like this, if Carl had been more like Ahmed, if we could have all acted a little more civilized —too many ifs. I needed too many it's to keep T.J. alive.
Ahmed pointed out a few of the patrons: Marian, the dancer, was a were-jackal from Egypt who had immigrated and was working to bring her sister over. Yutaka, near the bar, was a history student from Japan and a were-fox. The musicians: two wolves and a tiger. Ahmed also mentioned a friend of his who wasn't here tonight, a professor who had defected from Russia in the seventies, who was a bear. I couldn't even picture what a were-bear would be like. The place was a zoo.
It was also a paradise, a Utopia, at least to my admittedly inexperienced eyes. I heard a lot of stories from doing the show—but then, people only called me with their problems. I'd only ever heard, and lived, the worst of it. I never heard about how things worked when they were going well.
The wine made me weepy. I wiped my eyes before tears could fall. Luis handed me a clean napkin from the next table over.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Yeah. This is so different from anything I've known. I never thought it could be like this. Everybody's getting along. You're all so friendly."
"I'm happy we could make you welcome here."
Ahmed said, "Your experience. What's it like?"
I shook my head absently. I wasn't sure I could put it into words. "Power. Jealousy. There was an alpha, and he protected us. But he controlled us as well. I had to fight for any kind of respect, but I refused in the end. It was all fighting and death. I had to leave. Then I get here, and Alette feeds me this line about the local lycanthropes being chaotic and dangerous, that they'd try to hurt me, and it was so easy to believe her. But she lied to me."
Ahmed shook his head. "Perhaps not from her point of view. Alette mistrusts us all because there is no alpha, no one she can negotiate with or control. That is why she says we are dangerous."