Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Spencer wiped his clammy palms on his pants and adjusted his tie.
The last time he attended a meeting with the network execs, he was fired and blacklisted within five minutes of sitting down.
He could still see Isabella’s smug, wicked grin as she told them she refused to work another day with him on the set.
She’d made up stories about his competence, blamed every mishap on him, called him lazy and self-serving. He’d defended himself, but she had every producer, director, and editor wrapped around her pristinely manicured finger, so he hadn’t had a chance.
“That’s a scowl I haven’t seen on your face in a long time.” Alan sat next to him at the massive oval table, drawing him from his thoughts.
“Thinking about the last time I was here.” He poured a glass of room-temperature water from the pitcher on the table and took a sip. It did nothing to relieve the dryness in his throat.
Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the far wall, providing an outrageously expensive view of the city sprawling out twenty stories below. The tint on the glass helped keep out the heat, but it didn’t stop sweat from beading on Spencer’s forehead.
If their show was canceled, Alan and Rebecca could work elsewhere.
Spencer was screwed, thanks to his ex-fiancée.
Alan joked about Spencer having to move back to Arizona and work at his dad’s feed store, but that was the most viable option he had.
He’d blown through his savings keeping himself afloat after the Isabella fiasco.
The best he could do would be to move in with his dad, save for a few years, and then head to New York or maybe Austin. Texas would be more affordable.
“I was going to say, ‘sorry I’m late,’ but since we’re the only ones here…” Rebecca forced a smile and sat on the other side of Alan.
“Their time is important, not ours.” Alan clasped his hands on the table, squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing. “Remember, Spence. If they ask about El Cadejo, it was not faked,” he whispered.
His teeth made an audible click as his jaw clenched. “Right.” A little white lie was better than loading customers’ trucks with fertilizer. That shit stank. He had to remember that.
Two men and a woman in dark, tailored suits and expensive shoes filed into the room and sat across from them. The woman he recognized as Mary Hinojosa, the head of all programming for the Adventure Channel. The men, one blond, one brunet, both with permanent frowns, he’d never seen.
“Thank you for joining us today,” Mary said. As if they had a choice. “We’re here to discuss the future of The Hunt for Cryptids. As you know, your ratings have steadily dropped over the past year.”
Alan straightened and moved his hands to his lap. “We are aware, but we have some ideas to liven up the show.”
Did they? That was news to Spencer.
“Have you seen the most recent footage we submitted?” Rebecca asked. Spencer kept his mouth shut, which, as the new guy, he could thankfully get away with.
“The cave-in?” Blondie asked.
“No,” Rebecca said. “I mean—”
Mary held up a hand. “While Spencer’s near-death experience did add excitement to the show, you still didn’t discover a single shred of evidence that the so-called demons you were hunting exist.”
Spencer inhaled, ready to point out that the show was called The Hunt for Cryptids, not The Finding of, but he thought better of it. It had taken a buttload of sweet-talking on Alan’s behalf to convince Mary to allow Spencer on the team. He wasn’t about to look a gift network exec in the mouth.
“So you haven’t seen El Cadejo?” Alan folded his hands on the table. “It must still be in editing. May I make a call and have them send it up? I think you’ll like what you see.”
The brown-haired man leaned over to whisper something into Mary’s ear. She rolled her eyes, shaking her head like she couldn’t believe she was about to allow it. “Tell them to email me a link within five minutes.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Alan grinned and dialed his phone.
“Hey, Joe. I need you to send the El Cadejo evidence to Mary Hinojosa right now.” He tightened his mouth as he listened to Joe’s response.
“I know it’s not ready. Send what you’ve got of the sighting.
Just that clip is fine. Thanks, man.” He returned the phone to his jacket pocket.
A minute later, Mary’s pinged.
“You’ve got mail,” Alan said.
Mary held the phone, and the other execs leaned in to view the scene.
Spencer closed his eyes, remembering the way Lilith had appeared through the trees.
She’d looked every bit the phantom dog with her glamour activated.
His heart thumped a hard beat. Without it, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
The moment he’d returned to a city big enough to have cell service, her apology text had come through.
She seemed genuinely sorry she had tricked them, and she assured him for the umpteenth time she was trying to help.
Warmth spread through his chest at the thought of her, so he shifted in his seat, giving his head a little shake to chase the sensation away.
The last thing he needed was to get the warm fuzzies for the cold undead.
“Well…” Mary put the phone on the table. “Color me impressed. That’s some extraordinary footage. Any idea what it was?”
Alan cut his gaze to Spencer before speaking. “I recorded a voiceover presenting multiple possibilities.”
“Such as?” She steepled her fingers.
“A ghost, a shapeshifter, a vampire. You know, the usual.”
Rebecca fought a smile, and Spencer ground his teeth.
The blond guy whispered something to Mary, and she nodded before saying something under her breath to the brunet. The man nodded in agreement, and Mary folded her arms on the table.
“We called you here today prepared to inform you your show would be canceled.”
The thickness in Spencer’s throat turned into a lump the size of a tangerine. Rebecca swallowed hard, and Alan held his breath.
“However, in light of your most recent expedition and the fact we don’t have another show lined up, we’re going to give you a second chance. I’d rather not fill your timeslot with reruns.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Spencer finally spoke. “We won’t let you down.”
“I hope you’re right. One more expedition. You have two weeks to plan it, one week to execute it, and one more for editing. That will be all.”
Spencer filed out of the conference room with his friends and stepped into the elevator. The last time he walked this path, the doors sliding shut had felt like the lid of a coffin closing on him, ending his career. This time, he had hope, but…
“Whatever we do, it’s got to be epic.” He pushed the button for the fourth floor.
“Got any ideas?” Alan asked.
Apparently, no one did because they remained silent the rest of the way down.
When the doors opened on their floor, Rebecca led the way to the team’s small office.
The dark, windowless room was more like a storage closet, but hey, at least they had a computer and enough space to store their camera equipment.
The Hunt for Cryptids didn’t have the ratings to earn them a view.
Alan sat behind the computer, and Rebecca and Spencer sat on either side of him. She chewed on her bottom lip and then opened and closed her mouth as if she wanted to speak.
“What’s your idea?” Spencer asked.
“I know when we started this show, we wanted the focus to be on the evidence we could capture. But what if we reorganized? So many people catch supposed evidence on their phones these days, we could do a call for submissions, interview the people, focus on the legends rather than the actual hunt.”
Alan scowled, two lines forming between his brows as he considered her idea. “That’s not what we’re about.”
“Pretty soon, we won’t be about anything,” she said. “It’s time to rethink our strategy.”
“You’re right,” Spencer said. “That’s a good strategy for future episodes if we’re allowed to continue, but we’ve only got two weeks to plan this one.
Even with Alan’s social media reach, it would take time to get enough quality submissions.
Then sorting them all, pulling out the good ones… We don’t have that kind of time.”
“Let’s table the idea for now.” Alan’s fingers clicked on the keyboard, and a schedule of past episodes opened on the screen. “We need something fresh and doable in a short period.”
Spencer scanned the list. “We haven’t done Bigfoot in a while. It’s not fresh, but it’s the easiest one to get evidence for. We could go to a different location to change it up.”
Alan grimaced. “I hate to say it, but that might be our only option.”
“What about the kitsune?” Rebecca asked. “We haven’t done that one, and if we take still images, with the shutter speed slow enough, I can wag my tail and create the illusion of having multiple. If we blur the image, it could be ambiguous enough to make skeptics question it.”
“But it would be fake,” Spencer said. “We got away with Lilith’s El Cadejo. If we make that our M.O., we’re begging to get busted.”
“He’s right,” Alan said as he opened a web browser. “No faking evidence. We have to be authentic.”
They sat in silence, searching their respective devices for ideas, but Spencer couldn’t help himself.
He swiped open his messaging app and clicked on his text exchange with Lilith.
Yes, he’d replied when she’d apologized.
It would have been rude to ignore her. And maybe they’d texted a few more times over the week following the expedition in Costa Rica, so what?
He hated the idea of any animal suffering, so he had checked in on Esther occasionally.
Lowering his phone into his lap, he read their most recent exchange.
Spencer: How’s your familiar today?
Lilith: Not great. She'll eat, but I’ve yet to see her as energetic as the sitter described her when I was in Costa Rica.
Spencer: I’m sorry to hear that.
Lilith: It seems one adventure with you wasn’t enough to cure her.
Spencer: What are you going to do?
Lilith: Perhaps I’ll try speed dating again.
His stomach churned as he reread that line. The idea of Lilith with another man didn’t just ruffle his feathers, it plucked them out one by one, making his skin crawl and his muscles tense. He needed to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with his owl because Lilith was off-limits.
So why couldn’t he help himself?
Forget the fact she was powerful enough to squash him like a cockroach in his sleep the moment he did something to piss her off.
That was a given, but it didn’t stop him from fantasizing about the way her soft, pale skin would feel beneath his fingertips.
The way her fangs would feel piercing his flesh as he pumped his hips…
He stretched his neck, banishing the thoughts from his mind.
She was immortal, for fuck’s sake. He refused to get involved with someone who would outlive him for millennia.
She’d said that problem had an easy fix, but there was no way in all of The Underworld he’d let her turn him.
His cousin Sam had fallen in love with a vampire a decade ago.
When she turned him, Sam had lost his owl.
A piece of his soul had died with his transformation, and he hadn’t been the same since.
The thought of losing that much of himself made Spencer want to vomit.
No way was he giving up his owl for Lilith… for anyone.
He had never replied to her speed dating statement, and a full twenty-four hours passed before he heard from her again.
Lilith: Where are you headed next? Somewhere exciting?
That was another reason he needed to squelch the emotions his owl was forcing on him. Lilith wasn’t interested in him. She was after excitement so she could heal her familiar. Spencer was simply a means to an end.
Still, he’d been compelled to confide in her.
Spencer: We might not be heading anywhere. The execs have called a conference, and I have a feeling they might be canceling the show.
Lilith: That’s awful. Is there anything I can do to help?
Spencer: Glamour the execs and everyone watching the program to make them think it’s the best show on TV.
He grinned as he remembered how long the three little dots had bounced on the screen. Way longer than it should have taken for her to type four words.
Lilith: I can do that.
Spencer: I’m kidding. Please don’t.
Lilith: Let me know if you change your mind.
“What are you grinning about?” Alan’s voice pulled Spencer from his thoughts.
He shoved his phone into his pocket. “Just something Lilith said last night.”
“Lilith?” Rebecca’s face lit up. “You didn’t tell us you were seeing her. How’s that going?”
“We aren’t seeing each other. We’re just talking. Well, texting.”
Alan laughed. “What are you? Seventeen? We aren’t dating, we’re talking,” he said in a ridiculous voice. “What are you ‘talking’ about?” He made air quotes.
Spencer rolled his eyes. “Forget it.”
“No, we want to know,” Rebecca said. “Do you like her?”
He wasn’t about to explain the conflicted emotions undulating in his psyche. Of course, while his friends, being shifters themselves, would be the most likely to understand the man versus beast dilemma, neither of them had ever met someone whom their animal wanted to claim.
“She offered to glamour everyone at the network to make them think ours was the best show they’ve got.”
Alan’s brows shot up. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“It’s unethical.” Spencer shook his head.
“And icky,” Rebecca added. “That’s the only thing that bothers me about vampires. How they can make people see things and forget what happened.”
Alan closed his laptop. “You didn’t seem to mind when Lilith gave us useable evidence for the show.”
“That was different. She saved our asses. Plus, I sense good vibes from her. She seems like a friendly, sincere woman.”
“Of course she seems that way to you,” Alan said. “Isn’t she the protector of womankind or something like that?”
Spencer’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and, almost as if Lilith had sensed them talking about her, a text lit up his screen: How did the meeting go?
He stood and stepped into the hallway while Alan and Rebecca continued their debate about vampires.
Spencer: Not as bad as I thought. They’re giving us one more chance to produce some evidence.
Lilith: That’s good news.
Spencer: It’ll be difficult to avoid crossing the line and exposing someone while still showing enough to make the network happy.
Lilith: Hang tight. I might have an idea.
Spencer: It’s fine. We’ll figure something out. I was kidding when I suggested you glamour them.
Lilith: This won’t involve any glamour. I promise.