Feral Curse (9 page)

I couldn’t care less about keeping up with him. I’m about to say so when Aimee elbows him — hard — and rain starts to fall.

AFTER THE FIRST FLASH OF LIGHTNING,
Kayla picks up the pace, veering from the booths and tents to lead us to the public library at the edge of downtown. Apparently, the festival will go on all weekend, rain or shine, but an electrical storm merits an intermission.

“Cute little town you’ve got here,” I tell Kayla as I hold open the door for the girls.

She makes a show of rolling her eyes. “
That’s
not condescending.” When I don’t take the bait, she adds, “Look, not everyone can afford to live in Austin or wants to. There’s something to be said for caring about the people you pass on the street.”

As we walk by the magazine display, Aimee stays out of it.

I press the issue. “Admit it,” I challenge Kayla, winking at the librarian behind the checkout counter. “You’re bored. You’ve been bored your whole life until now.”

“What makes you think you know me?” she quips, leading us toward a gallery display of pastoral paintings (heavy on the wildflowers) by local artists. “We just met.”

“I lived most of my life in the country,” I admit. “But my grandmother’s land was only twenty minutes outside of Wichita.”

“Exciting,” Kayla shoots back, turning at an overhead sign marked
YA
. “I’d rather live an hour
outside
of Austin than in
downtown
Wichita.”

“Are you insulting Kansas?” I want to know. “Besides, I currently live —”

“That’s enough!” Aimee exclaims. “Play nice, or I’ll have to separate you.”

We spend most of the morning waiting out the bad weather in the teen room, where I sit at a circular table, flipping through graphic novels while the girls visit, the two of them gazing, side by side, out the floor-to-ceiling window. Aimee’s been chattering, making girl talk, mostly about Clyde, and using her phone to show photos of the two of them together. It’s not like her to go on about him like that, at least not around me, but she’s doing a good job of putting Kayla at ease.

“This is what we looked like after dominating the paintball range on Valentine’s Day,” Aimee says. “Are you going out with anyone, Kayla?”

Telling myself I’m not that interested in her reply, I sense a spike in anxiety, frustration, and something else — sadness — from the girl Cat. But her answer is curt.

“No.” She adds, “I’m not a huge fan of Valentine’s Day.”

I sense a bad boyfriend. Aimee takes the hint and steers the conversation back to the weather. I’d rather hear about the fortune-teller, but this is a public place, and we don’t need to broadcast our plans to all of Pine Ridge.

Given that the spell-caster guy, Benjamin Bloom, was killed by lightning, I don’t blame Kayla or anyone else for taking cover (post-traumatic paranoia), but it’s painful, waiting around.

“I see you’ve made new friends,” a resonant male voice observes from the door.

Great. It’s Kayla’s father. Still dressed like an undertaker.

Apparently he didn’t want to get rained on, either.

Eyes wide, Kayla spins to greet him. “Hi, Daddy.”

Aimee grins. “How do you do, Mr. Mayor? I’m Aimee. I’m doing an oral report on small-town city governments for my U.S. government class. One of the chili teams referred me to your daughter and said she had the inside scoop.”

Shaking her hand, Mayor Morgan says, “Kayla’s picked up a lot from me over the years. But why would you be doing a report on city governments for a class on federal —”

“Extra credit,” she clarifies, and I appreciate how smooth a liar she’s become, practically as good as a shifter, and for most of the same reasons. Drawing out her phone again, she asks the mayor to pose for a photo, and he cheerfully obliges.

Before getting to know Aimee, I never thought much about the human allies and lovers of werepeople, let alone the human family members. But from his scent, Kayla’s father is obviously in the latter group. He must be her stepfather, and it’s her mom who’s the Cat. Or maybe Kayla is part
Homo sapiens.
You can’t tell by looking or by scent, not in human or animal form.

It occurs to me that he might’ve already been in office, or at least a professional politician, when he and Mrs. Morgan met. That would help explain his being in such a high-profile job now, despite his family’s mixed-species makeup and the risks that come with it.

Even in twenty-first-century clothes, he’d be a distinguished-looking fellow — gray at the temples, a bit of middle-age girth around his belly. He’s got a politician’s charm and, unfortunately for us, the savvy to go with it. I only wish Aimee had come up with a cover story that had nothing to do with what he does for a living. It could be because I was raised without any, but I’m a big believer that parents mostly just get in the way.

“Interesting tattoo you’ve got around your neck,” Mayor Morgan adds, as if on cue.

The repeating crosses. In Austin, nobody blinks twice at ink, but here . . .

“I’m a believer,” Aimee says, steady and sincere. “I believe in salvation. I believe in true everlasting life.”

She’s not kidding. I’m not sure what religion Aimee is exactly, but she’s not one of those vaguely “spiritual” people. She believes deeply in heaven, hell, and especially angels. She believes that Earth is some kind of battleground for celestial forces.

I don’t make fun of it; not anymore.

“Good for you.” Mayor Morgan looks chagrined. “Who’s this?” he wants to know, turning his attention to me.

“Aimee’s boyfriend, Yoshi,” Kayla announces. “They’re from Austin.”

Right. Because an already-taken teenage boy is less threatening to the father of a teenage daughter than one on the prowl. (I’ve had my share of unpleasant interactions with fathers of teenage daughters — two of them involving firearms). I swing an arm around Aimee’s shoulders and give her a quick kiss on the top of the head. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

I hope Clyde finds out about this.

The sun breaks through the gray clouds not long after noon. We dash out to pick up a couple of roasted turkey legs for me and Kayla and a fluffy pink cotton candy for Aimee.

I’m impressed by how quickly the Founders’ Day scene recovers. Bluegrass music rises from the performance stage. Restaurants and bars empty as festival-goers fill the streets, only to order more food and drinks outside.

We double back and take a winding concrete ramp down to park, positioning ourselves to cross the pea-green water. It’s swollen and flowing at a brisk clip. The downpour has churned up a lot of debris. A bit of trash, vines, loose branches.

“This isn’t good,” Kayla mutters, tossing her turkey bone into a trash can. “We could take the highway bridge — there’s a sidewalk — but by now Deputy Hoover has set up a roadblock to catch drunk drivers headed from the festival to the highway. He’ll want to know where we’re going and why, and he’ll have a hissy fit if we take the historic bridge alongside it. It’s a landmark, but a hazard. Half the town thinks it should be torn down.”

Aimee frowns in the general direction of the bridge. “It’s early in the day to be nailing intoxicated —”

“Klas’s Kolachies opens for brunch at ten
A.M.
It’s famous for its dollar-fifty home-brewed pints and dart games. I’m betting a fair number of husbands took refuge from the storm and their shopping spouses there.”

Kayla is so plugged in. Her life’s been completely different from mine. I merely existed at the outskirts of town in Kansas. I slip anonymously through Austin. I don’t care like she does. I’ve never had a community that meant anything to me.

“We don’t all have to go,” I say as a blue heron takes flight from the water. “Aimee, you could wait —”

“Like hell,” she replies, spraying her arms with insect repellent.

I knew she was going to say that. Still, the water looks dangerous for a human, and Aimee’s got a wary expression on her face.

I pick her up in a matter-of-fact, rescue-worker kind of way. “Unless you’d rather ride on my back,” I say, “consider me your first-class transportation.”

The rising river isn’t wide. After scanning the surrounding greenery, Kayla makes something of a game of leaping from the protruding top of one limestone outcropping to another. I wade, unwilling to risk dropping Aimee, but I’m still across in less than three minutes.

“Where does the fortune-teller live?” she asks as I set her on the muddy bank.

Kayla gestures southwest. “I think it’s that way.”

The Morgans’ property is woodsy and dense. I can hear birds in the distance, but they become quiet when we approach, the way all birds do when cats creep by. Somewhere in the treetops, a sentry squirrel warns his kind that predators have entered their territory.

It’s slow going with Aimee along. Not that she’s out of shape, just that she’s a human, not a Cat. I still can’t believe Kayla thinks her state championships in track and cross-country mean anything. I could dominate in shifter high-school sports . . . if there was such a thing as a shifter high-school league. Maybe there will be someday, if the fanatics get their way and we end up living in total segregation. Not that I’m the type to dwell on political crap I can’t change.

I’d much rather dwell on Aimee. She walks almost everywhere and is naturally high-energy. Plus she’s taking tae kwon do two days a week. She’s got a cute little figure, different from Kayla’s. The Cat girl is all long, lean muscle with a tight round butt.

I’m not saying it’s a competition. Truth is, there’s pretty much no female body type that doesn’t hold some appeal for me. . . . Still, I love a great ass.

“Clyde is half wereopossum, half werelion?” Kayla asks. “How is that possible?”

Stepping up and over a fallen tree, I reply, “Sometimes a Possum and a Lion love each other very, very much. . . .”

“Actually,” Aimee puts in, “I think it was more of a strangers-in-the-night kind of thing that happened when his parents were separated. He didn’t even know about his Lion heritage until this winter.” Ducking beneath a branch, she adds, “They’re nice people, the Gilberts —”

“I wasn’t judging,” Kayla replies. “I was realizing that, before this weekend, I hadn’t thought much about other mixed families — shifter and human.”

It’s like she’s been reading my mind. “Your dad is
Homo sapiens,
” I say to Kayla, mostly so Aimee doesn’t accidentally out me to the Morgans on the theory that they can already scent my Cat-ness.

Kayla extends her claws, more aggressively clearing the foliage. I do the same. Then Kayla says, “My mom is
Homo sapiens,
too.”

“Uh . . .” I exchange a look with Aimee. “Are you sure it didn’t just skip a generation?”

Not every wereperson is filled with shifter pride. Many pass as human, even in the most personal aspects of their lives, and some of those who identify as mixed human and shifter pray they don’t pass on their animal forms to their children. I understand that. It’s no doubt easier, less complicated, to lead a mono-form life. But the whole thing still pisses me off.

“I’m adopted,” Kayla explains. “From Ethiopia.”

In North America, it would be extraordinarily unusual for a Cat, or any shifter, to knowingly put his or her child up for adoption by humans, but maybe it’s different overseas.

Aimee’s brow crinkles. “Do you know anything about your birth family?”

“Before my first shift, I liked to think my biological parents were poor, desperate — that they wanted to give me a better future.”

I can see where that would be more comforting than assuming that they’re dead or just didn’t want her. Ruby remembers our mom, but I don’t even have that.

“I worried that maybe they had HIV or some other disease and couldn’t afford medication,” Kayla goes on. “Afterward, I wondered if maybe it was more complicated than that.” She shakes her head. “My Cat form came as a surprise to my parents. To me, too.”

By which she means her adoptive parents. Yeah, I bet they were surprised. I ask, “Any other shifters in Pine Ridge?”

“Just the fortune-teller,” Kayla replies. “Not that we’re close. I’ve never spoken to her.”

I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Kayla, growing up, alone and mystified by her very biology. Granted, Grams is far from nurturing, but I had my older sister, Ruby, too.

No matter what, the first few times you transform, it’s scary, excruciating, and more than a little overwhelming. Accidents happen. Bystanders can get hurt.

It’s rare, but young, unsupervised adolescent shifters have been known to accidentally kill themselves. And family pets.

That said, traipsing through the woodlands, I am envious that the Cat girl has so much room to run wild in animal form. When I lived on Grams’s farm in Kansas, I would occasionally shift under the cover of the wheat field, chasing mice or crows.

City living has caged me more than I like to admit.