Nine Lives of an Urban Panther (15 page)

“There's something else that we haven't discussed yet.” Peter's voice was dark, low and quiet. “Violet stole power from the pack.”

I'd known what I'd done from the moment I woke up. I felt different, off, wrong, and I knew it was more than the aftereffects of the stun gun, the marks of which were still red and angry on my torso.

“I didn't know what I was doing.”

“But it's not the first time you defaulted to something that Spencer could do,” Tucker said.

I looked over at him. “I am so sor—”

Tucker held his hand up and I stopped. “It wasn't you. It was Spencer.”

“No, Tucker. It was me. Stop putting me up on this pedestal. I did that. I took power because I'd expended myself. Let me take responsibility for this.”

Tucker looked away. Jessa squeezed my knee.

“Spencer wouldn't have cared,” Peter said. “He just took and he'd never apologize.”

“Let me apologize, Tucker.”

Tucker's dark gaze rose to mine. “Accepted, but you rest and you eat and you shift so it never happens again.”

Nash's voice carried from the doorway. “And if he's gotten to the point that he's taken power from others, he's much bigger than he was before.”

Nash slipped into the room and closed the door. Smart boy.

“We are bigger than we were before.” Good to know the poison hadn't numbed my moxy.

“Numbers aren't going to win this one, Prima,” Peter said.

My skin goose bumped. He'd finally called me Prima and the title held so much more weight with his voice than it ever had before.

“But your suave might, and Nash's info. And we've still got something he doesn't have.”

Peter chuckled. “What could we possible have?”

“A reason to fight.”

Peter dropped his chin and looked away.

“We're going to need marching orders,” Tucker said.

I smiled. Where I might default to evil, Tucker still defaulted to his military precision. “We need to solidify the Veil.”

“Done,” Jessa said. “I'll call my mom. See if she's got anything else I can throw at it.”

“And the ones with Jovan's mark?” I asked.

Tucker nodded. “I'll corral them. We've only got two days until the full moon.”

I nodded. Was I even going to be in shape enough to run a full moon? “I don't know if ‘corral' is the right word, but thank you.”

“I'll get on the mark he used. See if there is something we can work to circumvent it,” Nash volunteered.

“And I'm going to leave all the rest in your very capable hands, Mr. Delmont.”

Peter nodded.

“Good.” I sighed. “I need some rest. Doctor's order.”

The men slowly filtered out. Jessa stayed and curled up next to me on the little bed. I adjusted my body as much as I could, but she ended up pressed against the wall.

“How are you really?” she whispered. “And don't think you can lie to me.”

“Exhausted. Scared. And still a little numb.”

Jessa sighed and wrapped her arm around my midsection. “Don't you ever almost die on me again.”

My eyes watered. Jessa was shaking. She'd finally let her guard down now that the boys were gone and I didn't blame her. I held her the best I could with one arm bound like a mummy and the other trapped under her.

“I will do my best.”

“I thought the Veil was bad and then the snake thing and then vampires. I was pretty sure that they were myths until last night.”

“Nice to know you have a learning curve as well.”

Jessa was quiet for a moment and I let my eyes close. Devin hadn't given me any painkillers and each muscle was quietly waking up from its slumber and reminding me that my pants had in fact been beaten off me. I was hoping I could sleep some of the pain away.

“What did Chaz say?” she asked.

I licked my lips. “Some one should have called him before I was filleted and he doesn't want to be part of the pack.”

“Oh.”

“Yep.”

“So where did he go?”

“I have no idea.”

I
T WAS SUSPICIOUSLY
quiet in the house and I was getting bored. Between the six hours of unconsciousness and six more hours of actual sleep, I'd gotten more rest in the past day than I had in two weeks, which meant that the brain was officially firing on all eight cylinders again.

And the poison had finally worn off. Which meant I could move all my limbs, but the residual effects of the ass-kicking were still there, which meant I didn't want to.

I knew I'd heal faster with the Legacy. But I deserved to suffer a little for this one. Call it self-penance. Call it self-pity. I was going to heal this one out without the magical mojo. It would teach me a lesson. I am edible. And I hurt people.

When someone finally knocked on the door, I was almost relieved. “Come in.”

Tyler stuck his head in and then followed. The book bag on his back almost got closed in the door; he was trying to be so stealthy.

“Hey there.” He kept his voice at a library level.

He came to sit on the chair next to the bed. I was feeling more and more like an invalid every time someone came to visit.

It took all the strength I had, but I pushed up on the bed so I wouldn't look completely defeated, though I was pretty sure the huge white gauze wrapped around my shoulder and the complete bed hair didn't help my case. “What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to say I was sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about.”

He hung his head. His hair was a little less golden than I remembered and his frame a little more slender.

“You needed time. But I'm glad you came when you did.”

Tyler sighed. “I came too late.”

He set the bag between his feet and reached inside. I gasped as he pulled out the grimoire that I'd given Cristina, the one that had been lost when she'd been taken. He carefully set it on the bed between us.

The dark energy radiated from the pages and the darker memories followed. Cristina had taken it to help us research breaking the mark. She'd done everything that I'd asked of her and then ended up dead in the arms of the man in front of me.

When I looked up at Tyler, I knew he was thinking the exact same thing. But he couldn't say any more than I could, so he talked business. “The mark Tucker found on the Shades—it's in there.”

“Shades? Better than ‘shadow men.' ” I shrugged.

“So is how to banish them, how to open a portal in the Veil, and how to create a demon.”

I gulped.

“It's got to be the sister book to the one that Spencer has. The one he used to first open the Veil.”

I nodded. “Yet another thing Spencer and I both have.”

“He doesn't have this.”

Tucker pulled a knife out of the bag as well. Its long silver blade flashed in the light from the table lamp next to him and I saw the familiar scrollwork down the edge. The last time I'd seen this, it was sticking out of Cristina's chest.

“The Haverty Blade?” I could barely speak as Tyler and I shared our grief for a moment.

Tyler licked his lips as he put the dagger on the bed. “Things are going to get dark, Violet. I think we all know that. You're going to need this.”

I ran my finger along the silver and it burned my skin. Sure enough. This was the real deal. “Did the others tell you about what happened? What I did to you?”

“They didn't need to. I knew. Which is why I'm giving you this now. You need to know what weapons you have.”

“My plans don't go well.”

Tyler looked up at me. “I know that. God, do I know that. But I also know that if you didn't know that, you wouldn't be holed up in this bedroom pouting.”

“I'm not pouting.”

Tyler raised an eyebrow. “You're pouting. It's a little pathetic.”

I sighed. “I need rest, Tyler.”

“I know. I've felt how strained you've been these past three weeks. I know that you are trying and it's not working.”

I frowned. “It's working. I'm just getting the kinks out.”

“Hate to point out the obvious, but it's not. Haverty could do this and take vacations to the Bahamas three times a year.”

“Haverty enslaved people and blackmailed and intimidated and oppressed everyone until they were scared little nothings who couldn't fight back.”

Tyler threw up his hands. “And it was damn effective. For him. You need to find your way of doing things.”

I looked down at the book between us. I needed to find my way a little sooner rather than later.

“I'll be at the full moon. Thought about going down today and helping to get ready,” Tyler said as he rose, picking up the empty bag. “And then I've been thinking about getting a job.”

“Which noble profession?”

“The paying kind. Tired of living off Tucker.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a good goal.”

“Small steps.” Tyler left me with a small smile. “I know what I need to do, and you know what you need to do. Just take that one small step.”

Maybe that's what I needed as well, small steps out of this bed.

 

Chapter Fourteen

A
FTER LOOKING AT
my wounds in the mirror, I knew Jessa was going to kill me. There was no wearing a strapless dress after this attack. The two fang marks looked like bullet wounds through my forearm and the one through my shoulder wasn't pretty either.

Of course, Jessa did have miraculous ways to hide dark circles under your eyes, so maybe for one day she could make me into a beautiful bride.

If I had a groom.

Chaz had been missing from his house for nearly two days. Kandice and Nash had been on Violet watch most of the time; the others came and went. The Rosario brothers had been hilarious as they told me what happened on their end of the fight, filling me in on what I didn't already know, complete with reenactments of Julian being strangled by a Shade and his brother hitting him over the head with a chair they'd found in the bushes. It was a laugh that I desperately needed.

I needed to go home. I needed to pack for the full moon. I needed to sleep in my own bed that wasn't the lumpy guest bedroom. I still couldn't manage to sleep in Chaz's bed alone.

Peter was the one who was there when I was ready to go home.

“You're up?” he asked as he looked up from his laptop. He'd made an office of Chaz's coffee table. And if I thought Peter in a sharp-cut suit looked odd in the coffee shop, it looked even more out of place against Chaz's orange couch and wood paneling.

“Don't sound so disappointed. Got the super healing thing too.” I sat down on the arm of the chair.

“How up?” he asked.

I would have shrugged but the shower had exhausted me. My arms felt like cement columns hanging off my sore shoulders. “Walking, talking. Not much else. Why?”

“The elemental Akasha contacted me. Seems she got word of what happened with the vampires and wants an explanation.”

“I can't meet with her right now. What kind of impression would that make?”

Peter thought. The gears churned in his head. He was a planner. Maybe his plans worked out.

“I think it's perfect. Go wounded. Let her know that you are vulnerable.”

“And when she stomps all over me and declares herself Prima?”

“She won't.”

“Why not?”

“Because she can't keep the vampires in check and obviously you can.”

The plan didn't make sense in my head. “I'm confused.”

He licked his lips and the thought again flashed across my brain that he was gorgeous. It was the strangest thought but it made me smile.

“She believes you defeated the vampires that night and they are following your lead already.”

“Crap, Peter. What part of the conversation when I yelled at you about putting words into my mouth didn't you get?”

“I didn't tell her that. But I may have led her to believe it.”

I frowned. There was that gray Peter was so very good at. That fine line he liked to walk.

“Where?”

“Still your call.”

“The coffee shop? No, it shut down.” And then the brain started working again. “How fast can you buy something?”

“Depends.”

“My coffee shop went under. But it's sacred and I want to buy it.”

“Do you want me to buy your childhood home as well?”

I smiled. Peter's snark felt good, like things were getting back into the Violet rhythm of things.

“It's not just sacred to me, Peter. It's a protected place for Wanderers now.”

Peter's lips parted. “Oh.”

“I want to buy it. Keep it open for us.”

Peter looked down at his laptop and reached out for his phone. “What's this place called?”

I
PACKED UP
my things, basically what was left of my clothes from the snake attack, and went back out into the living room.

Peter was pacing, but had the widest smile on his face. “Great. Have the papers sent over to my office by Friday, but I'd like the keys by the end of the day.”

He ended the call and looked over at me. “It's yours, Prima.”

I let out a deep relaxing breath. Finally, something going right for a change. “Thank you.”

“Do you want me to call the Akasha?”

And the sense of accomplishment flew right out of me. “What day is it?”

“Tuesday.”

“I think I've got something on Tuesday.” What was it?

Peter pulled my cell phone off the charger on the side table. “Your cousin called a couple of times.”

My chin hit my chest. “Dinner with Waylon and Lexie.”

“I think this is more important.”

“I don't. Can you take me home?”

M
Y HOUSE SMELLED
amazing. Candles had been burning to cover the lemon-scented cleaning supplies that Chaz liked to use when he was deep cleaning the house.

Peter stopped in the doorway and winced at the smell. “What happened?”

“Stress cleaning.” I walked into the living room. “Chaz?”

Mixed in with the candle smell was the smell of fresh flowers. Fresh cut flowers only meant one thing. He was gone? He'd take a job at a time like this?

Of course he would. He needed to be needed and what I had done had unequivocally told him that I could fight my own battles. I walked over to the dining-room table and found a note tucked between the loops of the next-door neighbor's honeysuckle plant.

“Needed to talk to Andrea. I'll meet you at Iris's.”

Guess he'd forgotten about the dinner with Waylon as well.

“Prima?”

I looked across the living room to see Peter still hanging out in the front entryway.

“Something wrong there?”

“Just want you to keep your space your space.”

I frowned and walked back to the doorway. Peter put my bag inside the foyer, which meant that he could enter, he just didn't want to.

“Meaning?” I asked.

Peter shook his head. “I'm the last person to give relationship advice.”

“We all learn from mistakes. They don't have to be ours.”

Peter put his hands on his hips. “I know Chaz isn't pack, but if he was, I'd say that he was scent marking.”

“Huh?”

“We invaded his home, his territory. So he's wiped us clean of this space.”

“I was thinking that it was the first time he didn't have to clean around people, but go on.”

“After what you two have been through, I don't think that you should let anyone else stay here. I think this needs to be your refuge.”

“I think you might be right.”

“We've got Tucker's place and Chaz's place for the overflow.”

“I like that pronoun use, Mr. Delmont.”

Peter just rolled his eyes.

“Set up the meeting with the Akasha for tomorrow morning and I'll see you at the full moon.”

Peter nodded and walked back to his car.

Tucker was going to hate that I was on my own, but I needed a little quiet time. And if I was going to have to have the conversation with Waylon and the Akasha I knew I needed to have, I needed to heal now.

I sat down in my comfortable living-room chair and took in a deep breath. It was time to stop pouting and get down to business. Small step number one: get strong enough to hold a cup of coffee.

I released the borders on my Legacy and let it burn around me, through me. The power swirled around me freely, openly. As the Legacy ran through every nerve ending, every muscle, my shoulder healed and power burned down the muscles in my back and the holes in my arm.

It was mine. They were mine and he wasn't going to hurt us anymore.

L
EXIE WAS IN
the living room watching some teen dream movie that she had convinced her father to rent on the way over. Waylon and I were in the kitchen waiting it out.

“How did that snake thing go?”

“Great. Got eaten and then vampires showed up and Spencer sent his lackeys to polish me off and then I got Tasered.”

“Wow.”

“Please be more specific next time.”

Waylon shook his head. “I can't believe you, Violet.”

“What? The panther part?”

“No, the fearless leader part. I came here thinking I was going to be the big hero, telling you things you never could have dreamed of and it seems you've already lived them.”

I squared up and asked him the hard question. “So what is your schtick? Lay it out for me.”

Waylon put down his coffee. Of course there was coffee involved in this situation.

“Psychic. Future only. Just like Aunt Lily. And I can't really control it.”

I swirled my coffee. It was the first thing I did when I felt like Violet again. Made a pot of coffee. “Do you dream it?”

“All the time.”

“But you are hidden. I can't feel you or Lexie and my preternatural senses are pretty damn good.”

“It's this.” Waylon pulled up his sleeve. On his upper forearm, there was a black swirly mark that I knew too well.

“You've got a permanent dampening spell?”

“Yep. And every pair of shoes that Lexie has gets one too.” Waylon rolled down his sleeve. “I'll tell her when she's ready. Maybe when she has her first dream.”

“When did your dreams start?”

Waylon gulped and looked away.

“Waylon?”

He licked his lips. “My first one was about a week after Aunt Lily died.”

I remembered that. My life with him was getting easier to remember from the black hole of oblivion I had shoved them into. I was still sleeping in the living room before his mom cleaned out her sewing room so I could have some privacy. Waylon woke up screaming and I took him a glass of milk because that's what my mother would have done.

“Pretty much every night since then.”

“When was your first about me?”

“Three years ago. You were fighting off this pack of dogs.”

I snorted. “That was my first date with Chaz.”

“You got attacked on your first date?”

“And he still stuck around.” The joke fell out of my mouth before I could realize that it wasn't exactly true. He wasn't here now.

“It was little things here and there until . . .”

I gulped. “Until what? You're going to have to weave a better story than your company sent you here.”

Waylon came out and said it, which, though I appreciated it, was still shocking. “Until I saw you thrown through the Veil. Packed up everything the moment I saw that. ”

The thought of it washed like cold water down my spine. “I haven't done that yet.”

“I know.”

“So it's still going to happen?”

“Yes.”

My stomach flopped over on itself and I couldn't breathe. I was going to be thrown through the Veil? As Spencer's tribute?

“We can't let it happen.” Waylon's brow was cement.

“Well, duh,” I said as I put the coffee down on the counter.

“No, I mean. I've seen what happens if Spencer wins. Every incarnation is bad.” When Waylon was serious, a vein popped out on his forehead. That wasn't there thirteen years ago.

“How bad?”

“Jovan takes over and runs everything.”

“Would it make you feel better to know that you're not the only one who has prophetic dreams?”

His eyes brightened. “You too?”

I waved my hand to get rid of the notion that I was psychic. “It's little things. Crazy dreams. It's not really about the future—more like my brain tuning into things I'm too dumb to listen to. The first time it was fairy tales that my mother told me.”

Waylon smiled. “I remember those. Every night.”

“Came back to me when I needed them, like little whispers from the past.”

Waylon picked his coffee back up and listened for the movie Lexie was watching. It was currently the musical number between the heartthrob and the underdog as they fell in love. This was one of those moments I wished I didn't have super hearing.

“I read somewhere that psychics get their power because they can hear what the Mother is telling us,” he started.

I put my finger up when I heard Lexie's movie stop and her bouncing across the first floor.

She landed in the kitchen doorway. “Whatcha talking about?”

“Dreams,” her father said.

Lexie walked into the kitchen and leaned against her father's arms. “I had a weird one last night about the cleaning lady in the hotel.”

“Weird as in clowns or aliens?” Waylon asked.

All three of us laughed. It felt good. Felt natural. And as angry as I should be at him for keeping all of this from me, for keeping this precious girl from me, I was glad that they were here now, when I could appreciate them.

I
'D WRITTEN THIS
character once, a vampire queen. She was cool and calm and calculating, and had learned to be as still as stone. It calmed her allies and infuriated her enemies. It was also one of the first times when what I'd seen in my head ended up on the screen—granted, it was a small screen venture but the actress did an amazing job of capturing it.

I thought about that stillness as I waited for the Akasha. Even though my neck was killing me and my arm was aching because I burned through ibuprofen faster than I could take it, I didn't want her to see how nervous I was. I had to fight my leg to keep from bouncing as I waited at a table in the middle of the coffee shop, my coffee shop. I wanted to look calm and put together despite the white bandages that wrapped around my arm and shoulder.

The morning after Peter had made the phone call, the keys to the coffee shop were in my mailbox. Say what you will about Peter's fidelity, the boy could push paperwork with the best of them. Attached to the blank manila envelope was a yellow note with “1100 am” written on it.

So I waited for my meeting with the Akasha and ran speeches through my head. But nothing seemed to come off right and there were always too many cat metaphors.

The bells on the door broke the unnatural silence of the place. The first thing I noticed about the Akasha were her eyes. They were almond-shaped and light colored despite her dark skin.