Diaries of an Urban Panther (23 page)

Cristina reached out, placing her hands out on the table between us. She tapped her knuckles on the table impatiently, insisting that I take her outstretched hands.

“I’m warning you, I have no idea what you’re going to see up there,” I joked as I reached across the table with sweaty palms.

“Like I want to rummage around your head.”

I rested my warm hands in her clammy ones. My skin goose-bumped as our circle completed. Her power rippled around me and she smelled like her incense and hot red wax.

Cristina closed her eyes and began chanting in a meditative whisper to herself. She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly across the table. I was beginning to see that shifting was a lot like a lot of things: shooting guns, yoga, summoning ancient spirits to enlighten the future.

This wasn’t so bad,
I was about to say before liquid lightening shot up my right arm, across my heart, and then down my left arm.

I let out a small yelp because Cristina clenched my hand tighter, in camaraderie or shared pain I wasn’t sure, but I was glad for her cool embrace to focus on. When I could breathe again through the tenderness in my chest, I heard Cristina’s voice softly waft across the table. Her eyes half-closed and her head slightly tilted back, she was speaking to no one.

“Ripped veil. Magnolia death. Mirrors broken.”

Just as I thought maybe that was the end of the show, white hot images flashed across my eyelids, like a thousand photos flashes going off.

Jessa’s reflection in a mirror

Blood on cement.

Chaz crouched in the darkness

The sinister glint off a cat-like eye.

Suddenly, Cristina gasped and her head dropped down to her chest. All the energy rushed from the room, stirring my hair as it went. The scent of hot wax and incense was lost as her hands went limp in mine.

I ripped my hands from her and covered my eyes, still able to see the brightness of the images burning in my retinas. The actual images faded quickly. I struggled to remember them and forget them at the same time. The searing blue spots were left as I dropped my hands and fluttered my eyes open to look at the dimly lit room.

“Dios mio,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Water,” she ordered.

Slowly I stood, bracing myself against the table and moved to the back of the room where another curtained doorway led into a brightly lit break room. The glasses were easy enough to find and on the way back to the table, I snuck a glance at a few family pictures on a bookcase full of doodads.

“Are you okay?” I asked when I returned, tall cold glass of water in my hot hand.

Her head rose slowly and her red watery eyes met mine.

“Cannot say you did not warn me.” Her breaths were rugged and her words poorly formed. “But some of that was you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” she shook her head. “It’s like this every time.”

I gulped. “Every time?”

She nodded slowly. “Every time. It is the sacrifice I have to make for my gift.” Her breaths were normal again; her words fluid again and perfectly exotic.

“Is it true?” I didn’t want to push her, but this was what we had been searching for.

“Clear as day. Protector of the Veil,” Cristina nodded and put her water back on the table. “A reincarnated warrior sent to guard the princess.”

I frowned. “Princess? When did this turn into Mario Brothers?”

Cristina looked up at me. “You don’t know?”

She muttered a long line of something in Spanish under her breath as I flopped down in the chair across from her and stared down at the carpet.

I could see Cristina struggle with words. She rose slowly from the chair, bracing herself for a moment before crossing the dark room. She pulled a wooden box from a shelf and worked her way slowly back to the table.

With a reverence I’ve only see in church and when Chaz handled his guns, she opened the box and carefully unfolded a deck of tarot from a green satin scarf.

She closed her eyes and flipped the first card over. When she opened her eyes, she jerked her head in surprise and put the car back in the shuffle. She licked her lips.

“Your friend. Jessa Feychild. She’s the key to the Veil.”

Jessa? The key to all of this was
Jessa
? How could an affluent New York socialite have anything to do with this? Her family was influential in the business market.

As I thought about her, the pieces snapped into place like another picture in my brain. My shoulders slumped. “Crap. Her last name is Fey Child.”

Seemed par for the course. Seemed like something I would do to one of my characters, frankly. When the situation is as worse as it could be, twist it to make it worse. So, I couldn’t just be a panther dealing with a dark legacy. I had to be a reincarnated panther with a prophecy to protect the Veil between the worlds and the key to that was an actual fairy princess currently not taking my calls.

“Do you know what the Veil is?” Cristina asked.

I nodded. “It’s a wall between this realm and a purely magical realm.”

Cristina flipped over the next card in her desk and she shivered. She quickly laid out five cards in the shape of an X between us. She sucked in a shuttered breath as her hand hovered over the Tower card.

“What does it mean?”

“This isn’t for you.” She snapped, as she reshuffled all the cards quickly and laid out another X with the Tower card in the center. Again.

A chill spread throughout the room.

Cristina wrapped her cards in their scarf and put the cards in the box and the lid on the box.

She spoke quickly, softly. Even with the super hearing, I could barely make out what she was saying. It was a hurried confession in the darkness of her sanctuary. “He’s been trying to find a spell to open a doorway. To rip the Veil. On the darkest of the darkest night. There is a beast on the other side who has offered him power to defeat his father. You keep Jessa safe, protected, it can’t happen.”

Jessa. Then this was more than just a little friendly feud. This was actually life or death. “What does the mirror have to do with it?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew the answer. The mirror was how the Veil ripped. Give the mirror an offering, it would give you something. Send something one way, something else come back. Break the mirror, break the spell.

I shivered with the realization I hadn’t read that in the little book Chaz had given me, never written that into a movie. It was just a fairy tale my mother told me and it was about to come true.

“You can have Wonder boy explain it to you,” she said with a flick of her hand towards the door.

As the mood changed, I watched as she brushed a curl from her eye and licked her lips. “So you and Chaz
do
have history.”

Cristina’s eyes snapped up to me.

“Didn’t have to be psychic to pick up on the
ex
vibe.”

“Charles and I were long ago and far away,” Cristina said as she leaned back in her chair. Her eyes went distant for a moment before she looked back at me. “He’s a very pretty, very damaged boy. Like playing with shiny broken glass.”

“Good thing my kind prefers string.”

She didn’t smile. She didn’t even fight a smile. This woman was stone. “You have many lives before you, Violet Jordan. They will not be easy.”

“Hey, means I’m going to get through this one.”

“The future is never certain. You of all people should know how quickly lives can change.”

We both stood, knowing she was not going to give me more information.

I showed myself out of her little back room. Chaz leapt off the couch and attacked me with questions. “What did she say?”

“You should ask her,” the voice startled both of us.

I turned around to see Cristina leaning in the door frame, looking tired and smaller than she had before. Her arms were locked across her chest as she looked over at Chaz.

I really tried not to smile as I watched Chaz pale and his Adam’s apple bob slowly in his throat.

“We need to go to Jessa’s,” I said. “As close to now as possible.”

With small nod and a thank you, I went outside to bask in the sunlight. I leaned against his car and rested. Even the December sun helped chase away the cool chill from her back room.

“What did Cris tell you?”

“Oh, it’s Cris?” I asked innocently. “That’s very familiar of you.”

We were on the highway before he spoke again. Chaz licked his lips as he changed lanes, driving faster than I would have preferred. But when you’ve got a car like this with an engine like this one and the world as we know it is at stake, why drive slowly? “We were sort of together for a while.”

“I know,
Charles
.”

His knuckles grew white on the steering wheel. “You were in there for ten minutes and you swapped life stories. What about the answers we actually came here for?”

“Actually I guessed. About you and her,” I slunk down in his passenger seat and crossed my arms over my chest. “And I did get answers.”

“And,” he prompted.

“And I need to talk to Jessa.”

S
omeone had wiped off the red smear I’d left last time. Chaz kept looking around the place like a little kid. His hands tucked into his jean pockets as if to ensure he wouldn’t touch anything.

“Do you know how much she pays in rent?” he asked as we stood outside.

“End of the world and you’re thinking real estate?”

Chaz shrugged. “Been thinking of selling my dad’s place.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” he said as he leaned against the wall, facing Jessa’s door. “Too big for just me.”

Well that was an odd piece of news. Not that his dad’s place was a palace but it was weird. First the car, and now this. “How bout we get to saving the princess and then we can play Monopoly?”

He sighed and gestured for me to get on with why we were here.

I looked at the cream door and sighed. Three knocks. “Jessa? It’s Violet.”

“What do you want?” she snapped from the other side of the door.

I closed my eyes and leaned against the elegant door. I could feel her there, her energy on the other side of the door. Why hadn’t I see it before? That’s right. Too absorbed in my own little drama. Who was the selfish one now?

“I need to talk to you about . . . stuff.”

“Talk to your little boyfriend there.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, Jessa. And if you’ll let me in, I can explain.”

“Never.”

“Isn’t that a little dramatic, Jessa?”

“Apparently all I am is a selfish drama queen, so I’m just being true to form.”

I pounded on the door. “Damn it, Jessa. This isn’t a game anymore.”

“And it was before?”

With a thud of my forehead on the door, I turned to face Chaz. “Got anything?”

He shrugged. “You could always throw her against a wall.”

“Would you get off of that already?”

My hands were in fists at my side and I had to take in a long cool breath to unclench my jaw enough to even speak. I turned back to the creamy door. “Jessa,” I said softly. “I’ve got information about the Veil.”

There was a cool ripple of something from the other side of the door. “No one’s getting married in here.”

“That’s it. I’m not playing anymore.”

I took two steps back and sucked in a deep breath.

“Violet, what are you doing?” Chaz asked.

“Going to throw her against a wall.”

There was a small yelp from the other side of the door as I dropped my shields and gathered a little more power. Wasn’t any time like the present to see if I really could control my power like a true Haverty should.

“Vi?”

But I was already moving forward, throwing my power forward and into the wooden door. Barreling towards it, the panther hit it before I did and my shoulder took barely any impact as the door splintered into a million pieces.

I found myself in one piece in her foyer. I rolled my shoulders and put the cat back where she needed to be. Brushing off chunks of door, I looked around her place. Her living room windows were open, letting in a cool breeze.

“Jessa?” I called out looking around.

Chaz followed me in slowly. “Shit Violet.”

“Built-in dark side.”

“They are going to call the cops.”

I took in a deep breath as I looked out her ninth-story penthouse apartment. “It’s okay. We can go. She’s not here.”

“What do you mean?”

I turned on him quickly, lightning quick, still a little jazzed from the adrenaline. He jumped back. “As in she’s not here anymore.”

“Where did she go?”

I looked into the mirror at my left. “Don’t know.”

We walked out of her apartment building just as the cops were pulling up. Chaz’s souped up engine once again aided in our escape.