Diaries of an Urban Panther (6 page)

Stumbling back a step, I landed on the tabletop.

Garrett waited until I was settled on top of the
Encyclopedia Grimoire
. “Miss Jordan.”

Mouth agape, I stared up at him and my entire body grew hot. The shadowy marks down my shoulder began to ache. “What are you doing here?”

Garrett looked down at the stacks of books on the table. He pushed a few of them around and looked at the covers and smiled. “Working. You?”

Embarrassed, I pulled all the books into a stack and snatched one out of his hand. “I’m doing research for a project that I’m working on.”

“Okay.”

“This stuff is crazy.” I rested my hand on top of the pile.

“Not from where I stand.”

“No one knows anything about anything.”

“If you’d just ask . . .”

“Listen, if I wanted stories, I’d make them up myself.”

Garrett shrugged. “Then maybe I shouldn’t give you this?” He pulled a small, soft covered book out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. The cover just read
For Those Who Wander
in silver letters.

“What is this? You’re Gideon Press too?”

“A brief history of our kind.”

“What do you mean,
our kind
?” I snapped as I flipped the book over, expecting something more mystical looking.

“Wanderers, if you will. Read the book. It’s got the answers you’re looking for. Including what’s in your blood that proves you’re going to shift.”

He turned to go and made it a few steps.

I couldn’t just let him walk off, my curiosity completely unsatiated. “Why can I wear silver?”

Garrett paused.

“Why am I running a fever?”

Slowly, he turned and looked at me.

“I want answers. And I want them really soon.”

“The Shala can give you real answers.”

“I want proof.”

He shrugged. “I can’t give you proof. You’ll just have to trust me.”

I scowled. “About as far as I can throw you.”

Something like a smile played on his lips as he slowly backed away. “See you later Violet Jordan.”

Chapter Five

I
flipped through my pathetic excuse for a wardrobe on Friday and took a chance on a black dress I had plumped out of three months earlier. I had gotten it on sale at one of the boutiques Jessa dragged me into and managed to wear it once before I started putting on my winter weight.

Wearing the appropriate underwear, I slid the dress over my head and down my torso. With contortions usually not possible, I zipped up the back of the dress without protest from the zipper. I stared at myself in the half mirror in the bathroom.

It fit. Perfectly. I spun around in the mirror in disbelief. But my celebration stopped when I saw the four dark marks down my shoulders. They were shadows of their former selves but they were there and visible to anyone who got close enough to really look.

Which meant I was fine. Standing next to Jessa, no one was going to really look at the Sasquatch by her side.

J
essa looked like something out of
Vogue
as she flipped her perfectly straight black hair over her shoulder. She checked her Chanel lip gloss one more time in the mirror in her foyer before turning towards me. “Ready?”

“Sure,” I shrugged.

“You okay?” she asked as she locked her front door and we started to the elevator.

“Fine. Work has just been rough this week.”

“Typing your little fingers to the bone?” she said wiggling her fingers in front of her, mocking my daily activities.

“Yeah. And they want me to collaborate on this online thing they are cooking up.”

“Uh-huh,” Jessa said as she watched her reflection in the sliding metallic doors.

“So it’s like double the work.”

“That sucks,” she said taking a deep breath and fogging up the place on the elevator doors that had caught her attention.

I stopped there. She had gotten that glazed look she sometimes got, which meant that she wasn’t listening.

T
he other girls were already at the elevators that would take us up to the 33rd floor club, all looking straight out of the magazines with their little skirts and halter tops and perfect tans. And here I was, a head taller than everyone else, paler than everyone else, in a knee-length black dress with my hair in a ponytail because the curls just were not cooperating.

“You look really good, Violet.”

The compliment caught me off guard and it took a second for me to respond. “Thanks, Carrie. I really like your new highlights.”

“Really?” she squeaked. “I wasn’t sure, it being so late in the year, but I just saw this picture and I knew that I had to have them, she said spinning her finger around one of her curly locks.

“Good choice.”

We filed out of the elevator of the Ghostbar and followed Jessa to the bar. Eyes followed her as she walked, swaying her hips to the rhythm of the music echoing through the blue-lit room.

And here is where the fun starts. Usually, within the first twenty minutes of entering anything that might be construed as a meat market, someone offers to buy Jessa a drink. Some nights, she can go the whole time without paying for a single cocktail. Sometimes, she can even swing getting drinks for the whole table. The guy comes over, maybe with a few friends that go for the shorter, cute girls, and then Jessa somehow gets them to go away to let another guy or guys come in and do the same thing.

It really is an art form. Something about the ebbing and flowing of testosterone really needs to be studied in a lab somewhere. There are strategic places and timing and hand movements and I have seen all of them so many times that maybe I should lead the study since I’m usually just watching anyway.

With the first set of guys, I was the odd woman out and decided to take my Baileys to the terrace to look out at the skyline. Dallas has one of the prettiest skylines I’ve ever seen. Maybe that’s why I stayed here. Maybe it was the great weather. Maybe it was the fact there was a Starbucks on every corner. As I stood there looking out at the city below, I was content for the moment. Not feeling like a girl with a destiny, not feeling like a victim. Just feeling like Violet.

Jessa joined me.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest and looking up at me with a raised eyebrow.

“No, I’m fine. Just enjoying the view.”

“You hate heights.”

“I don’t hate heights,” I laughed as I looked down at the thirty-three floor drop below me.

“You sat on the floor of the Ferris wheel last year at the state fair.”

I remembered. Terrified in the little cage, I was convinced it would snap off the huge wheel and we would all go tumbling down. But now, I could only shrug. “Doesn’t bother me now.”

Jessa looked out at the night with a huge sigh. “It is a gorgeous skyline, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” I sighed as I sipped the last of my drink. Baileys wasn’t my usual drink but something about the milky texture soothed me, and after what happened last week, I wouldn’t be drinking anything heavier for a very, very long time.

“Do you ever regret it?” I asked.

“What?”

“Moving here from New York, starting your life over again.”

“You mean to babysit you through a broken heart?” Jessa shrugged. “Never.”

“Excuse me,” a voice came from the interior of the bar.

Both of us turned to see a waitress in a white halter dress with a drink in her hand.

“There is a gentleman at the bar who sends his best wishes.”

Jessa smiled and reached for the tumbler but the waitress pulled the drink away from her.

“It’s for the tall brunette,” the waitress nodded, handing the drink over to me.

Jessa looked like she had been smacked, but it was my cheeks that flushed and I was very glad I was on a darkened balcony.

I handed her my empty glass and took the new Baileys. No one had ever bought me a drink before. I stared down at the small crystal tumbler in my hand and couldn’t help but smile.

“Which one is he?” I asked the waitress, excitement running up and down my arms like cool water.

She pointed discreetly at a man wearing a dark leather coat. I didn’t need to squint to see who it was through the smoky bar. My excitement failed, but my manners didn’t.

I lifted my glass to Mr. Garrett and thanked the waitress before I turned back to the window where a deep furrow had formed between Jessa’s usually perfect brows.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Stalker boy just bought you a drink.”

I pursed my lips. I had really been hoping that she hadn’t seen him too. “Guess he’s got a thing for Chewbacca now.”

And Jessa did the one thing that reminded me why we were friends. She let out a Wookie trill that would have made George Lucas swoon.

I snorted with laughter as we moseyed our way back to the table, where I was sure another group of men would be waiting.

W
hen a new bunch of boys came over, numbers uneven again, I snuck away to go stand at the terrace bar next to Garrett’s hunched-over figure as he watched the plasma screen scream with psychedelic colors above the bartender’s head.

“Didn’t think I’d answer my phone?” I asked as I slid up next to him.

He looked over at me and nodded. He still had to lean in a little so I could hear him over the music. “Can’t a guy just go to a bar and have a drink?”

“But of all the bars in all the world . . .” I quoted with a very bad Bogart impression.

He chuckled. I thought he was being generous.

As I watched him, I knew I should be feeling fear or confusion or something but I felt normal, good even. And it wasn’t the Baileys talking. I took the seat next to him and crossed my legs, leaning on the bar.

“Read the book?” he asked.

“Cover to cover.”

“Did it answer your question about silver and the fever?”

“Only heirloom silver is deadly and shapeshifters, the fancy word for werewolves, maintain a higher temperature around the full moon.”

He chuckled. “Bet you were an A student.”

“When I wasn’t driving my teacher insane with questions. How have you been?” I asked.

He jerked back with a sharply raised eyebrow and sat up straighter.

“What?” I laughed at his reaction. “I’m not allowed to ask? Something in the stalker’s union code? Conversations must be unidirectional and monosyllabic?”

“No,” he said with a small smile as he settled back into his hunched position, elbows on the bar.

“Well then, how are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“Just okay. What does it take, Mr. Garrett? I mean you
are
in the premier bar in downtown Dallas and you have a leggy girl by your side,” I explained dramatically.

“That I had to lure with Baileys.”

“Hey, whatever works,” I shrugged with a smile.

He looked back at the TV for a moment with a grin, then back at the leggy brunette next to him. “Chaz,” he said.

“What?” I had to lean in a little more to hear him.

“Call me Chaz.”

“What about Chuck?”

“Never.”

“Well, Chaz,” I said. Just saying it made me want to giggle a little. I slid off the leather stool and smoothed down my skirt. “Since you can see I’m doing fine, I will take my leave.”

“See you tomorrow, Violet Jordan.”

“Joy.”

“I
’m sorry,” I said over my glass of red wine.

“Why?” Devin asked taking a sip of his own drink.

We were pressed into a corner by the bar in Bass Hall. Everyone was paired off for the opening night and dressed in their finest, including me in a new dress I picked up two sizes smaller than I had worn a week ago. And a pashmina to cover my back. The marks still tingled when something brushed them.

“Because I should have offered you and Peter the tickets.”

Devin smiled like a little boy when I mentioned Peter and looked down at his glass of wine.

“So the two of you must be hitting it off?”

Devin only nodded. We had both agreed talking too much about something like this would surely jinx it. Yes or no questions were permitted, if nothing else, for the other to live vicariously through.

“Am I being selfish, keeping you to myself on a Saturday night?”

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

I leaned in and rested my head on Devin’s shoulder for a moment. He always smelled so clean and crisp. Not like the last man that I had been this close to. My mind drifted quickly to the dark man in the dark jacket and I clutched my purse to make sure my cell phone was still there.

The lights flickered in the old theatre and we paraded into the amazing box seats that Ben had scored for Jessa.

Half-way through the first act, Devin offered me his opera glasses but I shook my head. Then a little part of me chilled in fear, making my skin goose bump.

I didn’t need the small binoculars because I could see everything in crystal clear detail. Startled, I sat up in my chair and looked around the dark theatre. I could see everything. In the dark. I could see the man in the front row who was already dozing off. I could see the young couple in the back already misty eyed. I could see the fake mole on the face of the prima donna.

Devin noticed my distraction.

“Are you okay?” he whispered, leaning in.

“Fine,” I said back a little too quickly.

He reached over to touch my hand and jerked his back quickly. “You’re hot.”

“You look nice too,” I said, hoping the joke would calm the extreme arch in his eyebrow.

“No, you’ve still got a fever.”

“It’s just the wine,” I said as I turned back to the beautiful opera going on before us.

“I told you to go to a doctor,” he persisted, drawing some dirty looks from those around us.

“I’m fine,” I said back to him harshly. “Watch the opera.”

He set back roughly in his seat, scowling at me with his arms crossed.

My hands were shaking and I hoped to God he didn’t notice. I wasn’t fine. As I thought about it, I hadn’t worn my glasses in a week even though I was doing marathon sessions at my computer. As I looked around at all the extra details of the people I could see in the dark, I had the sudden realization it all might be real. People don’t just grow out of their glasses; something had to have changed me to suddenly have perfect vision.

And that’s when I panicked. A full-blown panic attack in the middle of one of the most beautiful operas ever written.

Besides the new vision and the slimmed down figure, I was on the umpteenth floor of a hotel last night looking down, not freaking out. This was real. I was changing, turning into something that ate dogs in back alleyways and attacked innocent bystanders.

Jumping out of my seat, I made a mad dash for the stairs. I needed fresh air. Needed to breathe. I clutched at my chest and flew past the ushers and the ticket takers and threw open the double doors, stumbling out into the night.