Nine Lives of an Urban Panther (7 page)

“It's gorgeous.” Jessa fluttered around me, fluffing this and that.

“I can't see my feet,” I complained.

“Why do you need to see your feet?” Jessa said.

I looked at the mirror and grimaced. Jessa peeked out from around my whipped cream disaster.

“You need to try on dresses to see what you like,” Jessa said as she went to sit on the love seat provided for families.

I sighed. My shoulders were starting to ache and the three ibuprofen weren't doing anything for it. “Can't you just pick out something fabulous and make sure that the pictures look good?”

“No, Violet. This is your special day. It has to be what you like.”

I looked back at the dress. “This is not what I want.”

Two more dresses later, I still wasn't sure what I liked.

“Definitely not this,” I said as I waddled like a penguin over to the love seat next to her. Jessa sighed. It was supposed to be a mermaid cut, but I felt more like a mummy.

“You have to have thought about it, Vi. You have to have a direction. What girl doesn't know what her wedding is going to look like?”

I raised my hand. My arms were the only thing moving in this dress. “This one.”

“Seriously.” Jessa dropped her chin to her chest and raised her eyebrows. “In the six weeks you've been engaged, you didn't think about what you wanted.”

“I haven't really had a lot of time to myself, Jessa. With the new pack and the other Wanderers and the holes in the Veil, being engaged sort of took a back seat.” I reached down the front of the dress and pulled at the bodice so I could take a deep breath. I slipped down on to the cushion next to her. “I thought about who I wanted there. You, Iris, Tucker. I can see people.”

Jessa sighed for the millionth time that evening. “This was supposed to be a bonding experience.”

“Aren't we bonded enough?” I asked.

“No, like girlie bonding. One night without that magic stuff. This is what girlfriends do. They go wedding-dress shopping and have champagne and fun. We used to go out and have fun, remember?”

“I'm not sure regular girlfriends close a wedding boutique to have a fully catered buffet while one of them tries on dresses that are three times her mortgage.”

Jessa shrugged. “I can't help that.”

I smiled. “Fine. But this little number.” I gestured to the slinky gown. “It's not it. And it smells funny.”

Satin binding my knees together tightly, I wriggled to the edge of the couch. “How do you walk in this?”

Jessa rose and offered a hand to help me up. “Think little Chihuahua. Tiny steps on your toes.”

Jessa helped pull me to my feet. It was a struggle given the height differential and the fact that the heaviest thing Jessa ever lifted was her purse.

Finally, we managed me off the couch. “Thanks.”

“Try the one with the blue sash.”

“Are you serious?”

“Go,” she pointed with her firm forefinger. “Humor me.”

I threw up my hands. “Humoring. I'm humoring.”

The next two dresses were hideous and by the seventh, I was exhausted. Wearing formal wear wasn't exhausting; the contortions needed to get in and out of is was. I leaned against the couch next to her and sipped the cool champagne. My head was spinning, and after the week I'd had, I was pretty sure it wasn't just the champagne.

“What's wrong with this one?” Jessa asked, probably expecting another goring critique.

“Actually”—I looked down at the cream-colored dress and was able to take in a deep breath—“this one doesn't suck.”

“Hallelujah.”

I turned around and looked at myself in the mirror. It was a simple strapless ivory dress that went down to the floor but I could still see my toes beneath. I turned to the side. “I think I like it.”

Jessa joined me at the mirror. “Nice simple lines. There is one problem though.” She turned my back to the mirror. “You can see the marks.”

As I turned my head to look over my shoulder, the four scars down my back were visible, highlighted against the ivory of the dress. “I haven't seen those in a while.”

They still unnerved me. I had almost forgotten about the scars down my shoulder, it seemed so long ago, and yet I felt the burden of it every day.

“Vi?” Jessa asked.

“It's okay,” I said as I looked back at her. “I'm not saying they are war wounds, but they are part of who I am and I'd expect anyone at my wedding probably already knows what they are.”

Jessa nodded. “I'll write down the style name of the gown.”

“Just don't tell me how much it is yet.”

“Aye, aye fearless leader.” Jessa walked back to the couch to get the wedding binder she had made. It was lavender satin with a white lace wedding cake on the top. How
not
me is that?

But her snide remark did beg a question. “Why do you call me ‘fearless leader'?”

Jessa looked up from her binder. “Because you hate it.”

“Has your family ever been part of a pack?”

Jessa froze. “Why?”

I swallowed and licked my lips. “Haverty was able to control other breeds within his pack. I don't know if I can.”

Jessa slowly walked toward me to get the dress information. “Are you seriously thinking about taking over Dallas?”

I shook my head. “I don't know. Delmont said that there would be chaos. But it sounds like the others are doing the same thing that we are.”

“And do we trust this Delmont person?”

“I don't know. He's tough to read. One minute he's Team Violet, and the next he's making deals with the devil. But what if he's right?”

Jessa shook her head. “It's not you, Violet. I know what you are capable of, and as much as I joke, you're doing a great job with the boys, but . . .”

She moved away to put her binder back on the couch. “I don't know if a Key Holder should be bound to a pack. We are sort of supposed to be neutral. It's why we don't deal with the Cause. We maintain the Veil, keep the powerful ones out, no matter their personal philosophies.”

“What about Chaz? Have you heard of guardians in a pack?”

She sat on the edge of the couch. “You'd have to ask him. But he's sort of already chosen his side, the Cause.”

I rolled my eyes. “Right. Those lovelies.”

Jessa smiled. “He chose you too, so it can't all be bad.”

I put my hands on my hips and looked down at the gorgeous dress. If I tried hard enough, I could see something like a wedding. Holding flowers. Probably purple ones. Maybe with some catnip.

 

Chapter Seven

T
HERE WERE TWO
reasons I was taking this meeting at the coffee shop instead of my home office in my turtle pajamas. The first was that in all the excitement, I'd run out of coffee beans for the coffeemaker. The second was that there was no longer a moment's peace with Chaz buzzing about the house doing God knows what, Kandice pacing in the guest bedroom, and Nash and Tucker alternating who was constantly checking up on all three of us.

So I curled up in my other office, the corner table where I'd taken a million meetings in the past month, and talked to the LA think tank who had me on speakerphone. Thanks to the super hearing, I could still hear everything on the call.

“Violet!” they all yelled simultaneously.

I smiled. The guys at the production company had known me since I was Drew's lowly assistant and worked with me at every cheesy step of the way through a million scripts. Now, I'd handpicked a group of people who could see
MoonBlood
onto the small screen. Putting your paranormal autobiography on TV does require some finesse.

“Hey guys! How's the weather?”

“Too damn sunny as usually.”

“Same here. Where should we start?”

Silence filled the line.

“Guys?”

Finally one of them spoke up. His voice was shaky. Did I have so much clout I could intimidate grown men from across the country? Go me. “We had some concerns with the main character.”

“Charles? What's wrong with Charles?” It already felt like they were kicking my baby.

“We think we need to make him tougher.”

I laughed. “Tougher we can do. What else?”

“We need to see more of Raven?”

“You mean the hot redhead in the leather everything?” I knew that was coming. I'd grown up in this culture. I know what nerdy boys want. They want the hot unattainable who they strive to attain and get. “Done.”

“And we need to get the bad guy to be less bad.”

I gulped. By working out Charles's pain after being bitten by a werewolf, I'd been masking my own. While his villain was a black-haired, blue-eyed alpha female who wanted nothing but power and got hers in the end, mine had gotten away and still haunted me. I didn't know if I could soften anything about my memory of Spencer.

Guess I needed to put all the fictionalizing to work. “I think I can come up with something.”

“And the location. We think it should be in New York.”

“Why?”

“It's got such a modern feel to it. We want it to be in a modern place.”

“I still think it should be in Portland. It fits Charles more.”

Another voice spoke up. “How about we see what the budget allows for and write accordingly?”

I nodded. “Agreed. Let's do be practical about this?”

There was a snicker on the line. “About a werewolf torn between evil and good? Of course, let's be practical.”

The group of us laughed.

There was that sense of camaraderie that I missed. “What can I do for you next, guys?”

“Story arcs. Three or four for each character.”

I scratched down the assignment in my planner. As I flipped through the pages, I tried to find some time to carve out to work. I think I had Sunday morning off and a little time on Tuesday before the full moon, which was approaching faster than I really wanted. “Done. Anything else?”

“I think we are good at our end. We will hammer out the business stuff but we'll need to get scripts out pretty soon to dangle in front of the money people.”

“Noted. Want to schedule a time to talk next week?”

The group laughed. “We can't think that far ahead, Violet. We don't see the big picture like you can. Just call us when you can.”

“Okay.” I flipped through a few pages of the planner and scratched in a time to call them again. They might have that flexibility but I certainly did not.

“Hey, we were wondering if you're planning a trip out here anytime soon. We'd love to do this in person at some point.”

“I can't think that far ahead, guys. Talk to y'all later.”

I hit the “end” button on the phone and rested my head in my hands. At least I'd managed not to lie to them. Bonus points for me.

But where the hell had
y'all
come from? Maybe I had been here too long.

I
WAS DRIVING
home when I got another call. This one threw me more than Kandice's or anything Jessa could possible think up, and lately, with all the holes in the Veil, her phone calls has been pretty exciting over the past six weeks.

Waylon's panicked voice shrieked in my ear. “Violet? Is Lexie with you?”

I stalled my car at the stop sign as fear made my muscles lock up and I couldn't downshift smoothly. “What?”

“She's not in her room. I've looked everywhere I can think of. Is she with you?”

“No, Waylon.”

“Violet, I don't know what do to.”

Finally, something I could handle. Muscle memory put my gearshift into neutral and I jammed down on the clutch. “Actually, I do. I'm coming to you.”

The car behind me honked at I tossed the phone into the passenger seat and turned the ignition. When my baby was purring again, I threw her into first gear and did a U-turn in the intersection. I loved my little car.

As I was flying over to Waylon's, I called Chaz. “Hey, meet me at Waylon's and bring your tracking gear.”

“What?”

“Bring that bag you bring when you tell people you're going to hunt someone down.”

“Oh. What's going on?”

“Lexie's missing.”

“I can be there in thirty minutes.”

“You'll be there now.”

I heard him grumble on the other end of the line. “Wait. What are you doing?”

While I came to a stop at a stoplight, I turned on my super hearing to try to figure out where he was. He was driving. I'd know the exhaust of that engine anywhere. “Chaz? Where are you going? Did the Avion call you?”

He sighed. “I was tracking that thing that broke into our houses.”

“Are you kidding? What were you thinking?”

“That it broke into my house?”

“But alone? It was strong enough to make a boot print in my front door. What was going to stop it from making a boot print in your head?”

“I did perfectly fine before I met you.”

I had to pause for a moment as I threw my car angrily into second gear. “And you're trying to get back your lost freedom?”

“No, Violet. I'm trying to protect myself.”

“At least call someone. Tucker's off duty.”

“They are not my pack, Violet!” The truth finally reared its ugly head.

“Don't be stupid, Chaz.” I knew it wasn't the best thing to say. I really knew it when he hung up on me.

W
AYLON WAS PACING
the foyer when I got there. “Oh thank God, Violet. I was just about to call the police and I . . .”

His eyes glanced behind me and I felt Chaz walk up. “You two move fast.”

“When family needs us, we're here,” I answered.

Waylon's brown eyes landed back on me. “We had this fight, and I could just hear someone who wasn't me yelling at her and . . .”

“It's okay, Waylon. I remember how many times I wanted to run away at her age.”

“You never ran away,” Waylon frowned.

“I had you,” I smiled. “And now I'm returning the favor.”

“Why?”

“Because she's got her Aunt Violet. And I will find her.”

Chaz cleared his throat behind me. His anger radiated out around him like a heater at my back. “Why don't we go up to your place and see if she left us anything?”

“No we need to be out hunting and—”

I put my hand on Waylon's arm. “No. You need to calm down, I need a coffee, and we can look at her room for clues.”

I
T WAS A
battle convincing Waylon to stay in his hotel room without busting out the “don't worry, my fiancé has psychic GPS and can find anything.”

But unfortunately, it left Chaz and I alone to discuss things as he kicked that GPS into gear.

“You were a little forceful with Waylon back there,” Chaz said as he drove, his eyes glowing as he steered us this way and that, following his psychic trail to her.

“Jordans are blunt, said so yourself. Besides, got the job done.” I plucked the little panda bear from the console between us and held it in my hands. It had been Lexie's baby toy and Chaz locked onto her in three seconds flat. “Where is she going?”

“She's not far now,” he said softly.

I picked at the panda's worn ear. “I'm sorry that I yelled at you.”

“Technically, I yelled first.”

“I was only trying to say that if you needed help, they aren't just my boys.”

Chaz shook his head as he turned exited the highway. “I'm not in the club, Violet.”

“Neither is Jessa.”

“But you guys are Key Holder and Guardian.”

“But we weren't before I was attacked and I'd still have taken a bullet for her.”

Chaz squeezed his knuckles around the steering wheel. “Get to the moral of the story, Aesop.”

“You guys hang out, play football. Joke around with each other. They don't just hang around you because of me. They don't feel they owe you for anything. You've got yourself a family now, little orphan boy. Use it.”

Chaz was quiet for a good long while as he wove through the streets. “I was already on my way back from hunting down the thing that tried to break in when you called.”

Anger sizzled around me, making the insides of the car hot enough with my Legacy that Chaz flipped on the air conditioner in defiance.

“You'll be happy to know that Shadow fought me on it. But I took the cloth from your dresser and followed it.”

I took in a deep breath. He was right. He'd done this for years before me, and his father before that. “Well, you're in one piece, so I'm guessing he didn't stomp on you.”

“Not just one, a group of them, but they were gone. It was a loft-apartment thing with lots of computers. Look like they'd been gone for about a day.”

“What were they?”

“I don't know. I don't have your preternatural senses. None of the usual signs. But it was like they'd up and gone. Food in the fridge, clothes still in dressers, shoes still by the door. Just gone.”

Listening to his voice was calming me down. Helping me remember what he was before me, before I'd completely turned his life upside down. “How do you know they weren't just at work?”

Chaz shook his head. “Didn't feel right.”

“Do you think they'll come back?”

“No. Don't think they found what they were looking for.”

“And now they are just wandering around town, shoeless?”

It was quiet for a little while. “Guess if I'd called Tucker, he might have been able to sniff something else out.”

“Actually, Nash has a stronger sense of smell.”

“Good to know.” Chaz relaxed and when he did, so did I. This was the part of him that I'd first fallen in love with, the fighting-the-good-fight part.

“What did you mean that Waylon saved you?” he asked

I picked at some food or wax embedded in Lexie's poor panda's fur. “They never let me go back home. After my parents died. My stuff was just brought to their house. I had it in my head Mom and Dad were just waiting for me to come home, like some lost princess story.”

“Sounds like you.”

“One night I'd had enough and I packed my bag and I started to walk home. Waylon found me about four hours later walking down the highway.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that if I was so intent on running away he was going to run with me. He wouldn't let me be alone. We spent the night at this completely vile hotel room, playing gin rummy all night and eating pizza. I'm pretty sure he called Aunt Glory when I was in the bathroom.”

“How'd he get you to come home?”

I looked over at Chaz. “He said he would drive me there to see the house but it wouldn't look the same. Wouldn't have the life it had with the three of us in it. And if he had to choose, he'd want to remember it like it was at Christmas when Mom would string lights on everything and the tree was in the front window. Not like it was now, dark and cold and empty. I told him to drive us home the next morning.”

“What happened to you two?”

I sighed. Chaz was my family now, right? He was marrying into this mess. “He left me. Aunt Glory was there, but Waylon was with me and the moment that I was getting happy, he left for college. Part of me knew he would come back, but it wasn't the same after that, and then I went to college and that was that. I did the leaving. I'm the schmuck in this scenario.”

Chaz reached out to take my hand. “You're making up for your schmuckiness.”

I took in a deep breath. I certainly was trying. “I'm learning about family at the same rate as you.”

“Uh, Violet?” Chaz stopped the car and pointed to the building next to us. “Lexie's at your coffee shop.”

I looked up at the building next to us. My coffee shop. Lexie had found her way to my safe spot? Goose bumps ran up my arm and I tried to push away what that meant and the complications that might follow.

“You okay?”

“Why this place, Chaz?” My voice wasn't more than a whisper. My brain flew in a million directions at once.

“We can't deny they are Wanderers, talent or not. Maybe she just went to a place that felt safe to her.”

I licked my lips and nodded. It was purely coincidence. There was no way she was just called to the coffee shop because her Wandering blood told her it was safe, right?

“I'm going in.”

B
ASTIAN, THE MANAGER,
was behind the counter rearranging the coffee mugs. Business was slow as usual. “Hey, Violet. What can I get you?” he greeted.