The Nine Lives of Chloe King (18 page)

She put the phone back down.

I have a secret.

It didn’t sound pretty, like a junior high secret crush or journal or juicy piece of gossip. The claws, the expanded senses, the speed, the freedom, the night—she hadn’t realized they came with a price. Like the time she’d taken a pull from a bong, when the giggles were over and she’d realized she had
done something illegal
—that if they chose to, any of her friends could have told, and she would have had a police record or gone to juvie hall. She had a secret and it was
punishable.

Silence overwhelmed the house. Once in a great while a car drove by and Kimmy the shih tzu would bark—Chloe thought about going outside to see if he still acted weird around her, but she couldn’t bear the thought of opening the door.

There was a bang and a metallic-sounding scrape as someone threw a glass bottle into a recycling can.

More slowly than she had ever done anything, Chloe moved to the stairway and went upstairs. Every step was forced, every moment balanced. She listened for footsteps outside in the grass or on the pavement beneath the windows. The twelve steps took twenty minutes: she could barely hear over her own heartbeats and breathing.

When she finally got upstairs, she opened her drawer with what seemed like
way
too much noise.

Squeak!

Mus-mus ran from her. She put her hand down and he ran into the corner, cowering. Chloe frowned. She pulled a Cheerio from the sandwich bag and held it out to him. He stayed in his corner. It took almost five minutes for him to work up his courage—and then he only ran forward, grabbed it in his mouth, and ran back into the corner again.

“What’s gotten into you?” Chloe demanded. He was her only friend in the house right now; she didn’t have the emotional energy for
him
to wig out, too. “Come on!” she said, a little more annoyed, going to pick him up. Then she noticed her claws were still out.

He thinks I’m a cat now. A predator.

She made herself relax, calmed her thoughts, waiting until the claws disappeared.

But when she put her hand in, he still ran away.

Chloe was sitting on the bed, in the same position, staring at the closed drawer, when her mother came in hours later. Chloe didn’t move when the car pulled up or the door opened or when she came upstairs.

“Hey.” Her mom stuck her head in, face slightly flushed from drink and good times. “You’re not in bed yet?”

“I’m going.
Now,”
Chloe said with a wan smile. Her tears had dried up a while ago, but they’d left scratchy, salty tracks on her cheeks.

She
knew
it wasn’t safer now that her mom was home … but somehow still she felt like it was.

Sixteen

Chloe had no
desire to go to school or work the next day—lying in bed under the covers definitely seemed like a superior option.
But not the safest.
Public places like school and work were absolutely the safest places to be, and in between she would make sure she was with crowds or other people.

And at home, tonight?

She never wanted to live through an evening of fear like that again. Thinking about it made her want to throw up. She hadn’t slept much, jumping up at every noise and lying awake for hours, following each sound to its conclusion: cars driving into the distance, someone—possibly with a
different
malevolent purpose—striding down the midnight street, pausing, taking a piss, and then going on his way. A rat or something small and noisy pushed its food along the ground outside her window, into a hole, for what seemed like half the night.

She surfed the Web for a few minutes before getting ready, looking for alarm systems and door jammers and electronic sentries—most of which seemed to start in the five-hundred-dollar category. Chloe tried to come up with a way of suggesting it to her mom: “Uh, there’ve been a lot of break-ins recently, and I was wondering …” The easiest thing would probably be to get a bunch of those kids’ toys that were supposed to guard your locker or room from a sibling and set them up all over the house.

But what about
her?
What if he attacked her again, more sneakily?

Thinking over the fight, she remembered how he had aimed for her throat and important joints—shoulders, knees—and finally the belly. She needed some sort of protection for those places: armor. Chloe took out the music box her dad had given her the last Christmas they were all together; where she kept all of her favorite pieces of jewelry, and the sparkly things she never wore. At the bottom, tangled up in a bracelet she got out of a cereal box, was a chain mail necklace she’d bought at a Renaissance fair Amy had dragged her to years ago. She put it on and looked at herself in the mirror. The steel links made a chain that was only a couple of inches wide, but if she wore it a little loose, then at least it protected the lower half of her neck, the veins and arteries there.

Chloe had no idea what to do about her knees and legs. She played with the idea of wrapping them with Ace bandages, the metal pins all stuck along more vulnerable

areas. For her stomach and shoulders the closest thing to protection she had was a leather vest from Pateena’s—very seventies and cracked in places. But it was a biker’s, thick and strong. She dug it out of her closet and put it on.

Some call me a space cowboy. …

Really, all she needed was a ten-gallon hat or a huge belt with a silver dollar buckle.
Actually
… She tilted her head. With her bob, a pair of feather earrings wouldn’t look too bad, either. Maybe some thick black eye liner, clumpy mascara …

“Morning,” she called, running downstairs and going right for the door. Her mother was doing a crossword—she never seemed to get headaches or hangovers from nights out.

Chloe realized she was breaking a major, major rule of their new “honesty” pact and felt guilty about it—but what was telling her mom going to accomplish?

“You doing anything after work tonight?” Mrs. King asked, trying to sound casual, not looking up.

Patrolling the perimeter? Setting little traps? Trembling in my shoes?

“Uh, no, not really …”

“I thought I would make lamb tonight.” She tapped the pen to her lips. “A really nice cut. Will you be home by eight?”

An image flashed before Chloe of her coming in late and finding her mother dead on the floor, broken glass and blood everywhere, the smell of burnt lamb fat from the oven.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Chloe answered quickly.

At school, she found she could doze for five minutes at a time—catnap—in class, without anyone noticing. While she felt the urge to snuggle down and sleep for much longer—especially in chemistry, when the sunlight warmed her chair and desk—Chloe found that even the brief five was refreshing. In gym she lucked out: they were watching a film about drunk driving. Chloe managed to sleep for the whole forty-five minutes.

She was woken in Am civ by her phone vibrating. She tried not to sit up quickly, annoyed and surprised out of a deep, dreamless sleep. The number was Brian’s.

She wondered if he somehow found out about what happened to her the night before. Or more importantly, if he was going to tell her how much he really liked her and apologize for being so hands-offish and weird. Or maybe he was finally going to admit that he was the other cat person. All these things would be good.
Any
of them. She waited until she was out in the hall after class before calling him.

“You rang?” she asked, phone pressed tight to her ear so she could hear over the crowd.

“Yeah—Chloe, we have to talk.” He sounded desperate, serious.

“Sure! Can you meet me before work, at the café near there, on the other side of the street?”

“You can’t get out earlier?”

Chloe raised an eyebrow. “I’m in high school, remember? Not the ‘real world.’ Getting out early means calls to Mom and
consequences.”

“Oh. Right. Okay, then, two-fifteen?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Chloe promised. She put the phone back into her pocket.

“Hey, Chloe!” Alyec was waving at her. She smiled and sauntered over, swinging her hips in a half-cowboy-with-spurs, half-sexy walk. “Nice vest. So Keira says you’re a complete slut. Is that true?”

Chloe’s mouth opened—and then just hung there. She was too stunned to speak. Keira’s closest friends were in earshot, listening raptly. Alyec was excellently maintaining a straight face, the still-foreign aspect of his expressions never too revealing.

Then Chloe laughed.

It was such a perfect, stupid high school moment, as far away from murdering psychos, supernatural powers, and mysterious fears as one could get. A complete breath of fresh air.

Alyec smiled, pleased to see her reaction.

“I hear you actually have to have sex to be one,” she answered loudly. “You should talk to Scott LeFevre and Jason Buttrick and—well, the whole soccer team. Ask them about Keira.”

The girl’s two friends sped away like little bluebirds of unhappiness, eager to tell.

“You look so down,” Alyec said, running a hand sexily through her hair. She pushed her head up into it, enjoying the feeling.
I hope I don’t start purring or anything like that.

“I … didn’t sleep well last night.”

“You should have called me. I would have come over, and
after
that,” he said, grinning devilishly, “you would have slept like a baby.”

“You’re a complete ass,” she said, genuinely meaning it.

“You love it, baby.” He leaned forward as if to kiss her but stopped just before, so there was a barely a millimeter between them, and just stood there.

Chloe could smell his skin, clean and warm. It felt like she had just swallowed a double shot of cheap whiskey: burning coursed through her stomach and the rest of her body. She turned her face slightly to move her lips along his cheek—still not touching—almost overwhelmed by heat and desire. But she held back.

Alyec finally pulled himself away. “Whew, strong medicine,” he said hoarsely.

“Catch you later, lover boy,” Chloe said over her shoulder as she walked away.

This is
way
too much fun.

She saw Amy in the hall a couple of times. They didn’t look at each other. Amy made a big deal of looking away. Chloe rolled her eyes.
With friends like this, who needs blade-wielding murderers?

When the final bell rang, she jogged to the café, making sure she was on the side of the street with the most pedestrians, slowing down to tag along in groups, speeding up to pass on to others.

She breathlessly threw herself into the chair opposite Brian, where he was sitting, brooding, over a cup of something and a biscotti. He was looking even less goth than usual, with creased khakis and shined boots and a black hoodie with the number 10 in red across the front. His kitty cat hat was nowhere to be found.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi.”

That was it for a few minutes while she ordered and they waited for her coffee to be brought over. It was tense; Chloe almost tapped her feet in impatience. When they were finally alone, Brian looked at her for a long minute, his brown eyes troubled. He absently fingered the scar on his cheek.

“I think you should stop seeing Alyec.”

Chloe blinked.

She thought back to their brief telephone conversation, how serious he’d sounded and troubled … and realized that the last time he had seen her was with Alyec. It had nothing to do with him being another cat person. …

“Brian, I thought we already talked about this—“Then she stopped, thinking about what he’d just said. These days nothing strange or out of the ordinary—no matter how small—could be dismissed anymore as harmless. “How do you know his name?” she asked quietly.

“What?” Brian asked, flustered, not having expected that response.

“How did you know Alyec’s name?” Chloe repeated, standing up. “Have you been following me?
Stalking
me?” she demanded.

He looked around, nervous at her loud accusations.

“Chloe, listen to me,” he begged. “You really shouldn’t see him. He’s not…
safe.”

“I cannot believe you, you …
freak
!” she said, slamming her fist down on the table. “You won’t commit to anything like a real relationship, and after only a few dates you start accusing other guys of being dangerous? That’s
pathetic,”
she spat. “Not
safe?
What would you know about safe? Someone tried to
kill
me last night and you’re worried about a goofy foreign sixteen-year-old?”

Brian’s face went white. “Someone … attacked you?”

“Yeah! I could have been killed. I spent the whole night terrified—he knew stuff about me
too,
Brian. I only have room in my life for
one
crazy stalker.”

“Are you okay?” he finally asked.

“Barely!” She took the vest and pulled it and her T-shirt aside. The deep gouge was clean but ugly. “Mofo had daggers and throwing stars and all sorts of weird stuff.” She was furious but still owed him thanks. “If it weren’t for the moves you taught me the other night, I’d be dead,” she said grudgingly.

“That
I
taught you?” he asked, confused.

Oh no …

“You didn’t … the other night …? Come on, this is serious.
Please—“

But he shook his head, shrugging.

When she realized he really meant it, Chloe was almost overcome with despair. Here she’d thought she finally had an answer to the insanity around her: not only was Brian a great guy, but he would have been someone who could teach her, who could protect her, who could tell her what she was.

And he’d turned out to be none of the above. Just some possessive, crazy freak.

“I have to go now,” she said, pushing her chair in.

“No, Chloe … don’t! Wait—”

But she was already out the door.

Seventeen