The Nine Lives of Chloe King (52 page)

There it was.
Wheeeeeeeeee
plop! Like a lit firecracker half dud that lay unexploded between your feet.
Do you pick it up or run?

“I don’t know what my eventual plans are,” Chloe said carefully.
Jesus Christ, I’m a sixteen-year-old kid! I shouldn’t be having to make decisions about the rest of my life or speak so carefully—politically—to someone three times
my age and ten times better at it! I should be dating, fighting with my mom, popping zits in front of the mirror.
“For now, I’m going to live with my mom.”

“You gave us a bit of a surprise at the Presidio, leaving with your friends like that,” the older man said, eyes flicking briefly to the ground and back up to her as if it were a painful memory. “It really …
hurt
me,” he added softly.

Chloe felt like vomiting. Right there and then. Was he the greatest actor in the world and
completely
evil—which she sort of preferred at this point—or just a man who had thought he’d found a daughter figure and whose heart had been broken?

“I—I’m sorry. I just…”

“It was difficult for you, we understand,” Olga said, reaching out to pat her hand. “All the violence must have been a shock.”

“But we were there for you, Chloe. You know that, right?” Sergei sort-of pleaded.

There.
A little tiny spark of anger.
Grab it, Chlo; follow it down to the source.
It was the only “power” she felt she had right then.

“I
just died,
for Christ’s sake!
Again!”
she exploded.
“Tell
me you wouldn’t want your mom after something like that.”

“Still,” Sergei said, crossing his legs and trying a different tactic, “fleeing for a while is completely understandable, as Olga has said. We will always be here, waiting for you.
But bringing a human into our complex?”
He didn’t raise his voice, but it was
cold,
each word ending in sharp silence.

She had been waiting for this, and she was still completely unprepared to answer it.

Chloe opened her mouth, but just then there was a soft click as the door opened behind her. Kim padded silently into the room, as calm and tranquil as a breeze on a sun-soaked oasis. She bowed to Chloe and Sergei and pulled up a chair.

“Kim, this is a private meeting,” Sergei said, both baffled and stern.

The girl with the giant black cat ears nodded, smoothing some unseen wrinkle on the front of her long, priestlike black dress. “You are discussing the transition of leadership to the One, correct?” she asked coolly.

“Correct,” Sergei answered through gritted teeth.

“I too must cede my power—I no longer represent the spiritual body of this Pride. Chloe is now the high priestess. This must be discussed as well.” She sat down, and that was the end of the story.

THANK YOU!
Chloe thought at Kim.
A thousand times, thank you.
If the other girl noticed Chloe looking at her, she ignored it, as if it was all just business as usual. But there was the slightest gleam in her eye that the two adults didn’t notice.

Now, if being the One came with cat ears and a tail or something else visually freaky, I’d be able to pull stunts like that without batting an eyelash, too,
Chloe thought a little jealously. Kim got away with a
lot
because of her ingrained weirdness.

The leader of the Pride let out a large sigh, as if he was giving up, changing his previous stance. “Chloe, this is just really hard. For a number of reasons,” he said frankly, “besides the personal ones—I
really do
want you back here. I
like
our little chess games and chats and … having you around,” he added quickly, as if he was a little embarrassed. Whatever else was true about him, the lion-haired middle-aged man really did like her, but did he like her so much that he had tried to kill her mom to keep her?

“And think of me,” he went on, gesturing to the walls around him. “I spent my
entire life
and millions of dollars building this little safe haven for us, this little real estate empire, and bringing our people over. It’s a little strange to suddenly have to hand it all over to a young girl.”

“I don’t think Chloe needs to involve herself with the business part of our Pride,” Kim suggested in a tone that made it sound more like a statement of the obvious. “At least not yet. It’s not really part of her ’job description’ anyway. She is our
spiritual
leader, leader in all things having to do with the Mai. Not humans.”

“What does that mean?” Olga asked bluntly.

“Well, in ancient days, she would have led us in the rites and rituals of the Twin Goddesses,” Kim said thoughtfully. “Or led us to war against out enemies. Or led the Hunt. Sacrificed herself, if need be, for the continued survival of the Pride. Now it means leading the Pride in whatever direction it needs to survive—and thrive—
today
in the modern era, in this new world.”

Olga, Sergei, and Kim looked expectantly at Chloe, who still had no idea what that meant. What
would
she suggest they do to become “more modern”?
Get an MP3-player hooked up to the speaker system in the lounge, maybe?

“The first thing I think we should do is hold an all-Pride gathering,” Sergei decided. “A meeting where we introduce you to everyone properly. There are those who won’t believe you’re the One until they’ve seen you in person. Kim, you should give her a crash course in our spirituality and the rites of the Twin Goddesses. I’ll fill you in on how we’ve been more or less governing ourselves for the past few decades.” He gave Chloe a weak smile. “As well as the traditions of leadership and the kizekh. We could order pizza …?”

A peace offering. He really did want her back—if only part time.

“Okay,” Chloe said, nodding, trying to look like it was no big deal.

“Good—can we meet this Friday?” Chloe shrugged. Sounded fine. “And we should have the gathering soon thereafter.” He flipped a page on his desk calendar. “Tuesday, maybe.”

“Shouldn’t you check everyone’s schedules first?” Chloe found herself saying. Even Kim had difficulty not rolling her eyes.

“Chloe King,” Sergei said mock-sternly, “the first thing you should know about the Pride is that this is
not
a democracy.”

Not a democracy.
As Chloe followed Kim back to the sanctuary where the cat gods Bastet and Sekhmet were worshiped, those words repeated themselves over and over in her mind.

Okay, let’s play this game. Pretend I’m leader of this entire group of felines. What do I think is best for them?
Chloe asked herself.

Integrate more,
was the immediate and loudest answer. There must be a way to survive racially and socially and not resort to holing up in a mansion on the outskirts of town like vampires. Play video games. Go to the movies. Make everyone go to college.

“Kim, I have no idea what these people expect me to do as the One or even what I
should
do,” she admitted aloud, sitting down on a bench as Kim bowed and said a little prayer to each of the goddesses: Bastet, house cat with the gentle smile and the earring; Sekhmet, with her teeth bared. The only sound in the room was the “moat” that separated the goddesses’ dais from the rest of the room, a gentle trickle of water meant to remind worshipers of the Nile.

“What you should do will come with time,” Kim said, shrugging. “You are only sixteen and the world is much more complicated than it was in the days of hunting and gathering. As for the expectations of others, the wise will understand. Everyone else will have to be patient.”

“What am I supposed to do in the meantime? If you asked me what I would do
today,
I would say breathe some fucking
air
and light into this place. Uh… not the temple, I mean Firebird,” she added quickly as Kim frowned. “’Sergei was right: the Mai
shouldn’t
be trapped here. They should be free to interact with the rest of the world and control their own destinies instead of being bound to some five-thousand-year-old curse.
And
a boring real estate company.”

Kim watched her curiously, listening without judgment.

“If it were up to me,” Chloe said slowly, thinking of Xavier and Brian, “I would do everything possible to get rid of the curse. That would be my number-one goal. It’s not fair to us
or
the humans we might accidentally wind up with. And besides that, it really adds to the whole cultish aspect of the Pride. No mixing with humans means a lot of dating at home and—well, pressure to keep it in the family. Having the place where you live for only a few years destroyed so you’re forced to move on makes everyone clingy, to a leader as well as each other. Lions roam free over hundreds of miles, going where and with whom they please … staying in their pride because they want to, not because they’re forced, you know?”

Actually, Chloe didn’t know if that last part was true, but it sounded good. In the dreams she had there was a sense of power and freedom that was definitely missing from her own close Pride. Kim nodded, looking almost hungry for that freedom.

“But let’s say we do that, huh?” Chloe said, slumping. “We somehow get rid of the curse, Mai and humans can interact again, everyone goes off and lives happily ever after on their own. The freedom of the Mai means their eventual integration and disappearance. I mean, there are six billion humans to meet and fall in love with and have babies with. The Mai would cease to exist in a couple of generations—is
that
the right thing? How can you have complete individual freedom and still maintain the culture of the Mai?”

A small smile curled at the edge of her friend’s lips, and her ears dipped a little. “Chloe, I think maybe you have answered your original question. Perhaps a
spiritual
guide who keeps us all connected is what is called for in this age.”

Chloe blinked.

“Anyway, you still have that five-thousand-year-old curse to lift, people to win over, and French to pass, so your plate’s pretty full right now, as they say,” Kim added, lighting a candle and picking up a handful of sand to continue her benedictions.

“Yeah, thanks for helping me,” Chloe said a little glumly, brought back from her philosophical daydreams about the future to the reality of schoolwork. “And thanks for crashing the meeting, too, by the way. Things with Sergei were getting a little tense.”

“No problem.” It was strange hearing modern phrases come out of Kim’s mouth with her little fangs showing.

“But of course he’s going to be a little weird about just handing over leadership of this Pride to a sixteen-year-old, right?” Chloe looked to her friend expectantly. “I mean, who wouldn’t be?”

Kim paused in her ritual and stared at Chloe unblinkingly, for a long enough time that Chloe actually began to feel uncomfortable.

“Hey, drink up,” Alyec said, toasting her and tipping back a frosty mug of India Pale Ale.

Chloe looked around the library, realizing how much she’d missed the Thursday night cocktail parties at Firebird. Everyone was dressed up and taking drinks that were served on silver trays. The older Mai who had grown up in Abkhazia or Russia or Georgia had straight champagne and expensive shots of vodka in glasses made of ice.

Igor, Valerie, Alyec, and the other younger members of the Pride tended to drink beer, but Chloe was enamored of the sophisticated drinks she could never afford, the ones that they talked about in magazines and
Sex and the City:
pink cosmopolitans, three-olive dirty martinis, Bellinis with champagne and peach nectar.

When she’d lived there, Sergei had always watched Chloe carefully and never let her have more than one. So she sipped slowly.

I’m the One now, though. Doesn’t that mean I’m old enough to drink?

It was pretty amazing, she thought as she sat on a velvet love seat among the younger members. Here she was in a library out of a mystery novel that was full of lion people—her
own
people—a secret feline race living among humans and all of them gorgeous.

“I want a full veil,” Valerie announced, throwing a much-thumbed
Martha Stewart Weddings
magazine down onto the coffee table for all to see.

So much for the cool, sexy, secret stuff.
Chloe sighed, but she looked at the page interestedly.

“That’s a patriarchal tradition for this day and age,” said Simone. She was the beautiful, red-haired dancer Chloe met at the hunt. When she moved—even casually—it was hard for anyone, male or female, to take eyes off her. “Though the lace is pretty.”

“Patriarchal, whatever, bah. This is what I want.”

“Whatever you want, it shall be yours,” Igor said, kissing her on the forehead.

Alyec and Chloe smiled at each other, rolling their eyes.

“Kim suggested adding some traditional Mai stuff,” Simone pressed. “You going to do that?”

The couple looked at each other, lips pursed in thinking expressions. “I think it’s a good idea,” Igor finally said. Valerie nodded.

Chloe had just sat through one group “service” that Kim led—it was always a personal religion, the cateared girl had emphasized, but a surprising number of Mai showed up. Instead of psalmbooks there were scrolls in languages Chloe couldn’t read. Some of the service was in English, but most was in Russian and Mai. Kim had poured out little measures of dried meat—it looked suspiciously like cat food—and honey and wine at the base of each statue. Kind of interesting, from an anthropological perspective, but not something Chloe really felt she could get worked up about.

“But you have to throw a bouquet,” one of the other girls said. “That way one of us unmarried girls can catch it.”

“Agreed.” Valerie laughed.

“Are you going to have your father bring you down the aisle?” Chloe asked, thinking about other possible “patriarchal” aspects of the service.

“I don’t know who my father is,” Valerie said, shrugging. “He’s probably dead.”