Authors: Christine Warren
“But the cats are totally different. From what I’ve been able to pull out of Rafe and Graham, there are as many different kinds of Feline as there are big cats. Lions, tigers, panthers, leopards. They’re all distinct species, and their Feline equivalents are all distinct groups as well. And just like the cats, werelions are the only ones with any sort of group dynamic among them. The others, like I said, tend to be loners and live separately. Which is probably why Rafe is the only Feline I’ve ever met.”
Tess supposed that made a sort of really disturbing sense to her. Then again, maybe she was going off the deep end. “What kind is he?”
She winced, thinking that question sounded awful, but Missy didn’t seem to take offense.
“A jaguar,” the blonde answered with a smile. “I’ve only seen his cat form once, but he was beautiful.”
“Careful,” Regina teased. “Remember, you’re a dog person, Miss.”
“Okay, so that’s the basics of Feline society,” Tess said. “But what does it have to do with Rafe, me, and curses?”
“It has to do with … context.” Missy shifted in her seat and fiddled with her wedding band. “When I say most Felines other than the Leos are loners, I mean it. There’s some degree of variation, of course, but it’s unusual to see more than one at a time without a fight breaking out, especially between males. And it means that Feline mating habits are different, too.”
Tess fought down a wave of heat at the memories of the Feline mating habits she’d encountered so far. Praying her cheeks weren’t on fire, she tried for a casual tone. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, wolves mate for life,” Missy pointed out, “and Lupines do, too. In fact, Graham says that in a lot of the shifter clans, there’s some sort of permanent bond established between mates, even if it’s a little less intense. From what I hear, the bears mate for life, too, and even most of the cats do it at least most of the time, like Leos and even tigers. Though I’ve heard the Tiguri—that’s what they’re called—form more political alliances than real mate bonds. Still, they stay with the same mate for life, according to Graham. But there are a few Feline breeds—like the leopards and cheetahs and, well, the jaguars—where they don’t take real mates. They stay alone their whole lives.”
Tess paused, digested. “Then how do they have little baby Felineses?”
“Not very easily,” Ava said. “Which is where the curse comes in.”
That little interruption earned her a glare from Missy, but Ava just shrugged, leaving Missy to explain.
“The curse is … ancient,” Missy finally said. “It’s a legend, really. No one remembers if things were any different before it happened, so…”
“Just spit it out.”
“The legend says that things did used to be different with the Felines. According to the stories, all Felines used to mate for life, just like Lupines do. At that time their human and animal natures combined in such a way that they loved with the ferocity of the beast and the devotion of the man. But that was before. At some point so long ago no one is sure if it’s fact or fantasy, a Felix from one of the spotted clans—some people claim it was a jaguar—supposedly met and became infatuated with a non-Feline woman. They had an affair, and the woman fell deeply in love with him. But after the initial burst of passion faded from their relationship, the Felix realized that he wasn’t really in love with this woman, and he began to worry that a non-Feline mate would be unable to bear him the healthy cubs he wanted. So he left her to find a mate among his own people.”
Tess felt her stomach twist a little. “Let me guess. She got kinda pissy about that, right?”
“She cursed him. Not just him, but all the spotted Feline clans. She vowed that if one male could be so fickle, so would they all. And until one male Feline of the same clan could change his spots and find a non-Feline mate to whom he could remain faithful for a year and a day, they would bear fewer and fewer children until all the spotted clans withered away.”
“Gah! Did she sow their fields with salt while she was at it?”
“She does sound like quite the bitch, doesn’t she?” Ava drawled. “Even I was impressed.”
Tess shuddered and lifted her herbs off the boil, straining the liquid into a mug and adding a dash of straight tea and a lump of brown sugar. She stirred thoughtfully. “Okay, so I get the gist of the curse. I’m just still not sure what any of it has to do with me.”
The five women at the table looked at one another, seemed to reach some sort of unspoken agreement, and turned back to Tess. She felt a little bit like a science fair project, some sort of strange bug pinned to a corkboard. She sipped her tea while she waited for an answer.
It was Missy who finally spoke.
“Well, you see, Tess, the woman who cursed the Felines … she didn’t just make it a non-Feline who could break the curse. She wanted her justice more poetic than that. She wanted a Felix to have to mate with someone just like her.”
Tess arched an eyebrow and took another sip of tea.
“Tess, she was a witch.”
Ten
It took Tess all afternoon to clean up the tea she’d sprayed everywhere after hearing Missy’s final bombshell. She spent the whole time with a bottle of Windex in one hand, a wad of paper towels in the other, and a dazed expression on her face. Bette had tried to get her to confess what had upset her, but Tess just shook her head and kept cleaning. She didn’t even really understand it herself; there was no way she could explain it to anyone else.
She went through the rest of her day on autopilot, filling orders and serving customers. And when closing time rolled around, Bette had the doors locked, the register counted, and the kitchen area cleaned before Tess even knew it was five.
“That’s it, then.” Bette shrugged into her coat and pulled out her key chain. “Everything’s put away. I locked the back door, too, but if you’re staying late, I can go run and unlock it.”
Tess’s head snapped up, and she shook it to clear away her fog. She glanced at her watch, saw the time, and shook her head. “Um, no, that’s okay. I’m having dinner with my grandfather tonight, so I’ve got to run home and get ready before I head over there. I’ll leave with you now. Just let me get my stuff.”
She hastily put away her cleaning supplies, grabbed her jacket, patted the pockets for her keys, and then followed Bette out the front door. She started up the stairs and stopped when her assistant called her name.
“Hey, Tess! Earth to Planet Menzies. Were you planning to lock the front door tonight, or did I miss the sign saying,
BURGLARY SPECIAL! COME ROB US NOW AND SAVE
?”
Tess swore and jogged back down the stairs, but Bette was already using her key to lock up. “I’m sorry, Bette. I don’t know what’s with me today.”
“Me, either.” Bette pocketed her keys and urged Tess back up to the sidewalk. “At first I thought it was the aftermath of great sex last night, but now I’m not so sure. You seemed even weirder when I got back from lunch than you’d been when I left.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just been … a really strange couple of days.” Tess skipped right over the mention of great sex and hoped Bette would, too.
“Hm, well, as much as I’m dying to question you about that, and about the potentially great sex you had last night, I can’t. I’m meeting my roommate at Veniero’s for dessert debauchery before the show tonight. Her boyfriend’s in a band. Along with the other three-quarters of Lower Manhattan.” She gave Tess an assessing glance and sighed. “But I’m on tomorrow closing, so I’ll get it out of you then. Just see if I don’t. Bye!”
She hurried off down the sidewalk in the opposite direction from Tess’s walk home and disappeared into the crowd. Tess sighed in relief. Right now, she had more than enough worrying her as it was. She did not need the Bettish Inquisition adding to it. Not when she was still freaking over Missy’s news and scared half to death about the idea of having dinner with her grandfather and the high chairs of the Witches’ Council. That seemed like plenty of worry for one person at one time.
More than, if you asked her.
She really tried not to stew about it during the twenty-minute walk back to her apartment, but of course, she failed miserably. It seemed a bit much to ask for her not to indulge in a minor freak-out over the idea that she might be the only thing standing between a species and its extinction. Especially given that donating to the World Wildlife Fund was not going to cut it. She still hadn’t completely dealt with the idea that she’d slept with Rafe to begin with, so the thought that Missy and the others expected her to become his mate for a year and a day had her head spinning.
“It wouldn’t be permanent,” Missy had said. “It’s not like we’re asking you to marry him. Just … be nice to him. For the next three hundred and sixty-six days.”
Tess could almost feel her eyes rolling back into her head again.
“It’s not as if we’re going to force you into it,” Ava added. “We’re not barbarians. We understand if the idea of spending the next year schtupping one of the most gorgeous men in Manhattan would be such a trial to you that you can’t even stomach the idea. Just let us know, and we’ll go let the Feline world know it was too much to ask.”
At least Regina had protested that. “Ava, come on. Give the girl a break. It’s not your responsibility, Tess, so don’t feel like it is. And it’s not like Rafe even knows about us talking to you. It was our idea, not his.”
“Right.” Tess scoffed at the memory, mumbling under her breath. “’Cause that makes me feel so much better.”
She let herself into her apartment a little before six and wanted nothing more than to change into flannel jammies and sit in front of her television with a big bowl of popcorn and a four-pack of Guinness. Unfortunately, she only had forty-five minutes before she had to be out the door and hailing a cab to take her to her grandfather’s house for the requested audience. If she rushed, she might have just enough time to make herself presentable to the point of passing inspection.
Lionel Menzies had really missed his calling as King of the Universe, instead becoming a successful investment banker, the same as his father and grandfather before him. But he still liked to call people into his throne room from time to time, just to keep his instincts sharp.
Tess, for instance, had been called upon the carpet of his intimidating library so often, she thought she might have worn through the pile. Since Lionel had raised her after her parents’ deaths when she was just four, she’d had ample time to try his patience and disappoint him on all possible fronts. She’d been mediocre in school, dropped out of college, and forgone a career in banking to open “that hippie dive in the ghetto.” Unless she declared herself a lesbian, converted to Buddhism, and went to live in a commune in California, she didn’t think she could fail more miserably in her grandfather’s eyes.
Which meant dinner promised to be as much fun as elective root canal without anesthesia.
With such a fine incentive, she hurried through her shower, rinsing away the scent of Rafe’s soap that had been driving her crazy since Bette first mentioned it. As soon as she stepped out and wrapped herself in a towel, she ruthlessly blow-dried her hair and set it in hot rollers to try to tame it. It never worked completely, but she was hoping to instill enough discipline to keep her grandfather from commenting on it the way he usually did.
While the rollers cooled, she slathered herself in lotion and pulled on bra, panties, and stockings before rummaging through her closet to find the Dinner with Granddad section—the one that contained all her most suitable and therefore least favorite dresses. She pulled one out without really looking and laid it out on the bed. They all looked alike to her, all with conservative cuts in traditional fabrics and dull, understated colors. She hated them all, so she figured it didn’t matter which one she wore.
She tugged the dress over her head and padded back into the bathroom to take care of her makeup and finish her hair. The makeup took less than five minutes, but the hair decided to fight with her and took nearly fifteen before it settled into semi-respectability on top of her head. She gave it a securing spritz of hair spray and prayed for the best as she dashed back into the bedroom to grab her purse and slip on her shoes. She made it out the door at six thirty on the nose and prayed traffic wouldn’t be too bad. She did not want to have to make excuses about being late on top of everything else. She thought her head might explode.
She was fairly sure it would by the time the taxi let her out at her grandfather’s doorstep. After paying the cabbie, she paused for a moment on the steps of the elegant, understated brownstone and took a few deep breaths. She wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do, but figured as long as she didn’t hyperventilate it probably couldn’t hurt.
She ignored the feeling of being stared at by random passersby and climbed the last two steps to the heavy brass doorknocker. She gave it a precisely spaced two taps and dropped her hand to wait.
The door opened, as always, in front of a moderately tall, moderately thin, moderately gray, and moderately polite man who had looked precisely the same age since Tess had been four.
“Good evening, Howard. I believe my grandfather is expecting me this evening.”
“Miss Menzies.” The butler bowed and stepped aside to let her in. “Mr. Menzies and his guests are in the drawing room.”
Tess resisted the urge to roll her eyes and stepped into the foyer. Only her grandfather had a drawing room in this day and age. Of course, only her grandfather had a butler who could have posed for a treatise on stereotypes. Personally, she preferred her modest little lifestyle on the other end of the island. She’d rather be poor than pompous.
“Thank you. I’ll show myself there.”
“Very good, miss.”
This time Tess did roll her eyes, but only after she handed Howard her coat and stepped past him. Not that she would have been surprised if he could see the gesture anyway. The man had strange and unsettling butler powers, made even more unsettling by the fact that he wasn’t even a witch.
Tess paused for a second on the threshold of the drawing room—or the living room, as normal people liked to call it—before she convinced herself to just go in and get it over with. She figured if she approached this evening in the same way as she approached ripping off a bandage—really fast so the pain would be over and done quickly—she might just survive.