Feral Curse (20 page)

Yoshi and Evan remain motionless, dazed. Personally, I’m not convinced that all three enchanted shifters don’t need brain scans, but I go with it.

Brushing off his caution, Aimee grabs cold bottles of water and drops them in turn in front of each of our entranced companions. It works. The
thump, thump, thump
snaps them back to the moment.

Yoshi reaches for his, rips off the top with extended saber teeth, and gulps loudly. Evan manages to unscrew the cap off his before pouring it over his own head.

I follow Aimee’s lead, rejoining the group at the table, but Clyde holds himself at a distance. He sets one foot on the spare chair and reties his shoelaces.

“What do you remember?” Junior prompts. “Do you have any messages to pass on?”

“He’s in me,” Yoshi, Tanya, and Evan say at the same time.

Creepy. I flinch as Yoshi adds, “But I couldn’t —”

“He wouldn’t,” Evan corrects.

“No,” Tanya says. “He can’t.”

“But it was Ben?” I ask, holding up the image on my phone. “You’re sure?”

Three nods. Dear God Almighty.
Ben.
“What’s wrong with him?”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Junior says. “Never heard Granny Z mention —”

“A split soul,” Aimee whispers. Her gaze goes to Clyde, and you can feel how mentally in sync they are. It practically radiates off them. “You knew all along?” she says to him.

“I suspected.” He walks over with the whiteboard and a thick black marker. “Split doesn’t necessarily mean evil, you know.” He’s talking only to her. She’s the one who matters. “Especially with a spirit as young —”

“I know.” Aimee straightens in her chair and addresses the rest of us. “In the event that a soul — or essence, if you’re dealing with something soulless — is somehow divided at death, it must be reunited for the being to move on to heaven or hell.”

What is she talking about? “Ben
has
a soul!” I exclaim.

“Of course he does,” she assures me. “I just . . .” Aimee glances up, distracted by her boyfriend scribbling on his board. “What are you doing?” she asks him.

Clyde has written Ben’s name in the center surrounded by those of the shifters transported by the carousel spell — each marked with an emotion:
Darby/sadness, Tanya/anger, Evan/desire, Yoshi/?

Is the part of Ben in Yoshi the reason why he’s always almost touching me?

“You dumped Ben, right?” Clyde asks. “So, he’s mad, sad, but he still wants you.” He smiles at Yoshi with teeth that are too big, too satisfied. “What do you feel for Kayla?”

Yoshi crushes the plastic bottle and crosses the room to fetch another one. He takes his time breaking the cap seal, unscrewing it, and taking a long drink. “Protective . . . Loyal. Like I have something to prove. I’m competitive about stuff I don’t normally care about. Money, grades, being right. My glorious future, or lack thereof.”

Interesting. He didn’t mention the attraction between us.

“Yoshi’s naturally protective and loyal,” Aimee insists. “They’re two of his better qualities.” She frowns and asks me, “How fierce is this competitive streak?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he says. “Really, I’m good with it.”

I believe him. “My rivalry with Ben was a friendly one.”

Clyde looks down at his marker, and I can tell he doesn’t love our answers. “I’m not saying that Ben’s qualities have replaced theirs, just that he’s influencing them. Or at least attached to them. Tanya, are you normally a hothead?”

She’s leaning back in her chair. “I have a temper when it’s warranted,” she replies, defensive, like it’s not the first time the subject has come up.

Clyde swaggers over to Evan, who’s seated with his legs crossed and his hands folded over this lap. I’ve seen boys position themselves that way before. I know what he’s trying to hide. “Hey, Evan,” Clyde begins. “Have you always been such a . . . hound dog?”

“I’m a healthy teenage guy,” is the Otter’s reply, angling himself as if he’s trying hard not to stare at me. “A healthy
gay
teenage guy. But I’m shy about, you know, expressing my emotions.”

Clyde’s grin is back. “So, it’s safe to say, however . . .” His gaze rakes my body, then, noticeably conscious of Aimee’s close attention, he clears his throat. “However attractive Kayla might be, she’s not exactly your type. You’re not lusting after me, Yoshi, or Junior, are you?”

Evan narrows his eyes. “The fact that I’m gay doesn’t mean I’m jonesing for anything with a”— my eyebrows shoot up —“manly physique,” he finishes. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Yoshi puts in, a thin sheen of sweat across his brow.

Whatever just happened took a lot out of him, out of all of them. Evan’s eyes are still dilated, and Tanya’s bangs are damp.

“But it proves my point,” Clyde says. “Ben’s desire for Kayla is haunting you.”

The Otter tilts his head. “That makes as much sense as anything else.”

“What about Peter, my werecoyote stalker?” I say. “Ben was never that way with me.”

“That you knew of,” Clyde declares. “Did you really see
any
of this coming?” He scribbles
Peter/obsession
on the board.

When I don’t answer, he goes on, “Building on what Aimee said, it may be necessary to reassemble the carousel not only to reverse the spell, but also to reunite Ben’s spirit so he can go into the light.”

“In which case,” Aimee adds, as if thinking out loud, “we’ll need all the teleported shifters here to pull it off. Including Peter and Darby.”

“Darby’s in Fort Worth,” I remind them.

Aimee stands up. “I’ll call Freddy,” she says. “It’s possible he’s still in that area, picking up carousel figures, or, if need be, I guess he can loop around. Kayla, do you have Darby’s number?”

I nod. “I’ll call him.” I hope he’s okay. It was wrong of me to let him leave, feeling the way he did. It hadn’t sunk in at the time how serious and complicated this was going to get.

I can’t imagine Ben ending it all because of losing me — well, not on purpose, anyway — it’s not like he intentionally caused the lightning strike that killed him. But Darby seemed incredibly distraught, fragile. More so than the ensorcelled shifters I’m with now. Who knows what his mental state was before he was caught in the spell. “I’ll call him right away.”

“Wait a minute,” Yoshi says. “Tanya’s doing a bang-up job of keeping her anger in check.” She favors him with a tight smile, her hands fisted at her sides. “But,” he goes on, “Peter is —”

“Peter is an X factor,” Aimee concludes. “We can’t be sure how dangerous he might be.”

STANDING ON KAYLA’S FRONT PORCH,
I call the Stubblefields. “Sorry to bother you at home,” I say to Lula. “But I talked to my grams, and one of our dealers is looking for a mate to a carousel cat that sounds like it might’ve come from your set. As long as I’m out here, I thought I might be able to bring it home with me.”

“We did have a couple of cats,” Lula raises her voice. “Eleanor, you remember who picked up the cat figure?” There’s a pause. “No, not the one that went to Austin, the other one.”

She covers the phone with her hand, and I can’t make out their conversation.

“I’m sorry, Yoshi,” Lula finally replies. “I must be having a senior moment. If it comes back to me, I’ll be sure to give your grams a call.”

When I cruise inside the Morgans’ house, Aimee and Clyde have already joined Kayla’s family in the kitchen. The table is set in Queen Anne Fair Lady china with black trim. There’s a Depression glass pitcher filled with iced tea at the center and wooden serving bowls of guacamole and black beans to each side.

Both Clyde and the mayor straighten in their chairs as I stroll into the room, and, remembering that I’m supposed to be Aimee’s boyfriend, I come up behind her at the bar counter, rest my hands at her waist, and give her a chaste kiss on the cheek.

It’s the kind of gesture that says I might do something more interesting if there weren’t parents around, and I’m partly doing it to annoy Clyde.

She whispers, “Any luck?”

The shake of my head is slight, but I know that Clyde, at the table, and Kayla, who’s depositing chicken enchiladas on the plates, both catch the exchange.

“So, Yoshi,” the mayor says, “Clyde tells me you’re a senior at J. L. Nixon High in Austin. They’ve got a great wrestling tradition. What’s your sport?”

I’m betting he was a wrestler in high school. It doesn’t occur to him that I’m not a school athlete. Every guy in Texas plays sports. I let go of Aimee. “Swimming.”

Not really. Werecats don’t hate water as much as people say, but we’re not fond of it. That soggy episode at the river with Kayla and Evan was zero fun for me. But I’ve been told enough times that I have a swimmer’s build to know that it’ll ring true.

Before he can ask me for specifics, I cross with Aimee to take our chairs and add, “I’m starving. The enchiladas smell delicious, Mrs. Morgan.”

I sound like a lame kiss-ass, but I’m not in the mood to chitchat with parents. I was tempted to argue when Kayla insisted that she had to go home for dinner. I can’t shake off the feeling that we should be
doing
something, but truth is, we’re in a holding pattern.

Evan and Tanya were playing a lively game of Clue with Junior when we left. Peter’s lying low. According to his latest text, Freddy is en route with Darby and the carousel figures that had been shipped to North Texas and Oklahoma. Nora already brought in the coyote pair, the snake, and the bear. We have zero leads on the missing cat. If the damn thing turns up long distance, we’ll have to figure in transport time.

I don’t want to think about what our chances of success might be if we don’t bring together every last piece of Ben’s soul. But we’re doing the best we can.

“What about college?” the mayor presses. “You a UT man?”

“I’m debating between a couple of West Coast schools,” I say, remembering the Cal Tech poster in the tree house. Total BS; it’s not entirely clear I’ll even graduate on time. But if I end up following Kayla across the country, I may eventually need that cover story.

I haven’t talked about the intensity of the spell, but I feel compelled to stay close to her . . . and, for some reason, to prove my chops as a mathlete — whatever the hell that’s about.

“Kind of late in the year not to have made a decision, isn’t it?” Mayor Morgan asks.

Playing the role of the soon-to-be-left-behind girlfriend, Aimee puts in, “Some of us think Yoshi should consider someplace closer to home.” Then, as if it’s too painful to talk about, she begins peppering the mayor with questions about her make-believe report on small towns.

Brilliant. I’m tempted to kiss her again for reasons that have nothing to do with Clyde.

As Mrs. Morgan muses on some consortium out of Longyearbyen, Norway, that’s buying up a ton of local land, much of it from folks who lost everything else in the wildfires, Kayla serves me and the Wild Card and herself four enchiladas. It’s twice what the
Homo sapiens
at the table receive, and I suppose she figures her folks will write off his and my appetites to the fact that we’re growing boys. Truth is, either of us could finish off the platter.

I wonder again how dangerous Peter is to her. I’d go out hunting him, except that would leave her vulnerable. Sure, Clyde, being half Lion, could kick any Coyote’s furry butt, and Kayla’s not without claws and teeth herself, but I can’t trust anybody else to handle it.

We’re lingering over the last of the coconut macaroon pie when Clyde’s phone buzzes. “Sorry,” he says. “I have to answer this.” He excuses himself from the table to do so, taking the call in the foyer. I hear him mention his friend Kieren’s name and something about the national news. He leans into the kitchen, motioning for Aimee to join him, and, excusing myself, I come, too. Kayla immediately begins clearing the dessert plates.

There’s something about the look on Clyde’s face.

The Wild Card leads us outside to the front porch. “Thanks, man,” he says into the receiver. He ends the call, fiddles with the phone a second, and then holds it so Aimee and I can see. Clyde puts his arm around her, reclaiming his rightful role as her real boyfriend. But it’s not a territory display for my benefit. This is all about her. “It’s your dad,” he announces. “About his work. Does he ever talk to you about that?”

As the INN video loads, she says, “He mentioned that his company had been bought out. I have no idea what he does these days. Something techie, I guess. Why?”

The Barbie-esque, plastic-looking anchor begins, “This morning on
AM Live
we welcome Graham Barnard live from MCC Implants in Hong Kong. Mr. Barnard, your company is touting a recent breakthrough in mind-control technology. You do realize that the very existence of such devices is frightening to —”

“Stephanie, that’s exactly the kind of alarmist accusation and misconception that I’m here to set straight. Our innovative new chip is specifically designed to modify shape-shifter thought and behavior only. Each also includes a tracking capability, triggered by elevated levels of a hormone that rises when one of the monsters begins a transformation.”

“Oh, God,” Aimee whispers. “Not this again.”