by Perry, D. R.
Nine Lives
Providence Paranormal College Book Nine
D.R. Perry
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2017 D.R. Perry
Cover by Fantasy Book Design
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Version 2.0 July, 2021
ebook ISBN: 978-1-64971-921-8
Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-922-5
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
And Nothing but the Truth
Connect with the Author
Also by D.R. Perry
Other LMBPN Publishing Books
Chapter One
Olivia
“So you understand, Doctor Watkins, that you must answer honestly.” Mr. Ichiro folded his hands as he peered across his desk. “The prosecutor will try to derail the testimony we’ve discussed if you give her even the smallest chance. Your colleague’s life is at stake here.”
“I’m not letting some green DA bully me on the stand, Yoshi.” A lopsided grin lifted the professor’s still-too-thin lips. It might have shamed the Devil if such a being existed. “Brodsky will have plenty of reasonable doubt on his side.”
“That’s precisely what I thought you’d say, Nathaniel.” Mr. Ichiro’s eyes lit with a sparkle of humor I envied. I hadn’t been able to muster anything in that particular emotional department. Not since the night we lost Tony.
I bent my head over the stenographer’s notebook, a stream of inked markings flowing from the pen in my hand as I recorded their conversation. The Law Offices Of Dunstable and Ichiro had recording devices, of course, both the mundane and the magical kind. But I needed something to keep my hands busy, especially since I’d thrown out the medication that kept me up all day.
At first, going off all the Adderall and Strattera had been a profound experience. Questions about how I’d been living struck my thoughts like thunderbolts from on high. Was this how normal nocturnal people felt all the time? Did other owl shifters live on those medications or off them? Why did my parents think I had to be diurnal, anyway? I hadn’t imagined that having this much energy was possible, and my brain was like a perpetual motion machine.
“Well, I suppose that’s all we’ve got to cover for this meeting, Nathaniel.” Mr. Ichiro stood up and held out his hand, bowing slightly at the waist.
“Gotcha.” Professor Watkin’s grin only got bigger and more mischievous. “We’ll be leading the hootenanny in that courtroom, Yoshi. No doubt.” He dropped me a wink and then shook with Mr. Ichiro. After he let go, he moved his hands to the grips on his wheelchair. It didn’t budge. “I hate this blasted contraption.”
“Don’t hate the chair, hate the coma.” Mr. Ichiro stepped around the desk and started toward the back of the wheelchair.
“Please, sir,” said a voice from behind me, “allow me.”
Albert, the son of the Dunstable half of the law firm, stood in the doorway. I’d almost forgotten he worked here part-time. Must have been nice, having an in besides good grades at the best Extrahuman Law firm in the tri-state area. Then again, Al was technically my packmate in Tinfoil Hat, just like Yoshi’s daughter. I had an in, too, but didn’t feel too comfortable using it. And I didn’t know either Albert or Kim that well.
I watched Al wheel Professor Watkins out of the office and down the hall, listening to the professor’s running snarky commentary about requiring a license to drive a wheelchair. It reminded me of something Tony might say. The hallway and Al and the professor in his chair blurred over in a nanosecond. I closed my eyes. The stenographer’s pad fell off my lap. The chair by the desk, used by people who hadn’t been in a coma for the better part of six months like Professor Watkins, creaked.
“Miss Adler, thank you for your help this evening.” Mr. Ichiro reached down to the floor, then placed something flat and dry in my hands.
“You don’t have to thank me, Mr. Ichiro.” I curled my fingers around the rescued notebook. I opened my eyes and looked up at him. “Just doing my job.”
“Under the circumstances, I’d expect you to work from your dormitory and transcribe the recordings.” He gestured at the computer on his desk. My boss had a point. All the audio files went to the tablet he’d designated for my use during the internship we’d arranged.
“Circumstances?” I blinked.
“I’m sorry.” Mr. Ichiro inclined his head. “Perhaps I presumed incorrectly, but I thought young Mr. Gitano was your mate.”
“Um, no.” I closed my eyes again, wishing I could just melt into a puddle on the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy gave her an impromptu shower. But I wasn’t a witch at all, just a regular, plain old owl shifter who could see ghosts for some reason. But there was one ghost I hadn’t laid eyes on, the most important one as far as I was concerned. Tony Gitano’s. I opened my eyes, scanning the room just in case. Nope. Still no semi-transparent cat-man. I sighed. “We never got around to discussing that, sir.”
“I see.” My boss folded his hands together on the desk. “Should you need time to attend his memorial service, I will grant it.”
“But what about the body, Mr. Ichiro? I think Tony might still—”
“Please, Miss Adler.” The twinkle faded from Mr. Ichiro’s eye, but nothing rolled down his cheek. “I understand that you have a unique perspective on the matter of young Mr. Gitano’s demise.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice. His eyes drifted to the open door behind me. “But whatever your belief, your attendance at the memorial is linked to a fortuitous outcome.”
“Hoo, boy.” I shook my head and matched his volume. “For whom?”
“You,” Yoshi Ichiro’s irises changed from their usual flat brown to rings of gold flecked with green. “Among others. Avoiding the memorial service could cause your Luck to take a turn for the worse.” He returned to his chair, sitting up with his shoulders squared instead of leaning back. I realized he’d been checking on my Luck, something only Tanuki like Mr. Ichiro could do. “You ought to head back to your dorm and dress for that occasion before it’s too late. I’ll send you the files to transcribe later.”
“Noted, sir.”
“Oh, and please take this back with you as well.” Mr. Ichiro handed me the intertwined bamboo stalks from his desk. I cradled the small glass container that sat in between my hands, then looked up at him. His eyes were bright but unfocused.
I opened my mouth, about to ask him for more information before he stopped scrutinizing whatever Luck energy happened to be around me. A floorboard cre
aked in the doorway at my back.
“Sorry if I’m interrupting.” The floor creaked again. Under other circumstances, I might have turned around to see who was there. But I already knew by the voice and the apology. Henry Baxter, Psychic vampire. He was the Beta of the pack I belonged to, Tinfoil Hat. Also, he was the sole survivor of the killings Professor Brodsky stood accused of.
“Nothing to be sorry for, Henry.” I stood and stepped aside, gesturing at the now empty chair. “I was just leaving, anyway.”
“So you’re going?” The vampire wasn’t nearly as tall as the other guys in Tinfoil Hat and, on the surface, nowhere near as intimidating unless he showed his fangs. He wore his ever-present black leather jacket over black slacks and a collarless black dress shirt. The Alliance Medallion that made his place in the pack so groundbreaking hung just over the third button. Henry had been the first vampire to join a wolf shifter pack since before the Big Reveal when everyone in the known universe found out about extrahumans. A handful of old vamps, worried that changes would destroy their covert power, had outed their wolfish allies and gone on a turning spree, ruining things for others. His hand on my shoulder snapped me out of my reverie with cold comfort. “You’ll be at Tony’s memorial?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged, shaking his hand off my shoulder.
“You sure?” His eyebrows lifted.
“It’s for the best if I go.” I waved one hand at my powder-blue and slate-gray office attire. “But I’ve got to change if I want to fit in.”
“Understood.” Henry stepped to the other side of the chair I’d recently vacated, leaving me a clear path to the door.
As I walked out, I heard Henry mention a memory charm he’d found, something that he couldn’t remember getting. It hadn’t been in the bank box where he usually kept those things. Instead, it had been in his apartment.
“And I can’t decipher any of the impressions I’m getting from it, Mr. Ichiro. It’s like watching videos of toddlers playing. In the Under.”
“Peculiar. But unless it pertains to Mr. Brodsky’s trial, I’m sure it won’t hurt to let its purpose come to light as coincidence dictates.”
The idea of a Psychic equivalent of home videos intrigued me. I’d had no such thing until I got adopted at age four. Nothing I’d tried had revealed memories of my birth parents, or even where I’d lived before New Jersey. At least my parents had been as honest about my origins as their knowledge allowed. But there wasn’t time to turn around and ask Henry whether his powers would help me or ask my boss why I needed lucky bamboo. Because I had to get out.
I escaped.
* * *
I had to put on just about every article of black clothing I owned to look funeral-appropriate. I’d worn exactly the same thing to Mr. Harcourt’s Mourning Day half a year earlier, but somehow, I’d lost the black handbag I’d used back then. All my usual must-haves went into a little black backpack instead because carrying my navy blue work bag would have looked all wrong. I couldn’t help but care even though the last thing I wanted to do in this world was to attend a memorial service for a man I love. Loved. No, that was wrong.
The night his dad signed the DNR order, I thought he might still be alive. And I still did, despite all the evidence to the contrary and my own usual tendency to stick with the simplest explanation. The doctor had pronounced time of death, and an interrupted autopsy had determined the cause (copper dagger fragment adjacent to the left ventricle). And the minute the medical examiner turned his back, Tony’s body had up and vanished.
I glanced over my shoulder at Mr. Ichiro’s bamboo on my desk before opening the door to stride down the hall toward the elevator. I’d already questioned Margot Malone’s imp friend and Gee-Nome about Tony’s missing body.
Both pure faeries were capable of instantly transporting something Tony's size. I owed the imp big-time by asking thrice, but it hadn’t had anything to do with Tony’s disappearance. And Gee-Nome had an alibi. Bianca Brighton. Either of them would have shown up on the morgue’s security camera. I pushed the button and tapped my foot thirty-seven times until the elevator yawned emptily before me.
Even Umbral magic couldn’t have gotten him out of there under the ME’s nose. The camera would have blanked out, and a simple faerie glamour would have shown a shimmer on the recording. There were exactly two faeries who had the kind of power it’d take to get a body out without a trace, and I doubted the Goblin King or the Sidhe Queen had any interest in Tony Gitano. I'd seen a tiny blip of blue light, but no Magus or faerie could cast a spell that color. Only one type of extinct magical shifter could. My eyes were sharp, and I’d watched that footage so many times I owed Detective Weaver a year’s supply of coffee.
I stepped into the elevator and imagined it swallowing my agitation like I used to down Adderal. The mystery of where Tony was now sat tangled in the corners of my mind. I couldn’t cut through that knot and had no further ideas on how to tease out answers. Someone had pushed all the buttons on the way up to the fifth floor. My hands curled into fists, my fingernails pressing against the calluses in my palms. The doors opened on the fourth floor.
It was a fact that the Extramagus, Richard Hopewell, tried to kill Bianca and Tony and me all at the same time. What made things worse was, even if we traced the magic in the explosion that brought the Olneyville house literally down, he could claim he got paid to do some wards that went up by accident. Tony’s father could show registry documents, and both he and Hopewell would get off Scot-free. But we all knew better. Tony had told us so.
No one besides me bothered listening to him most of the time. He’d sauntered in the front door of that house while I busted through the attic window. I’d heard him downstairs even though Bianca couldn’t in her diabetic stupor. Tony had argued with his Dad's wise guy about how the place would go up, definitely on purpose, no accidentally about it. But my testimony wouldn’t do much against Tony’s father. Two people telling the same story on the stand would have been a game-changer, but Bianca had been out cold at the time and hadn’t heard a thing. I rolled my eyes, waiting for the doors to close on the third floor.
The others believed Tony was dead. They didn’t want to listen to little old strung-out me. Except I wasn’t on meds anymore. They didn’t understand the difference it made, how all the facts came into relentless focus. Gino Gitano had spoken to me right after they called the time of death. I’d swallowed my rage in the face of Gino’s smug cordiality after watching his son die, something that felt unreal in my heart even though my brain knew better. Tony never came out and said it directly, but that night confirmed my worst speculations. The danger I’d suspected he lived in on a near-constant basis had been real all along.
It’s easy to hear about something like that without understanding when you come from a family like mine. My parents always said they wanted me so badly, they went to court. For someone whose parents chose me to love from a crowd of orphans, Tony’s situation seemed like part of a vigilante’s origin story.
Maybe life under such an intimate and constant threat was the reason Tony had gone so far out of his way every time he found his friends in danger. And now, I was the one in Richard Hopewell’s cross-hairs. I wouldn't delude myself into thinking he'd let up on me now. On the second floor, a pair of hirsute Freshmen blinked, then backed off under my glare. And I couldn’t blame them for choosing the stairs over an elevator ride with an angry owl shifter.
I wouldn’t believe Tony Gitano was dead. I also couldn’t believe he’d made himself scarce deliberately. Not when I was the one in danger. He’d saved me twice before, once when I crashed into the side of a house to help Henry and Maddie, and after that, he’d gotten me out of the tentacles of a magipsychic construct before it could crush me. And then it had been my turn to look out for him. I jumped through hoops so he could become an informant with Newport PD and helped him evade Richard while he kept Fred Redford’s faerie cap out of his hands. The elevator chime sounded, but the doors took their sweet time opening
on the ground floor.
My fist hit wood as I punched the inside of the elevator. I wasn’t in mourning. Instead, I was in a state of slowly burning rage. Going to this memorial felt like a waste of time. I should be out turning over more leaves, looking for more clues. Since Luck dictated I should go anyway, the fire in my belly would have to wait. Any advantage in the Luck department could get negated in an instant if I flew off the handle, literally or figuratively.
My ballet flats slapped against pavement after I pushed through the doors to the vestibule and hit the sidewalk outside. I didn’t give a fluff of down how my anger looked, either. I crossed the street, heading toward my car in the parking lot in a straight line.
People thought the SmartCar suited me. It didn’t. Mom had picked it out according to her sensibilities. She was human and didn’t really understand shifters even though she tried. I only vaguely remembered that day at the dealership where she and Dad always bought their own efficient sedans, nodding at the salesman. His tie had been silvery blue, almost the same color as the car I drove off the lot two weeks before heading up from New Jersey to Providence Paranormal College.
It’d been a long strange series of trips since then, oddly cloudy but brightly lit at the same time. This spring, something inside me cracked open, breaking in past the pane of shelter my parents had raised me behind. The shards and dust of that cataclysm finally settled this semester, revealing the world in sharper focus once Mr. Ichiro had put me on the night shift and gotten me off the diurnal drug cocktail.