Nine Lives: Providence Paranormal College Book Nine

by Perry, D. R.

  “That’s an interesting sentiment from the fellow attending a magical college.” Kiki leaned against one side of the arch. “A weapon’s no good if there’s a ban on it touching its targets. The Roman lions weren’t the only cat shifters fighting in that war or the only neutral party to side with a monarch. A rogue cat shifter of the magical variety turned the weapon on them. Because they were magical, a few survived, but the big mortal wars of the twentieth century put an end to them. Now they’re as extinct as Kitsunes. That’s one reason the weapon’s been hidden all this time, waiting for the right person to come along and use it as intended.”

  But a Kitsune stood in front of me, not extinct at all. Could she be the last of her kind? Did that mean there was just one of those rogue magical cat shifters left? Obviously, it was me. But what was I? And was I the last of a dying breed, or the first of a new one? These questions would have rocked a Watkins-led classroom, and possibly impressed Headmistress Thurston. They did nothing for me here, where I had to silence them or risk owing my life to Kiki. I set them aside.

  “Yeah, well, that right person ain’t me. I know diddly squat about archery. More likely to shoot my eye out than hit the bad guys.” I rolled my eyes and shook my head. My problem was more that I didn’t want to kill Dad, I only wanted justice of the legal variety. I wasn’t about to tell a powerful and apparently bloodthirsty Kitsune that, however. “I’m not a fan of handling weapons that can kill me deader than the wise guys I’m worried about.”

  “Fan or not, it’s what you’ll need if you mean to face a shifter descended from the Roman lions of old.” Kiki hedged her phrasing to avoid blatantly encouraging patricide, but the sentiment remained. She avoided looking me in the eye, too. No big surprise there.

  I tried to shrug off the sense of wrongness that particular word dragged into my mind after it. I owed Dad no loyalty. My father had tried to kill me. Succeeded, maybe even more than once. I swallowed bile and rage, wrinkling my nose. Still, I didn’t want him dead, just out of the picture.

  "Jail is best," I told myself. I’d never killed and didn’t want to start, which Dad always gave as one reason I disappointed him. My brain clung to those three words and hammered them into a mantra. Could I follow it? I closed my eyes and prayed I’d never have to answer that question.

  “Still doesn’t do a thing about the fact that there aren’t any magic weapons here. This room wasn’t designed for fighters.” I turned back to the suite, preparing to head back down the hall to see if I’d missed any other rooms. “It's for lovers. No faerie in their right mind would stash a magic weapon in such an oppositely purposed room. Glamour can only do so much when it comes to hiding something that doesn’t belong somewhere.”

  “This place skirts all kinds of edges.” Kiki’s hand gripped my arm like a steel vise. “There’s nothing in any of the king’s rules that states exactly what kinds of battles make someone a fighter. You’ve got no idea what has happened in this room, and no right to judge. Go back in there and look harder.”

  “I won’t find anything.” I couldn’t turn my head to meet her glare because it felt like a leaden weight. “And I already told you, I ain’t got much magic.”

  “You found the entrance, so you’ll find the Garters.” She dropped her hand. “And technically, the weapon isn’t meant for you to use, though you could brandish it in a pinch.”

  “That’s what it sounds like when you say only I can touch it.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “No point in looking for it if I ain’t gonna bother using it.”

  “For a cat who easily dodges my attempts to trick questions out of him, you certainly are clueless.” Kiki snorted. “I’ll speak plainly just this once. Find the bow and its quiver of magic arrows. They are in this room. They will help your cause somehow.”

  “I wonder what kind of creature would use a weapon designed to kill feline shifters?” I turned back to examine the room and its contents more closely. “Someone like that has got to be terrifying.”

  “All the more reason for you to get the blasted thing. You want a frightful person in your debt, not holding a weapon without any obligation to you.” My godmother put her hands on her hips, looking for all the world like she’d just told me I can’t have any dessert if I don’t eat my meat.

  Before stepping into the chamber again, I glanced at Kiki. Maybe it shouldn’t have bothered me to see the Kitsune stifling a laugh. I didn’t give two shakes of my tail about how I should have felt. Most of my classmates would react to the news that Kitsune extinction had been highly exaggerated with the same enthusiasm I’d reserve for winning the lottery. They were a maddeningly optimistic bunch. Even the vampires barely brooded. But I knew better than the rest of them about too many things.

  I’d watched the pack of them sympathizing together over consequences and the aftermath of shared experiences. It all started with the perfectly abnormal storm that had made Bobby want to hibernate and almost killed Lynn with a truck-ton of ice. A month ago, I’d started seeing ghosts. My whiskers had tingled with the prospect that we approached some bitter end, and I thought it’d be mine personally. I hadn’t been wrong, either.

  I stood at the foot of the bed, my head so far out of this “find the magic weapon game” it could have been on the Enterprise. Did my so-called packmates care about the loss of one little Omega kittycat? My dad had surely put on some fiasco of a memorial service to make himself look important, with a nice heaping side of innocent. I couldn’t imagine anyone in Tinfoil Hat showing up except Olivia. Maybe Bianca, but probably just because she’d want to check for my ghost.

  The only real friend I had in the pack was Fred Redford, and he couldn’t have left the Under during his first tithed year without the queen’s supervision. Then again, maybe she’d have gone. Yeah, that felt right somehow. The Extramagus, Richard Hopewell, was the closest thing to a friend a guy like my Dad could have. Hopewell had been angling for a gig as the queen’s consort in exchange for tithing his badass self to the Seelie side of things. Dad would be all over cementing ties with that kind of power.

  I shook my head, unable to concentrate on hunting for magic items like some sort of live-action D&D player. I took a stroll around the room instead, pacing its circumference and trying to acknowledge my negative thinking in hopes making like Queen Elsa and letting it go. Sure, everyone was hip-deep in Extramagus trouble. The rest of them had it easy. None came from a family with one parent murdered and the other an untrustworthy schemer. And then, I stopped with one foot in the air, feeling like the biggest calabrese moron in the known universe.

  I was wrong. One of them did understand. Blaine Harcourt. He’d been too slow, missed his chance to stop an attack on his step-dad. Even his Luck-wielding mate couldn’t help him. After that, Blaine had watched his literally venomous mother put the man who raised him out of his misery with a knife through the heart. I set my foot down and hung my head, ashamed of myself for going full judgmental on the dragon shifter. And that’s when I saw the sickly green glow coming from under the bed.

  The last thing I wanted to do was stick my hand into a space I couldn’t see, looking for something made of copper. Silver killed werewolves. Iron killed faeries. Copper killed cat shifters. I dismissed the idea that I’d somehow be immune on account of my unexpected magical nature. No one was that lucky, not even the two Tanuki I knew.

  But I had no choice. If Kiki was right, the only way to proceed against my father was to get the dang Garters. I wasn’t going to grab blindly under the bed, though. I had a trick or three up my sleeve, literally. I always did.

  I wasn’t exactly sure when I realized I could activate magipsychic devices without help, but they were everywhere at my dad’s safehouses and with his people. The Gatto Gang’s main stream of illegal income was in “imports and exports” of black-market magically enhanced doodads. The crafters and buyers all thought shifters were great go-betweens since none of us could use the wares without an attunement done by a Magus or a Psychic. That was how things
were supposed to work, but I was a monkey-wrench, and no one knew it.

  The quartz lapel pin wasn’t anything I’d ever wear in plain sight, but fixed to the lining of my trench coat, no one could see it. I pressed it between my bare arm and the floor, called on energy I shouldn’t have been able to use, and activated it. After that, I eased my weight to my elbow and let the black fabric drape.

  Light streamed from my open sleeve, illuminating the dusty space under the bed. A long, lean, shape swaddled in some kind of burlap fabric rested there, with a faint but telltale green glow coming from under and through a few threadbare spots in the fabric. I reached out with my lightless hand and grabbed what could only be a short bow and its quiver through the thickest section of burlap I could find. I pulled it toward me and out from under the bed. Then, I stood.

  A question burned through my body like the time I’d accidentally-on-purpose gotten hit with a dart. Dad made me play a match against him after getting notice of my scholarship at PPC. I’d been sick, like my blood was on fire. I thought he’d poisoned me, but he couldn’t have because I got better after a good fifteen hours of sleep. Maybe that was one of the deaths Kiki mentioned, and I’d come back without realizing it.

  The bow thrummed through the fabric in my hand while the glow under the burlap brightened. Could the magical weapon be reacting to my thoughts and feelings? How, though, if its purpose was killing people like me and was meant for someone else to use in the first place? Was I really that different from other cat shifters, or was this weapon more than what my godmother implied?

  “You look like you’ve got questions,” Kiki called from where she hovered over an urn by the doorway. “As much as I would absolutely love for you to ask them, we’re out of time.”

  “Of course, we are.” I strode back across the room toward her.

  “Time waits for no cat or Kitsune.” My godmother turned and led me back through the passage. She slipped the scarf off of her head and draped it around her neck, exposing her ears. After that, she twisted the scarf on her waist, revealing her tails. Were there more of them than I'd seen earlier?

  I stopped when we got to the chamber we’d fallen into, wondering how in the name of magic we’d ever get out. Kiki just kept on walking toward the passage to the right, eight tails swishing behind her as she went. Yup, she had one additional tail, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know why. I followed her into a darkness even shifter eyes had trouble seeing through, lifting my arm so the light in my sleeve could lead the way. I’d seen this kind of darkness before and wanted no part of it ever again.

  “Oh, no.” I stopped. “We’re not going through here.”

  “We will.” Kiki kept walking. I had to press on or risk losing sight of her.

  “But this is a Grim lair.” I lowered my voice to a murmur, not even wanting to risk a whisper because the hissing might be too loud.

  “I know.” The Kitsune walked with steady, measured paces, lifting her feet with each step to avoid shuffling them.

  “They’re always hungry.” I tried not to shudder but couldn’t help myself.

  “All the same, it’s the only way out of here without wings or a Gnome.” She twitched her ears, tilting them back toward me. “And we’d best do this quietly until we get out.”

  “Fine.” I shut my trap, not because Kiki told me to, but because Grims were serious business.

  I called on my glamour, cloaking us like I’d done back in January with Henry. It didn’t work well against Grims in the Under, but it couldn’t hurt. My godmother seemed alert, not afraid. I figured she must know something I didn’t, either about the Grims or her abilities.

  We went slow, almost maddeningly so. My jumpy nerves wanted me to just cut and run, but that would have been a bad idea. Grims weren’t the king’s hunting hounds like Spites were the queen’s. They were worse.

  With a Spite, the queen or even one of her high-ranking courtiers could call it off. That was because Spites used to be Sprites and had experience beyond the chase and the hunt.

  Grims came from Umbral shadows, born of light-devouring magic, so all they ever knew was hunger. The shadow hounds ran wild and didn’t answer to anyone unless a Summoner bound them, or the king blew the Hunting Horn and called them to war. Only the most strong-willed Psychics dared seek them out. Pavlo Brodsky had been near-legendary in his prime, a fact that made Richard Hopewell’s subjugation of his mind one of the scariest things I knew he’d done. If he got stronger, the queen herself could be at risk from his mind magic.

  We strode along for what seemed like hours until finally, a faint light appeared up ahead. I shut the quartz device off to find we’d come to the end of the thrice-accursed tunnel at last.

  A rustle of leaves echoed as fresh dusk air flooded my senses. The light dimmed with Kiki’s passage, and moments later, I struggled my way through some brambles and away from the entrance to the Grim Central. I followed my godmother along a deer trail, ducking in places she didn’t have to in order to avoid braining myself on a branch or five. Finally, we reached a clearing. I blinked in the moonlight.

  “Wait a minute.” I peered at the slight incline and bare hilltop. “It’s the Gnomehill again.”

  “Yes.” Kiki literally barked. On the other side of the clearing, a bush’s branches bounced. My godmother smirked, then chuckled. “I guess this Gnomehill is somehow bound to you by coincidence.”

  “Well, you can tell the coincidence fairy I’m getting sick of looking at it.” I glared at its toadstool-ringed top.

  “That’s a shame.” My godmother shook her head, giving me a wrung-out half-smile.

  “I bet we have plenty to do, so moving along might be a good idea.” I raised my eyebrows, hoping my statement was correct.

  “Yes. And no.” She shook her head, then hung it.

  “Knowing why we have to stay this close to a whole den of Grims might be good.” I put my hands on my hips.

  “You’ll understand in a couple of months.” The Kitsune gazed up at the sky, where one star sat on the horizon.

  “You have got to be kidding me, Kiki.” I snorted. “Two months is a long time.”

  “Oh, wait.” She shook her head, curls bouncing. “Not months. I’ve got my mortal time measurements all mixed up again. Hmm, I don’t think I mean years either. Not weeks. Days might be right. Those have sixty seconds.”

  “Sixty seconds is a minute, Failure Godmother.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Oh!” She clapped her hands, seemingly immune or indifferent to my insult. “Yes! Minutes! A couple of minutes is what I mean.”

  “Okay, then.” I nodded. “I can wait that long without curiosity killing me.”

  “But you shouldn’t wait over here, Tony.” Kiki poked my arm.

  I shot her a look designed to convey the fact that I thought she might be from a planet in a whole different galaxy and blinked.

  “Move about halfway up the hill, on the opposite side from where you fell through.” Kiki pointed to the area she’d mentioned as if a city boy like me couldn’t possibly have any sense of direction.

  I headed over to the patch of earth she’d indicated, wondering about that. Because I shouldn’t have been able to get my bearings in the Under. I’d never been there. So why did I know which way was North with absolute certainty? How did I understand that time moved here even though the sun never rose on the king’s demesne? Did I somehow grok that time flowed the opposite way on the queen’s side? Was it the whiskers, the magic, or something else?

  That was one reason I was so confused. When I turned around, Kiki had vanished. I scratched my head, wondering for a moment who I’d expected to see. It was almost as though my godmother had something like the Umbral Affinity my friend Maddie did, but I’d learned to push past that since joining a pack with her in it.

  “Get your brain on, Tony,” I grumbled to myself. “Freaking Kitsune; shouldn’t exist, and then runs off like she thinks she’s Gandalf or whatev—”

  I stopped complaining becau
se there was something else that shouldn’t exist—a creature that hadn’t been extinct because it really was the stuff of legend. I blinked at the expanse above the Gnomehill’s clearing, barely able to believe what I saw.

  An angel was falling from the sky.

  Olivia

  Back at my room, I shooed Gee-Nome off to the lounge so I could change out of my professional outfit. I knew my royal-blue suit wasn’t the usual lawyerly attire, but I’d stand out in the night court with my nearly white hair anyway. Most owl shifters had more normal-looking hair than me. Sidhe did, but they rarely tithed to the king and lived the nightlife like their Goblin counterparts. The atypically colored suit felt like armor to protect my confidence in the courtroom, the trait Mr. Ichiro said a good lawyer needed most.

  As much as I loved and felt safe in my suit, I didn’t want to wear it into the Under. Shifters got forced into their animal forms while visiting the Faerie realm, and our clothes didn’t shift with us. I’d been surprised the night I rescued Bianca with Tony. I’d shifted, picked up her insulin in my talons, and found my clothes still on when I turned human again in the safe house, but that might have had something to do with all the crazy wards on the place. I couldn’t count on that kind of thing happening again.

  I had to wear something I wouldn’t miss and that I could put on easily if it survived the trip once we got back. There was no way I’d do what Josh had suggested and ask Nox for help with outfitting. The Kelpie was intimidating on a good day, and tall, too. Anything she owned would drag on the floor like I was a kid playing dress-up with her mother’s clothes.

  Staring at the closet just wasn’t the same as it had been a week before. Picking an outfit when I might run into Tony was way more exciting than dressing for utility. I settled on a long, draped midi-dress I usually wore to the beach with a big floppy sun hat. It was silvery-gray and shimmered slightly, which I always thought washed me out without the shadow of the floppy hat. I didn’t care about looking monochrome on campus anymore, though.