Her hand comes up, flat against my stomach, holding me there. “What am I doing?”
Is this a trick question? “What’s wrong?”
“It’s not you,” she says, and that strikes me as a terrible way to begin. “This isn’t the time.” Kayla sinks into a morris chair with embroidered star-pattern cushions and starts unbuckling her shoes. “Freddy got me a pair of lace-up boots, too. I’ll run upstairs and —”
“Whoa.” I settle on the daybed, rest my hands on my knees. “What are you thinking?”
She’s checking me out. “You look striking. Grown-up.”
Striking? I’ll say. Freddy brought me a black leather-trim Western-style shirt, black jeans, and designer snakeskin cowboy boots. (Take that, Seth!) I haven’t put on the steampunk eye goggles yet, but my handcrafted steel cross belt buckle is both Goth fashion statement and precautionary. Kayla’s gaze lingers there, and it makes me flush.
“Sorry.” She shields her eyes. “It’s partly Ben. I don’t want it to be, but it is.”
She misses him. That’s only natural. “Listen, kitten, I can wait for —”
“What about Aimee?” Kayla asks. “I know she’s with Clyde, and I understand that you and she are close friends. I’m not worried about that. But before you two met, she had a boyfriend — Travis — who died. Now, you’re into me, and I had a boyfriend who died, too.”
“So, you’re saying . . .” I’m tempted to inform her that, from what I understand, Travis and Aimee never hit official couple status, but that’s beside the point. “What are you saying? I have some perverse thing for girls who’ve dated dead guys? Because that’s a coinci —”
“No, I’m saying people die. Lula died. Your friend Teghan died. Your friends Kieren and Joshua are lucky to be alive. Yoshi, you’ve been shot at twice in two days. You could die, too.”
Hearing Teghan’s name stings. The old me, the hit-it-and-quit-it Tom Cat, would’ve quipped that desperate times are all the more reason to live, hot and sticky, while we can. God, I miss him.
“IT’S BEEN A WHILE.” Noelle waltzes into Sanguini’s private dining room at five till midnight. The ravishing werelioness was imprisoned in the cage next to mine on Daemon Island. She was my one fling before Aimee. A sultry older woman.
I thought we had something special. Who knows? Maybe we did. Then it turned out she slaughtered my buddy Travis at the local neighborhood park while she was amped up on transformeaze. Noelle was out of it. She didn’t even realize what she’d done until Yoshi’s sister pulled her off Travis’s mauled body.
“What’re you doing with Pop-Pop Richards?” I want to know. His Majesty hasn’t arrived yet. But Travis was Pop-Pop’s grandson. A “favored prince” of the werearmadillo throne.
A human court might’ve cared that Noelle didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t intend to kill anybody. Supposedly, that makes it legally not murder. It doesn’t make him any less dead. Shifters tend to skew more primal. If Travis’s ghost hadn’t interceded with his grandfather on her behalf, Noelle would be toast.
“I’m not here with Richards.” Noelle takes a seat at the opposite end of the table. “I’m representing the interested third party.” Is it wrong how much I love that costume? She’s dressed — blue body paint, dyed red hair — as Mystique of X-Men fame. A shape-shifter disguised as a shape-shifter. She pours herself a glass of ice water. She tosses aside the napkin folded in the shape of a bat and opens an electronic tablet encased in gold leather.
It’s only the two of us in here. I set my mask on the table.
Aimee isn’t going to be thrilled when she finds out Noelle’s tied up in whatever’s happening. It’s not only our fling. Romance crosses species lines all the time. But there’s an extra hormonal, horny pow between two shifters of the same kind.
Besides, I was raised as a Possum. I’m new to owning my werelion heritage. Noelle is the only Lion I know. She was with me when I first came into my mane.
“Where have you been?” I ask. “Nora and Freddy were trying to warn you about —”
“I already knew.” Noelle stops typing and looks up. “I hid in plain sight at the zoo.”
“In Lion form?” Of course in Lion form. It pisses me off when haters call us animals. Noelle and I know what it’s like to be caged. But the way things are . . . “Brilliant!”
We laugh together for the first time since our breakup.
I relax my shoulders. Noelle killed Travis, not by choice. I killed Mrs. Great White Hunter on the island, not by choice. Sure, I pounced. Noelle took transformeaze. Neither of us had any way of knowing what would happen. It would be stupid of me to alienate an ally.
“You hear about MCC Injections’ new” — she raises her fingers to make air quotes — “‘transformation-suppressing patch and vaccine’? It’s a modification of the formula for transformeaze. Rather than freezing a shift midway, it blocks one altogether.”
Even money that’s the poison Yoshi found in Agent Masters’s car. Given Noelle’s history, I have to give her credit for going there. She releases her claws. “Have you seen their pet troll, Graham Barnard, on the TV news?” She takes a swipe at thin air. “You think he’s trying to protect the so-called purity of Homo sapiens, or do you think he’s in it for the money?”
Noelle has no idea that she’s talking about my girlfriend’s father. “Well, the human servants on Daemon Island were tricked into . . .”
The Lioness weighs me from behind a curtain of lush eyelashes. “Get real.”
Aimee’s dad isn’t exactly a poor dude from a developing country, desperate to help his struggling family make ends meet. He’s a grown-up, big-time all-American corporate flack. “I know him,” I say. “Graham Barnard.” Or at least we’re connected by only one degree of separation. “He’s not exactly up with werepeople power.”
The slightest limp still betrays Noelle’s island injury. With shifters, only the most devastating damage lasts. She rests her palms on the table. “You know Graham Barnard?” Her cleavage is distracting. “You know him how?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “He’s the mouth of the haters. Not the brain trust.”
Noelle glances over my shoulder. I turn in my chair, expecting Armadillo royalty. I find Aimee standing in the doorway instead. Her forehead’s wrinkled. She clasps her hands in front of her, then lets them fall to the sides. She overheard me and Noelle talking trash about her dad.
“Pop-Pop Richards just arrived,” Aimee announces. “Nora asked if you want food.” It’s a BS question. Of course we want food. We always want food. It’s an excuse to check up on me. “I’ll tell her yes.” With that, she practically sprints out of the room.
Crap. I start to chase after Aimee when Pop-Pop struts in. He’s carrying a glass of his preferred single-malt Scotch. (The bar keeps it on reserve.) Two of his rotund royal guards take point outside the room.
“Clyde, what did you do?” Pop-Pop stops me with a couple of stiff fingers to my chest. “Never mind, this is more important.” The Armadillo king slides off the jacket of his pin-striped suit. He drapes it over a chair and acknowledges Noelle with a curt nod.
She responds with a hard swallow. The guilt gnaws at her.
I stay put. We need info on the Snake. I’ll smooth things over with Aimee later.
A light knock on the door signals Freddy’s assistant, Willa. She’s carrying a tray of appetizers — gorgonzola and a selection of olives, the carnivore taster, and the wasabi deviled quail eggs. We settle around the table. I pour His Majesty a glass of water as she drops off the plates. Nobody bothers with small talk. Willa lifts her tray and shuts the door as she exits.
Wasting no time, Pop-Pop leans his barrel body forward. “A critical dignitary knows something about this Snake. Important information.”
So, it isn’t Pop-Pop himself who has the scoop. “Dignitary?”
“He won’t talk to me, Clyde.” Pop-Pop tosses an olive into his mouth. “He considers me beneath him, the arrogant ass! But
he’s heard about your experience with the newly discovered mono-forms.”
No more experience than Noelle. She apparently works for whoever it is and is probably his source. “He doesn’t want to talk to Yoshi or Aimee?” We were all on the island together.
Pop-Pop lights up a cigar. “I have a confession, Clyde.” He puffs. “Did you ever wonder why I encouraged your close friendship with my grandson Travis?”
Noelle studies her retracted nails. She painted them blue to match her Mystique persona. Having shifted to claws and back, they’ve returned to their natural color.
I spear a piece of venison blood sausage. “Travis and I were like brothers.”
“It was fitting that you should be,” Pop-Pop informs me. “Two young princes.”
“Princes?” I exclaim, dropping the meat. “Uh, my dad is —”
“A fine man,” His Majesty replies, waving his cigar. “A Possum for the ages. But I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about your biological father, the Lion king.”
Under her breath, Noelle says, “Hakuna matata.”
POP-POP RICHARDS left half an hour ago. It’s almost 2 A.M., closing time at Sanguini’s, and Mercedes whisks away what used to be my bowl of kumquat sherbet with frozen eyes of newt. It’s on the house, courtesy of Nora.
Security has been quadrupled, with bouncers stationed both indoors and out. Other than a four-top of weredonkeys (whose laughs live up to their reputation) and an aging British pop star (known for his manscara and probiotics commercials), it’s been a quiet night.
A man with Mohawk-style hair, sprayed hot pink, winks at Kayla as he sashays by in assless leather pants, and her expression is priceless.
I’m grateful for the distraction. Not that it’s completely taking my mind off whatever’s going on in the private dining room between Clyde and Noelle.
Noelle. Why did it have to be her? I’m not jealous. It’s more complicated than that. I don’t blame her for what happened to Travis, not entirely. I don’t care that she and Clyde are both Lions and I’m not, at least not much.
It’s what they said about my dad. The worst part? I agree with them. He is “the mouth of the haters.” But it’s one thing for me to say that to Clyde, another for him to say it to Noelle. She doesn’t even know my father, and, for that matter, Clyde doesn’t either.
All Dad knows about werepeople is what he sees on the news, and werepredators are only mentioned in violent crime stories. I’m sure it’s never dawned on him that there are werewolf wedding planners or werecat teenagers admitted to Cal Tech.
The snowpeople may control the FHPU and MCC. But it’s not like Dad has any idea that his anonymous corporate overlords are also behind fake federal kill squads. He may be prejudiced, but he’s not pure evil.
“Howdy, kids.” It’s Detective Zaleski from the Austin Police Department. He’s a werebear, and he and his partner Wertheimer, a Porcupine-Bunny, are the unofficial go-to men for Austin-area shifters when it comes to all things law enforcement. Zaleski says, “I hear you’re in a mess of trouble. Again.” Zaleski’s not one for cosplay, but he blends in to the extent possible, what with his height and girth, in a tailored charcoal suit. He nods to Kayla. “Young lady.”
Zaleski’s dating Nora, and I can tell by how he doesn’t pay too much attention to Kayla that the chef’s already briefed him on her.
Yoshi reaches to shake his hand. “We heard you quit the force.” Everyone else at the table can hear the Cat fine, but I have to lean in to catch it. “Over some rumor about —”
“You heard right.” Zaleski takes a seat. “I did quit, and I wasn’t the only one. Several other shifters called in sick — ‘the fur flu,’ we were calling it. But the rumor was the rumor.”
“Huh?” Yoshi replies. At the same time, Kayla says, “Come again?” She’s on her second serving of brandied peaches flambé over French vanilla ice cream.
Off duty, Zaleski sips red wine. “The order really did come down from the governor’s office. We were supposed to execute a massive shifter roundup. It was only hours before she was taken, but then there were the obvious facility and manpower issues, especially with so many officers — human and shifter — walking out in protest.”
Nice of him to mention those human officers. Too bad Clyde wasn’t around to hear it. Unfortunately, I’m not shocked by the governor’s order. Shortly before being kidnapped, Lawson also announced that next fall Texas would be doing mandatory genetic testing of public employees and students. On our way here, there was a report on the radio claiming that “Lawson’s recent no-nonsense tactics are what spurred Seth and his werebeast followers into action.”
Zaleski continues, “Anyway, the governor’s kidnapping has taken priority. Bringing her home safe is critical to all of us, especially with that weresnake claiming to act on behalf of shifters everywhere. We’ve got something to prove.”
Sinatra’s “Blue Moon” pours from the speakers, and Yoshi asks, “Why would Lawson have ordered a door-to-door shifter sweep? I’d understand something like that as a reaction to the unexplained Bear DNA found in the governor’s mansion or the weresnake’s declaration of war, but it’s like she saw all this coming and —”
Zaleski sets down his glass. “How do you know about that? The Bear DNA?”
Oliver. One of the last things the Tasmanian weredevil trooper said to us was “we never met.” Yoshi fiddles with his napkin. “You’ve got your sources. We’ve got ours.”
I’m surprised the detective lets that go, but he’s mentoring Yoshi’s big sister, Ruby, who’s been working toward joining APD herself, and he’s got a soft spot for the Cat siblings.
Zaleski informs us that the DNA matched the Bears that Miz Morales brought to the coalition surgeons from Quincie’s house. They’d been darted, drugged, and kidnapped out of Washington State and woke up in Texas with the mind-control implants in place. Masters turned out to be a soldier of fortune recently attached to — what else? — MCC’s holdings in Afghanistan.
“Good job, kids, taking that SOB down and those chipped Bears, too.” Zaleski stands, checking his watch. “You all right? You’re quiet tonight.”
It takes a moment to realize he’s talking to me. “I’m fine.”
The detective takes my word for it. “Be careful, and holler if you need anything.”
“You do the same,” Yoshi replies, and Zaleski grins his approval. Then he’s off, striding purposefully toward the crimson velvet curtains that lead to the kitchen and Chef Nora.
The Cats don’t comment on my quietness, but Yoshi stretches his arm around the back of my chair. Meanwhile, on the dance floor, the couple costumed as Sally and Jack Skellington twirls one last time. An eight-top of Walking Dead–inspired zombies exits through the curtains to the foyer, belting out Sinatra’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and Clyde and Noelle finally emerge from the private dining room. She looks boobalicious in that geek glam costume. Just my luck: Clyde’s always had a thing for Mystique.
As she leaves, Clyde maneuvers through the dissipating glittery crowd to our table. He reaches for my hand and leads me to the dance floor.
Whatever happened in there, he’s not ready to tell the Cats.
Courtesy of Freddy, the Lossum is dressed in a full Venetian-style joker masquerade mask that adds spark to his pirate-inspired ensemble. I’m in a gender-bending veiled fedora over a double-breasted white men’s suit with silver skull buttons and ostrich feather trim — not that anybody would glance twice at two guys slow dancing together at Sanguini’s.
“What happened in there?” I ask as Frankie begins crooning “It Had to Be You” over the speakers. With the full mask, I can’t gauge Clyde’s expression. “Was it about my dad?”
He pauses. “No, not your dad.”
What happened? We’re not dancing anymore. We’re standing still. Why are we standing still? “Are you going to tell me?” I ask, half joking. “Or is this a shifters-only secret?”
Clyde breaks the embrace. “A
lot of secrets are shifters only . . . or certain shifters only.” He walks away. “Being a human, you wouldn’t understand.”
WE PROMISED FREDDY to only use our burner phones in case of an emergency.
Does finding out my bio dad is the freaking Lion king qualify? It’s not like I’m being shot at or a werebear is trying to pull my arms out of the sockets (or is that only a Wookiee thing?). But tomorrow night I’m going to meet him, mano a mano.
My sire, my sperm donor, His Majesty. According to Noelle and Pop-Pop, he’s got the lowdown on the weresnake. The king could’ve passed on the intel through her. He wants to meet me in person. For all I know, he’s wanted to meet me my whole life.
At the hideout house, Yoshi is still crashed on the sleeping porch and Kayla is in the bedroom with the front balcony. Too wired to sleep, I offered to stand watch downstairs. My parents should be awake by now.
“It’s me,” I say when Mom answers. We spend a few moments assuring each other that I’m fine. She and Dad are fine. The kits and my leopard gecko are fine. So are Aunt Jenny and Uncle Victor and the weather in Amarillo. It’s in the upper sixties and sunny.
“I don’t think it’s safe for y’all to come home,” I say. “Not yet.” There’s been no sign of the FHPU since yesterday at Quincie’s. We figure they’ve disbanded. But that doesn’t mean the snowmen and their flunkies couldn’t come up with a new way to target me through my family.
I called to talk to Mom about the Lion king. I’ve heard stories about the werelion royalty since I was a kit. Some say they battle to the death for their crowns, others that they’re descended from the Lions who sailed with Noah during the Great Flood.
Seated on a bar stool, I start with my other pressing question. “In your text, you said to ‘stay away from AB.’ You meant Aimee, right? Aimee Barnard?”
“The government man who came looking for you,” Mom begins. “He said if you knew what was good for you, you would leave her alone. Clyde, are you dating Aimee?”
I should’ve mentioned it before. “She really cares about me.”
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