The Lion's Fling (Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance Book 1)

by Lilly Pink

  “Scammed? Ha! Funny. Are you a funny girl? Do you jest on purpose or without even knowing you do it?”

  “I’m not being funny, not on purpose or as a joke, either. This kind of thing isn’t real. People can’t see into other people’s heads. They can’t tell you about your past and they can’t tell you about your future, either. That’s why it’s a scam. I’m sure you’re very good at what you do, but that doesn’t make it real.”

  There was a voice inside of Eloise that was screaming for her to just be quiet already! Even in a situation such as the one she currently found herself in, her parents would have been appalled by the way she was talking to this woman. It was downright rude, whether she tried to wrap it up in a cheerful voice or not, and she couldn’t honestly figure out what was making her act that way.

  It never occurred to her that she was now an animal with her back up against the wall and that animals in that kind of position had a tendency to bite. That thought never even crossed her mind. All she could think about was how unlike herself she felt, how unlike herself she sounded, she wanted out. She wanted to get the hell out of this tent and back into the fresh air and if she could just do that, she would never set foot in a place like the fortune teller’s dwelling again.

  “You give me your hands, girl, I’ll show you what’s real and what ain’t. Give me your hands and I’ll show you the way of things.”

  “Why would you need my hands, though? Don’t you read my cards or something? Isn’t that how this fortune teller stuff works?”

  “I got no idea how it works the way you’re thinking of it. All’s I know is the way the sight works for me. Now, either give me your hands or get out of here. I won’t sit here and let you waste my time all night long.”

  Again, this was so far from the way Eloise was used to being talked to that she couldn’t do anything but what she told her to. She put her hands out palms up and was embarrassed to see that they were shaking a little bit. She concentrated all of her efforts on steadying herself, demanding that her body comply with her wishes, but it didn’t work.

  Whether she liked it or not, there was something about this strange little old woman that frightened her. She didn’t want to look into her eyes. Truth be told, she didn’t want to be anywhere near her. If she hadn’t been so stubborn, if it hadn’t been for Archer, she would be gone. But before she could even really consider the seemingly unspeakable option of getting up and going, Gram’s hands had locked onto her wrists.

  Her grip was shockingly strong, like that of a woman closer to Eloise’s age, and Eloise knew she wasn’t going anywhere. When she let out a little cry of shock, Gram smiled, something that looked distorted and ominous in the dim candlelight. Whatever illusions Eloise had held of being in control evaporated right then and there. She was in Gram’s hands now, in every way she possibly could be. It was the last place she wanted to be, but it was too late to get herself to any other place.

  Gram was pouring over her palms, her face so close that she could have unfolded her tongue and licked her had she wanted to. Suddenly, Eloise was overtaken by the certainty that she would do exactly that. She could see it so clearly in her mind’s eye that she was overwhelmed by a whole-body shudder. If Gram noticed it, however, she gave no indication. She just continued on with her task, muttering incoherently to herself under her breath.

  “What is it?” she asked breathlessly, being taken in despite her best efforts. “What do you see?”

  “I thought you didn’t believe,” she snapped back quickly, never lifting her eyes from her task.

  “I don’t,” Eloise stammered, now feeling more confused than ever, “but I’d like to know anyway. That’s what I’m paying for, right?”

  “How should I know what you’re paying for? A girl who doesn’t know her own mind, her own heart, how should I be expected to know a thing like that?”

  “Excuse me? What are you talking about, a girl who doesn’t know her own mind? Of course I know my own mind. I’ve never been accused of anything like that before. Never in my life. If anything, I’ve been told that I’m too—”

  “Headstrong. Yes, I know. You think you’re telling me anything I don’t know, girl? All the same, you’re torn in two. Two different beings living inside of you at the same time. How you gonna know your mind like that? Problem is, you got to know which mind you’re looking to know, and you haven’t figured that out quite yet.”

  Eloise didn’t want to be affected by the words coming out of the old woman’s mouth, but she couldn’t help being stunned. She wasn’t sure if Gram knew how close to the truth she was now getting but she couldn’t help but feel like she very well might. Sure, it was possible that her observations could also apply to others who graced Archer’s Gram with their presence and monetary contributions.

  Anything was possible, right? But it didn’t feel like that was what was going on. It could have been, but it honest to god didn’t feel like it. It felt a hell of a lot more like this woman was looking inside of her. Eloise glanced quickly down at her hands, suddenly sure her whole body had gone completely transparent.

  If that were the case, it would explain why she knew as much about her as she seemed to despite the fact that the two of them had never met in her life. Eloise’s hands flinched, an involuntary movement designed to free herself, but she moved nowhere at all. Gram had her held fast and she wasn’t letting her go until she had said her peace.

  “There’s a beast inside of you, that’s for sure. A beast and a girl, living in equal parts and vying for ownership. It’s in your blood, girl. An ancient bloodline of predators, a line of royalty, even. Your family holds you apart from the world around you. To keep you safe, yes, but also for the safety of others. You’re like a weapon, girl. You could go off at any moment. Your parents know that, your father especially. It’s why he didn’t want you here.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I know that and a great many other things as well. I know that he doesn’t want to let you go because he wants you all for himself. I know that your mother is terribly jealous of you. She’s thought about getting rid of you, you know. She’s thought about taking you out of the equation so that she can have your father all to herself again.”

  “Stop it,” Eloise whispered in a weak voice that sounded nothing like her own, “that’s enough. I don’t want to hear these things.”

  “Nobody ever wants to hear the truth, do they? But not hearing it isn’t the same as making it not so. There’s plenty that are jealous of you. Plenty that don’t have your own best interest in mind, even the one’s who’re supposed to love you.”

  “I said stop it! Really, stop!”

  “But the time is coming when you’ll have to make a decision, girly, and it’s coming soon. You’ll have to decide who will be the ruler of your life. Will it be you or your father? Will it be you or will it be the bloodline that now looks to make you a slave? You’ll have to decide. You have an immense power inside of you but you’re afraid to use it. There’s a storm coming in your life, a fork in the road of your destiny. Do you think you’re powerful enough to stand up to it? Do you?”

  With a horrified cry, Eloise finally succeeded in prying her hands free from the terrifying old woman. It took a shocking amount of strength, the woman was so determined to hold onto her and finish what she wanted to say, that by the time she had her body to herself again there were deep scratches from the woman’s witch-like fingernails. Eloise looked down at them in disbelief then back at the woman who had given them to her.

  She wanted to say something about it, started to say something about it, but when she saw the expression on her wrinkled old face the words died in her throat. She was smiling, but there was no actual humor in it.

  Instead there was a deep-rooted knowing and perhaps a little bit of malice thrown in for good measure. Looking at that made Eloise feel like she wouldn’t be able to talk again for a long time, maybe ever. She felt like her ability to reason had disappeared, that everyt
hing that made her human had disappeared and left her with nothing but the instinct to survive.

  Now that she was free, surviving meant getting as far away from this sorcerer’s tent as she could manage as quickly as her feet could carry her. She hardly even cared if her superhuman ability for speed was detected by one of her fellow patrons at the carnival. She didn’t care because this was real.

  Her arrogance and desire to impress had led her into this mess, assuring her that it would be nothing but a con and therefore no kind of danger. But now? Now she saw that wasn’t so. This place was full of danger and she wanted to get away from it as quickly as possible.

  “What’s the matter, girl? You aren’t so interested in knowing anymore?”

  “No! I don’t want any of this! I don’t ever want to see you again!”

  She stood quickly, quickly enough to knock her chair over and topple it over onto the floor. Now that she was free of the strange woman’s strange control she didn’t intend to ever let her have it back. She backed away, eyes wide and hardly seeing anything as she fumbled for the tent’s exit.

  It wasn’t even a need at this point, but an imperative. If she didn’t get out of that tiny space, a tiny space that felt like it was steadily growing smaller, she would fall apart and then the old fortune teller would get a front row seat to the duality of who she was. She could feel herself getting close to the point where she would lose control and was horrified to find that part of her wanted to do just that thing.

  She wanted to rip the place apart and to hell with the fallout. That was why she had to get out. She had to do it before it was too late. She whirled around and plunged through the tent’s flaps, gasping great big gulps of air as if she had been suffocating on the inside.

  Her eyes were blurry with tears and her mind so disoriented that she didn’t see Archer still standing there. She barreled headfirst into his chest, which happened to be just about as solid as a brick wall.

  “Oh! Dear Lord!”

  “Whoa, sugar, what’s your rush?”

  “Nothing,” Eloise stammered, itching to look behind her and make sure she wasn’t being followed and doing everything she could to resist the urge. “I just...I just didn’t want to be in there anymore.”

  “Nah, that’s not right.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course, it is.”

  “Nope. I can see it in your face, even though you’re trying to keep it hidden from me. Something’s got you troubled.”

  She looked up into his face then, his gray eyes veiled and entirely unreadable to her. His slightly too long black curls were falling into his face with the way his face had to dip down to look at her and she was struck by the sudden desire, almost as acute as the desire to run away, to reach up and brush it out of his face.

  The idea of touching him, of feeling his skin beneath her fingertips, made her feel hot all over as well as making her distress grow. The wanting of him and the fear of what had gone on in his grandmother’s tent were such diametrically opposed feelings that she felt like her head was going to explode. It was so unbearable that she actually shoved him away from her, the exact opposite of what she wanted to do. She expected him to look offended or at least a little bit surprised, but his face hardly registered any emotion at all. She wanted to apologize to him the way all of her good breeding insisted she do.

  She wanted to scream at him for ever suggesting she do something as ludicrous as having her fortune told. Most of all, she just wanted to escape, and it was this feeling that won out in the end.

  “I’m fine, really. I’m fine and I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving? No, you can’t do that. We’ve only just met.”

  “But I can. I’m sorry. Goodbye!”

  Later she would wonder whether or not she had made herself look like the most ridiculous thing in the world, but in that moment her flight felt just right. She took off in a sprint, heedless of who was around her and whether or not she was forcing people to actually jump out of her way (which she was, several people). She ran straight out of the carnival without looking back and without bothering to look and see if there was anyone around her who knew her and might whisper about her behavior later on.

  She didn’t care about anything but getting home. She ran the whole way there, losing both shoes and ripping gaping holes in her pretty dress. By the time she arrived at her home’s front porch, she was caught somewhere in between the girl she was and the lion living inside of her. Any normal person would have been exhausted after the run she’d just taken but Eloise didn’t feel that way at all. If anything, she felt more energized than ever.

  The beast inside of her was raging, clawing at her insides to be let out. She felt like she was burning from the inside out and it was very close to torture. She paced back and forth on the porch where she’d so many times shared glasses of tea with friends and family, fighting the instinct to shift and take off into the surrounding land to hunt. It would have been easy hunting, too, and she knew it. All of those people milling around the carnival grounds?

  They would never have seen her coming, wouldn’t have even guessed that there was someone out there anything like her. Knowing this made it harder than she ever could have imagined to turn her back on the now slightly chilly night and walk through her front door. Once inside, she actually collapsed against the door, resting her head against it and shutting her eyes to the world. She felt like she’d just fought a massive battle and won by barely an inch.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Oh! Father!”

  “I’ll ask you again. Where have you been?”

  “What do you mean, where have I been? I’ve been to the carnival, just like I told you I would be.”

  Even though the house was completely dark, almost darker than it was outside where the stars and moonlight were busy doing their work, Eloise could see the look on her father’s face. It wasn’t good and suddenly she felt like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar before dinner after having been given specific instructions not to.

  She knew the tone of his voice. Although she hadn’t experienced it too many times in her life she had on rare occasions gotten into enough trouble to elicit it from her father and she was anything but happy to hear it now. Something told her that she needed to tread lightly here, that she was on the verge of walking into a trap she hadn’t yet begun to see.

  “You weren’t though, were you? You weren’t doing exactly what you were supposed to do.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well,” he said in a casual, conversational tone punctuated by the sound of a large ice cube working its way around the inside of a glass of straight liquor, “I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. For one thing, it’s much later than it should be. It’s well past dark. You should have been here a while back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not done. You were supposed to be here a long time ago and when you weren’t I decided to pay a visit to Penelope’s parents. I wanted to see if they were worried about her and do you know what? They weren’t worried at all! They weren’t worried because their Penelope was all tucked away safe and sound in her bed. I told myself that couldn’t be right, not after how clear I made it that the two of you were to stay together.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? And what was it that made you think it was alright to so openly defy me?”

  Eloise didn’t know why, but she didn’t want to tell him. Something about what she’d done felt wrong, shameful even, and she knew without knowing why she knew that her father was going to be angry about the fortune teller. Still, Eloise had never been one to lie to her parents and she couldn’t find it within herself to start now. Instead, she took a deep breath, wishing she had a drink just like the one her father was sipping on, and began to explain herself.

  “Penelope and I were together but I saw something I wanted to do. She wasn’t interested in it, wasn’t happy about it or who
I was talking to, and so I told her to leave. I wouldn’t have done anything like that except that she was being so rude! It was unforgivable, how rude she was being and I know she’s probably angry but really, she deserved it. And I’ll make up with her, I promise I will. I’ll make it all right.”

  “What was it?”

  “What was what?”

  “What was the thing you wanted to do that Penelope wasn’t interested in?”

  “It was nothing, really. I just wanted to visit the fortune teller’s tent. She didn’t want to go and she was unforgivably rude to the men standing in front of it. I just thought—”

  “The fortune teller? You were with the fortune teller?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “You mean with the gypsies?!”

  Eloise stared at her father in confusion. She knew him to be a man with a temper but even so, she hadn’t ever seen him quite so worked up as this. He stood abruptly, slamming his glass down so hard on the little reading table her mother so loved that she heard either glass or table crack, she couldn’t be sure which.