Feral Curse

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  “What if she’s having a stroke?” Aimee suggests, pulling out her phone.

  Granny Z bobs her head up and says, “Instead of the spell ripping the Cat out of you, it’s bringing in shifters. The lightning strike, for lack of a better term, scrambled and superpowered it. I don’t think it’ll stop until you —”

  “Destroy the carousel?” Yoshi asks. “How? Fire, chain saw? Does it matter?”

  Granny Z shakes her head. “Only if you want to risk killing someone in the midst of being teleported in.” To me, she adds, “What was this Benjamin Bloom to you?”

  Here goes nothing. “Boyfriend,” I finally admit out loud. “Newly ex-boyfriend, if you want to be technical about it.”

  Yoshi’s brows rise at that — I should’ve told him earlier.

  I try to keep the conversation moving. “You know what I don’t get? The carousel has been broken up — the pieces separated and sold off. How is it that the various animal figures keep crossing paths with werepeople of those exact same animal forms?”

  Granny Z turns to Yoshi. “Plays by human rules, you say?”

  “Raised with a human sensibility,” he explains.

  Aimee tucks a strand of turquoise hair behind her ear. “Werepeople tend to seek out images of their animal form. I had a close friend who was killed, a werearmadillo named Travis, and afterward, shifter mourners brought plush toy armadillos as tributes to the spot where he died. It was sweet.”

  Okay, then. To Granny Z, I ask, “Any idea what we can do?”

  She shrugs. “It’s dangerous, but you could try to reverse it.”

  “What do you mean ‘reverse’?” Aimee wants to know.

  “Read the spell backward?” Yoshi guesses out loud.

  “No!” Granny Z exclaims. “Never do that. I’m a fortune-teller, not a priestess, but with this particular blessing, I’d bet my last penny that the payoff is tied to the wielder’s intent.” She scratches her chin. “Replicate it as closely as possible. But with better intentions.”

  “Replicate it?” Yoshi repeats. “Do we need lightning?” His brow furls. “If that’s what it’ll take to pull off Operation Carousel, well, I don’t happen have any in my back pocket.”

  “You need energy.” Granny Z straightens in her chair. “But it’ll come to you. Be ready for the ritual to rip it from the sky, if necessary. Be ready for the chaos to come.”

  Geriatric or no, she’s quite the drama queen.

  Without further elaborating, Granny Z stands and marches toward the bedroom. “Well, children, it’s time I take my leave.” She kicks a banged-up leather suitcase, covered with touristy bumper stickers, across the wood floor from the other side of the doorway. “Miss Kayla, you are welcome to come and go here as you please. Someday, you and your friends may need a hiding place. Someday soon.”

  I don’t like the sound of that — any of it. “Wait,” I say. “Where are you going?”

  “Florida,” she replies. “It’s time. My granddaughter has taken over the family business. And . . .” She waves a letter at us. “Breaking news! The Old Alligator Man has proposed.”

  He’s not a shifter. There’s no such thing as a weregator or, for that matter, a reptile-form shifter of any kind. The Old Alligator Man must be some kind of carny con or maybe he has an unfortunate skin condition, but none of the rest of us can resist glancing at the poster heralding her fiancé’s unique appeal. Takes all kinds, I suppose.

  “Congratulations,” Aimee says, and Yoshi gives a curt wave good-bye.

  I follow Granny Z out, leaving them talking in hushed tones. There’s something I have to know. “If it weren’t for the lightning,” I begin, as the white house cat yawns up at us, “could Ben’s spell have worked? Given it was his intent, could he have turned me into a human being?”

  Thundering across the bridge, she replies, “Is that what you want? To be a Homo sapiens?”

  When I don’t reply, Granny Z steps onto land, tosses her beat-up leather suitcase in the cab of the orange truck, wrenches open the rusty door, and climbs into the driver’s seat. “The Alligator Man’s proposal isn’t the only reason I’m skedaddling out of these parts, and you — especially you — might do the same.”

  She slams the door shut and adds through the rolled-down window, “Meanwhile, take care of Junior for me. He has a touch of the sight, but he’s just learning how to channel it. And I don’t have the heart to do to him what should be done.”

  She’s talking in riddles. I ask, “Who’s Junior?”

  With a cough and a sputter, the truck starts up and she drives away.

  As I return to the cabin, a furry white humanoid head rises from the pond with a fish between its teeth. The creature drops the flopping fish on the bridge and hauls himself up.

  His dripping, all-white coat likewise covers his entire body — he’s definitely a boy, though it’s probably not so obvious when his fur is dry. He stands about my height and, kicking his catch back into the water, he slowly blinks at me with large ice-blue eyes.

  In a guttural voice, he says, “Junior is me.”

  I’M IN NO WAY HAPPY TO SEE, as a friend of mine liked to put it, a goddamned greedy yeti trail in, soaking wet, behind Kayla. It smells literally fishy, but it lumbers toward me with a goofy grin and asks, “Are you both werecats, too? I am a cat person. Not a Cat-person, obviously, but, you know, I love cats. I even have a cat, Blizzard. You probably met him outside.”

  “Yoshi is a werecat,” Kayla informs it. “Aimee is a human being.”

  At the same time, I exclaim, “Where did you find that?”

  It babbles on, “Did you know that most of the big wild-cat — not werecat, animal cat — populations are shrinking at an alarming rate? Experts blame loss of habitat, trade in body parts and pelts, a decrease in —”

  “His name is Junior.” Kayla crosses her arms. “He’s alone in the world. Yoshi —”

  I growl. “You can’t trust anything it —”

  Aimee holds up a hand. “Enough.” She disappears into the bedroom and comes back with a beach towel. Tossing it to Junior, she asks, “Has Madame Zelda been raising you?”

  As he dries off, the yeti clarifies, “Was, and before her Jennie, the bearded lady. Well, them and the rest of the carnies. Granny Z warned me that”— he makes air quotes —“‘the sun was setting on our time together.’” Realizing he’s still dripping on the wood-plank floor, he drops the towel and stands on it. “I can’t take the Florida humidity — the Texas heat is bad enough. And I’m not alone. I have Blizzard.”

  Blizzard? Oh, right, the house cat. Forgive me if I’m not charmed.

  This winter Aimee, Clyde, and I were kidnapped by yetis — they refer to themselves as Homo deific, which means “God people” (the egomaniacs) — and brought to a remote, private tropical island, called Daemon Island, in the Pacific, where she was forced into servitude, he was caged, and I became big game for high-dollar hunters (half of them supernaturally demonic and soulless and all of them out to kill me for my animal-form pelt and trophy head). We barely escaped alive, and put mildly, I’m not a fan of yetis as a direct result of that experience.

  “Granny Z said we should take care of him,” Kayla tells us. “And I guess Blizzard, too.” Glancing at the yeti, she asks, “Um, what kind of shifter are you?”

  “He’s not one of us,” I spit out, heading for the door. “He’s the enemy.”

  Junior recoils, and I feel a flash of guilt.

  “He’s a person,” Aimee says, blowing out the candles. “Like humans and shifters are all people, just from different branches on the evolutionary family tree.”

  Technically, she’s right. The yetis — they’re not really yetis; I just call them that — are naturally born, but they’re even deeper in hiding than we are. Their species is single-form, so they’re more closely related to humans. They live in total secret, originally in the Arctic and now around the globe, manipulating worldwide financial and political systems with the aid of mega money, tec
h, and human flunkies. Plus, they’re known to dabble in demonic magic. Did I mention how much I hate magic? “We should get out of here.” I point. “But not him.”

  “He was raised by a shifter,” Aimee reminds me. “How old are you, Junior?”

  “Thirteen or so; I’m not sure. I was abandoned at the carnival as a baby.”

  What was he, a sideshow act? “We could turn him over to our favorite Austin police detectives,” I suggest, “and expose the international crime syndicate that is —”

  “Don’t talk crazy,” Aimee says. “We’re taking him home with us.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I exclaim, tossing my hands up. “He’s not a puppy!”

  Junior opens his mouth as if to protest, too, but Kayla cuts him off. “My home?” she asks, as if Aimee’s lost her mind.

  Because the scorched forest is perilous and Junior needs to watch his step, Aimee insisted that I carry Blizzard. Given that he can smell that I’m a werecat, my feline passenger is alternating between ducking his head in the crook of my elbow and glowering at me. I’ve been bitten twice — skin broken and bleeding. Tiny claws are buried in my forearm. I don’t mind, though. He may be a very, very distant cousin, but he’s still family. Unlike Junior.

  “I am not letting that cat pick on Peso,” Kayla announces. “And what exactly do y’all expect me to tell my parents —”

  “It’ll be okay,” Aimee says. “I have a friend, a priest, who’s great about stuff like this. He’s based outside of Chicago, but if I call, I’m sure he’ll drive down as soon as possible. Junior is not our problem.” She favors him with a reassuring smile. “The spell is.”

  “What spell?” Junior adds, brightening.

  “Isn’t that confidential?” I demand. “You haven’t even known him for an hour.”

  “Yet.” Kayla nudges, “Aimee, why don’t you call your priest friend now?”

  Aimee is silent a moment. “I’ll wait until I have more privacy.” Her voice doesn’t betray it, but I know her well enough to tell she’s pissed at both of us. At me for not giving Junior a chance and at Kayla for clinging to her unrealistic expectation of having a completely average, humanlike life.

  “Who’s Peso?” Junior asks, skirting a fallen trunk.

  “Her dog,” I explain. “She’s a dog person.”

  I’m sure Aimee’s right that I overreacted. Now that I know Junior’s alone and a big kid, I don’t so much care about him one way or the other, except that we have to figure out what to do with him until Father Ramos —

  As the earth folds, crumbling, under me, I tumble, tossing Blizzard toward Kayla, frantically grabbing for tree roots that tear away, burnt to nothingness.

  “Yoshi!” Junior shouts from above. “You okay?”

  I dig my claws into the side of the ashy pit and keep sliding. “Stay back!”

  Lunging, I seize a thick root that holds, catch my breath, and begin my painstaking climb back up. “I’m good!” I yell. “Give me a few minutes.”

  It’s a tough climb — a foot gained here, two lost there. I have time to think about what Granny Z said about replicating the spell. We’ll have to track down the stored, shipped, and/or purchased figures and come up with a way to return them to the carousel . . . while recreating as closely as possible the ritual itself, including the time, place, and atmospheric conditions.

  We’ll need a dark and stormy night, at the very least.

  I can hear the others talking above.

  “Do you need help?” Junior wants to know, because naturally it’s the smelly yeti who cares and neither of the irresistibly cute girls.

  “Stay back!” He’s built thick and already as tall as I am. I bet he clocks in at well over two hundred pounds. I don’t need his giant yeti feet caving in more land around me.

  “You seem awfully concerned with Yoshi,” Aimee observes, knowing full well I can hear her. “And after he was so rude to you.”

  “He’s a Cat!” Junior reminds her. “Cats can be prickly, and it takes a while to win them over. You have to be patient with them and continue offering feathered toys and tasty treats.”

  “We are not animals!” Kayla exclaims. “Wait. Is that why you were in the lake, trying to find us a treat?” She pauses. “Then why’d you throw the fish back in?”

  “I’m so sorry!” he replies. “Did you want it?”

  And so it goes for the three or four additional minutes it takes me to crawl to the surface and reunite with the others. Junior promptly hands Blizzard back to me.

  My patience shot, I fume. It seems like the least he could do is transport his own pet.

  “Is there a point to this?” I say as tiny claws re-embed themselves. “In case you missed it, I’ve already fallen once, and —”

  “And Blizzard is fine!” Junior shouts, bouncing in place. “You saved him.”

  The yeti blinks at me with grateful blue eyes. God!

  As we continue on our way, Kayla glances sideways at me. “What’s this about a Book of Lions?” she asks.

  “The Book of Lions, The Book of Old.”

  Aimee interjects. “Is that one book or two?”

  “One,” Junior puts in, “but it goes by both names.”

  It’s disturbing that he’s the one who knows that. I admit, “I’m not the religious type, but it’s obviously associated with a werelion faith.”

  “A spell book?” Kayla counters.

  Aimee sounds almost prim as she replies, “An angel would say there are many paths to the Big Boss. Maybe it’s archaic, pagan. Like people who worship Zeus. And Granny Z said the text wasn’t a spell or a curse. It’s a blessing for healing.”

  Kayla coughs. “Forgive me if I’m not feeling blessed.”

  “Wherever its history, we have to deal with the here and now,” I point out. “If we don’t want the carousel figures to keep fetching shifters, we’ll have to round them up and keep them out of circulation. Step one of Operation Carousel: Track them down.”

  Aimee nods. “If we’re going to replicate the spell as closely as possible, we’ll need them to reassemble the ride.”

  She beat me to saying so. I turn to Kayla, “So Ben was your boyfriend?” It explains . . . I’m not sure what it explains exactly, but it’s personal to her, very personal and relevant as hell, given the circumstances surrounding the spell.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Aimee puts in, her tone warning me to tread lightly.

  I don’t. “How did Ben find out you’re a Cat, anyway?”

  Kayla bites her luscious lower lip. “I told him.”

  “Rule number one for our kind,” I say. “You can’t trust humans.”

  “Hello?” Aimee pipes up. “Walking right beside you through the dead forest.”

  “Most humans,” I amend. “You have to be more careful and stop keeping secrets.”

  “Keep secrets, don’t keep secrets,” Kayla counters. “You’re contradicting yourself.” She sets her hands on curvy hips. “Don’t tell me —”

  “Are you friends?” Junior asks. “You don’t talk to each other like friends.”

  That shuts everybody up. We walk in silence the rest of the way to the border of the Morgans’ property, mercifully without plunging into the ground again or being crushed by a falling tree.

  We’re finally at the river’s muddy edge when Kayla wants to know, “Is it true your grandma is as mean as snot?”

  “Worse,” I admit, glancing down. “Oh.”

  The water is higher, faster, break dancing over the rocks.

  I hand off the white cat to Kayla, preparing to carry Aimee.

  I doubt Junior can swim any better than a human, probably worse, what with all that fur to weigh him down. But he’s not my priority.

  “No, no, don’t be stupid.” Kayla squints toward the highway bridge. “Beats me how we’re going to explain ourselves to Deputy Hoover, but we’re taking the long way home.”

  Right then Blizzard sinks his teeth into her arm and, dropping him, she his
ses and loses her balance, teetering on a rock drenched in rising water.

  “Whoa!” Kayla tumbles backward into the drink with a splash and a yelp.

  “Kayla!” I jump in after her, but the water is muddy, cloudy. Popping my head up, I shout, “Where’d she go?”

  “I don’t know!” Aimee exclaims, scanning the rapids.

  Werecats are known for our speed, strength, and grace, but we can’t hold our breath any longer than humans and we’re not naturally great swimmers (with the exception of Tigers).

  I dive back under, gripping roots for support. I can’t see a damn thing.

  How long has it been? Did Kayla suck in air before submerging? How long does it take to drown? So much debris — branches, leaves, trash. This is impossible. I can’t . . . There’s not . . .

  Underneath in the murk, something big and fast-moving flips past my leg.

  What the hell?

  I rise until my vision is clear of the water again, and, glancing over my shoulder, I see a brown furred head surface. A split second later, Kayla, coughing hard, rises alongside it.

  Make that him. Wereotter. Male. In partial shift.

  Fighting the current, I wade after the Otter and Kayla to the park side of the river.

  “We’re taking the long way,” Aimee shouts from the bank bordering the forest. “We’ll say we walked from a hotel along the highway.”

  Right, because without Kayla, she’s just another tourist. It’s not a bad story — simple, plausible. Except for Junior. But I have enormous faith in Aimee’s creativity in a pinch. Besides, once you say you’re from Austin, other Texans expect some weirdness from you. Along the tree-and-scrub line behind her, I notice that Junior has retrieved Blizzard from a branch.

  Aimee waves. I wave. “Be careful,” I yell. “Stay sharp.”

  Junior may be only a goofy kid, but to me, “yeti” still equals “danger.” I hate letting them out of my sight. Still, I can’t leave Kayla. She throws up water as the Otter retracts his shift. Her hands have been cut on the rocks. There’s a tiny bleeding gash across her cheek. But the Cat girl will heal fast. All shifters do. Finally, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.