Claws and Effect

by Amanda Arista

  “I talked to the priestess about the book. I think we’ve figured out what happened.”

  “Oh. Well, what happened?”

  “I think I’d need to show you.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  I ended the call and slipped my phone back into my purse. “Come on.”

  “What?” Tyler asked, all the mirth gone from his face.

  “We need to go see Cristina.”

  He gulped. “How about you just drop me off at the apartment?”

  “How about you tell me what went on between you two, and I’ll think about it?”

  Tyler licked his lips and rubbed his hands up and down his thighs. “She told me that we would be together for the rest of her life.”

  I sat up straight like someone had rammed a steel pipe through my spine. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, and I freaked and it wasn’t pretty.”

  I set my coffee on the table between us. “Did you freak or did you not feel the same?”

  “I freaked. I wasn’t ready, I mean, we’d just woken up and she is this powerful psychic and . . .”

  I read it in his eyes, in the way they danced along the edge of the table, in the bond between us. I read it so easily because I knew the look and the feeling. “You didn’t think that you were worthy of her?”

  He pressed his lips together before he answered. “Well, no.”

  I pressed gently. “Would you like a piece of advice from some one who has always managed to chase away her men?”

  Tyler’s warm brown eyes jumped up to mine. He nodded.

  “She loves you. It’s a little pathetic. And freak out or not, I think she will take you back.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not the same Tyler Briggs you were two months ago. Hell, you’re not the same Tyler Briggs you were a week ago. And though I’d like to think that I had a hand in that, you really did all the heavy lifting.”

  Tyler took in a long slow breath and let it out across the table. It was the first time that I’d been able to pinpoint his scent, soft leather. It made me smile.

  “Let’s go.”

  I’D TOLD CRISTINA that we would be fifteen, but it was closer to thirty with traffic. She didn’t seem surprised that we were late, but she was surprised with who I’d had in tow. Her eyes jumped straight passed me and to the tentative man behind me.

  “Miss Jordan. Mr. Briggs,” she greeted us into the backroom of her shop.

  The psychic business must have been slow because she had the Garrett book and a few others open across her reading table with a few tea cups and her reading cards.

  It looked the same as it had a few months ago, same melted wax and Nag Champa smell. It was nice when things stayed the same.

  “Okay, what do you have?” I asked as I leaned over the book. I could still feel the pull of power from its pages.

  Cristina’s eyes flitted from me to Tyler and then back to me.

  “Maybe I should wait . . .” he headed for the door.

  I caught his arm. “I need you here, Tyler.”

  He clenched his jaw and stayed right beside me.

  I looked up at Cristina. “Please proceed.”

  Cristina’s hands were tight at her waist. “So I contacted a priestess of the old ways who had see a million of these in her time.”

  “And when was that?”

  “The sixteen hundreds.”

  I gaped and looked up at Cristina.

  “It was a simple séance.” Cristina said as if she had just asked the woman to tea. “We talked about how to break it, and we couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t result in a great loss from the spellcaster.”

  I nodded.

  “The Demon Lock is a bonding spell, to allow for the flow of energy from one to another.” She pointed to the page in the book with the branding on it.

  “Right,” I nodded. “So how do we break something like this without great harm to the spellcaster?”

  “There isn’t one. It would take great magic to break it completely. Otherwise, the bond would just be transferred.”

  “Crap,” I grumbled. Iris was right. We have official confirmation that I really did suck at this Prima stuff.

  “What?” Cristina asked.

  I just looked up at Tyler. With one swift movement, he pulled up the edge of his shirt and showed Cristina his scarred mark.

  “You’ve already broke it?” Cristina gasped. “But how?”

  “Bond transferred, but not broken completely,” I pulled the hair tie form my hair and ran my fingers through my hair. I was wondering if I was gaining some of the boy’s tendencies.

  “You said that your sensei had been through it, what did he tell you?”

  “I didn’t want to push too much, but . . . His mark looked just like the boys. It wasn’t gone, just not demon filled. What if . . .”

  My brain kicked into over drive, my brain spinning around with stories so fast that it made my knees weak, and I fell into Cristina’s reading chair. Seth Garrett freed how many people of the Demon Lock? Five, six? Wasn’t that what Sensei said? What if he didn’t free them, but just transferred the bond to himself? What if he’d drained himself in saving all those people?

  What if that was why he couldn’t defeat Reade Haverty that night? The night that Haverty killed Chaz’s father.

  Cristina’s hand slid onto my shoulder, and I felt her sorting through the images in my mind, adding to them with memories of Seth Garrett, and reading my thoughts, my worst fears.

  “How can you be in my head like that?” I whispered.

  “You’re psychic blood is still strong, Violet. Just not the strongest that runs through you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tyler asked.

  We both looked up at him, and he jumped back at our glares. Cristina slipped her hand down my arm and took my hand. She sat on the edge of her table and looked down at me. “It really is what he would have wanted, which is why Chaz can’t know.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t tell him something like this, but I couldn’t bear if he found out something like this from someone else, even if he wasn’t mine anymore.

  I took in a deep breath. “There is something there, Cristina. There has to be a way to break the rest of them. I can handle the four of them, but not an entire pack of people. And what about all the others across the world, what about them?”

  Cristina nodded. “I’ll keep looking.”

  I rose from the chair and put my hand on Cristina’s shoulder. I felt her in my head again. The warm, homemade feel of her. “Would you like some company?”

  Cristina’s dark eyes didn’t need to drift over to Tyler. Everything was so bright in her thoughts when it came to Tyler. It made me feel the distance between Chaz and I feel like the distance to the moon.

  “Violet?” Cristina asked.

  I pulled my hand away, sorry that I had let a thought like that across our easy connection. “Thank you, Cristina. For everything.”

  She gave me a small smile and I motioned that Tyler needed to follow me out into her waiting room. “I’d like you to stay and help Cristina.”

  “I can’t, Violet.”

  “You will, Tyler. This one is an order.”

  Tyler leaned in and dropped his voice. “But what do I say?”

  “She’s a psychic, Tyler. You don’t have to say anything.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  MARCH 15. The Ides of March. The grimmest day for Julius Caesar and what would turn out to be not the best day of my life either.

  It was my birthday. I was twenty-eight, wasn’t exactly myself once a month, and still managed to have a cheating boyfriend.

  Not much changed since last year.

  I figured a day like this needed to start out with at least a decent cup of coffee. I padded down stairs in my pajamas and grabbed some fresh coffee beans from the fridge. When Jessa got me the cappuccino maker, I became a master at it. Couldn’t cook a decent meal to save my life, but I could ma
ke a mean latté. Didn’t mean I would ever give up my coffee shop.

  As I waited for the milk to steam, I tried not to think about the whole getting older thing. It was inevitable. Worrying about getting old was like worrying about taxes: both were going to happen whether you accepted it or ran from it.

  Chaz’s birthday was August 11. He was Leo. Lion-hearted and courageous to the end.

  As long as he was being courageous in another state, I was fine. For now.

  The milk steaming, I ground the coffee, though I could have probably ground it with my fists, currently locked around the edge of the counter.

  It still wasn’t fair.

  I slammed the grinder off and then prepared the espresso, remembering to add a little bit of cinnamon to the mix.

  On the bright side, I had myself a little family. That was new this year. And a deadly legacy that haunted me every time I went to sleep. Though it seemed to be suspiciously quiet since we completed the bonding.

  As the espresso dripped down, I stopped the steaming milk at 150 degrees and grabbed a cup from the cabinet.

  “At least I have you, coffee machine,” I said as I mixed everything together.

  Sunlight gleamed merrily across the chrome front, and I patted it nicely as I grabbed my mug and went up to my office.

  I dialed into Sera like I did every Monday morning and headed up to my office.

  “Oh. Hi, Violet.”

  That wasn’t a happy voice. This wasn’t the perky little ray of sunshine that I was used to on a Monday morning.

  “Sera?”

  “Have you checked your e-mail this morning?”

  “No. Why do I need to?” I turned on my computer. “What’s the story?”

  “You need to check your e-mail.”

  A deep furrow formed between my brows. I opened up my e-mail and the blaring urgent e-mail from Drew sat at the top of the pile.

  “Drew doesn’t send e-mails,” I said into the phone.

  Sera was quite at the grave.

  I opened the e-mail and scanned the one sentence message without a salutation. And then I read it again. And then again.

  “You’re off the movie.”

  I said it out loud just to make it real. “I’m off the movie? The movie that I wrote.”

  Sera jumped in. “I tried to fight for you, Vi. Drew wouldn’t hear of it. He said you turned stuff in late and you missed the last call. And when he found out about the comic book thing, he said he felt like you were cheating on him.”

  I leaped out of my chair and started pacing along the small wall of my office. “Cheating on him. Are you joking? It’s my movie.”

  “I know, Violet.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair. This was too much before coffee. “Am I fired?” it was hard to even say the words. This place had been my life for ages. This job was who I was: Violet the funny writer. Violet the creature creator.

  “More like down at the bottom of the totem pole again.”

  “I am not working my way up through the ranks again, Sera.”

  “I know, honey.”

  I had the urge to sink my nails into something, and my office chair was the nearest thing. Talons rippled slowly down through my finger nails and ripped into the squishy purple cloth.

  “Just give him some time. Blood Moon was already perfect. Just give him a month and he’ll realize that you’re the best writer we’ve got.”

  “You’re damn right I’m the best writer that you’ve got.”

  Seeing the sudden innards of my defenseless chair made me jump back and shake the talons back in. Besides, destroying it didn’t make me feel any better.

  I sighed and crumpled into the now destroyed office chair. “Not the way I wanted to start off my birthday, Sera.”

  “Oh honey, I’m sorry.”

  I sighed, brain blank.

  “Have you ordered the bridesmaid dress yet?”

  I gulped. I’d just spent two hundred dollars on that neon purple disaster. “Yeah.”

  “And I haven’t gotten your RSVP. For two, right?”

  Another blow to the stomach. I turned the chair around, sat, and thumped my head on the desk. At least there was a nice stack of scripts and comic book sketches to rest on. “Just one.”

  “Oh god, Violet.”

  “And, I’m turning the same age my mother was when she got married. Would you like to add any more awesome to this day?”

  “I love you?” she offered.

  “Thanks, Sera.”

  “I’m sending all of my good thoughts your way.”

  “I need it.”

  “Happy birthday, Violet.”

  I hung up the phone and just lay limp on the desk top, staring at my coffee. Unemployment was not the way to start off a birthday. Birthday’s were supposed to be presents and candles, not sledge hammers to your self-identity.

  THE PHONE RAN again before I managed to lift my head off the table or drink any of my coffee. It was Jessa. I hit the speaker phone button and kept my head on the desk.

  “Yeah,” I barked out.

  “Happy birthday,” Jessa chimed out.

  “Yippee,” I grumbled.

  “I’m not going to be able to have lunch today.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Stupid contractor is bringing in, get this, more contractors to do the break room.”

  I sighed. Yet another reason not to leave the house today. “Fine.”

  Jessa snorted. “But I’ll see you tonight. Seven, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you will be in a better mood by then.”

  I stuck my tongue out at the phone.

  “Don’t mock me,” Jessa snapped.

  That made me sit up and stare at the phone.

  “Take a shower. Get some of the twenty-seven off of you and welcome in the new year.”

  I heard the click of the line. Great. Now I had all day to think about how horrible the rest of this day was going to be.

  MYERS SHOWED UP on my door step with a purple bouquet that stood high enough to cover his face. It was lilacs and roses and violets and more long purple things than I had names for. The fresh smell of it all hit me before Myers’s bright smile.

  “Happy birthday, Violet,” he said as he handed them over.

  My cheeks began to burn. I wasn’t ready for something to go right today. I reached out for them and buried my nose in the fragrant petals. Even as the rock awesome feminist that I want to be, there is still something about getting an arm full of flowers that just works for me.

  “Thank you,” I managed to get out and stepped aside to let him in. Flowers were a good enough toll to get into my house.

  He walked around, looking at the living room, his hands on his hips.

  “How did you find out?” I asked as I moved around his slow pace across my living room and into the dining area where I had a very dusty crystal vase somewhere.

  “It’s on the Internet.”

  “What?”

  “No. Tucker called me about tonight.”

  I laughed as I walked back into the kitchen to hunt down something to put the flowers in. I had to search around. I never got flowers I vases. The bouquet was big enough, I dumped out my utensil pitcher next to my stove and filled it up with water. Dropping the long stems in the cool water, I tousled them into place and smiled. Beautiful.

  As I walked back out, he was standing by the edge of the couch. “Where are all the birthday cards?”

  “Didn’t get any this year,” I shrugged placing the flowers on the table and stepping back to appreciate the array.

  “Nothing? At all.”

  “Why waste the three dollars on a card when you can just buy me a drink instead? And you have as much right to buy me a drink on my birthday as anyone else.”

  A smile spread across his face that brightened the room almost as much as the flowers. “I’d love to.”

  WE WALKED TO my coffee shop. Two panthers were better than one, especially one who’d alr
eady had one hell of a day. Subconsciously, I was probably begging the universe to give me something to hit.

  There was a new accoutrement in the front window of the café, a for sale sign.

  When I grabbed my usual table, Bastian, my usually coffee boy, walked over.

  “What’s with the sign?” I pointed.

  The dirty blond sighed. “Business isn’t good, Vi. With the chains moving in, we can’t protect ourselves anymore.”

  It hurt. I’m not saying it hurt like being fired or finding out that your significant other is cheating on you with random one-night stands, but there was a severe emotional reaction to thinking that I might loose one of my safe spots.

  “How long have you got?”

  “Long enough to get you a tuna fish sandwich and a double cinnamon no foam latté.”

  I smiled up at Bastian. “Why didn’t you wait for me? We could have made one hell of a mocha together.”

  He laughed. “Chronic thing for a redhead.”

  “Breaking my heart, kid,” I laughed.

  “And for your friend?” Bastian asked.

  “What ever the lady is having,” Myers said.

  As Bastian went to the back, Myers leaned back in his chair. There was an ease about him today that hadn’t been there just a week ago. A kind of smarmy attitude that looked good on the previously long-tailed nervousness look he usually had. I guess I’d been completely forgiven for the trespasses committed on the farm for not offering him a place in the pack.

  “How are you doing today?” I asked as I played with a sugar packet.

  “It’s not my birthday.” When he smiled, two dimples appeared.

  “Doesn’t feel like a birthday,” I sighed as I leaned forward and rested my elbow on the table.

  “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Not really. I just want to relax.”

  “Well, how do you want to relax?”

  I laughed. “What part of bounty on my head doesn’t register? There is no real relaxing.”

  Myers licked his lips and leaned forward. “Then tell me what you would do. Ideal day. Who, what, when, where, of what your perfect birthday would be if the world wasn’t on your shoulders.”

  A little voice in the back of my head told me that I would be here with Chaz. I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes. Half to start the story and half to prevent tears. “I think I’d start it with Belgian waffles in bed.”