by Holley Trent
“My mother always told me that if I wanted something bad enough, I could find a way,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I can’t make my body do things it isn’t conditioned to do, no matter how…bad I want it.”
Like she’d wanted that baby. Her body had turned on her when the pregnancy didn’t progress.
Lance opened his mouth and then closed it without saying anything. He kicked up some speed and raced ahead of her on the trail, and she didn’t follow.
She turned back toward the trailhead and said, as she approached Nayeli, “Quédate soltera, ¿sí? Marriage will probably take twenty years off your life.”
The statement made Nayeli, bewildered, stop in her tracks. “Why you marry, Lily?”
“Because I thought I had to,” Lily said with a distressed scoff. “And maybe deep down, I thought I could fix him. I guess I was wrong.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Shit, close that door, will you?” Lance smoothed down the hairs standing on the back of his neck and tried to shake off the feeling of disquietude caused by the high-pitched droning outside the trailer.
Lily gave him a sidelong look, but hitched Martha onto her other hip and pulled the door closed.
With the noise buffered on the other side of the wall, he was able to take a breath. He shifted his attention back to the DSLR camera he was swapping lenses on. The sun was going to set soon and he wanted to grab a few shots of the sky. He always grabbed some scenery pictures whenever he camped somewhere new, but due to the Jaguar disturbance, he hadn’t had a chance yet.
“What are they doing out there? That noise is gods-awful.”
“What noise?” Lily asked flatly. She carried Martha to the sofa and picked up the remote. Martha was gnawing on her fist and making noises of frustration. All the while, her nose ran.
Lily didn’t seem bothered. Lance suspected he would have been. He guessed it was one thing to have your own kid snotting all over you, but other people’s kids carried major ick.
“The noise the Jaguars are making,” he said. “You can’t hear it? It’s like a high-pitched droning.”
“No, I can’t hear it. Must be a frequency only dogs can hear. French Fry was jumping around in circles. Maybe that’s why.”
He chose not to respond to the quip and concentrated on nestling the unneeded lens into its case. “What were they doing?”
“As far as I could tell, they were in a huddle having a chat. They didn’t seem especially high-strung or motivated to do any particular thing.”
“Why do you have Martha?”
“Because Estela handed her to me.”
“But why?”
Lily shrugged. “Maybe so I don’t go too far?”
“Logical,” he murmured. He twisted the new lens into position, snapped on the filter he’d been meaning to try, and then hit the power switch.
No whir. No juice.
Groaning, he rooted through the camera bag for the charger pack. “She’s probably used to being handed around. I thought babies didn’t like that.”
“Babies are more adaptable than people like to give them credit for, but yes, there are some that can’t stand to be in unfamiliar arms. Sean’s daughter Cory hates it. She won’t let anyone but her mother hold her when she’s sleepy, though sometimes she’ll let me stand in, in a pinch. I think because we’re two blondes and when Cory’s been screaming for an hour, she can’t see the difference between us.”
“You just volunteer to cuddle people’s kids?”
She settled on a channel with a cartoon show. “I don’t volunteer. I simply don’t refuse. They’re my little cousins. Of course, I wouldn’t say no.”
“I think that’s crazy. Back in Sparks, people tended to keep to themselves when it came to their kids.”
“Why?”
“Because allegiances form early and associations can get you in trouble.”
“But didn’t your mother always try to keep you and Kenny together?”
“That’s different. We’re first cousins. We couldn’t pretend that we weren’t allies, even if we wanted to. What my mother and aunt did was simply teach us to have an awareness that we’d be safer if we watched each other’s backs. Because we’re so closely related, we have a certain kind of connection. We know each other’s shifter magic and how it morphs when we’re in certain moods. We also know each other’s flaws pretty well.”
“He must keep busy, then, if that relationship is as lopsided as I think,” she said, smoothing Martha’s cowlick.
It was hard to think of a comeback for the insult while noting that she wasn’t paying all that much attention to him in the first place, just like always.
Martha looked up with her with such adoration that his stomach clenched with some emotion he couldn’t quite pinpoint. Jealousy, perhaps, though that wasn’t a feeling he was intimately familiar with. He didn’t have time to worry about what other people had. He just worked harder to get what he wanted. What he was enduring with Lily wasn’t something that could be worked on, though. It was something to get past.
The Jaguars must have been keening louder because all of a sudden, Lance’s right eardrum clicked. He put his finger in his ear and wriggled it. “What the hell are they doing?”
“Is it getting worse?” Shifting Martha to her other arm, Lily opened the blinds behind her and peeked out. “Huh.”
“What?” He slid out from behind the table and went to the window to peer through the gap she’d made.
The five women were sitting in a circle, eyes closed, holding hands.
Lily closed the blinds. “Before Estela handed Martha to me, the ladies were talking about some kind of ritual. It seemed important to them that they do it at a specific time, and on today in particular.”
“No idea what the ritual was for, huh? You just took the baby and pranced off?”
“I don’t prance. Screw you.”
“Yeah, that’s helpful.”
“So is you constantly undermining my common sense. Just because I don’t volunteer information to you doesn’t mean I don’t know anything.”
“You don’t think perhaps I should be privy to that information?”
Martha, who’d been distracted by gnawing on her fist, suddenly noticed that Lance was there and started screaming bloody murder.
He growled and backed away.
She went back to gnawing.
Mona Lisa had nothing on Lily’s coy little smile.
“No.” Lily settled back into her seat and nestled the baby banshee onto her lap.
His ear stopped clicking. He looked outside again, then hurried to the door for a better view. Before he could get it open, he already knew they were gone.
“Where’d they go?” He walked to their pad. Their van was still there as were their tents, but all five women had vanished. They hadn’t even left a lady behind to watch him as far as he could tell.
“They couldn’t have gone far,” Lily said from the doorway.
“Not with Martha here. I’ve never heard of a Cat abandoning her baby. She’s got to be nearby, probably watching to see what we’re going to do.”
“You think this is a trap?” Shaking her head in disbelief, Lily stomped back up the step into the trailer.
“It’d be unwise to dismiss it as not being one. If they get rid of me, they can snatch you and shake you down for information about Lola.”
“They wouldn’t do that.” Lily’s statement sounded certain, but the furrow in her brow suggested that she didn’t really know.
Of course she wouldn’t have known. In spite of her protestations, she really was naïve about paranormal creatures. She had no idea how wily they could be.
He marched to the table for his camera remembering the shots he wanted to get, then gave up on the idea. He took shitty pictures when he couldn’t focus, and he certainly had enough stressors pulling at his attention. “I don’t plan on doing anything rash, so I’d advise you to do the same.”
In lieu of a response,
Lily lifted her eyebrows and then let them fall.
Apparently, they’d resumed their previous level of discourse in which he’d tell her things and she’d pretend he was little more than a wearisome inconvenience. It must have been genetic. Her cousins were like that, too.
He put the camera away and snatched up his phone. If she didn’t want to talk to him, he had another trick up his sleeve.
Willa answered on the third ring. “Is Blue not answering his phone? He might be out of range,” she offered in her usual concerned tone.
She was always so nice and helpful, unlike some people.
“Oh, you’re exactly the person I wanted to talk to,” he said. “I’m gonna put you on speaker, okay?”
“Well, okay, if you need to.”
Lily’s gaze flitted over.
He glowered at her. “I’ve got Lily here and she’s holding Martha, the Jaguar spawn.”
“Lance,” Willa scolded.
“Sorry. Me and Martha aren’t BFFs right now. She’s cute though, I guess, even with the nose running all over the damn place. I hope whatever she’s got isn’t contagious. Listen, those ladies ran off somewhere and left the kid. They were doing some kind of ritual immediately beforehand. You know anything about rituals?”
“Wait. You said Lily? Why’s Lily there?”
Shit.
He’d forgotten about that. He’d told Kenny and had forgotten that he’d told Kenny to keep his mouth shut. He wasn’t at all surprised that Willa knew about the Jaguars, though. Lance assumed that everything he told Blue would eventually trickle down to his wife.
“Disgusting coincidence,” Lily said while glowering at him. “I needed to come down to take a look at a bull for Belle. I figured I’d ride here on his gas rather than my own.”
“Oh, well, good luck,” Willa said. “I heard the last one was a handful.”
“Yep,” Lily said, still glowering. “That’s what she named him, too. Handful.”
She was looking at Lance like that should have been his name.
“Well, I know a little about rituals,” Willa said contemplatively. “I imagine my aunt Artemis would know more. Want me to summon her?”
“Summon her…” he murmured, rubbing his beard contemplatively. “Is that what they’re doing?”
“Something like that, I think,” Lily finally offered up.
He smiled on the inside. He loved when a plan came together.
“Rewind,” Willa said. “We’re talking about the Jaguars, yes?”
“Right,” Lily said. “Before their leader, Estela, handed me the baby, she and the others were having a conversation about a ritual. They were speaking really fast and I didn’t quite catch all the vocabulary they were using. They’re from Oaxaca so some of it might have been Zapotec or Mixtec or any number of indigenous languages. Also, I was a little distracted at the moment. Blanca wanted to show me some of the braziers she’d made to sell and I was in the van looking through crates.”
“You couldn’t tell me this?” Lance asked.
Lily ignored him. “Oh. I remember something from earlier,” she told Willa. “I’d jokingly asked Estela if they ever let outsiders join their group, and she told me that no one ever joins El Culto. They’re born into it and it’s been that way since the boat sank.”
“What boat?”
Lily grimaced. “You know how sometimes when people tell stories, they turn into these long-winded, circular things with lots of morals and metaphors and you sort of lose track of what’s real and what’s just an elaborate flourish?”
“Of course I do. My father is a Greek god.”
“Well, it was kind of like that. Seemed like the sort of story that never gets written down and is only part of a culture’s oral tradition. So, take this with a grain of salt knowing that I only understood seventy-five percent of what she was saying.”
“What the hell did she say?” Lance asked.
Lily rolled her eyes, stood, walked to him, and snatched the phone away. She returned to the sofa and put her feet up on the coffee table and Martha on her thighs.
Wicked little wretch.
“I’ve been trying to piece this together into something linear in my brain,” Lily told Willa. “I think the story started in Angola. There was a slave ship. I’m not sure where the boat was supposed to go, but it sank before it got there.” Her brow creased. “No, sank isn’t a strong enough word. It…exploded somehow. I think that’s what she said.”
“A slave ship that exploded. Hold on. I’m writing this down.”
“There should be some record of that, wouldn’t you think?” Lance asked.
“Not necessarily,” Willa said. “During that time, if a boat didn’t check in, the people holding the purse strings may not have ever have learned its fate. They would only know that it didn’t arrive at the intended port. We didn’t get much news about the journeys in Europe. It was hard to find out anything unless you had connections. I happened to have some only because I briefly worked in the household of a wealthy trader. I left as soon as I found out how he was making his money. People shouldn’t be commodities unless they choose to be.”
“I agree,” Lily said. “Anyhow, Estela said that the boat was sinking, and La Dama pulled as many of them to shore as she could. All women. Estela said she changed them.”
“Made them Jaguars, you mean,” Lance said.
“I believe so, but like I said, the story was twisty-turny. All I caught from there was that La Dama taught them how to feed themselves in their strange new land. She checked in every so often for the first few months, I guess, but then she vanished.”
“Huh,” Willa said. “And then they migrated? I thought I’d gleaned from Blue that they’re from Oaxaca.”
“Yes.”
“Are they hostile toward her? Neutral, or what?”
“I can’t tell.” Lily tipped Martha back onto her left arm. The baby had fallen asleep, likely soothed by the sound of her voice.
It had the same effect on Lance at times. Even when she was being nasty, he couldn’t turn away from her. The words didn’t matter as much as the sound.
“I’ll have Blue look into them as soon as we both get home. I’m still at school doing lesson plans.”
“Sorry to bother you,” Lily said.
“Oh, no worries. Gets kind of depressing in here this time of day with the sun going down so early. It’s nice to hear a voice that isn’t my own. Normally, Diana swings by after school, but she had something else to do today.”
“Yeah, I’d be hurrying out, too, if I were you. I used to do that all the time back when I did receptionist work for a temp agency. Everyone else would clear out by four and I’d be in that drafty old building alone.”
“When was that?” Lance asked.
“Before you dogs turned up in Maria.”
Lance really should have expected that. Of course she was going to be extra mean with Willa overhearing. She was probably even relishing it.
To Willa, he said, “Could you please have Blue call as soon as he finds out anything at all?”
“Of course. Be safe.” Willa disconnected.
Lily slid the phone onto the little table beside the sofa.
He opened his mouth to say something to her about her selective retelling of what she learned but thought better of it. Martha was asleep, limp with limbs dangling over Lily’s legs, mouth open, drool threatening.
She had the fattest cheeks he’d ever seen on a baby. He wanted to poke them to see if they’d deflate.
“She’s like a chipmunk,” he muttered, shifting his weight.
“Hmm?” Lily raised a brow.
He pointed to his face and puffed his cheeks.
She snorted softly rocking her legs a bit when Martha smacked her lips in sleep. “She’s sweet.”
“Yeah, as long as I don’t get near her, I guess. Maybe she doesn’t like my face.”
“Probably.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I didn’t mean
it that way. Only that babies like familiar things. She’s never been around men. Your facial hair probably upsets her.”
He ran his hand down his beard and scratched his chin. He’d been bearded since before hipsters had made it cool, first out of laziness, and later so that people would stop accidentally calling him by his father’s name. He’d never thought they looked that much alike but apparently the rest of Sparks disagreed.
He took a seat at the opposite end of the sofa, putting some space between him and the sleeping banshee. He grabbed the remote, but stared through the parted blinds next to the entertainment center. That side of the trailer faced the road. Traffic had picked up. There was some kind of event happening down on the lake.
Where’d those Jaguars go?
They couldn’t have just vanished. No shifter had that ability, except Lola Perez’s son Tito, and he wasn’t disappearing so much as running too fast for most people to be able to see him.
“Are they running or vanishing?” he murmured, rubbing his beard again.
“What?” Lily asked.
He crooked his thumb in the general direction of the Jaguar encampment and then turned on the TV. “I was just thinking that it’d be frightening as hell if the Jaguars had the ability to actually disappear the way Lola Perez can.”
Lily seemed to be considering it, judging by the deep crease of her brow and her gently parted lips.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d discussed tactical information with a woman who wasn’t Willa or Diana. Coyote women he’d known generally avoided any parts of pack politics because they had to be careful to keep their allegiances hidden, and he really didn’t spend much time around people who weren’t Coyotes. Before moving to Maria, he’d never really had a reason to. Blue’s father Randall Shapely had kept the group fairly insulated in Sparks, and when Lance and Kenny had moved with Blue to Vegas, Lance had spent more time in his plane than on the Strip. It was a wonder he’d developed conversational skills at all.
“I don’t think she would have given them that ability,” Lily said right as the local news started its opening montage. “Tito can’t even do that.”