“ ‘Destroy’ is a very harsh word, Nash.”
Nash struggled and it killed me. Nash was our heart and if he was in pain, then I was in pain. I opened up my hand to him and rested it on the table between us.
“Thank you for telling me, Nash. Tucker just growled at me when I mentioned his name.”
There was a twitch on Nash’s lips.
“And frankly, the guy’s had me on edge since our first meeting. He’s too perfect. It’s annoying.”
“Tell me about it.” Nash finally reached out and took my hand.
I squeezed his long fingers. “I don’t trust him a hundred percent. But he knows things and—”
“The evil you know is better than the evil you don’t,” he finished.
I smiled. “You know, I never fully appreciated that statement until recently.”
Nash brought his wide hazel eyes up to mine. “You changed us from the zombies we were. Maybe you can turn him into something that isn’t a complete dou—”
“Nash,” I chided. “Language. You’re in a library.”
I WAS AT home for exactly thirty minutes before Jessa knocked on my door. And I was so looking forward to a nap.
“Hello bride-to-be,” she greeted as she sauntered into my living room. Her black hair caught the rest of the daylight as she posed, her big bag swinging on her arm.
I sighed. In all the hustle of the day, in all the flipping through that blasted planner, I’d forgotten that Jessa and I had plans. “I need coffee.”
Jessa frowned as she followed me into the kitchen. There wasn’t much protein in there, , but damn if I didn’t have the best coffee station this side of Oak Lawn.
I started to grind the beans.
Jessa waited to speak until after the beans were properly pulverized. “What’s up? Why are you so tired? You and Chaz enjoying the you-and-Chaz a little too much?”
I grimaced. “No. But good to know you’re warped.”
I snapped the beans into place and flipped the switch to brew them. “It seems that along with playing Prima, almost having my house broken into, not to mention the Legacy, I at some point became a millionaire.”
I ran her through the meeting with Delmont.
“Seriously?” Jessa smiled.
“Seriously.”
“And Stalker Boy?”
“He’s completely on board.”
Jessa’s eyebrows jumped. “Wow. That was a little unexpected.”
“Why?”
“I’d thought he’d tell you to distance yourself from it as much as you can. It’s practically blood money.”
“Thank you!” I flipped on the steamer. When I stopped, I pulled two to-go mugs out of the cabinet. “I’ve been saying that the whole time and he’s still all supportive and you can do this.”
Jessa looked down at her hands. “He doesn’t understand the temptation.”
My skin tingled. It was a very un-Jessa thing to say. “Huh?”
“I think you forget we’re linked sometimes. I know what you go through. Hell, right now, I can feel how tired you are and he won’t understand that. I don’t think Chaz fully appreciates just how fine a line you walk, because he’s never had to walk that line.”
“Which is probably why I love him. He will always be squarely on the good guy side.”
“Thank God, because I don’t want all this wedding planning to go to waste.”
I was just about to sip my latté when I got the gist of tonight. I don’t know why it took me so long to put all the pieces together. She had a bag that was bigger than normal. She was wearing comfortable shoes instead of the in-style espadrilles. “Are we going wedding planning?”
A smile spread across Jessa’s face and she beamed. Literally. Part of the fairy-princess gig. “I’ve got the whole evening set.”
“Joy,” I snarked.
“I LOOK LIKE a cream puff.” I was trapped in a prison of tulle and satin. The corset dug into my ribs and the feathers along the top tickled my nose.
“It’s gorgeous.” Jessa fluttered around me, fluffing this and that.
“I can’t see my feet,” I complained.
“Why do you need to see your feet?” Jessa said.
I looked at the mirror and grimaced. Jessa peeked out from around my whipped cream disaster.
“You need to try on dresses to see what you like,” Jessa said as she went to sit on the love seat provided for families.
I sighed. My shoulders were starting to ache and the three ibuprofen weren’t doing anything for it. “Can’t you just pick out something fabulous and make sure that the pictures look good?”
“No, Violet. This is your special day. It has to be what you like.”
I looked back at the dress. “This is not what I want.”
Two more dresses later, I still wasn’t sure what I liked.
“Definitely not this,” I said as I waddled like a penguin over to the love seat next to her. Jessa sighed. It was supposed to be a mermaid cut, but I felt more like a mummy.
“You have to have thought about it, Vi. You have to have a direction. What girl doesn’t know what her wedding is going to look like?”
I raised my hand. My arms were the only thing moving in this dress. “This one.”
“Seriously.” Jessa dropped her chin to her chest and raised her eyebrows. “In the six weeks you’ve been engaged, you didn’t think about what you wanted.”
“I haven’t really had a lot of time to myself, Jessa. With the new pack and the other Wanderers and the holes in the Veil, being engaged sort of took a back seat.” I reached down the front of the dress and pulled at the bodice so I could take a deep breath. I slipped down on to the cushion next to her. “I thought about who I wanted there. You, Iris, Tucker. I can see people.”
Jessa sighed for the millionth time that evening. “This was supposed to be a bonding experience.”
“Aren’t we bonded enough?” I asked.
“No, like girlie bonding. One night without that magic stuff. This is what girlfriends do. They go wedding-dress shopping and have champagne and fun. We used to go out and have fun, remember?”
“I’m not sure regular girlfriends close a wedding boutique to have a fully catered buffet while one of them tries on dresses that are three times her mortgage.”
Jessa shrugged. “I can’t help that.”
I smiled. “Fine. But this little number.” I gestured to the slinky gown. “It’s not it. And it smells funny.”
Satin binding my knees together tightly, I wriggled to the edge of the couch. “How do you walk in this?”
Jessa rose and offered a hand to help me up. “Think little Chihuahua. Tiny steps on your toes.”
Jessa helped pull me to my feet. It was a struggle given the height differential and the fact that the heaviest thing Jessa ever lifted was her purse.
Finally, we managed me off the couch. “Thanks.”
“Try the one with the blue sash.”
“Are you serious?”
“Go,” she pointed with her firm forefinger. “Humor me.”
I threw up my hands. “Humoring. I’m humoring.”
The next two dresses were hideous and by the seventh, I was exhausted. Wearing formal wear wasn’t exhausting; the contortions needed to get in and out of is was. I leaned against the couch next to her and sipped the cool champagne. My head was spinning, and after the week I’d had, I was pretty sure it wasn’t just the champagne.
“What’s wrong with this one?” Jessa asked, probably expecting another goring critique.
“Actually”—I looked down at the cream-colored dress and was able to take in a deep breath—“this one doesn’t suck.”
“Hallelujah.”
I turned around and looked at myself in the mirror. It was a simple strapless ivory dress that went down to the floor but I could still see my toes beneath. I turned to the side. “I think I like it.”
Jessa joined me at the mirror. “Nice simple lines. There is one problem though.�
� She turned my back to the mirror. “You can see the marks.”
As I turned my head to look over my shoulder, the four scars down my back were visible, highlighted against the ivory of the dress. “I haven’t seen those in a while.”
They still unnerved me. I had almost forgotten about the scars down my shoulder, it seemed so long ago, and yet I felt the burden of it every day.
“Vi?” Jessa asked.
“It’s okay,” I said as I looked back at her. “I’m not saying they are war wounds, but they are part of who I am and I’d expect anyone at my wedding probably already knows what they are.”
Jessa nodded. “I’ll write down the style name of the gown.”
“Just don’t tell me how much it is yet.”
“Aye, aye fearless leader.” Jessa walked back to the couch to get the wedding binder she had made. It was lavender satin with a white lace wedding cake on the top. How not me is that?
But her snide remark did beg a question. “Why do you call me ‘fearless leader’?”
Jessa looked up from her binder. “Because you hate it.”
“Has your family ever been part of a pack?”
Jessa froze. “Why?”
I swallowed and licked my lips. “Haverty was able to control other breeds within his pack. I don’t know if I can.”
Jessa slowly walked toward me to get the dress information. “Are you seriously thinking about taking over Dallas?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Delmont said that there would be chaos. But it sounds like the others are doing the same thing that we are.”
“And do we trust this Delmont person?”
“I don’t know. He’s tough to read. One minute he’s Team Violet, and the next he’s making deals with the devil. But what if he’s right?”
Jessa shook her head. “It’s not you, Violet. I know what you are capable of, and as much as I joke, you’re doing a great job with the boys, but . . .”
She moved away to put her binder back on the couch. “I don’t know if a Key Holder should be bound to a pack. We are sort of supposed to be neutral. It’s why we don’t deal with the Cause. We maintain the Veil, keep the powerful ones out, no matter their personal philosophies.”
“What about Chaz? Have you heard of guardians in a pack?”
She sat on the edge of the couch. “You’d have to ask him. But he’s sort of already chosen his side, the Cause.”
I rolled my eyes. “Right. Those lovelies.”
Jessa smiled. “He chose you too, so it can’t all be bad.”
I put my hands on my hips and looked down at the gorgeous dress. If I tried hard enough, I could see something like a wedding. Holding flowers. Probably purple ones. Maybe with some catnip.
Chapter Seven
THERE WERE TWO reasons I was taking this meeting at the coffee shop instead of my home office in my turtle pajamas. The first was that in all the excitement, I’d run out of coffee beans for the coffeemaker. The second was that there was no longer a moment’s peace with Chaz buzzing about the house doing God knows what, Kandice pacing in the guest bedroom, and Nash and Tucker alternating who was constantly checking up on all three of us.
So I curled up in my other office, the corner table where I’d taken a million meetings in the past month, and talked to the LA think tank who had me on speakerphone. Thanks to the super hearing, I could still hear everything on the call.
“Violet!” they all yelled simultaneously.
I smiled. The guys at the production company had known me since I was Drew’s lowly assistant and worked with me at every cheesy step of the way through a million scripts. Now, I’d handpicked a group of people who could see MoonBlood onto the small screen. Putting your paranormal autobiography on TV does require some finesse.
“Hey guys! How’s the weather?”
“Too damn sunny as usually.”
“Same here. Where should we start?”
Silence filled the line.
“Guys?”
Finally one of them spoke up. His voice was shaky. Did I have so much clout I could intimidate grown men from across the country? Go me. “We had some concerns with the main character.”
“Charles? What’s wrong with Charles?” It already felt like they were kicking my baby.
“We think we need to make him tougher.”
I laughed. “Tougher we can do. What else?”
“We need to see more of Raven?”
“You mean the hot redhead in the leather everything?” I knew that was coming. I’d grown up in this culture. I know what nerdy boys want. They want the hot unattainable who they strive to attain and get. “Done.”
“And we need to get the bad guy to be less bad.”
I gulped. By working out Charles’s pain after being bitten by a werewolf, I’d been masking my own. While his villain was a black-haired, blue-eyed alpha female who wanted nothing but power and got hers in the end, mine had gotten away and still haunted me. I didn’t know if I could soften anything about my memory of Spencer.
Guess I needed to put all the fictionalizing to work. “I think I can come up with something.”
“And the location. We think it should be in New York.”
“Why?”
“It’s got such a modern feel to it. We want it to be in a modern place.”
“I still think it should be in Portland. It fits Charles more.”
Another voice spoke up. “How about we see what the budget allows for and write accordingly?”
I nodded. “Agreed. Let’s do be practical about this?”
There was a snicker on the line. “About a werewolf torn between evil and good? Of course, let’s be practical.”
The group of us laughed.
There was that sense of camaraderie that I missed. “What can I do for you next, guys?”
“Story arcs. Three or four for each character.”
I scratched down the assignment in my planner. As I flipped through the pages, I tried to find some time to carve out to work. I think I had Sunday morning off and a little time on Tuesday before the full moon, which was approaching faster than I really wanted. “Done. Anything else?”
“I think we are good at our end. We will hammer out the business stuff but we’ll need to get scripts out pretty soon to dangle in front of the money people.”
“Noted. Want to schedule a time to talk next week?”
The group laughed. “We can’t think that far ahead, Violet. We don’t see the big picture like you can. Just call us when you can.”
“Okay.” I flipped through a few pages of the planner and scratched in a time to call them again. They might have that flexibility but I certainly did not.
“Hey, we were wondering if you’re planning a trip out here anytime soon. We’d love to do this in person at some point.”
“I can’t think that far ahead, guys. Talk to y’all later.”
I hit the “end” button on the phone and rested my head in my hands. At least I’d managed not to lie to them. Bonus points for me.
But where the hell had y’all come from? Maybe I had been here too long.
I WAS DRIVING home when I got another call. This one threw me more than Kandice’s or anything Jessa could possible think up, and lately, with all the holes in the Veil, her phone calls has been pretty exciting over the past six weeks.
Waylon’s panicked voice shrieked in my ear. “Violet? Is Lexie with you?”
I stalled my car at the stop sign as fear made my muscles lock up and I couldn’t downshift smoothly. “What?”
“She’s not in her room. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of. Is she with you?”
“No, Waylon.”
“Violet, I don’t know what do to.”
Finally, something I could handle. Muscle memory put my gearshift into neutral and I jammed down on the clutch. “Actually, I do. I’m coming to you.”
The car behind me honked at I tossed the phone into the passenger seat and turned the ignition. When my baby wa
s purring again, I threw her into first gear and did a U-turn in the intersection. I loved my little car.
As I was flying over to Waylon’s, I called Chaz. “Hey, meet me at Waylon’s and bring your tracking gear.”
“What?”
“Bring that bag you bring when you tell people you’re going to hunt someone down.”
“Oh. What’s going on?”
“Lexie’s missing.”
“I can be there in thirty minutes.”
“You’ll be there now.”
I heard him grumble on the other end of the line. “Wait. What are you doing?”
While I came to a stop at a stoplight, I turned on my super hearing to try to figure out where he was. He was driving. I’d know the exhaust of that engine anywhere. “Chaz? Where are you going? Did the Avion call you?”
He sighed. “I was tracking that thing that broke into our houses.”
“Are you kidding? What were you thinking?”
“That it broke into my house?”
“But alone? It was strong enough to make a boot print in my front door. What was going to stop it from making a boot print in your head?”
“I did perfectly fine before I met you.”
I had to pause for a moment as I threw my car angrily into second gear. “And you’re trying to get back your lost freedom?”
“No, Violet. I’m trying to protect myself.”
“At least call someone. Tucker’s off duty.”
“They are not my pack, Violet!” The truth finally reared its ugly head.
“Don’t be stupid, Chaz.” I knew it wasn’t the best thing to say. I really knew it when he hung up on me.
WAYLON WAS PACING the foyer when I got there. “Oh thank God, Violet. I was just about to call the police and I . . .”
His eyes glanced behind me and I felt Chaz walk up. “You two move fast.”
“When family needs us, we’re here,” I answered.
Waylon’s brown eyes landed back on me. “We had this fight, and I could just hear someone who wasn’t me yelling at her and . . .”
“It’s okay, Waylon. I remember how many times I wanted to run away at her age.”
Nine Lives of an Urban Panther Page 7