“You’re walking yourself into a logical nightmare, Violet.” Nash licked his thin lips. “You can’t protect every Wanderer from Spencer without uniting the pack again and you can’t fight Spencer without risking people’s lives.” He walked around the table and came closer.
Chaz’s golden heat enveloped me as he slid his hand into mine. “But you can draw a line in the sand.”
I looked up at him, into his golden eyes. He was juiced from some unknown source. “What?”
“I thought you were the queen of all cinema. You draw a line. Do what you do best.”
“Frustrate them to death?” Jessa said from the kitchen door. She darted around Peter’s broad frame and walked across the white tile floor, grabbing a kitchen towel to swiftly cover the blood on her hand and standing dangerously close to Tucker.
Chaz continued. “You make them choose. Keep the magic out of it. No pack stuff. Just make them choose which side of the line they want to be on when the fighting happens.”
“It’s too simple,” Peter said. “Which is why it might work.”
I turned toward Chaz. “Are you seriously telling me to Plan A it? To go in there and just tell all the leaders the truth? When has that ever worked?”
“With the Akasha,” Tucker said.
“But . . .”
“You said so yourself. It’s just Inez.” Tucker smiled. I think he was enjoying this just a little too much.
I licked my lips and leaned back against the tile counter, Chaz’s hand still firmly grasped in mine.
Nash spoke again. “Start with offering up the information about the Shades.”
Jessa sighed. “How about we just pull out the big guns and tell them what Spencer is planning?”
All of us took a keen interest in Jessa and I think she drew out telling us the information for dramatic effect. Good to know you can never take the princess out of this particular fairy.
“You were right. It was Spencer. There was enough of his energy left in her to see what he was up to. It took a few go-rounds and that poor girl is exhausted, but—”
“Jessa! Seriously get to the point.”
“He’s trying to come back. Plus, Jovan wants him back on this side of the Veil.”
The collective intake of air should have rid the kitchen of oxygen but no one passed out.
“As a messenger kind of thing?” I’m not sure who asked the question, who had regained their wits first. Sure wasn’t me.
Jessa looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “I got more of a ‘get the boy away’ thing.”
“So there has been a power struggle on the other side,” Tucker said.
I began to pace. There were so many people in the kitchen that the pacing room was only three good strides and I was pretty sure that I stepped on someone but they didn’t protest.
“So Jovan takes the little devil under his wing. Teaches him things like how to steal energy, things that his father never taught him. He gets really good at it, which is why I defaulted to it when I was dying, but now, he’s gotten too big for his britches and surrogate daddy wants him out of the nest. So he’s pulling on his debts to help my older brother three-heel-click it back home.”
I looked around at the gaping mouths.
“Don’t explain it to the others like that,” Jessa said. “There was just way too much wrong with that whole thing.”
“But I’m right.” I looked around at all the other eyes, but particularly Nash’s. I knew that he’d find the flaw in the logic. He shook his head. I smiled. We had a plan.
“So we get back to Dallas. Tell the heads what we know and—”
Tucker spoke. “Fortify you. You’re the one he needs to get across.”
I nodded. “Agreed, but if I’ve got all the Wanderers keeping a look out for weirdness, then that should be easier.”
“Maybe we could ask a certain long lost cousin to see something useful?” Chaz asked.
“First steps first, though,” Nash said. “Do we want to break the Demon Lock?”
I gasped. “What?”
“Cristina solved it for us,” Nash said as he walked back around to the side of the table. “It was in the margins of the paper you had stuck in there.”
The energy between Tyler and me tightened. I pulled at it as well, like he was keeping me upright as much as I was keeping him standing, both knowing that we could do this together.
“Seth Garrett had it half right and Cristina finished it off.”
“What?” Chaz joined us at the table to look over the bound book.
Nash’s gaze bounced between me and Chaz like a tennis ball that didn’t quite know when to stop.
“I mean I knew that he helped people out, but he broke Jovan’s mark?”
I nodded. How was I going to say this without completely sending Chaz into another dark and broody because maybe I had left out a few vital details about his father? “Cristina was helping me figure out exactly how. Our concern was that we could break it, but it would bond them to me, and I can’t have more than four.”
“Why not?” Chaz asked, his eyes growing more golden as the conversation went on.
Why’d he have to ask that question? “Because the way that your father did it actually just broke the bond with Jovan and didn’t actually remove the lock.”
Chaz wasn’t stupid. He’d lived with monsters and demons his whole life. He knew how this stuff worked. “Dad pinned the mark on himself. Like the boys pinned their mark on you.”
I nodded.
“And the boys drained you, so the others drained him?”
Iris finally broke in on the powwow. “Seth knew what he was doing.” The crowd parted for her as she carefully made her way to the table. “Came to me, told me what he’d done.”
“Did it kill him?” Chaz’s hands wrapped around the top of the kitchen chair and I watched the tension run up from his white knuckles to his shoulders.
“Made him fight like hell.” Iris reached out and put her wrinkled hand over Chaz’s hand. “He fought harder afterward. He was connected to others. And he knew that Haverty had to die.”
Chaz got silent, that stony silent that he always got.
I curled my arm around his. “Nash, how do we break it?”
Nash licked his lips. “Fire. Burn another mark on top of it, just like Garrett did.”
“But it wasn’t enough,” Chaz growled next to me.
Nash looked to me for permission to continue. I nodded and he slipped into Mr. Info Mode.
“The lock connects two people’s magics, their souls if you will, allowing for a flow of energy. Undoing the mark just unlocks them but it’s like two loose shoelaces. Still dangling out there. The key, the part that Cristina figured out, was how to loop the magic back in on itself and create a whole person again.”
“My brilliant girl,” Tyler breathed. Something light and fluttery passed between us.
“How?” I asked.
“By redirecting the person’s power into themselves.”
“And what makes you think that I can do that?”
“Because you’re the freak with the stories,” Jessa said. “We do stuff together that no one’s even heard of before.”
I burst out laughing, as did the whole of the kitchen. “And I’m the one who says stuff wrong?”
Jessa just rolled her eyes. “I’m saying that you have a knack for this stuff. If your little brain can dream it up, I’m pretty sure you can do it.”
“Like that lightning thing with Carlisle. Shifters aren’t supposed to be able to do that,” Tucker said from behind Jessa.
“And no one but a Fairy Warden is supposed to be able to weave the Veil but you can.”
I shook my head. “I’m not chancing this one. We need more than just Violet’s brain to rely on. It’s too important.”
“So use your stones,” Nash said as innocently as possible.
“What?” I said, with a smile. I was beginning to think that everyone needed an extra cup of coffee this mo
rning.
“Cristina thought of that too. You’ll have two loose ends. Put a banishing field up so Jovan’s energy can’t stay anywhere around here and something else that will help bind their energy to themselves.”
“What about anyone else within a five-mile radius?” I asked. “What protects them from Jovan?”
Nash’s face turned to stone. “You can’t protect everyone.”
I was going to have to choose between my pack and innocent people. My stomach churned and I felt something like a squid kick around in my gut. Did I put my pack above the others in the area?
I tightened my embrace of Chaz’s arm. His power beat around him, his emotions breaking through his steely borders for the moment. I’d fought too hard to let this happen, to have my people take from me. And Seth Garrett had fought too hard to have me stop trying.
“Do it.” The words made my mouth dry and my stomach turn over on itself. A million other thoughts ran through my head.
Nash and Kandice nodded and took the book away. Tyler escorted Jane back upstairs.
The rest of us just looked at each other in silence for a moment.
“You can do this,” Chaz finally said.
I dropped my head to his shoulder. “I wish I had your faith.”
“You do. And apparently that of everyone else you’ve every met.”
Chaz pulled his arm away from me. “Who thinks Violet can pull this off?”
Chaz raised his hand and everyone else in the room did too. It was ridiculous to see a group of grown-ups raise their hands, but the visual was damn effective.
“Who’s going to be right there, just in case Plan A doesn’t work out?”
Everyone kept their hands up.
“Fine,” I said as I pulled Chaz’s arm down. “But this isn’t a joke. I know I tend to tread on the lighter side of things, but not about people’s souls.”
Tucker stepped up. “As a person who happens to actually have their magic connected to yours, I know you can do this. You just have to want to.”
PETER CAME IN when I was scratching my back against the rough edge of Iris’s fireplace. “What can I do for my favorite emissary?”
He stalked across the living room and joined me by the fireplace. “Still wanted to make sure you were keen on this unity thing.”
“Not pushing for unity. I just want to make sure that everyone is safe.”
Peter watched me for a second as I rubbed against the mantel.
“Are your scars itching?”
I stopped and a chill ran down my shoulders. They were. That’s exactly what it was. The fours scars down my shoulder tickled almost.
“Mine do that right before a major litigation.” Peter said.
“I think mine are trying to tell me that I’m mortal.”
“Well,” Peter said as he ran his fingers through his blond hair. It fell back into its perfect order. “You are trying to do not one but two things that have never been done before.”
“Break the marks and unify a city?”
“Defy a demon and declare war on your maker.”
“I think that second thing has been done before. Granted, it was probably in a movie, but I’m sure it’s been done before.”
“You need an army if you think you can stop him,” Peter said frankly.
I looked up from where my eyes had been raking the bricks of the fireplace. “I’ve got one better. I’ve got a silver-tongued wolf who can charm the skin off a snake and will get all the heads together by the time I get back to Dallas.”
Peter’s jaw turned to stone as he clenched his teeth. “That would take a miracle.”
“No, it won’t, and you want to know why?” I reached over and placed my hand over his heart. It pounded under my fingertips. “Because I know what your insides look like, Peter. I know why your bond to me is so different from all the others.”
He licked his lips. “Why’s that?”
“The others are strands, they keep themselves loosely connected to me for their own reasons. But our connection is a million strands twisted together through strife, and frankly, some serious frustration. Do you understand?”
Peter’s lower lip quivered for a moment and his borders dropped around him and I was awash in the scent of leather and sandalwood.
“You are the tested rope, Peter. And you are the stronger for it. You can work those miracles.”
In a sharp move, Peter took my hand from his chest and put it against his smooth cheek. He closed his eyes and took in a long, steady breath. “You reminded me of my older sister.” His breath traveled down my wrist as he narrated the story that I’d been waiting for. “She was fierce and free-spirited and everything I couldn’t be because of . . .” He took in a deep shuddering breath. “She was on the outside what she was on the inside.”
“What happened to her?” I whispered.
“Nothing. She’s living happily in Seattle with her two kids. But until you, until . . . I didn’t think I’d be comfortable enough in my skin to even think about that kind of happiness.”
His blue eyes fluttered open and I smiled up at him. “Feel free to quote me back to me.”
“It’s not about the power. It’s about the lives you build.”
“And if I can do anything to help in those choices, or help you build anything, you only need to ask.”
Slowly, Peter let go of my hand and let it trail down his chest before I pulled it into the back pocket of my jeans.
“Thank you, Prima.”
I felt the word, felt the power burning in my chest as he repledged himself to me, to this fight.
Peter dropped his head and walked out of the living room past a very confused Chaz.
I called out after him. “If you want his new cell number, it’s on my phone.”
Chaz raised an eyebrow but walked to join me by the fireplace. “Does that need explanation?”
“He’s going to set up a meeting with the other heads.”
I rested my head on Chaz’s chest. That morning when it was light between us, when it was far away and just us, seemed a million years ago.
“You’re exhausted.”
“I’m exhausted. Are they ready yet?”
“No. They didn’t have enough salt.”
He kissed my temple and wrapped his arms around me. I pressed myself against his strong chest and took in a deep breath of that wonderful scent.
“Remember when it was simple stuff, like four mutts chasing after me?”
Chaz chuckled and I closed my eyes to just be quiet for a moment. Just be still. And loved. And just Violet.
“Can I tell you a story for a change? I think you might need it.”
Chaz pulled me over to the couch and set me down. He pulled my legs over his and I rested my head on the back of the couch. He ran his hand through my long hair and pulled lightly the ends, sending prickles of calm down my scalp.
“I met this girl once. Klutzy thing that couldn’t seem to keep her shoes on.”
I laughed.
“Hey. Interrupting the narrative flow.”
I rested my head back on the couch. “Continue.”
“So this girl didn’t know just how special she was. Couldn’t see the big picture. Sure she could tell you the entire canon of Star Wars, but she couldn’t see what was really going on around her. And it amazed me that when the world was falling around her ears, she was still her. And when there was blood and violence, she was still her. And now that she is facing down another prophecy about death and another resurrection of a demon, she is still her.”
“And what is that?”
“Funny. Sharp. And she still puts others first.”
“So what are you going to do about this shoeless, klutzy girl, because she sounds a little dense?”
Chaz smiled and everything went golden for a moment. “I’m going to marry her and make sure I put her first.”
A tear squeaked out of the corner of my eye. “Still keen on that idea? After all this?”
“Because of all this.
I curled into his chest and tucked my head into his neck. A few more hot and happy tears streamed down my face and I buried it into his chest. Why did he always manage to make me cry?
“I want to get married in the barn,” I said into his Illinois T-shirt.
I waited for the laughter, or some joke about animals, etc. Nothing came. I sat up and looked at him.
“I love it.” He shrugged. “Now you have a phone call to make to Drew. Don’t think I’m letting you out of your promise from yesterday.”
“Yes, sir.” And I kissed him. More than I had kissed him in a good long while.
Chapter Eighteen
IT WAS BIG spell time. Nash had drawn this circle in a field and it spread out as far as I could see. The boy had a talent for spell craft, or at least for following instructions to the letter. Maybe Cristina actually had the flair.
Tyler had gathered the four with the mark. Jane still quivered from her run-in this morning. Charlotte, the other Fang sister, stood there, her heels digging into the earth. Julio was joined by his two brothers. Hannah and Evan held each other’s hands.
Others stood outside of woven patterns of the circle.
Jessa squeezed my arm. “I think I have something that will help.”
“I’m taking all I can get.”
Jessa reached up and touched my forehead. There was a familiar chill that forced my eyes closed as a cool power covered my face. “It will let you see the unseen. Like I did that one time.”
“I love that we survived that-one-times.”
I opened my eyes and Jessa glowed a little more radiant than usual, like I was looking at the world through 3D glasses. Everything had a deeper dimension.
The circle beneath my feet glowed white and I knew this was going to work because even I had a hard time pushing through the barrier as I walked toward my people. The circle really did know evil.
“So you know how this is going to work?” I asked my huddling masses.
They all nodded obediently.
“Then I guess I just need a willing participant.”
The four looked around at each other. I wouldn’t have volunteered to be first either.
“Fine, I’ll go,” Charlotte said. “Nothing’s gonna hurt more than giving birth to Terrell. Have you seen the head on that kid?”
Nine Lives of an Urban Panther Page 21