Tess tugged Missy back out into the hallway and looked into the living room with suspicious eyes. “Does carrying a shifter’s baby suck brain cells, or has she always been like that?”
“No, that’s just Fawn. We think she got her name because she’s about as smart as one. But do you see what I mean?”
“About what?”
“About it being your fault?”
“Missy! No, I do not see what you mean. I don’t even see what language you’re speaking.” She realized she was shouting and lowered her voice. “I am so beyond confused that I don’t even think I could find my way back with a map. Why does it matter that these three women are going to have kittens?”
“Didn’t you listen to anything we told you last week? Spotted Felines don’t just get women pregnant. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Actually, what you told me was that the birthrate was declining. Clearly it’s not dead yet, or the whole race would be extinct.”
Missy growled in exasperation. She sounded a lot like Graham. “Yeah, but it’s been declining for hundreds and hundreds of years. Last year there were seven spotted Feline births in New York. Seven! All year. And now we have three pregnancies in one week? What does that say to you?”
“Nothing!” Tess threw up her hands. “It says nothing to me, because I have no idea what you’re getting at! Last week you told me about a curse on the spotted Feline shifters that said pregnancy couldn’t happen until a Felix stayed faithful to a witch for a year and a day. Rafe has only been with me for eight bloody days! And even if I have kept him too busy to sleep with anyone else, that’s still not enough time to undo your bloody curse! So what the hell are you trying to tell me?”
The blond woman took a deep breath and spoke again, slower and more softly this time. “I’m trying to tell you that maybe the legend is wrong. Maybe the year-and-a-day thing isn’t really necessary. Maybe once you get pregnant, anyone can get pregnant. Or maybe Rafe only needs to fall in love with you to lift the curse. I’m not sure. But I am sure that you have something to do with the answer, and that’s why I dragged you all the way across town.”
“Missy, I can’t—”
“Just listen. I have a theory.”
“Miss—”
“Listen.” The Luna took a deep breath and began pacing. “I was thinking about it after lunch, while I was nursing Roark. See, until he’s weaned, I still have some Lupine abilities. Not like I did while I was pregnant, and not like a real Lupine, of course, but echoes of the things they can do. I love it. I’ll be sorry to stop nursing, because I know that’s when it will really fade away. See, at the moment, I have the most amazing connection to Graham. I can see things the way he does. I can smell them. It’s like looking at the world through Lupine eyes. I mean, I know he still sees and smells and tastes things so much more clearly than me, but I’m only human. At least I get to see the echoes. And I got to thinking about that. About echoes, and the connection that forms between a shifter and a non-shifter when she’s carrying his child.”
Tess sighed impatiently, but she listened.
“And I started to think maybe that was the secret to the curse,” Missy continued. “What if it wasn’t about being faithful to a non-Feline for a year and a day, but about having that connection to one. I figured, what if all the witch wanted was for a Felix to experience that connection to a non-Feline, to become almost like the same person for the time that the witch he mated with was pregnant. That’s why I called to ask if you were pregnant. I thought you must be, if it had managed to lift the curse.”
“Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not.” Tess made a face. “Look, I know you’re only trying to help the Felines, and I do understand, Missy, but I just don’t have time for this right now. The last week of my life has been utter chaos. I’ve missed more hours of work in these past few days than in the last seven years combined. I have orders backing up from here to kingdom come, and if I ask Bette to cover for me one more time, I think she’s going to cover me with wet cement before throwing me into the East River. I have to go.”
Missy sighed. “I know. I just got so excited when I thought I’d figured it out.”
Tess reached out and hugged the other woman impulsively. “I know, and I appreciate it. And as soon as this business with the councils meeting is over, we’ll figure it out together, okay?”
Missy hugged her back. “If you say so. But I honestly thought I had it. I mean, if all these Feline pregnancies didn’t happen because Rafe knocked you up, what the heck is going on here?”
Seventeen
Tess stepped out of the subway station still mumbling over Missy’s question. As if she had any idea what the heck was going on in her life these days. The last clue she’d possessed had gotten knocked clean out of her the minute Rafe tackled her in the alley on Wednesday night. Since then, she’d barely been able to tell if she was coming or going.
Except mostly, she’d been coming.
Rafe seemed unable to keep his hands off her, which was flattering, she acknowledged, but also a little freaky. Tess knew she was cute, knew men responded to her blond curls and her blue eyes and her curvy figure, but they didn’t usually insinuate themselves quite so far into her life within the first ten days of the relationship. Though to be accurate, it had actually been only nine days; so, you know, one day freakier.
Her alley cat encounter had happened on Wednesday night. By Saturday, he had managed somehow—she still wasn’t quite sure how it had happened—to wheedle a spare key from her so that even when she retained enough sense not to let him take her back to his place, she still couldn’t stay away from him. Or rather, Rafe couldn’t stay away from her. If she didn’t present herself in his apartment by ten o’clock each night, he magically appeared at hers. Usually hungry.
Not that Tess could complain about the sex, mind you, unless she intended to complain about getting too much of it, and she just didn’t have that kinda crazy. Sex with the werecat continued to burn hot enough to sear the sheets and intense enough that she’d given up any pretense of working out at a gym because her heart rate got up into the cardiac fitness zone every time Rafe so much as laid a hand on her. The intensity of the chemistry between them frankly overwhelmed her.
In fact, that word summed up Tess’s entire life at the moment: overwhelming.
Stuffing her hands into her pockets, she trudged around the corner, deep in thought. Missy’s chosen topic for the afternoon hadn’t exactly done much to reassure her, either. Pregnancy just wasn’t the kind of thing Tess left up to chance. If she ever had kids—and she kind of hoped she would someday—she did not intend to bring them into the world as a single mom. Heck, it was hard enough to take care of herself as a working professional; add kids to the mix, and she could envision nothing but trouble. No, children didn’t figure in to her life plan until after she had met Mr. Right and heard him utter those three little words: I am committed. The tincture of wild carrot she took daily was just her little insurance policy.
Missy had seemed surprised that Tess had thought about birth control since meeting Rafe. Granted, lust-induced stupidity had swept the thought from her mind during their first encounter, but one of the first things she’d done the next day was take her tincture. Thankfully, the stuff was effective as a plan B option, but she sure hadn’t missed a dose since then. Rafe might still be sniffing at her door more than a week after their meeting, but who knew how long that behavior would last? In Tess’s experience, men couldn’t exactly be called the most faithful bunch on the planet, and from what she’d gathered from Missy and her friends, Feline men sounded even less inclined to settle in for the long haul. Without that kind of commitment, Tess considered her womb closed for business.
Unfortunately, all that logic didn’t seem to be doing her much good in taking her mind off what intentions Rafe might actually have toward her. Sure, he reached for her each time with just as much enthusiasm as he had from the first, but after just nine days, what did that re
ally mean?
“Most likely? That even cats are horny pigs,” she muttered to herself as she skirted a car that had managed to park with its front passenger tire all the way up on the curb. Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to own cars in Manhattan.
Narrowly resisting the urge to take her frustration and sour mood out on the unsuspecting vehicle, she pressed close against the stairs of the adjacent building and picked her way through the narrow slice of open sidewalk.
The premonition hit her three seconds before the first blow did.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the pipe swing down, aiming for the back of her head. She also saw the split in her scalp, the dark spray of blood, black in the poorly lit space between streetlamps, and the depressed fracture at the back of her skull. She saw herself fall and saw the glassy blankness of her own eyes staring sightlessly up at the night sky. She saw all of it in a fraction of a second, and in the next fraction, she twisted, raising her arms to shield the back of her head and screaming bloody murder, because that was exactly what her attacker had intended.
Instead of connecting with the back of Tess’s skull, her attacker’s aim was thrown off the mark by her sudden and unexpected movement. The intended killing blow glanced off her shoulder and back, still packing enough force to send pain exploding through her senses. She screamed again and heard a man’s voice cursing in the shadows. A stray beam of light glinted off dull metal as he raised the pipe for a second blow.
The third scream was the charm.
Tess spun and jumped onto the stairs, and the second strike caught her across the upper thigh. It felt like she imagined thunder would feel, if it could hit a person instead of just deafening them, and it sent her tumbling onto her ass. She saw stars—literally—but the pain took her breath away, so she could hear an angry shout and the sound of running footsteps pounding in her direction.
Her attacker, heavily camouflaged in a hooded jacket and dark bandanna, swore again and took off running, leaving Tess struggling to breathe and wishing for morphine.
“Holy shit!” someone said, the voice female but surprisingly powerful. Tess supposed it had to be in order to frighten off an armed mugger. “Did he get you? Are you hurt?”
“Yes, and I think so, but not badly.”
Tess winced and raised her spinning head to thank the woman who had probably saved her life. Part of her had expected to see a policewoman, or maybe a female wrestler—someone either well armed or bulging with muscles. Instead, she saw a tall, slim African American woman with coffee-colored skin, dark eyes, and hair so black that it glinted blue when she passed under the streetlights.
“You’re lucky, then,” the woman told her, stopping at the base of the steps Tess sat on and bracing her hands on her hips. “He looked like he was trying to kill you.”
“That’s only because he was.”
Tess winced and used the railing to lever herself to her feet. Her hands still shook from the aftermath of her adrenaline surge, her shoulder and back screamed like they were on fire, and her thigh barely wanted to support her weight. And still she knew she had gotten off lightly. If her magic hadn’t warned her of the coming attack, she could very well be dead right now.
“I should thank you,” she said, trying to muster a smile even as she cradled her right arm close against her body to lessen the strain on her injury. “He was about to come at me again when we heard you approaching. If you hadn’t come along, he could have killed me.”
The stranger’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I’m damned glad to see you’re alive, because I have a bone to pick with you, and it would be a hell of a lot less satisfying for me if I’d had to resort to telling off your corpse.”
Tess blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Not that I wouldn’t have done it,” the woman continued. Tess’s position standing on the second stair of the building entry put them eye-to-eye, and she could see that her erstwhile rescuer looked plenty mad. “In fact, I’m so ticked off right now, I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t have kicked you when you were down. You’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve, lady!”
Right, because Tess hadn’t been feeling confused enough before this.
“Um, look,” she began, eyeing the strange woman warily, “I’m really grateful for your help and everything, but I have no idea who you are or what the hell you’re talking about, so I’m just going to be on my way now, all right? You have a good night.”
The woman didn’t touch Tess, but she stepped to the side to block the way and keep Tess on the steps. With her brown eyes blazing and her lips pressed in a narrow line, the stranger looked a lot like an angry girlfriend, only Tess felt pretty sure she would have remembered if she’d ever dated a woman, let alone pissed one off enough for an angry public scene.
“I’ll tell you what I’m talking about,” the woman growled, “and you’re damned well going to listen. My name is Anisia Cuma, and it seems we didn’t need to meet before now for you to completely screw up my life.”
“Okay, are you looking for directions to Bellevue? Because I’m not sure—”
Anisia growled again, this time sounding an awful lot like Rafe did when Tess told him they really needed to spend some time apart from each other, or at least not in bed with each other. “I’m not crazy, lady; I’m pregnant. And it’s all your frickin’ fault.”
Oh, for the sake of everything holy!
Tess sighed and pushed her way around the other woman, gasping through her teeth when the move jostled her shoulder and sent white-hot arrows of pain shooting through her. She so wasn’t in the mood for this conversation, especially not if it was headed in the direction she feared.
And that had nothing to do with a premonition. It was just that after everything that had happened today, only something this horrifying could possibly top it all off.
“Let me guess,” she grumbled, setting off down the street at a brisk hobble. “You must be Feline—spotted Feline, I’m guessing—and despite the fact that we’re living in the twenty-first century and you look like the kind of girl who got at least an elementary education, you’ve gotten it into your head that you’re pregnant because of the lifting of some ridiculous curse that probably never existed. Am I right?”
Anisia stepped into her path and scowled. “The curse is not ridiculous. It’s a fact. We’ve been living with its effects for centuries now, and we all know that until it’s broken, the chances of any of us becoming pregnant are practically nil.”
Tess raised an eyebrow and shot the other woman’s flat stomach a pointed look. “Apparently not, if what you’re telling me is true. But either way, it’s none of my business; first because I don’t know you, and second because I can guarantee you that I have not broken any curses lately. Now get out of my way so can I go put an icepack on my entire body. Thanks.”
“It doesn’t matter if you know me; you know the Felix, and that’s the part that matters in all this.”
“No, actually, it doesn’t, because I did not break the curse.”
“Then explain to me how the hell I got knocked up.”
“Okay, it’s like this. When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, sometimes they want to exp—”
“Great, you’re a frickin’ comedian,” Anisia said, still refusing to move out of Tess’s path. “Notice how hard I’m not laughing. I’m twenty-seven years old. I’ve been sexually active since I was eighteen. In that time, I’ve had relationships with four different Felines and never taken a single precaution. I mean, why would I bother? My mom started trying to get pregnant when she was twenty-four and didn’t have me till she was almost forty. It just doesn’t happen for us without a damned long concerted effort. Until you showed up.”
“Look, I know you must be—”
“Shut up. I’m telling you, you’re the only thing that’s changed here. Before you, there was nothing in this world safer than sex with a spotted Feline. Now? One lousy week of you and suddenly I’m about to be a frickin’ mommy! Do you have any idea what that
means?”
“I’m not—”
“Shut up. I had plans, you know. I have a good job with an ad agency in Midtown. I’ve been busting my ass for them for nearly four years, and I’m finally—finally—on the fast track to the promotion I deserved two years ago. I have plans, damn it, and they don’t involve taking six weeks of maternity leave while some young, white, male asshole from Yale swoops in on an internship and steals my accounts!”
“What do you think—”
“I said, shut. Up. Don’t go telling me that I should just get rid of it. That’s bullshit. This is a baby. It’s my baby, not to mention one of the first spotted Felines conceived this year. This is the future of my goddamned race we’re talking about, and I am damned well going to keep it and raise it and love it like a mother ought to do. But you need to understand that this was Not. In. My. Plan!”
Anisia punctuated each statement with an increase in volume until Tess found herself stepping backward simply to preserve her ability to hear.
“Lady, you have got to get a grip on yourself.” Tess retreated an extra step for good measure and eyed the other woman warily. “I sympathize with what you’re telling me, really I do, but I think you need to stop for a minute and take a good look at the situation.”
“Oh, I’ve looked plenty—”
Tess snapped and gave a pretty respectable growl of her own. “No, now it’s your turn to shut up. I’m sorry if you think you’re stuck with an unplanned pregnancy and all the consequences that go along with it, you but need to stop blaming it on me and maybe think about the fact that anyone who has unprotected sex with a fertile member of the opposite sex should maybe think about the repercussions, no matter how unlikely they might be.”
“I told—”
“Zip it! You also apparently have a lot to learn about your own culture, sweet cheeks, because the legend I heard says that a spotted Feline has to remain faithful to his human mate for a year and a day before everyone can get on with the baby making. Since none of you Others appears to be able to work out the technical aspects of a calendar, allow me to point out that far from three-hundred-sixty-odd days so far, it has been exactly nine. Now, why don’t you go share that with your little friends and pass on the message that I said you can all start leaving me the hell alone? Capice?”
Drive Me Wild (The Others) Page 15