by Liz Braswell
“Uh, yeah.” Chloe had had no actual plan for when she actually met him, if he was still alive. Now that she had seen him, all she wanted to do was rush back and see Brian. There was hope.
“Have you eaten yet?”
Eaten yet? It was two thirty. Lunch? Tea? Elevensies?
“Uh, I’m fine, thanks,” she said awkwardly. Her hands itched for her cell phone.
“So.” He put the pan carefully down on a coffee table. “I haven’t seen you at The Bank, but then again, I haven’t been there much recently myself,” he said, referring to the club where she met him on the eve of her sixteenth birthday.
“You’ve been sick,” Chloe said as neutrally as she could, making it sound like both a question and a statement.
“How did you know?” He looked up at her sharply.
“I … came here a couple of nights after we met,” Chloe admitted. “Your door was open and I found you lying on the floor, all … suffocating and covered in hives and stuff. I called 911.”
“That was you? I would have died if you hadn’t come. I was all alone here.” He shivered. It was weird seeing the sexy guy from the club—the one she almost had sex with. “They said I was in shock, the whole deal. My body just started attacking itself and they couldn’t figure out why.”
“But they were able to treat you,” she said, again neutrally, trying to sound like she wasn’t digging for information.
He shook his head, his beautiful black hair staying neatly put. “They couldn’t do anything. I went into a coma … and then one day I just suddenly got better. I woke up and it was all over. They said it was like my body was all of sudden able to heal itself or something. No explanation. I just woke up, on October 19.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay. I just came back to see how you were.” Chloe turned to go, feeling it was a good time to exit.
He put a hand out to stop her. “But they said no one was in the apartment when the ambulance came.”
“I freaked and ran away. Sorry about that,” Chloe apologized with a small smile. Why was it easier to tell a stranger the whole truth than her friends and family? “If my mom found out I was in some strange guy’s apartment at night—even if it wound up saving his life—my life would be over.”
Xavier laughed, an open, clear-eyed laugh that held none of the seducer’s smile from the night at the club.
“In fact, I should probably get going,” she added. Okay, you’re not dead. This is where the Xavier-Chloe story ends. Goodbye and good luck. No more complications. “Like I said, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I mean it, I owe you, Chloe,” he said standing up with her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in an extremely sexy, masculine way. “I would have died. If there’s anything you want or need, name it. Even, like, help moving in somewhere,” he added with a grin of teeth as white as the plastered wall on the postcard of Santorini that hung on Chloe’s fridge.
“Uh, I’ll keep that in mind.” Although the idea of a rich young Euro playboy who owed her was an intriguing concept—visions of a free vacation in Greece came to mind—Chloe was pretty sure she was never going to see him again.
“Hey,” he called as she walked out. “Maybe I’ll see you at The Bank sometime?”
“Maybe!” Chloe shouted back. But she was already two flights down.
Nine
Xavier was alive.
Chloe repeated this over and over to herself as she rode the bus to Sausalito, her foot impatiently marking the seconds as she tapped it against the seat in front of her.
There still remained the mystery of how he “just woke up,” but it seemed like her kiss wasn’t fatal—this time, at least. Maybe it wouldn’t be for Brian either. Maybe the curse was losing its power as the centuries wore on, remaining overhyped as something to scare the kids with. Maybe everything was going to be okay.
A bubble of hope grew out of control in the back of Chloe’s head, threatening to explode and drench her spirit with joy. She tried to rein it in, not wanting to be disappointed later if reality went south on her. Instead she channeled it into movement, leaping off the bus as soon as it stopped and running all the way to Firebird.
No going in the back way this time. Chloe was the leader of this Pride, for chrissake. She didn’t need to go slinking around into her own den, embarrassed by the presence of her human boyfriend and intimidated by Sergei. Chloe walked right up to the front door and strode in breezily past the receptionist.
“I’ll tell Sergei you are in,” the sharp-angled woman said with the slightest of bows.
“Tell him I’ll be right there,” Chloe said, trying not to snap, not looking over her shoulder. “There’s something I have to do.”
How did a leader speak to her subjects? Not that she was, really—but she wasn’t going to be treated as a helpless teenage girl by Sergei and his employees anymore. Until she found a middle ground, it was going to be tricky.
And as much as she wanted—needed—to see Brian, there was another person Chloe had to talk to first.
She went straight to the sanctuary, knocking on the door lightly before cracking it open and stepping silently in. Surprisingly, Kim wasn’t there, though the lingering traces of incense indicated her recent presence. There was another Mai woman there—Valerie, Igor’s fiancée. She was bent over on the floor before the statues of the twins Bastet and Sekhmet, murmuring something plaintively. She was beautiful, a perfect devoted servant of the Twin Goddesses, and might have been taken right off an Egyptian wall painting had it not been for her bright lavender suit and stiletto heels.
Chloe backed up quietly until she was out, not clicking the door completely closed, afraid of disturbing the woman. What was she praying for? Her marriage? A baby? Or was her visit just something routine—like going to mass every Sunday? Chloe wasn’t sure she could show that much devotion to the goddesses she supposedly received her power from; in the same way that Buddhism sounded neat, she was just too Western, Judeo-Christian monotheistically raised to be able to treat ancient deities with much belief or reverence.
Valerie had taken down a deer with her bare hands—and claws—on the Hunt that Chloe had attended. Another thing Chloe was also pretty sure she couldn’t do. They should have chosen her, she thought sadly. Or Kim. People who actually deserved leadership of the Mai.
She headed upstairs to the library, the other obvious place Kim would be, though she checked the dining room and the little Firebird kitchenette first. All empty. Except for the usual coffee-swilling real estate drones.
Chloe kicked herself mentally. A lot of these people would have died for an opportunity to live in America and be—mostly—left alone with their Mai habits to work for a Mai company and be fairly well paid to do so. She would really have to stop judging people so much if she was actually going to be a leader.
Bingo.
Her friend stood at the end of a long bookshelf, silently turning the pages of a monstrous leather-bound volume. The long windows were shaded and draped by equally long velvet curtains; motes of dust hung silently in the air, unsparkled by any stray beam of sun. It was to protect the ancient and rare books, Chloe understood, but the darkness made the whole place also kind of reek of doom.
Kim looked up directly at her, even though Chloe could have sworn she hadn’t made any noise.
“Hello,” the girl with the black, velvety cat ears said in a normal voice, strangely out of place in a room that demanded whispering.
“Hey, Kim—I have a question for you.”
Kim’s ears flicked back and her green slit eyes focused, waiting.
“Is there a chance …” Chloe bit her lip. She was calling into question all this other girl believed in. She sucked it up. “Is there a chance that the whole human-and-Mai curse thing could be a little, well, overblown?”
Kim blinked her heavy eyelashes. “Which part? The feud? The story of the Mai girl who was killed?”
“No, the, uh, biological particulars. Could it be
a complete fib that humans and Mai can’t interact?”
“Chloe, unlike many of the Mai, I believe that you are free to choose your relationships however you wish, but I cannot advise testing that theory on any human you particularly like.”
“No, no.” Chloe sighed and sat down on the edge of a table—something she would have been screamed at for in any other library in the world. Kim merely raised an eyebrow. Chloe couldn’t help noticing the Ethernet ports and wireless broadband antennas that stuck out of the center of the table, incongruous against the old wood and tarnished brass printers’ lamps. The Mai were such a strange mix of boldly going modern and completely hung up on the past. “Look, I’ve already kissed two humans—uh, boys.”
Kim’s eyebrows climbed even higher than Dr. Lovsky’s had. “The one at the club … Olga mentioned it,” Kim said.
“Yeah, I checked up on him. He’s fine now.”
Kim stood in way that implied that had she a tail, it would have been swishing back and forth. “And who else? Paul, maybe?”
Chloe started. “What? I don’t know, maybe as a kid. No, I meant Brian. Right before he conked out.” Didn’t Kim realize how much she liked him? And what did Paul have to do with anything? “And Dr. Lovsky says he’s recovering normally.”
The two girls looked at each other for a long moment.
“It sounds like our curse is somehow being lifted or fading,” Kim said slowly, thinking. “How exactly did the boy from the club ’recover’?”
“I don’t know. He said he just sort of woke up; they told him that he suddenly just ’got better.’”
“And when exactly did this happen?”
“Uh, October 19th.”
Kim’s eyes widened. “That’s the night you died—at the Presidio, with everyone.”
“Yeah, so …?” Chloe hadn’t made the connection and still didn’t see what it had to do with anything.
“You’re lifting the curse!” her friend practically shouted, scaring Chloe with her intensity.
“Um … what?”
“You died saving a human!”
“She’s my mom, Kim….”
“Yes, but listen—we were cursed because we killed whole villages of humans!” Kim said excitedly, her fangs gleaming and her eyes a little crazy. “Maybe because you died saving one, it mitigates our burden. And Brian? How is he?”
“I’m going downstairs to see him now, but the doctor said that so far he hasn’t shown any signs of anything.”
Kim glowed with excitement. “I must research this further,” she said, disappearing back into the stacks. “I’ll call you later if I find an answer!”
As she headed downstairs to the hospital room, Chloe smiled to herself at the idea of her lifting an ancient curse. Besides it meaning that everyone would be okay … how cool was that? It finally sounded like something a real leader would do.
Brian was still unconscious on the bed, IVs and tubes sticking in and out of his body. There was almost no discernable change from the other day, except that maybe his wounds looked a little scabbier, like they were beginning to heal around the edges. Maybe. No signs of death or toxic shock.
“Hey,” Chloe said softly, taking his hand. Without her realizing it, her claws came out, slowly and delicately. She used them to comb back his hair.
“Oh.” Dr. Lovsky stopped short when she came in and saw the two of them together. “I, uh, I’ll just leave the two of you alone….”
“No, it’s okay. Has he shown any signs of—has he—?” Chloe didn’t know how to say it.
“There has been no sign of any of the traditional symptoms associated with humans who have … closely interacted with Mai,” the doctor answered, shaking her head. “I even went back and looked up in our oldest documents any description of what happens. Boils. Fever. Strange bruises and scratches.” She ticked them off on her clawed fingers. “Inability to breathe. Eyes sealed shut. Blood from the pores. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Aside from being severely beaten, Brian is fine.”
Chloe’s bubble of hope grew a little bigger.
“I don’t understand it at all. I’m completely thrilled for my patient, but… I’ve seen what happens when a Mai kisses a human,” Dr. Lovsky said helplessly. “Anyway, the best thing for him now is rest—and lots of antibiotics—to let his body get on with the process of healing.”
“Why antibiotics?”
Dr. Lovsky narrowed her eyes at Chloe as if she were an idiot and raised one eyebrow to further illustrate her feelings. “You found him injured on the street in a puddle. Would you like me to list all the sorts of buggies an already-stressed body can be taken up with?”
“Uh, no, that’s okay,” Chloe said, quickly holding up her hand. “I get it. Thanks for everything.”
Dr. Lovsky left and Chloe turned back to Brian.
He rustled in the bedclothes—though his leg in the cast was eerily still. “Chloe?” he whispered hoarsely.
“I’m here,” she whispered back, kissing his cheek as lightly as possible. While it might not have mattered, there was no reason to tempt the Fates.
“Where am I?” After a few tries he managed to open his crusted eyes. Chloe swallowed her sadness at the damage done to another human being, the ravaging of his good looks. Brian’s eyes were red and there was a pool of blood or something covering half of his left one; his right was sunk in a swollen mass of purple flesh.
What a stupid, stupid thing! was all she could think.
“You’re safe,” she said, deciding that was the easiest answer.
He snorted. Then he coughed, a long, rasping fit.
“No,” he croaked. “Really.” His dull eyes managed to twinkle just a little.
Chloe sighed.
“You’re in the emergency room of Mai HQ. Can’t reveal the location; it’s a secret.”
“I’m—“He hacked some more. Spittle came out of his mouth and ran down his chin. No blood this time, Chloe was relieved to see. Before she even thought about it, she took the edge of her shirt and wiped his face with it. “I’m where?”
“Well, where else was I supposed to take you?” she snapped with feigned annoyance. She was just relieved he was able to speak this coherently.
“That doctor … lady …?” A weak finger pointed at the door.
“Mai.”
Brian took so long to answer that she was afraid he had fallen asleep with his eyes open.
“Holy crap,” he finally said, groaning. “Irony …”
“Shhh. Rest.”
“Not… dead …” he suddenly realized, eyes flaring. He turned his head and tried to move his shoulders so he could look at her. “I kissed you! Not dead … How?”
Chloe shook her head. “I don’t know. … Kim thinks the curse might be lifting because I saved a human life—my mom’s.” She decided not to burden him, once again, with the details of Xavier. Later. When he was feeling better.
“Kiss me,” he ordered.
So she did.
He pulled her partly onto the bed with him, and except for one bad moment when her elbow dug into what was probably a cracked rib, they remained that way for a while. …
Chloe was so distracted by the fact that Kim seemed to be right—the curse did seem to be lifted—that when she finally left to go see Sergei, she forgot to be nervous or worried.
“Hey,” she said. Olga and Sergei were bent over his desk together, looking at a newspaper or a contract or something. Her short platinum hair and his natural tweedy orange clashed so badly that Chloe almost had to look away.
When Olga looked up and saw her, she smiled with genuine affection and dipped her head.
“Yes, Chloe.” Sergei also smiled, but Chloe saw something else in his blue-water eyes: fear, mistrust, eagerness; she couldn’t tell. “Oh, and we’re confirmed for Tuesday, October 28. Your introduction to the Pride.”
“Oh, great. I have to check my class schedule and talk with Mom, but I don’t see why not.” All Chloe could picture was Sergei onstage in a gi
ant auditorium, speaking at a blue-draped podium with Chloe sitting in a folding chair beside him, waiting to be introduced. All of the eyes she could see beyond the foot-and spotlights were slit, and there were occasional hisses from the audience.
“Has Kim fitted you with a robe yet?” Olga asked, jotting something down on the PalmPilot she carried.
If only that woman knew how ridiculous those words sounded coming out of her mouth. Chloe could just see it on her college application: Math team, AP French, and two years of mostly dead ancient-Egyptian-related language and religion. Well, at least Brown would be interested.
“Robe?”
“You have to start learning the Precepts of the Mai and at least some of our language before the ritual.”
“Ritual?” The scene in Chloe’s head switched from a highschool assembly to a cross between a bat mitzvah and something she might have seen on Buffy.
“Chloe, you have to start taking this seriously,” Sergei said sternly. “It is not all about fun and power.”
She opened her mouth to tell him Kim’s theory about the curse and her possible lifting of it—but something made her stop. Something her cateared friend had told her weeks ago, when she first came to the mansion, about not always revealing everything she knew.
Sergei misinterpreted the look in her eyes and sighed. “I’m just trying. … There’s a lot more to being a leader than just, well, ’leading,’ Chloe. You really need to understand the soul of our people. And while you were born with a better natural insight of our ways and religion, you are still without a connection to those who live it every day.”
“Yeah, I know, you’re right,” Chloe admitted.
“Even those of us who have had many years of experience can still make horrible mistakes. … I feel terrible about what happened to your mother, Chloe,” he said out of nowhere and stiffly, as if he wasn’t used to apologizing. “My previous decision to not risk Mai life for the mother of the Chosen—of any Mai—was shortsighted and foolish and almost led to great harm. Anything could have happened once the Order kidnapped her—and I would have been partially to blame.”
Where is he going with this? Chloe wondered.