Diaries of an Urban Panther

by Amanda Arista

  The pain began to slowly retreat, the metallic hook pulled out centimeter by centimeter. The pressure slowly lifted and I was able to suck in air, the chilly night air filling my lungs. I took shallow quick breaths, the broken ribs shooting fire through my sides.

  My hand flew up to my chest, expecting there to be a wound, a gash, a hole the size of my fist, but there was nothing. Not even blood.

  “Don’t touch her,” Iris hissed.

  My vision cleared and I saw Chaz back off.

  “What the hell,” I managed out.

  “I don’t know, honey,” Iris shook her head with more worry in her eyes than I had ever wanted to put there. “But it was powerful.”

  “Yeah me.”

  “Darling, you need to shift. Take hold of your cat. You’ll heal faster that way, especially under the full moon.”

  The inky blackness of the cat was just behind my eyelids. Nodding was proving too painful, so I licked my lips. “See you in the morning.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There once was a prince who had everything he could want. If he wanted a horse, he got a horse; if he wanted a new dog for his pack, he got a new dog for his pack. If he wanted a new castle built for him, his father would call the royal architect right away.

  But it was never enough. And the king knew it. Knew that his son was going to ask for the kingdom one day, and he knew that his son would ruin everything that he had built. So he wanted to teach his son that to rule is to sacrifice, that to rule is to be alone with the thoughts of many.

  He pulled his son out into a field by the castle. “Son, I know that you have wanted a new horse in the stable. But there isn’t enough room with the horses you already have.”

  “So build a new stable,” his son said simply.

  “No. If you want a new horse, you have to give away one of your own. If there are too many in the barn, there will not be enough food and they will die.”

  “The weaker ones will die, leaving the stronger ones for me.”

  His father was disgusted with his son’s cruel outlook. “I will not buy you a new horse.”

  So the son disobeyed his father and went into town to buy a horse and brought it back to the stable. He placed the magnificent beast in a stable with a colt that his father had bred from many generations of the best horses in the kingdom. Proud of himself, he strutted back to the castle and went to bed, forgetting that he had left a lamp burning as he gazed at his purchase.

  “Wait mom,” I said as I leaned up from the bed. “This isn’t going to be a happy tale, is it?”

  “No honey,” she said as she rubbed my back. “Not all stories have a happy ending.”

  “Jessa!” I called out as I beat on her door. “Jessa, we need to talk.”

  I kept knocking. Red welts were forming on my knuckles but I didn’t care. “I know you’re there.”

  I could smell her perfume. She was home. About fifteen feet away from the door eating chocolate chip cookies.

  When I brought my knuckles back, there was a red smear on the door. Crap.

  “We are going to talk,” I said through the door. “Even if I have to tie your perky ass to a chair.”

  I stormed back through the long posh hallway and wiped my knuckles on my black sweater. By the end of the hallway, the cuts were gone. As I reached my car, the redness had faded.

  What the hell, I fumed as I screeched my tires outside of her complex and headed back to the highway. I was trying to make amends here. I was trying to be the bigger person here.

  I dragged my many bags into the laundry and then took in a deep calming breath. It had been almost a week and a half since I’d been home.

  Place was still there, untouched, still smelled like Violet, which still ironically smelled like magnolias now all the time. I started a pot of coffee that would be waiting and wonderful after the hot, hot shower I was planning to take.

  I slid off my shoes and walked across the plush carpet, ran my hands over the edge of the couch. Just being home relaxed me. Being back in my precious lair.

  I would have smiled at the little joke, but there was a dark car parked outside my house. Pushing the drapes aside, I saw Chaz sitting outside in his sports car, reading.

  I unlocked the front door and stepped out.

  His head snapped up at the crack of the door. He had his windows open and some music playing in the car. Quickly, he got out of the car and walked across the street.

  “Got some info for you. You’re not going to like it,” he said quickly as he brushed past me in the doorway and went straight for the couch.

  “I’m doing great, Chaz. Broken ribs all better. Thanks for asking,” I sassed as I closed and bolted the door.

  He turned to face me with a frown before he flopped on the couch. “Been up for two days.”

  “Whadaya know? Me too.”

  And I would have gone on a little further but he turned to look into the kitchen where the coffee was beginning to brew and I saw a dark shadow across his face. A pretty little bruise was healing fast.

  “Rough nights for both of us then,” I said as I pointed to my cheek.

  “Yeah,” he reached up to run his fingers through his hair. His knuckles were freshly scabbed.

  “I’ll shut up now and get the coffee.”

  I curled up on the far side of the couch from him, careful of the hot coffee in my hand. The milk had curdled ages ago and I had to drink mine black like Chaz did. Wasn’t bad. The three packets of sugar helped.

  “Bad news or bad news first,” he started.

  “Got an inkling about what happened that night?”

  “Yeah,” he shook his head. “The baddies I could find said Haverty Junior got disowned by his father.”

  “So?”

  Chaz shook his head and put his cup on the coffee table by his knee. “This was more than just disinherited, Violet. He banished him from the pack, which means Haverty ripped out any power that he had gained from the pack.”

  “Ripped?” I gulped. A brief hint of pain returned to my chest as I distinctly remembered the filet-of-fish feeling.

  “Apparently the only thing left is his panther. He’s like a newborn.”

  “He’s me a month ago.”

  Chaz nodded.

  “What’s it got to do with what happened last night?”

  “Iris said the link is always strongest to your first heir. Which means that Spencer is your sire.”

  I licked my lips. “So it was Spencer in the alley?”

  “Makes sense. Haverty hunts on his own private ground. He’d never go out in the city.”

  “Then isn’t it sort of good news if I was his only.”

  “It means the link between you is strong. Strong enough to control both of you.”

  Gulp number 2.

  “And that’s the better of the bad news?”

  I watched as Chaz struggled through the words, watched as he clasped his hand to tightly together to hide the shaking. “It would be better if Haverty were after you. He’s methodical. Old school. He’d send his Rottweilers after you, bring you in, torture you.”

  “What about that is the better part?” I struggled to follow his logic through visions of me strapped to a chair under a bright flood lamp.

  “I can’t predict Junior. Can’t say what he’ll do. Can’t even imagine what his next move might be.”

  I can’t protect you. He didn’t have to say it. I read it in every muscle of his body, in the tension across his shoulders, the white of his knuckles.

  “I bet you know someone who can.”

  He looked up from his tightly wound hands. “Huh?”

  “You really need to get some sleep. You’re running a little slow,” I said as I took a sip of coffee. “All these white hats and you don’t have a psychic in your back pocket.”

  The blood drained from his face as he stared up at me. “Sort of.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Here.”

  “Well then, drink up, Chu
ck. And take a shower,” I said as I got up from the couch.

  After the array of emotion I had just been through, having a plan made me feel ten times better. The coffee maybe another three times better.

  But Chaz didn’t move from the couch.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, nothing. I’ll take you to see . . . Cristina.”

  There was a pause in that sentence. And where there was a pause, there was a story. “What’s the sitch?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” he repeated as he headed up the stairs to the shower. “Just my funeral,” he muttered as he hit the second floor.

  “Super hearing, remember,” I called up the stairwell.

  An expletive was mumbled as he went into the bedroom to take a shower.

  “How good is a psychic who advertises 2 for 1 deals in the front window?” I asked.

  “Just my funeral,” he whispered again as he got out of the car.

  As I got out of the car, I studied the storefront. As we were driving to Irving, I’d imagined what a powerful psychic’s place would look like. Frankly, I was expecting something a little more gothic, with spooky windows and at the very least a small black cat creeping along a yard of dead grass. I really didn’t expect it to be nestled between Rick’s Tropical Fish and The UPS Store. The plain storefront had a hand-painted sign reading “Culandera” above the plain glass door with a cracked OPEN sign swinging from its hook.

  Chaz took a deep breath before he walked up to the front door, his hand pausing over the metal door handle before he swung it open.

  The foyer was dark and cool, the curtains over the window sill rustled in an invisible breeze and the beads that separated this waiting area from the back swung back and forth. The white tile floor needed to be mopped and two tired couches waited for a steam cleaner. It smelled intensely of nag champa and tamales. Framed drawings of chakra points and zodiac wheels hung on the walls. I stifled a laugh when I saw the infamous palm charm I’d actually used to write a fortune teller’s scene two scripts back.

  It was a joke until a slightly built woman in a long red dress swung the curtain across and looked out at us with her dark eyes. She was real. Her power poured out around her and it lapped against me like a cold New England tide. This was real power. The smile faded from my face and I licked my lips.

  Well, if a panther could have a townhouse in north Dallas, then a real Seer could have a shop on Beltline Road in Irving.

  “You are late,” the woman grumbled with a Spanish accent. Her gold bangles jangled as they slid down her slender arm as she brushed a short curl out of her dark chocolate eyes.

  Chaz’s gaze hit the white tile beneath our feet.

  The woman stepped through the curtain, letting the strings of beads drop back into place. Her dark eyes studied Chaz just over my shoulder, her perfect skin wrinkling slightly between her perfect brows.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” I said as I stepped between them and stuck out my hand in a friendly greeting.

  Cristina looked at me and then at my awkwardly outstretched hand and then over at Chaz. “This is her?”

  “Cristina, this is Violet Jordan,” Chaz introduced.

  I dropped my hand and rested both on my bag. I was suddenly getting a very, very bad vibe from all this.

  Cristina looked me up and then down. “She was shorter in my vision.”

  She extended her hand in another rush of jingling and gracefully swept back the beaded curtain. “We should talk more privately.”

  As I moved towards the door, I had the distinct feeling of pressure down my shoulders. I looked around the empty backroom, expecting to see someone. Even took a little sniff, but there was nothing over the incense. Still a little paranoid. So sue me.

  “Huh.”

  We both looked back at Chaz who was looking around the ceilings. “Your wards. What happened to them?”

  I looked at the spot on the wall that he was looking at. There was a distinct stencil of something that had been on the wall for a very long time.

  “You haven’t been here in a very long time.” There was a distinctive low growl in Cristina’s voice.

  Chaz looked at me with a slight crease in his forehead. Something was wrong. His arms crossed over his chest as he looked around. His unease made my unease greater.

  I turned back to the dark room and took a deep breath. I could do this. We needed this. I needed to do this for both of us to see what we were up against. “You coming?”

  “Not exactly welcome,” he said. “I’ll just wait out here for you.”

  My eyes darted between Cristina’s glare, to her hand as her fingers dug into her hip and Chaz’s clenched jaw. Looking between the two people who were glaring at each other, I gulped. Ex-lovers? I looked at Cristina. She was stunning. A solid ten. Well, he was a supermodel; guess he was allowed to date the hottest psychic I’d certainly ever met.

  I followed her into a room where red and purple abounded. Everything was in heavy velvets and satins, draped in gold adornments. The Persian rug beneath our feet was thick and plush as she led me to a large table in the center. The atmosphere was so different in here. The air even smelled heavier, more intense. This was why she didn’t need to adorn the outside. The real magic was in here.

  “It is not magic,” Cristina snapped as she arranged herself in her chair.

  “Sorry,” I said adjusting the bag on my shoulder.

  “Sit,” she ordered.

  I slowly slid into the high-backed chair across from her. As sly as possible, I clicked on the tape recorder in my purse and placed it on the top of the junk in there, nestling it beside me in the chair.

  Cristina reached out, placing her hands out on the table between us. She tapped her knuckles on the table impatiently, insisting that I take her outstretched hands.

  “I’m warning you, I have no idea what you’re going to see up there,” I joked as I reached across the table with sweaty palms.

  “Like I want to rummage around your head.”

  I rested my warm hands in her clammy ones. My skin goose-bumped as our circle completed. Her power rippled around me and she smelled like her incense and hot red wax.

  Cristina closed her eyes and began chanting in a meditative whisper to herself. She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly across the table. I was beginning to see that shifting was a lot like a lot of things: shooting guns, yoga, summoning ancient spirits to enlighten the future.

  This wasn’t so bad, I was about to say before liquid lightening shot up my right arm, across my heart, and then down my left arm.

  I let out a small yelp because Cristina clenched my hand tighter, in camaraderie or shared pain I wasn’t sure, but I was glad for her cool embrace to focus on. When I could breathe again through the tenderness in my chest, I heard Cristina’s voice softly waft across the table. Her eyes half-closed and her head slightly tilted back, she was speaking to no one.

  “Ripped veil. Magnolia death. Mirrors broken.”

  Just as I thought maybe that was the end of the show, white hot images flashed across my eyelids, like a thousand photos flashes going off.

  Jessa’s reflection in a mirror

  Blood on cement.

  Chaz crouched in the darkness

  The sinister glint off a cat-like eye.

  Suddenly, Cristina gasped and her head dropped down to her chest. All the energy rushed from the room, stirring my hair as it went. The scent of hot wax and incense was lost as her hands went limp in mine.

  I ripped my hands from her and covered my eyes, still able to see the brightness of the images burning in my retinas. The actual images faded quickly. I struggled to remember them and forget them at the same time. The searing blue spots were left as I dropped my hands and fluttered my eyes open to look at the dimly lit room.

  “Dios mio,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Water,” she ordered.

  Slowly I stood, bracing myself against the table and moved to the back of the
room where another curtained doorway led into a brightly lit break room. The glasses were easy enough to find and on the way back to the table, I snuck a glance at a few family pictures on a bookcase full of doodads.

  “Are you okay?” I asked when I returned, tall cold glass of water in my hot hand.

  Her head rose slowly and her red watery eyes met mine.

  “Cannot say you did not warn me.” Her breaths were rugged and her words poorly formed. “But some of that was you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “It’s like this every time.”

  I gulped. “Every time?”

  She nodded slowly. “Every time. It is the sacrifice I have to make for my gift.” Her breaths were normal again; her words fluid again and perfectly exotic.

  “Is it true?” I didn’t want to push her, but this was what we had been searching for.

  “Clear as day. Protector of the Veil,” Cristina nodded and put her water back on the table. “A reincarnated warrior sent to guard the princess.”

  I frowned. “Princess? When did this turn into Mario Brothers?”

  Cristina looked up at me. “You don’t know?”

  She muttered a long line of something in Spanish under her breath as I flopped down in the chair across from her and stared down at the carpet.

  I could see Cristina struggle with words. She rose slowly from the chair, bracing herself for a moment before crossing the dark room. She pulled a wooden box from a shelf and worked her way slowly back to the table.

  With a reverence I’ve only see in church and when Chaz handled his guns, she opened the box and carefully unfolded a deck of tarot from a green satin scarf.

  She closed her eyes and flipped the first card over. When she opened her eyes, she jerked her head in surprise and put the car back in the shuffle. She licked her lips.

  “Your friend. Jessa Feychild. She’s the key to the Veil.”

  Jessa? The key to all of this was Jessa? How could an affluent New York socialite have anything to do with this? Her family was influential in the business market.

  As I thought about her, the pieces snapped into place like another picture in my brain. My shoulders slumped. “Crap. Her last name is Fey Child.”