Feral Curse (23 page)

Tanya wavers. She goes down slowly, onto one knee, then the other.

I release her, circling behind the pony figures positioned in front of the wagon.

“I wish y’all would behave so I wouldn’t have to keep doing that,” Aimee says.

Kayla sidesteps Darby, who’s sprawled on the carousel platform. “Junior!” she calls over her shoulder. “Get a move on! There’s a snake to fix and one last cat to reattach.”

Kayla hesitates as Lula marches onto the ride and makes herself comfortable in the wagon. The elder Cat woman promptly draws a romance novel from the deep pocket of her long denim skirt and attaches a tiny light. “Spell, schmell, it’s just like flying on an airplane. Tell me when we’re on the ground!” With that, she opens the book and begins to read.

Whatever gets you through the incantation, I suppose.

“Junior!” Kayla peers out at the yeti lumbering toward the cover of woods. “Where the hell does he think he’s going?”

Evan is propped up on one elbow. “Hey, sexy lady! Want to stroke my fur?”

Kayla points at him with one clawed finger. “Shut your hole or, so help me, your future husband is going to”— she gestures vaguely at his junk —“suffer without.”

From the expression on his face, the threat is enough to quell even magical desire. He twitches his long whiskers, assumes the lotus position, and begins meditating to calm himself.

Aimee raises the snake figure so it’s upright, and Kayla takes over where Junior left off, affixing it in place around the circle.

Partly forcing back my facial shift, I grimace in pain. “Kayla, hang on! I’ll be right there.”

“I’ve got this!” she says. “I can put this right.”

I hesitate, compelled to help her, to prove I can do it as well as she can. Better, even.

What’s more, I want to be the one who reverses the spell and saves the day. To be the hero of Operation Carousel — provided I don’t kill us all in the process.

But that’s what Ben did. That was his mistake, putting himself in charge of her situation. That’s
him
inside of me, making me feel this way. I won’t do that to her.

Am I affected by what’s happening? Sure, my life, maybe even whatever makes me more than an animal is on the line. So what? This is her fight to lead. She spoke the words that started it when she revealed her secret, and she’ll speak the words that end it, too.

I glance at my watch. “Three minutes, thirty seconds, people!”

LIGHTNING SHATTERS THE CRYING SKY.
I have to hurry.

No, I have to think.

We don’t have Peter, but I can’t worry about that now. Maybe the part of Ben’s soul that’s in Peter doesn’t deserve to go to heaven. Maybe it’s the part that hated me.

God, I hope Peso is okay.

Focus. I click through the spell ingredients.

We have multiple images of Ben, the gigantic photos of him dressed as the quarterback, the pitcher, the graduate, and as Jesus. I move to stand next to the cat figure and tie Ben’s necklace so it hangs from one perched ear. It’s something that was his but connects us.

I remember setting the gemstone in the center of his palm.

I remember him saying, “That’s it? I was worried you were going to break up with me.”

Those words sounded ridiculous, but the next morning I did just that, and look where we are now. Ben, where are you? How did we get to this awful place?

With shaking fingers, I tear a match from the Lurie’s Steakhouse pack, cupping my free hand sideways to protect the flame from the wind, and light one of Junior’s votive candles.

“Clyde!” hollers Yoshi, in mostly human form again. “Aimee, get clear! Now!”

Good call. We don’t want to screw up and accidentally suck them into the spell.

Clyde, still rocking a full Lion hairdo, swoops up his girlfriend and leaps all the way to the teeter-totter. Then he takes off running.

I pull the folded printout of the spell from my jeans.

I’m annoyed that Junior bailed on us and wonder why. Then again, this really doesn’t concern him. The fact that he pitched in doesn’t make it his responsibility, and he would’ve needed to clear out by now anyway.

I memorized the words, but just in case reading the damn thing matters somehow, I’ve got it in front of me. With my Cat eyes, the candlelight is enough.

“Blessed is the whole, unto whom God gave an image like His own.

“Blessed is the uncorrupted, he who is not soiled by the Beast.

“With these words, the demon shall be cast out.

“With these words, the soul shall be cured.

“With these words, the angels shall bear witness and deliver paradise.”

Nothing. Yoshi coughs. Lula yawns and fans herself with her romance novel.

The colorful bulbs of the carousel click on; its robotic organ music begins to play.

I hold up the candle, and it’s extinguished in the wind. “Do you think it worked?”

“I don’t know,” Yoshi says. But his teeth and hands are normal again. The fur has vanished from his chiseled human-form face.

Evan joins Lula on the wagon. They clasp each other’s hands.

A chilly wind blows through, and I turn my head at the sound of Peso’s bark. The pup bounds across the base of the carousel and flings his wiggly body at my legs, bouncing, his tail whipping back and forth. I scoop him up, cradle him to my chest, and that’s when I notice a wiry figure in the distance. Is that? Yes, auburn hair, dimpled chin, masculine nose. It’s Peter, slowly advancing toward the carousel. Except it’s not Peter. Not entirely.

It’s Ben. I can tell by the way he walks. By his expression. By the way he’s staring at me.

All this time I’ve been wrong. Peter-Ben didn’t take Peso to hurt him. He took Peso because Ben loved him. He’s the one who left daisies on his father’s casket. That was love, too.

Ben’s love is the part of his soul that seeped in when Peter touched the coyote figure in Fredericksburg. That’s what I recognized in Peter’s gaze when our eyes met on the street at the Founders’ Day festival. He was watching over, not stalking me. His note wasn’t meant as a threat, but a warning against all this insanity.

Ben promised to come for me when the moment was right, and that moment is now.

Yoshi’s voice is hot against my ear. “Kayla . . .”

“It’s okay,” I say, the cool air crackling with magic. “Take Peso and wait here.”

“Kayla . . .” Yoshi says again, and I can hear the pain in his voice. It’s not over yet. The spell still holds some sway. It’s almost killing him not to defend me, but I don’t need protecting.

Not from this. This is what I needed all along.

Steps later, I wrap my arms around the neck of a boy I’ve never met before and kiss the soul of the boy who was the centerpiece of my life.

“Kayla.” This time the voice, the disembodied voice, is Ben’s.

Did lightning strike? I don’t know where we are. I can still see the glowing form of the carousel and the shifters on it, but the park landscape has faded to stars, and everywhere I look, there are black-and-blue butterflies. Our lips linger, caressing, forgiving. In my mind, I hear him say, “There’s no difference between the Cat and Kayla. They are one. They are the same.”

A rebellious, sassy part of my brain snarls that I tried to tell him that in the first place, that all of this drama was incredibly unnecessary, except for his prejudice and fear. But then I realize he’s the one who’s changed, that living inside Darby, inside Evan and Tanya and Lula and Yoshi and Peter has taught him what it means to be a wereperson.

What it means to be me.

Ben finally breaks the kiss and whispers, “I want to celebrate what you are.”

I barely feel it as my saber teeth and claws extend. I don’t think twice about ripping away my shirt or peeling off my jeans. I’m finally fully naked in front of him in a way so much more intimate than I imagined when I fantasized about offering up my virginity.

Then again, maybe that’s what I’m doing now.

I know I’ll never be the same. I’ll never be the girl I was.

It’s denying, hiding, living in secret that’s stoked this pain.

I don’t know how I’ll manage to live in the world. But raising my whiskers, I refuse to hide my inner Cat from anyone any longer.

A day later, or maybe it’s only a moment, I glimpse a rush of luminescent white wings.

The park returns. The river yawns in front of me. The glow is gone.

I remember Granny Z saying that the spell was a blessing for healing. I don’t feel wholly healed, but I do feel better. The grief lingers inside me, but it’s retracted its claws.

It’s still raining. Peter is only Peter again. Yoshi is at my side, like me in full Cat form.

His fur is black. His body is muscled and sleek. He rubs his flank against mine.

It’s too soon. But it’s not a promise, it’s a possibility.

And that feels just fine.

Anchor:
We interrupt our regularly scheduled showing of
INN Money Sense
in light of the following footage. Please be advised that it may disturb some viewers, including impressionable children.

The scene unfolding on your screen was shot at Pine Ridge, Texas, a small town about an hour southeast of Austin, with a night-vision camera by an anonymous source. Here with me is Dr. Sedler, a specialist in shape-shifter physiology from the New York Natural History Museum. Dr. Sedler, could you explain to us what we’re seeing?

Dr. Sedler:
That female in the center of the screen is a werecat. You can see how she’s removing her clothing and starting to shift from human to — there! — you can clearly discern her body taking Cat form. What is that odd blurring of the screen?

Anchor:
Our technical crew quickly added that in compliance with FCC guidelines.

Dr. Sedler:
Oh, um, of course. In any case, you can see the arms turning to legs, the hands to paws. This is not unprecedented film. Humans have recorded shifters transforming before.

Anchor:
In rural areas and controlled labs, but not in small-town U.S.A. According to the source of the footage, this female shifter was engaging in a satanic ritual when —

Dr. Sedler:
There’s a young, solid-colored male off to the side behind her, and other figures I can’t make out on the . . . what is that structure?

Anchor:
A carousel. This female shifter has been identified as Kayla Morgan, an honors student at Pine Ridge High and the daughter of Mayor Franklin Morgan. Is this evidence that shifters are not only integrated into human society but also asserting political and demonic power within it?

Dr. Sedler:
There’s the tail! She’s a magnificent specimen. Wait, what’re those flashing red lights?

Anchor:
The police. They’re taking the werepeople into custody.

“LIGHTS,” KAYLA SAYS,
pointing up the hill. “Not town lights, something else.” She sounds winded, exhausted from so much shifting in such a short time.

I can make out a rotating red light and a blue one. A white, searching beam swings across the park. “Firefighters?” I guess, once again in my human form and feeling naked and exposed next to the lady Cat, who suddenly seems a lot more comfortable with the whole concept of nudity. Lightning did strike the carousel, but we’re alive and we’ve returned to reality from . . . whatever the hell that was. A ghost dimension, I guess. Granny Z said the incantation is shifter in origin. Tonight I sure as hell hope there’s a higher power on our side.