Authors: Sara Humphreys
Undenied
Copyright © 2012 by Sara Humphreys
Cover and internal design © 2012 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Dawn Adams
Cover images © tankist276/shutterstock.com; jo crebbin/Shutterstock.com
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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“What do you mean you rented the room to someone else?”
Lillian attempted to keep her voice calm, but her temper was getting the better of her. She glanced around the shabby apartment house and found it difficult to believe that it was booked solid. With all the gorgeous rentals in New Orleans, how on earth could this dump have no vacancies—especially since she had booked a room here for the next six months?
“Sorry.” The old woman took a long drag off her cigarette and blew the smoke into Lillian’s face. Her pale blue-gray eyes stared back unapologetically as she shifted her rotund frame in the chair behind her desk. “I sent you an email, but you never responded, so I figured you were just pissed.”
“Well, I am now.” She ran her hands over her face and let out a sound of frustration. The row of silver bangles on her wrist jingled their familiar tune and instantly calmed her. Something about that tinkling sound always brought her a certain level of serenity.
“Here’s your deposit back.” The woman shoved the envelope into Lillian’s hands.
“Thanks… I guess.” She sucked in another cleansing breath and braced both hands on the desk, hoping to appeal to whatever human decency this woman may have. “Gladys, I’ve been on the road for almost ten days, and my computer died right after I left Washington, so I haven’t had Internet access. That’s why I didn’t answer you—because I never got the email. What am I supposed to do now? I gotta tell ya, Gladys… you’re asking for some bad juju. How can you do this to someone?”
“Aren’t you a fortune-teller?” Gladys looked at her suspiciously and pursed her lips. “Must not be very good at it if you didn’t see this coming.”
“I’m a palm reader.” Lillian adjusted the leather satchel slung over her shoulder. “I read palms—not minds.”
And she did. She could run her finger along the deep-seated lines in a person’s palm and see their past, present, and future. She tried to read people in other ways, but it never worked. It wasn’t just a touch of flesh. Touching someone on the arm or anywhere else didn’t tell her squat.
It was the connection to those creases in the hands… the ones created in the womb that stay with us until the grave… those held a multitude of secrets and truths.
“Yeah?” She stuck her meaty hand out to Lillian. “Prove it,” she sneered.
Lillian bit back the urge to tell the old bag off and took the woman’s plump hand. She turned it over and sucked in a deep breath before trailing her finger along the deep lifeline.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and her lids fluttered closed. Images flashed through her mind as she moved her finger slowly along the crease in her palm—like a slide show of Gladys’s entire life.
Playing in the bayou as a child. Sitting on Santa’s knee at Christmas. Fooling around with a boy behind the bleachers of her high school football field. Stumbling drunk out of bars on Bourbon Street. Coughing up blood, and finally, lying in a casket—not long from now.
Gladys tugged her hand away. “I said, let go.” She rubbed her hand and looked at Lillian with a scowl. “Well? What’d you see?”
“Been to the doctor lately?” Lillian flicked her gaze to the still-burning cigarette dangling from her lips. “They call those coffin nails for a reason.”
“Whatever.” She shrugged and took another drag off her cigarette. “The holidays are just a few weeks away, and the tourists have already invaded the Quarter, so I doubt you’ll find anything around here.”
The cell phone on the desk rang, and the horrible creature picked it up without sparing a glance at Lillian. She started yelling at the caller. It was someone named Bob, and from the way she was screaming—Bob was in deep shit.
Looking around the beat-up old place and listening to Gladys berate poor Bob, Lillian decided that perhaps it was better this way. The old bat was not someone she wanted to deal with on a daily basis. She had bad karma.
Resigned to her fate, she stuffed the envelope in her bag and turned to leave.
“Hang on,” Gladys barked into the phone, before holding it to her ample bosom. “The only place you might actually find a room is over at The Den. It’s a bar just down the ways on the corner of Ursulines and Dauphine. Word has it that Boris has a room for rent, but since that thing happened with his sister, no one wants to rent the place. That’s your best shot.”
Lillian nodded absently as she pushed the screen door open. It creaked in protest and slammed shut behind her with a nerve-shattering crack. She stepped onto the sidewalk and made her way to her old VW bus as she fought the tears threatening to spill down her face.
Great. Her only chance of renting a room was with some guy who had a shady story involving his sister. Boris? He was probably some fat, crusty Russian dude who barked at everyone. Could this day get any worse?
Standing on the corner, she wondered what in the hell she was supposed to do now. The truth was that she had limited options and even more limited funds. She rolled into town on fumes and had only fifty dollars in cash in her pocket. She had no credit cards, and the banks were closed, so she couldn’t deposit the check.
She shielded her eyes from the bright afternoon sun and looked up and down the quiet street. This place was nothing like the wild stories she’d heard about New Orleans, but she was on the edge of the French Quarter, not on Bourbon Street—perhaps that’s where all the action really was. She had planned to check into her room and then go have a look around Jackson Square, where she’d be working for the next six months—so much for her bloody plans.
Lillian checked the locks on her van to see that they were secure and decided to take a walk up Ursulines to see if she could find the place that Gladys mentioned. She figured she had nothing to lose by trying. Everything she owned was locked in her flower-and-peace-symbol-covered van. She’d already spent the past week and a half sleeping in it—a streak she was looking forward to breaking once she reached New Orleans.
Sleeping in her van was uncomfortable, but she hadn’t been sleeping well in general for the past few weeks anyway—van or no van. Her dreams had been bright, loud, and persistent. It was the dreams that got her to change her plans and come to New Orleans instead of San Francisco.
She’d always considered the tiger her spirit animal or personal totem. She’d dreamt of tigers her entire life, and the dreams were strongest when she was at a crossroads or needing comfort. When she turned eighteen she even got a tattoo of a tiger on her lower back. It lay along the top of her ass and looked at the world through glowing yellow eyes—just like it often did in her dream.
Her mother, of course, freaked out, and that was the last straw before she was kicked out. She’d been on her own ever since, living like a gypsy, roaming from city to city, and reading palms along the way to earn her keep.
A few weeks before her scheduled move to San Francisco, she dreamt of her tiger, but for the first time—he spoke. He told her to come to New Orleans. The animal never actually moved his lips and spoke—but she heard him—his deep, smooth baritone whispered, calling her here.
Lillian tied her wavy blond hair back with an elastic band from the pocket of her jean jacket as a cool gust of wind whipped her ankle-length skirt around her legs. She tripped, almost falling in the middle of the street. Her face heated with embarrassment as she looked around to see if anyone noticed because the activity increased as she moved closer to the French Quarter.
Satisfied that nobody saw her typical clumsy move, she let out a sigh of relief. Stranded and homeless was bad enough, but falling on her face in public would add insult to injury. As she unfurled the batik skirt from her legs, the treacherous voice of self-doubt nibbled away.
Why had she listened to that voice in her dream? Why didn’t she go to college and settle down like her mother always wanted her to? Why did she always follow her gut instinct and listen to talking tigers in her dream?
Look where it got her. Alone and essentially homeless.
“What a dope.” She hugged her jacket closed against the surprisingly brisk wind and wondered if she was doing the right thing.
***
A growl rumbled in the back of Boris’s throat as he struggled to keep his irises from shifting into the glowing yellow eyes of his clan. He gripped the tequila bottle in one hand and snatched a glass with the other before pouring a shot and sliding it across the bar to his unwelcome patron.
His instinct was to shift into his Tiger form and rip Hayden’s throat out, but since he had a bar full of humans, that wasn’t likely to happen, and Hayden knew it. Hayden threw the shot back and slid the empty glass across the bar to Boris. As a member of the Bear Clan and the son of a high-ranking Council elder, Hayden had to be tolerated—unfortunately.
“What do you want, Hayden?” Boris asked as quietly as possible.
He moved to the far end of the bar and motioned for Hayden to follow. The last thing he needed was more rumors flying around about him or his place. Ever since the incident with his sister, business hadn’t been booming, and discussing Amoveo politics within earshot of humans was unwise. The existence of their race had remained secret for centuries, and he’d rather not be the one to let the proverbial cat out of the bag.
He hit the volume button from the jukebox remote. He could speak with Hayden telepathically, as all Amoveo could, but he didn’t care for the idea of allowing this asshole into his head.
“My father asked me to come and speak with you.” He took the seat at the very end and kept his voice low. “You know that our race is under attack from within, and we need to gather as many true believers as possible before we can make our move.”
Boris stilled and gritted his teeth against Hayden’s dark energy signature. It slithered around the bar like a snake and set him on edge. All Amoveo had a signature, a spiritual fingerprint that distinguished them from everyone else, and Hayden’s was dark and thick. Aside from being a spoiled, self-entitled tool, he also had a mean streak a mile long, and Boris couldn’t stand him.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree. My sister got involved in this crap, and look where it got her.” He shifted his body so that his back was to the rest of the bar and fixed his intent gaze on Hayden. “Dead. That’s where.”
“Your sister was a patriot,” Hayden seethed. He grimaced and dropped his voice to just above a whisper as he leaned both elbows on the bar. “Are you telling me that you would encourage mating with humans and add more hybrids to the mix?”
“There’s nothing to encourage.” Boris crossed his arms over his broad chest. “You know as well as I do that our matings are predestined, so there’s little choice in the matter.”
“We are not supposed to mate with humans,” he seethed. “It’s going to be our undoing.”
“Listen.” Boris poured him another shot and leaned onto the bar with both hands, getting right in Hayden’s face. “All I’m telling you is that I want no part of politics. All I want to do is run my bar and be left alone. Got it?”
Hayden narrowed his dark beady eyes and leveled a suspicious gaze at Boris. “You haven’t found your mate yet, have you? You’re in your midtwenties, so the clock is ticking. I hope you’re not thinking that your predestined spouse is a hybrid freak like the ones that Dante and Malcolm have shacked up with.”
“No.” Boris stilled and looked away, busying himself with cleaning behind the bar. “I am positive that my mate is not a hybrid.”
“I see.” Hayden nodded and made a sound of understanding. “Good. Because I’d hate to see you put yourself in a dangerous position. We’ve got a civil war brewing, and you don’t want to be one of those hybrid sympathizers when it happens. Better to be unmated and fight with us than to allow this cycle of birth-defect breeding to continue.”
Boris said nothing and hoped that Hayden would be satisfied with his lie. The truth was that he had found his mate—and she was not a hybrid—she was one hundred percent human.
At least, that’s what he suspected.
He’d found her in the dream realm years ago, the way all Amoveo found their predestined mates, but he’d never been able to see her. At first he thought she was from a different clan, and that’s why it was difficult to connect. There were, after all, ten animal clans among his people. But after several years of not being able to connect, he realized that she was likely human.
He didn’t exactly know how he knew it… he just did. After listening to Hayden and his hatred, the last thing he was going to do was tell him. The hybrids and their Amoveo mates were under attack from men like Hayden, so God only knew what they’d do if they found out his mate was a human.
He’d rather never connect and die alone than put her life at risk.
He could already feel his powers slipping away. He walked in the dream realm less as the days passed, and his skills of visualization and shifting took more and more energy. He knew that if he didn’t claim his mate and connect with her by his thirtieth birthday, all of his powers would fade away until they were nothing but a distant memory. At that point, death would be merciful.
Hayden tossed back another shot, stood from the stool, and threw a twenty on the bar. He glanced at the row of pictures along the stairway that led to the upstairs dining area and stopped to stare for a few minutes. Boris watched him intently, and every cell in his body went on high alert.
“Your sister was quite a piece of ass,” he said through a heavy sigh. Hayden turned to face Boris and gave him a smug smile. “Too bad I didn’t fuck her when I had the chance.”
Rage flashed over Boris’s skin at the crude comments about his sister. He leaped over the wooden bar with a growl, grabbed Hayden by the throat, dragged him through the crowd, and tossed him into the street as stunned patrons looked on.
“And don’t you ever show your goddamned face in my place again!” he yelled. Seconds later, he watched Hayden plow into a young woman as she rounded the corner. The poor thing tumbled to the ground in a heap and gaped at Hayden, too surprised to say anything.
Hayden screamed something at him, but he didn’t hear it because he was completely transfixed by the disheveled creature sitting on the sidewalk. Boris wanted to apologize and tell her how sorry he was, but just as he was about to offer her a hand, the familiar sound of bracelets jingling stopped him dead in his tracks.