The Cursed Key

by Miranda Brock

  I curled my hand against the buzzing in my left hand. It was like the reminder of that loosed energy had the power inside of me singing for release.

  Quickening my steps, I left the path and started picking my way through the underbrush. Kael followed behind, something that left me uncomfortable. Just another reason to keep the knife in my hand. I had no problem threatening him with the weapon again if I needed to.

  He was unnervingly quiet behind me, and I peeked over my shoulder frequently to assure myself he was still there. How could he move so quietly?

  After getting turned around for a couple of minutes, much to Kael’s frustration, I finally picked my way through a patch of briars to the small clearing where I had buried the key.

  “I buried it over there.” I raised my arm, pointing with the blade of my knife toward the little patch of disturbed earth.

  Kael brushed past me. As he made his way forward, I stared at his back, a nagging feeling overcoming me again that I had seen him somewhere before. I worked to pull him from some forgotten memory but came up empty. I was fairly good with faces. Certainly I would have remembered his.

  I shook my head against thoughts of his face—I didn’t care how handsome it was—and stepped across the brittle leaves to join him.

  The PITO agent was squatting beside the hole, eyebrows lowered as he grumbled, “Burying the key. Brilliant idea.” He pulled at the dirt along the bottom of the dip in the earth, as if hoping to find it still in there. “Foolish. Completely foolish.”

  My hands went to my hips, and I huffed loud enough for Kael to hear me. But if he had, he obviously didn’t care. He ignored me as he straightened. The grumbling continued as he walked around the area with quick steps. He wasn’t so quiet anymore, his footfalls snapping twigs and disturbing the litter of leaves.

  After years of experience on digs around the world, I was accustomed to the careful search of clues. This was not how you went about it.

  “You know,” I said, as Kael continued his assault on the forest floor with his hectic pacing. “You’re trampling all over any footprints or other evidence that man may have left behind.”

  Kael growled and narrowed his eyes at me. I shrugged. It was the truth. He’d likely smashed any prints into oblivion under his worn leather boots. It certainly wasn’t my fault. After a moment, he glanced around, squinting through the trees.

  “I’m going to try to track the mage.” His gaze swung back to me. “Try not to freak out. I don’t want your screaming to bring the attention of anyone here.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Scream? At what, exactly? Your serious lack of careful investigative skills?”

  Kael’s lips curled back into a snarl. What was with this guy, always growling and grumbling?

  His searing gaze fell, and then he was crouching to untie his boots. What was he doing? Did he have a twig poking his foot?

  He pulled off the boots, then promptly followed with his shirt. I was too stunned to do more than stare. Luckily, he was nice to stare at, with his wide shoulders and hard muscles that made a great canvas for the occasional scars marring his slightly tanned skin. I always liked scars on men. They told a story, and likely not an easy one at that.

  When he started unbuckling his belt, I was jerked from my ogling with a quickening pulse. It wasn’t until he started shucking off his pants that I finally found my voice.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I didn’t know what this guy thought he was going to accomplish, but I was definitely out. It was like he was trying to get stabbed.

  Two steps of retreat was as far as I got before my backward movement faltered. Energy flared from my hand in response to the abnormality happening before me. Kael’s body was jerking and folding in an impossible way. His bones cracked and broke at unnerving angles as his limbs twisted.

  Kael had expected me to scream. I didn’t, but it was difficult when one moment I was staring at his disturbing, contorting body, and the next, a massive jaguar stood in his place.

  His sides rose and fell with each breath, the spots patterned across his fur shifting slightly with the movement. The big cat’s head lowered, peering at me with pale yellow eyes.

  I knew this massive jaguar. He was the same one I had encountered in the rainforest in South America. He was the same one that had tried to kill me.

  My grip on my knife was slick with sweat. He pulled his unnerving stare from me and tilted up his head, whiskers flaring as he sniffed the air. Without another glance in my direction, he disappeared through the underbrush.

  This is getting too weird.

  The man had just changed into a jaguar. Letting the energy caressing my fingers wisp away, I turned and left. I hurried through the trees, not even bothering to be quiet. Kael would likely be angry at my retreat, but dude just shifted into an animal without warning me. What was I supposed to do? Stick around?

  I needed to get out of the woods and get home.

  As I broke from the trees and hit the pavement, an odd sense of déjà vu rippled through me. How many days had it been since I’d been fleeing under a swaying canopy with the large cat running nearby?

  A few minutes later, I reached my house. I swept around to the back and went in through the door leading into the kitchen. The whole situation was crazy.

  I dropped my bag on the floor and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. It was two-thirds gone in one go before I set it back. I leaned against the counter. The man had turned into a jaguar. Not just any jaguar, either, but the very one that had pursued me in the rainforest.

  I wanted answers, but first I had to process this.

  My stomach growled, reminding me I had other needs as well. Not feeling up to anything fancy, I set my knife on the counter and reached into the cabinet for a box of cereal. I turned back toward the fridge and gasped, dropping the cereal.

  Kael was standing in my kitchen.

  He was no longer a massive jaguar and was once again fully clothed. By instinct, I reached back and grabbed my knife. I pointed it toward him. How had he even come inside without me noticing? Did he retain some sort of jaguar stealth?

  The man just shook his head. “Haven’t you already tried that?”

  I scowled. “Get out of my house.”

  The man had the audacity to ignore my request, and my weapon, and stride past me into the dining room. He pulled out one of the chairs and plopped heavily into it. He looked a bit winded as he leaned his elbows on the table.

  I stalked after him. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t just come in here and—”

  “Do you have any water?”

  I really wanted to bite back that no, I didn’t, but Kael did look like he was in desperate need of hydration.

  His chest rose and fell rapidly with strands of hair slicked to his forehead. I snatched a bottle of water from the fridge and set it on the table a good two feet from him. Getting too close to him wasn’t something I was keen on after seeing him transform into a carnivorous wild beast.

  On the opposite side of the table, I pulled out a chair and waited for him to gulp the entire bottle of water. He could probably use some more, but I wanted answers first.

  “What are you?”

  Kael leaned back into his chair and folded his arms. The sweat-heavy shirt made his muscles look even more pronounced. “I told you, I work for the—”

  I waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. The Supernatural Investigative and Tracing Organization.”

  “It’s Paranormal Intelligence and Tracking Organization.”

  “Whatever. That isn’t what I meant about what you are, anyway.” I narrowed my eyes. “You turned into a jaguar. How?”

  Kael muttered something about humans, then said, “I’m a shifter. A jaguar shifter. Everyone who works for PITO is a shifter of some kind.”

  Of some kind.

  Implying what? That those who worked for this organization were capable of turning into some kind of animal, not just jaguars?

  I shook my head to dislodge
the thoughts screaming at the impossibility. “You were in the rainforest when I was there. When I found the key.”

  If he had any surprise that I recognized him, he didn’t let it show. “I was. I’ve been assigned there for a few years now. And now, because of you, I have to be here.”

  Slowly, I set my knife down. I left it sitting on the glossy surface of the table where Kael could plainly see the weapon. I sat against the back of the chair. “You tried to stop me from getting the key. Why did you want it?”

  “I didn’t want it. I was protecting it.” He gripped the edge of the table with tight fingers. “Protecting it from people like you who want to take things that don’t belong to them and mess everything up.”

  “You tried to kill me.”

  Kael bared his teeth, a gesture that somehow seemed more unnerving now that I knew about the beast hiding beneath his skin. “I tried to stop you, not kill you. Your thievery cost my partner his life. You’re lucky I didn’t rip your throat out.”

  Until that moment, I had forgotten about the other jaguar. He had been shot and killed by the guides.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, a sick feeling pinching in my stomach as the weight of that reality crashed into me.

  He sighed, the sound whispering from his bones. “What’s done is done. Not that it gives much comfort to his mate.”

  Was he trying to make me feel worse? In an effort to move past the sudden, stabbing guilt, I asked, “So, did you find anything?”

  “Not a trace. Which is unusual.”

  “Sooo… What are we going to do?” We. Already I was referring to us as ‘we.’ I was a part of this now, though. I had to help get the key back.

  Kael laid his forehead in his hand, massaging his temples with fingers and thumb. “I may know someone who can help us.” He lifted his head and fixed me with a calculating stare. “Are you certain you want to go?”

  Did he expect me to hesitate after basically telling me I’d killed his friend and some woman’s husband? What was I supposed to say? ‘Your problem, not mine?’

  “Yes,” I said, a familiar but different feeling bubbling up inside of me.

  I knew some of this feeling was the excitement of adventure. I felt it before every dig. But this time, it was accompanied by fear. And not a fear of failure, but a fear for my life.

  “Good.” Kael’s chair scraped across the floor as he stood. “Get some rest today and pack some things. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone. We’ll leave this evening.”

  He toed his boots off in the middle of my dining room floor and proceeded to make himself at home by flopping down on the couch in my living room.

  I shoved away from the table. “Don’t you have somewhere else you can go until then?”

  Kael cracked an eye open. “Not really. Besides, someone has to keep an eye on you.”

  “I’m not going to leave.”

  He attempted to mash one of the throw pillows into something comfortable to rest his head on. “I would notice if you tried.”

  I didn’t like the way he looked at me just then, a mix of caution and determination on his face.

  “Besides,” he continued, “normal humans can’t do the things you can. Until I figure out what you are, you’re stuck with me.”

  His words were unsettling, but no more than the fact that I didn’t know what I was anymore, either.

  “So, where are we going?” I asked.

  “Pinnacle. It’s a nightclub.”

  The name seemed vaguely familiar. Was that the club the cashier at the store had been rambling about?

  I didn’t bother to pry for more information, though. I left the interloper taking up my couch and headed upstairs.

  If I was going to leave on some mission to find an ancient, powerful being to recover a cursed key with the help of a cranky jaguar shifter, all while trying to figure out what was going on with my suddenly occurring magical powers, I had to prepare.

  I opened the door to my study. Research was calling my name.

  Chapter 11

  Kael Rivera was in my kitchen, helping himself to the pasta I had intended on cooking for supper the evening before. The man had some nerve. I dropped my suitcase onto the wooden floor, and his attention snapped to me.

  I propped my hand on a cocked hip. My messenger back was resting against the other, weighing down on my shoulder. “Are you eating my food?”

  He grabbed the paper towel next to his mostly empty plate and wiped sauce from his mouth. A quick glance at the clock hanging on the wall to his left, and his gaze swept back to mine. “It’s nearly eight. Time to go.”

  Most of my day had been spent in the study, rifling through every scrap of paper, books, and journals of notes I could get my hands on. My vision had gone bleary from staring at my computer screen. I’d taken a nap, had a shower, and packed. Kael never deigned to tell me exactly what I would need or where we would be going, so I had chosen a variety of clothing. I’d skipped lunch, too busy and too stressed to worry about food at the time.

  And now he was lounging in my kitchen, eating my food, and acting as though I was the one holding things up.

  I marched across the kitchen to the stove and lifted the lid on one of my pots. There was hardly a tablespoon of sauce left. “You ate all of it?”

  As though not the least bit fazed by my annoyed scowl, Kael pushed back the chair and stood. He put his dirty dishes in the sink, at least.

  “I’ll grab you something on the way,” he said.

  I was about to tell him I was capable of buying my own dinner, but then again, he had eaten my food. A meal on him was definitely called for. “Fine. Whatever.”

  The PITO agent quickly washed his dishes as I laced my boots and gathered my jacket.

  Glancing down at my outfit, I added, “I’m not exactly dressed for a club.”

  He stacked the washed dishes in the drying rack beside the sink. “Doesn’t matter. Come on.”

  He headed out the back door as I hefted my suitcase, but I paused in the doorway. Turning, I peered at the kitchen and into the adjoining dining room. A prickling sensation ran over me. One I couldn’t put my finger on. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be seeing my home again for a very long time.

  I flicked off the light and locked the door behind me. As a goodbye squeezed my heart, my fingers brushed against the rough brick edging the doorway. I’d left countless times, but this was...different.

  “Olivia, hurry up!” Kael barked, jolting me from my silent farewell.

  A small sense of shock jolted through me. Had I told him my name yet? I didn’t think I had. I grumbled under my breath as I headed toward the garage where his voice had sounded. Had he been snooping through my house while I had been preoccupied upstairs?

  Despite his gruff tone, Kael was eyeing my dad’s Bristol with approval. Men. If he thought we were driving my dad’s car, he was crazy. Even I had never gotten behind its wheel. It was more like a monument to my dad than a vehicle to me, and it would remain untouched and pristine as long as it was in my care.

  Popping the trunk on my Subaru, I shoved my suitcase inside. Kael rounded the front of the car and headed toward the driver’s side.

  I froze, hand on the trunk lid that I hadn’t even snapped back down yet. “Uh, no. I can drive my own car.”

  He held his hand out, for my keys, I assumed. “I’m driving.”

  “Don’t you have a car?”

  “Back in Brazil, I do. Now come on, we don’t have all night.”

  I ignored him and headed for the driver’s side door. When he didn’t budge, a glare narrowed my eyes. Stabbing him would probably be extreme now. My window of opportunity for reasonably getting away with that had passed. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance of shoving him out of the way, either. With his wide shoulders and hard muscles, it would be like trying to move a boulder.

  “I can drive,” I repeated.

  He leaned closer, golden gaze hard. “Listen. I’m assuming what you can do—” His gaze flicke
d to my hands. “—is something new. The last thing we need is for your hands to light up like a Christmas tree just because some jerk cuts you off or something.”

  Where was his sense of personal space? My mind flashed back to the woods, to when he had me smashed up against the tree. Duly noted: he didn’t have a sense of personal space. Did he think he could loom me into agreement or something?

  Irritatingly, though, Kael had a point. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if that magic burst from my palms while I was in the middle of traffic.

  A tingling whispered across my skin, and I tampered it back. “Fine. Here.”

  I shoved my keys against Kael’s chest. He didn’t jostle an inch. I had been right. The man was solid as a rock. I wheeled around and watched with a small bit of satisfaction as he shimmied with difficulty into the front seat, trying not to get the door too close to the Bristol. I settled in and wedged the messenger bag in beside my feet.

  Chaucer was inside, along with the few scraps I’d been able to glean from the study in my research, most of which likely wouldn’t amount to anything. I clicked on my seatbelt.

  “Food first, then the club,” I said.

  Kael drove like a bat out of hell. I wasn’t the safest driver around, but this man made wearing a seatbelt seem like minimal protection. If he wrecked my car, I’d kill him. It was a wonder I’d been able to hold in the power humming through me. The only time I didn’t have my hands smashed under my thighs was when he stopped to grab me a double cheeseburger with extra bacon. At least he had the grace to stay parked while I scarfed, even if he did sigh and drum his fingers on the steering wheel the entire time.

  I nearly stabbed myself in the eye with my straw as he took a sharp turn to the right. He had insisted on waiting all day to leave, and now he couldn’t seem to get there fast enough.

  “What’s the rush?”

  “Pinnacle is only open from eight to midnight. The guy I want to talk to will be gone after that and won’t return until next week. We can’t miss this window.”