Lions and Tigers and Boys

by Tawny Stokes

  My breath was labored as I took another tentative step backward. At any moment I was going to panic. I could sense it creeping up on me, like fingers feathering over my throat preparing to squeeze. “You’re okay, Dani. You’ll be fine. Nothing’s going to rip you apart.”

  Feeling a bit more confident from the sound of my own voice, I took another step back and ran into something solid. Solid and fleshy and breathing. I sucked in air in order to let out one mega scream, when a warm hand clamped down over my mouth, and a voice whispered in my ear.

  “Don’t freak out. It’s Cai.”

  Except at that point, I was already in fight-or-flight mode, and I kicked back with my foot and threw an elbow behind me. My foot landed on a shin, and my elbow in a gut, and I was released. Turning to see Cai doubled over rubbing his stomach, I winced. “I’m so sorry!”

  He shook his head with his lips pressed together. Was he trying not to laugh? “No, my fault. I shouldn’t have snuck up behind you.”

  “That’s true.” I rubbed at my chest, my heart still thumping like a jackrabbit. “Did you know I was following you?”

  He straightened and nodded. “Yeah, pretty much from the get-go.”

  “And you led me out here”—I splayed my arms to gesture to the absolute isolation and oppressive darkness—“as, what, a prank?”

  “Not a prank exactly.” He rubbed at his shin. “Anyway, I’m the one who should be miffed. Why were you following me?”

  “Um.” Well, he had me there. Was confession really all that great for the soul? “Curiosity?”

  “It can be dangerous out here. You really shouldn’t have done this. What if I hadn’t known you were following me and you got lost for real?”

  “I would’ve found my way back. Eventually.”

  “What if you had tripped and broken something, or what if something tried to…” He paused, rubbing his face. “Point is, I know these woods better than you do.”

  “These woods don’t scare me. I can take care of myself.”

  “But you smell—er, I mean you looked scared earlier. Did you see something?”

  I was reluctant to say anything, because I didn’t want to look like a dork. Again. It seemed that was my natural state when I was around this boy. All matter was solid, liquid, or gas, and I was dork. Hooray! I just invented a new element.

  I glanced toward the fence. “I thought I saw or heard something. It was probably just a raccoon or a badger or maybe something bigger like a wild boar.”

  “A wild boar?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know. I heard something grunt and snuffle. If it wasn’t a pig, I don’t know what kind of animal would make that sound.”

  He took a step toward the fence and put his nose in the air as if sniffing for something. Could he somehow smell the animal? That would be a bit weird but kind of cool, too. He was like Tarzan of the jungle. A flash of Cai, shirtless, a bit dirty, wearing only a loincloth, crouched on a tree branch, popped in my mind, rendering me nearly speechless.

  “Hello? Are you listening?”

  I must’ve been gaping at him, because he waved his hand in front of my face, breaking me out of fantasyland. “Yes, what? I heard you.”

  “What did I say, then?” He gave me a doubting look, but there was an amused twitch to his lips.

  “That you should, um…walk me to my dorm?”

  “Close enough.” He started back the way we had come. “Let’s go.”

  I rushed to catch up to him, then we walked side by side through the tall grass and the copse of trees. I glanced at him a few times, catching him looking at me. Every now and then a ray of moonlight would play over Cai’s face, and I had to stop myself from gawking. Hadn’t I fantasized about this moment a ton of times before? Hell yes, I had. Except he wasn’t escorting me back to the dorms like a naughty child. We were taking a romantic moonlit stroll through the woods, and then he would turn to me, take my hand, pull me closer, and kiss me.

  And that’s when I tripped on the tree root sticking out of the ground, and almost did a face-plant into the dirt.

  Chapter Ten

  Cai

  I hadn’t meant to pull her close enough that I could smell the ginger from her shampoo in her hair. She’d just fallen so suddenly, and I had reacted in an instant, that I didn’t have any other thought than to save her. I wrapped my arm around before she could hit the ground, twisted, and hugged her tight to my body. In my mind, it had been super slo-mo and heroic as hell. Yes, I was puffing out my chest a little.

  Dani looked at me all wide-eyed and surprised, with a bit of a flush on her cheeks. I could feel her heart hammering against her chest and smell the sweat that had beaded on her top lip, which drew my gaze to her mouth. She was panting, and it made me breathless as well. I knew I should let her go, but I really didn’t want to. I liked the feel of her in my arms. If I just leaned in and kissed her…

  “Um, what just happened?”

  Remembering myself, I dropped my arm and took a step away. Marvel’s voice bounced around my head: Pretty girls are a distraction you don’t need and can’t afford.

  “You fell. I caught you,” I said. “Now we’re continuing to walk back to the dorms.” Where it’s safe, and I can stop thinking about kissing you.

  “It was like you knew I was going to fall even before I did,” she said as we got back on the main path.

  “I have good reflexes.” I slid my phone out of my back jeans pocket and tossed it in the air, waiting until the very last second to catch it. “Being around Ozzy and Loki, you have to be quick.”

  “Do you like working with them?”

  “Love it. Ozzy’s like a fuzzy brother to me.” I rolled my eyes. Why did I just say that? She was going to think I was a weirdo.

  She chuckled. “That’s so cool. I love animals. I wish I could have that connection.”

  “Maybe you do and don’t know it yet.” She probably thought I was talking about her cat, which I knew she had. I could scent the animal on some of her clothes, but I was talking about something a bit bigger and a lot more dangerous. The fear she’d experienced earlier had a particularly ripe aroma. I could smell it all around her.

  As we neared her dorm, Dani kept looking at me, like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to or whether she should. I stopped on the stone path and lifted a brow.

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t say anything.”

  “You don’t have to. You keep looking at me.”

  She glanced down at the ground, then up at the sky, then finally at me. “What’s going on in class?”

  “What do you mean?” Although I knew exactly what she was getting at.

  “Well, one second we’re all in synch and everything is near perfect, and then…splat, you let go of me and I fall.”

  “I don’t let go of you. Maybe we’re not as in synch as you think.”

  Her face fell, and I knew I hurt her. Damn you, Marvel.

  “I really don’t get you.” She frowned. “One minute you’re, I don’t know, friendly with me, and the next, you’re kind of a jerk.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her. All I really wanted to do was pull her to me and kiss her. I loved the way our hands and legs had fit together during class, and I wanted to see how the rest of our bodies would respond brushing up next to each other. Would her heart pound, like mine was right now, just thinking about pressing my lips to hers?

  “I don’t think I’m being a jerk.” But maybe it was better if she thought that. Then maybe it would be easier for me to sabotage her. “I’m sorry if you think that.”

  “You’re not really like what people say.”

  “What do they say?”

  “That you’re kind of cold. Don’t like many people.”

  “Well, not everything you hear is true.” I scuffed the ground with my shoe. I knew there were rumors going around about me. Maggie likely started some of them because I broke up wi
th her. It still sucked when people misjudged me. Thought they knew me, when they didn’t have a clue. “Just like I’m sure what people say about you isn’t true.”

  She balked. “I’m not sure if I’m flattered that people talk about me or not.”

  I chuckled. I liked this girl. She had backbone, and more ability and strength than I bet she ever realized.

  “Let me guess. The wonderful Maggie West probably says that I’m lumbering and awkward and have no business being here.”

  “Lumbering?”

  She shrugged. “Hey, I like to read the thesaurus late at night when I can’t sleep, what can I say? I have an advanced vocabulary.”

  This made me laugh, and I shook my head as we walked the rest of the way to her dorm. When we reached the doors, a palpable tension surrounded us. It almost felt like I was bringing her back after a first date and there was that long, significant pause where both people were deciding whether to kiss or not. This was not a date, and there’d be no kiss, despite the fact that I desperately wanted to.

  I would lean in, her lips would part in anticipation, her heartbeat would flutter, and my lips would just brush hers for a moment until I’d deepen the kiss with my tongue…

  She licked her lips and stared into my eyes. “Cai, I…”

  I had to diffuse the situation, so I quickly said, “Have a good night,” then walked away, heading toward my dorm. There was no point in my going back into the woods for a run. That would be too tempting for Dani to follow me again. And too tempting for me to just grab her, press her up against one of the trees, and kiss her until she was breathless and doe-eyed.

  “Hey.”

  I turned to see her, standing in the open doorframe, leaning on the door.

  “Why do you go into the woods at night?”

  I could’ve given her a million different reasons, but instead I said, “Most of the time it’s because I like to be alone, to run, to think. I feel more myself running through the trees.”

  “Naked?”

  Even from here I could tell she was blushing. I had to admit I was, too. How do you explain to someone why you run around the woods with no clothes on?

  I shrugged. “Clothes are too constricting?”

  She laughed again. “That’s kind of being a perv, you know.”

  “Yeah, you got me there.”

  What I could have said was, Because no one can see me shape-shift into a tiger, and I need to stretch out my feline legs almost every night. I didn’t want anyone to find out, because then people would come to study me in a laboratory like an experiment. I grew up thinking I was a freak, and I didn’t want anyone to look at me like that again. Especially not a girl like you. I couldn’t shape-shift with clothes on, so I took them off before I changed. But of course I didn’t say that. I couldn’t.

  She nodded. “And the other times?”

  “Meetings of the secret society I belong to.”

  She laughed then, full, hearty guffaws that made me smile. “I knew it!” She gave me a little wave, then disappeared inside.

  I found it interesting that I wanted to call out to her to come running with me. That I didn’t fear telling her my secrets. I sensed that she wouldn’t look at me strangely, that she wouldn’t judge me harshly. I think on some level, she may have already suspected some truth about me. Maybe not the exact truth that I was some magical shape-shifting being, but some version of it.

  And for those reasons, and several more, I had to keep our relationship professional. Marvel couldn’t know how I felt about her. Because I knew he would go with Plan B and stage an accident or have her removed from the school. The mission was everything. He would do anything to keep it secret, to keep us secret. He would reason that it was for our own safety. That he was protecting us from a great evil. An evil that would do anything to possess all the magic and wonder that was sheltered on these school grounds. An evil that would use an innocent, sweet girl to any advantage he could.

  Just like I was.

  That was what I had scented by the fence when I’d grabbed Dani. One of the Wizard’s minions. He employed many creatures to do his bidding, but none as fearsome and vile as what had lurked in the tall grass. Dani had said it sounded like a pig, or a wild boar. But it was no innocent thing like a pig. It was a winged beast with black fur and a large muzzle with sharp vicious fangs. Talons six inches long grew from its thick stubby toes on each paw.

  I’d seen pictures of them, Marvel showed us during one of our first meetings. It had been to warn us, to scare us most likely, into being careful. Into not venturing too far from the safety of the enchanted campus. Marvel himself had spelled the wrought iron fence that surrounded the entire seventy-five acres. It was to keep us safe from the Wizard and his twisted winged monkeys.

  This was the first time one of them had come close to the school, or at least the first time anyone had known about the visit. They were becoming bolder. It was obvious the Wizard knew we were planning something and sent his minions to test our defenses.

  What if Dani had gotten too close to the fence? Would it have tried to pull her out? A shiver of dread rushed over me, thinking about what could have happened. A hungry cougar or bear couldn’t have inflicted the same damage that one of these creatures could have. And a cougar or bear wouldn’t have done it for pleasure.

  However much I didn’t want to, I had to suppress my feelings for her. The less she knew, the better for everyone involved.

  I went into the dorm and up the stairs to my room. Leander was snoring safely in his bed. I didn’t bother taking my clothes off and just lay down on my bed. I probably should’ve tried to sleep, as I had a full day tomorrow, but too many thoughts and images swirled in my mind. And the most prominent of them was Dani Gale, the pixie of a girl with the soul of a warrior.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dani

  This was the day that would not end. I seemed to be having a lot of these in the past few weeks. But when it finally did end, I collapsed onto my bed and groaned into my pillow. Only 150 more days to go before summer holidays. If I was being optimistic it was a little less than seventy-five days until winter break. I could survive seventy-five more days. Couldn’t I?

  I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. It wasn’t as if the term was hard or anything. It wasn’t. I was good at English and math and loved my dance class. It was just proving difficult to keep partnering with Cai and not act on my feelings toward him. And I suspected that he had feelings for me, too. I could tell by the way he would look at me. I just couldn’t figure out why he was keeping his distance. I didn’t think it was because of Maggie. They weren’t together; I had made sure to ask around about that. I needed something to keep my mind occupied so I wasn’t thinking/dreaming of Cai’s crazy intense eyes and the way he smelled up close and personal. I couldn’t seem to get his scent out of my nostrils.

  It was a mixture of grass and sun and the way my cat’s fur smelled. Which a person might think would be gross, but it wasn’t. I loved the way my little Siamese cat, Gypsy, smelled. Almost like candy. It was hard to explain, but that’s what Cai smelled like. Fresh, warm candy.

  I shook my head, grabbed my pillow, and smooshed it into my face. I wanted to scream into it but refrained. I didn’t want any unwelcome visits from the girls in the other dorm rooms wondering if I’d found a large spider crawling on the wall or if I was going completely loony. Instead I took a deep, hearty sniff, hoping that the smell of my ginger shampoo and laundry soap would invade my nose and expel that delicious candy scent for good.

  “What are you doing?”

  I pulled the pillow away to see Anna looking down at me. Her big brown eyes were wide with worry.

  “Practicing killing myself, so I don’t have to humiliate myself again tomorrow.”

  “You shouldn’t joke about that stuff. I knew a girl in my middle school whose cousin committed suicide because she was being bullied.”

  I sat up, hugging my pillow to my chest. “You’re right
. I’m sorry.”

  Grabbing her math book, she sat on her bed. “It wasn’t all that bad today, was it?”

  “I fell off the beam today. Hard.” Off her “so what?” look, I elaborated further, “And landed at Maggie West’s feet. It was really mortifying.”

  “Everyone falls. It’s part of the process.” She waved my concern away with the swish of her petite hand. “Did something else happen?”

  I considered telling her about my frustration with Cai, but then I’d have to tell her about seeing him naked outside in the woods as well and about following him around in the dark. But I didn’t want to embarrass him any further than I was sure he already was at the time.

  And I definitely didn’t want to tell her I had a crush on Cai Coppersmith. A full on mad, heart-squeezing, tummy-turning crush.

  “No, nothing else happened.”

  Anna smiled. “You see, nothing to be upset about.”

  I nodded, then also grabbed my math textbook. We had another assignment due tomorrow.

  “Oh, I saw Maggie in the common room. She told me to tell you, she better see you later.”

  Ah yes, I had two assignments due tomorrow.

  “What is that all about? Did you two become friends when I wasn’t looking?”

  I shook my head vehemently. “Oh no. Maybe when hell freezes over. Maybe not even then.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d mind being friends with her,” she said shyly, without looking up.

  “Why on earth would you ever want to be friends with her? She’s horrible.”

  “She’s not horrible, Dani. She can be nice. She smiled at me after stretch class the other day.”

  “Are you sure she wasn’t sizing you up, on how to slice you, cook you, and gobble you down? I heard witches eat children.”

  She didn’t say anything in return, and I thought maybe I had hurt her feelings somehow. I just didn’t want Anna to get sliced up by Maggie’s talons. I got a sense that once she had them in you, it would just be a matter of time before she shredded you into razor thin ribbons. I didn’t want ribbons of Anna, I wanted Anna whole and unscarred.