Feral Pride

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  “They came looking for both of you yesterday,” Grams explains. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, honestly baffled.

  Grams wrinkles her nose at the smell of the truth. “The newlyweds were planning to come home Monday. I warned Ruby to be on the lookout and told her, what with the weresnake mess, no shifter can pass in or out of Texas right now without being questioned. Knowing your sister, she’d get cheeky with a TSA agent, and they’ve got zero sense of humor. The way I see it, there’s always some damn thing going wrong in the world. They may as well stay put and enjoy their honeymoon.”

  Clyde moseys up the aisle, sipping from a bowl of miso soup.

  “Where the hell have you been?” I want to know.

  He shrugs. “What? It wasn’t an emergency.”

  I swear to God. “I was being shot at.”

  The Wild Card’s grin is smug. “Like I said.”

  Grams scowls at him. “Fetch a broom, boy, and then sweep up that mess of glass. Supply closet is by the restrooms.” He doesn’t argue, which proves he’s not a total idiot.

  Kayla, who hasn’t met my eyes since my declaration of like, helps Grams lift the bronze longhorn statue back into place. Grams asks, “The FHPU — you know them?”

  “We’ve met,” Kayla puts in. “Back in my hometown.”

  Grams’s pupils dilate. She moves closer to Kayla, studying her face, and I begin picking up crap from the floor, trying to look less worried. In the old days, being caught mid-shift by humans might be punishable by banishment, sometimes death, at the claws of your own kind, assuming of course that the Homo sapiens in question didn’t skin you first. In the info age, the stakes are higher. True, we’ve got more allies. We’re softer with our own — usually. However, Grams is something of a traditionalist.

  Toe-to-toe, Kayla’s younger, in better physical condition, but Mayor and Mrs. Morgan’s princess is no trained fighter. Grams is mean as hell, a retired professional spy (or something like it), and a little mentally unstable.

  Grams rests a hand on Kayla’s shoulder. It looks reassuring, but she could be bracing my would-be girlfriend to hollow her throat out. Instead, her voice is gentle. “How did it happen?”

  Creepy, the way she’s being so nice. Trying to play it cool, I set the Bionic Woman lunch box on a plywood shelf and bend to snag a Snoopy one.

  Conventional wisdom is that shifters make up less than one percent of the U.S. population and that we confine ourselves to low-income urban and remote areas, that we’re mostly vegetarians like weredeer or mountain weregoats. I don’t know our real numbers. It’s not like there’s a shifter box on the census. But we’re more plentiful than that, and Cats, Wolves, Bears, and Orcas are by no means endangered species.

  Kayla raises her chin, and I’m relieved that she’s picked up something about dominance from me and Clyde. “At that hour, with the stormy weather, nobody should’ve been at the park.”

  Grams’s nod is punctual. Texans can’t cope with rain, though they’re always praying for it.

  “It’s secluded, along the riverfront, separated by downtown from residential housing and by a steep, heavily wooded hill from the business district. I wasn’t expecting . . .” Kayla takes a breath. “We were performing a ritual to reassemble a fragmented soul, my ex-boyfriend Ben’s, so he could move on and also to release the werepeople he was partially possessing, including Yoshi. Someone we trusted secretly filmed me, uploaded the file . . .”

  I blow off the Dukes of Hazzard box. “Kayla didn’t mean —”

  “No, she didn’t mean a blasted thing.” Grams scoops up a vintage marcasite hairpin and asks me, “Since when are you in the soul-saving business? Or interesting enough to get possessed? And what ‘friend’ betrayed her?”

  I get why Grams is confused. Before meeting Aimee this winter, I was a slacker, a carefree Tom Cat. Grams’s knowledge of Daemon Island is sketchy, and she’s still putting together what happened in Pine Ridge. “It was a goddamn greedy yeti,” I declare. “Junior, that’s what he calls himself. He’s just a kid — thirteen or so — and your buddy Zelda raised him, so we thought he could be trusted.” I don’t know what happened to him after that. He could’ve lumbered back through the forest to Zelda’s log cabin on the lake. I can’t imagine he’d abandon his house cat, Blizzard. I don’t really care. Well, I care about Blizzard. I’m a cat person, after all.

  I find a blue glass bottle that survived its fall and set it on top of a nearby cast-iron and wooden school desk. I might have a world history paper due today. I can’t remember for sure.

  “Howdy,” greets a masculine voice from the front of the store. “You open?”

  “Uh . . . Ms. Kitahara!” Clyde calls. “Customer!”

  “On my way!” Grams lets go of Kayla and whispers, “I’ll keep whoever that is busy. Meanwhile, you two clean up this mess — fast — take your dim-witted friend, and get out of here.”

  Carrying a broom, Clyde turns into the aisle. “The customer’s looking for a hunk of shag carpeting that used to be in Graceland.”

  “Easy mark,” Grams mutters. “Listen, kids, the feds are looking for you. Don’t go home. Don’t go to school. It’s not just guns you’ve got to worry about. They’re using Bears for muscle. The working theory is that they’re being controlled by neural implant technology.”

  MCC Implants, I bet. I refuse to get psyched out. Bears may be strong, but they aren’t fast. They’re even money racing a wereboar or pygmy wereelephant, but Ostriches, Hyenas, Deer . . . any of us Cats are faster. Kayla could blow past a werebear.

  I’VE SEEN THE BUMPER STICKERS: KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD. The city boasts hippies and hipsters, bubbas and techies, gurus and politicos, musicians and movie stars. I’ve heard it called “the pretty girl capital of the world.” Dad jokes that it’s the Sodom and Gomorrah of Texas. Passing a bike-riding man in only thong underwear, I’m inclined to believe him.

  Yoshi turns at the large rotating purple metal sculpture of a bat.

  We left Sheriff Bigheart’s car near the liquor store and hot-wired Yoshi’s grandmother’s truck, which had been parked behind the diner.

  From there we cruised across town to pick up Aimee outside her apartment. Now all four of us are jammed in together, and my outer thigh is pressed tight against Yoshi’s.

  Do Cat families normally behave like Yoshi and his grams? I have no idea. I didn’t even know another were-person until a week ago. There were the Stubblefield sisters — werecats who owned the antique shop back home on Main — but what with their vanilla rose perfume, I never realized they weren’t human. Lula’s dead now, gunned down by the FHPU.

  Clyde says, “Yoshi’s grandmother told us the FHPU is using Bears controlled with implants. How can your dad justify —?”

  “There’s an argument that using brain chips on werepeople felons is more humane than the death penalty,” Aimee says at the stoplight.

  That’s the kindest face she could put on it, but even states that don’t execute humans have no such reservations about werepeople. Our legal rights are slippery. The difference between an accused shifter and a convicted shifter is, well, there isn’t one.

  The South Congress strip is bursting with nightclubs, restaurants, lodging, bohemian and chic boutiques. There’s a 1950s rehabbed motel with a key-shaped neon sign, a burger joint that used to be a gas station, and a costume shop called All the World’s a Stage.

  “Implants could facilitate a slave class, prostitution.” I shudder. “Breeding for hides . . . It doesn’t take much to imagine the applications of MCC’s —”

  “The company’s also involved in medical research,” Aimee adds, twisting a pink gemstone ring around her finger. “If your healing abilities could somehow be shared with humans, it could end suffering. Save lives.”

  The quiet that follows her halfhearted defense becomes painful. Aimee may be in the majority of the general population, but she’s in the minority of her social group. “I’m sorry,” she gushes. “I can’
t believe my own father —”

  “Not your fault.” Yoshi turns down a Screaming Head Colds song on the radio. “I’ve never even met my parents.” His smile is wry. “Or at least I don’t remember my mother.”

  He likes me. He said so to his lunatic grandmother with me standing right there. Not that I didn’t suspect it earlier. Still, it’s something to hear it out loud. Other than our Cat heritage, we’ve got little in common. I’m tight with my loving parents, and his grams is downright dangerous. I’ve been raised like a human, where he revels in his inner animal. My roots run deep in Pine Ridge, while he’s a new arrival to Austin. I’m competitive-college-bound (or at least I’m supposed to be), and from what I’ve gathered he’s . . . an academic underachiever.

  Yoshi’s known — and I mean known — his share of girls (I can tell), and I’ve had only the one disastrous relationship. Speaking of which, I spent half of last night exorcising my late ex-boyfriend Ben’s fractured spirit. I spent the other half on the run from federal agents and (apparently) werebears . . . so of course I’m obsessing over Yoshi.

  It’s mental self-preservation. I’m so maxed out by what matters that the trivial is taking over my brain, giving me something less overwhelming to think about. Yeah, that’s it.

  Regardless, part of me wishes that Clyde had been the one to reassure Aimee about her father instead. I’ve met other kids of political parents at party fund-raisers. It sucks when your mom or dad makes a gaffe or is down in the polls or, worse, indicted. Graham Barnard’s in business, not politics, but he’s the company spokesperson, which makes him very public.

  Yoshi turns at a boots and Western wear shop, then again into the alley behind it.

  “I’ve never met my dad either, whoever he is,” Clyde tells me. “My biological father, I mean. Not my dad dad.”

  I understand. To me, my adoptive parents are my parents, and that’s that. Sometimes I think about my birth family, though — more so since I discovered I’m a Cat. Do they wonder about me? Are they even still alive? Beyond Ethiopia, it’s a blank. Until the past few days, I’ve mostly had to piece together what being a Cat means on my own.

  I suspect Clyde feels the same way about his inner Lion.

  I’M SURPRISED TO DISCOVER that our destination — Sanguini’s: A Very Rare Restaurant — is a nondescript one-story brick building with no windows. Clyde proudly informs me that the red neon sign is new. I was expecting . . . more. With its history of murder, jaw-dropping fashions, and a celebrity chef, Sanguini’s is infamous.

  We park in a newly extended asphalt lot, behind a meticulously labeled vegetable and herb garden. The centerpiece is a six-foot-tall marble statue of an angel — a twentysomething-looking male with flowing hair — depicted on a pedestal in low-riding, form-fitting jeans and a T-shirt that reads COEXIST in the symbols of various religions.

  He’s my-oh-my sexy, gasp-and-sweat sexy.

  The way I was raised, it’s bordering on sacrilegious.

  Aimee laughs at my expression. “Think of it as an affectionate tribute.”

  We’re buzzed in at the back door, and I take note of the security cameras.

  Inside, my Cat ears pick up muffled voices cussing over Tejano music blasting from a radio in the commercial kitchen. My nose detects garlic, oregano, onions. Down the hall, I hear a man with a slight Mexican accent inside an office marked MANAGER.

  We pass a handwritten sign that reads Executive Staff Meeting, Private Party Room on a door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY. At that, Aimee and Clyde take off jogging and disappear between red drapes at the end of the hallway. Yoshi mutters, “Executive? I thought they were dishwashers.” He ducks into the men’s restroom, and I linger in the hallway to wait.

  I appreciate having a moment. I’m an only child. For some years I’ve kept mostly to myself. I’m not used to so much togetherness.

  I can hear Yoshi in there, splashing his face. He’s incredibly composed for someone who was shot at less than an hour ago. I never figured him for an abused kid. I doubt he thinks of himself that way. But his grams isn’t just a big personality. She’s damaged somehow.

  Once he’s back, he offers me his arm and I take it. We grandly pass through the heavy drapes into a schmaltzy dining room — crystal chandeliers, black leather seating, cozy dance floor. Minus the bar area, the place probably sits about fifty. We pick up our pace at the sound of voices arguing. I recognize Clyde’s. He’s saying, “I’m not going to cower while —”

  “Hon, it’s been a doozy of a week,” Chef Nora says as we reach the entry to the private dining room. She’s on the other side of a table set with plates and platters, stacked high with aluminum-foil wraps. The private dining room seats a dozen and, with its faux-painted castle walls and candle-like wall sconces, reflects the restaurant’s signature decor.

  I met Nora and Freddy, who’s also present, earlier this weekend. Nora’s one of those older southern ladies who own their curves and rule their kitchens. Freddy’s a trim fashionisto in his early forties who runs the catering department. She says, “Those FHPU brutes hurt our Kieren.”

  I’ve never met Kieren Morales, but I’ve heard of him. He’s Clyde’s closest friend, a Wolf studies scholar who was wrong about the existence of weresnakes. According to Aimee, he doesn’t like Yoshi because the Cat “ogled” somebody. I’m guessing Kieren’s girlfriend.

  “Kieren!” Aimee exclaims, sinking into a chair. “What happened? When?”

  “This morning.” Cleaning his wire-framed glasses with a red napkin, Freddy reports, “Meara was in Buda, having just delivered wereraccoon triplets. Roberto had already dropped off Meghan at preschool and gone to teach a class at UT. That left Kieren home alone.”

  Kieren’s mother, Meara Morales, must be a healer. Werepeople don’t go to human doctors or hospitals. I had to get creative on my physical examination forms for track and cross-country. Before realizing I was a Cat, my mom took me in for immunizations, eye and hearing checks, but, fortunately, I was never outed with a blood or urine test.

  Running a hand through his thick hair, Clyde looks stunned. “How bad is —?”

  “Both of his arms are broken,” reports a stunning freckled redhead, perched on the edge of the table at the front of the room. “Both shoulders separated, most of his ribs cracked or broken. He has a concussion and spinal compression fractures, so right now shifting is too dangerous. He’ll have to heal in human form for a while.” She raises her UT sports bottle, and I notice her hand is badly scarred. “The FHPU came looking for you, Clyde,” she adds, meeting his gaze. “Their pet werebears roughed him up, trying to get information. He managed to break out through the back door and lost them in the neighborhood.”

  Freddy motions us in. “Thank God they didn’t shoot him.”

  Clyde says, “Quincie, when can I —?”

  “As soon as he’s up to it,” she replies. “His mama is with him. He’s resting now.” Her voice has an eerie calmness to it that’s pricking at my instincts.

  Yoshi and I stay where we are, in the doorway.

  “At least Meghan wasn’t there,” Aimee says, as ever grasping at the bright side. Glancing at me, she adds, “Kayla, this is Quincie P. Morris, the owner of this esteemed establishment. Quincie, meet our newest best friend, Kayla Morgan.”

  I raise my hand in a halfhearted wave, and her responding nod is almost dismissive. I get the distinct impression that Nora and Freddy have already filled her in on me.

  I’m oddly fascinated by this Quincie girl. She’s toying with a turquoise-and-silver cross necklace. Crucifix? I write off her rudeness to emotional overload. No hint of shifter to her scent. She’s dressed in faded overalls over a T-shirt and red-wine cowboy boots. Yet she exudes “predator” and holds herself like Sanguini’s is her territory.

  It makes no sense in the face of an unarmed teenage human girl, but my inner Cat is screaming at me to run fast, run far, and climb the tallest tree I can find.

  Yoshi steps into the room at the mention of the d
eath of his young weredevil friend Teghan.

  “Paxton didn’t survive his visit either,” Freddy puts in.

  That name is new to me. With this Paxton, I don’t detect the kind of grief surrounding Teghan’s death or the outrage over Kieren’s injuries.

  “Teghan and Paxton were on Daemon Island,” Yoshi says, mostly for my benefit. “He was dealing transformeaze to werepeople at an underground club downtown and working for the yetis to capture shifters for the hunts. But he did help us escape.”

  “Thanks to Aimee,” Clyde adds, and she brightens at the praise.

  “We already called Mei and James to warn them,” Chef Nora says. “And Brenek in Chicago, but we can’t find Noelle.” More island shifters, I assume.

  Yoshi relates that the FHPU went to his grams’s antique store, searching for him and Ruby. He mentions that his sister is out of state on her honeymoon, and everyone’s delighted by that news. Then Clyde reports that his parents packed up “the kits” and his gecko and left town after an FHPU visit, too. What’s happening inside feels a lot like family business. Quincie keeps glancing my way like she’s not convinced they should be talking so freely in my presence.

  Screw that. I may be a total stranger to the redhead and she may rule this restaurant. But it’s my name and image that have gone viral, my species that’s been outed, and my longtime neighbor Lula who was gunned down in cold blood in my hometown park.

  Besides, I earned my bright, shiny future. I want it back.

  “WHAT ARE OUR ASSETS?” I ask, inserting myself in the conversation.

  Freddy rubs his forehead. “If you mean money —”