Diaries of an Urban Panther

by Amanda Arista

“God, help me I do,” I sighed as I cut an even bigger slice than before.

  I crossed her plush carpet and flopped pathetically on the couch.

  Jessa laughed and held out her fork. “A toast. To powerful women and the loneliness that ensues.”

  We clinked silverware and both took another huge bite.

  Absorbed in a book on ritual mirror magic that too closely echoed what I already knew about mirrors, I neglected to check the number flashing across my cell phone when I flipped it open.

  “Hello,” I greeted as I flipped through the section on protection spells. I did a celebratory spin in my desk chair as I found the one Jessa mentioned. I could finally stop looking. Been at it all morning and my eyeballs hurt.

  “Violet. It’s Chaz.”

  All the celebration melted away and suddenly I was awash in the pity party I had been throwing myself. My chair slowed to a sad stop.

  “What do you want, Chaz?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “You need to talk,” I corrected harshly.

  “I’ve got information on why else you were an assignment.”

  “So tell me.”

  “I’d rather talk to you in person.”

  “Why? So you can just up and leave me again?”

  The line was silent for a long while but I didn’t hang up. I hadn’t realized until now I missed listening to his breath over the phone.

  “Please, Violet.”

  Every bad thought about him flashed through my head but they were quickly outweighed by the good things he had done: saving my life, buying me coffee. And maybe the minor facts that he was an excellent kisser and had abs you could do your laundry with.

  “I need a coffee, which means you’ll have twenty minutes to plead your case.”

  “I’m going to need more than twenty minutes, Vi.”

  “You’re getting fifteen and it’s Violet.”

  He snapped his phone shut and I slowly set mine on the desk. I knew halfway across town he was cursing up a storm in his living room.

  How many times had I talked Jessa through this? And here I was, falling into the same trap men used on her time and time again. Just that one last meeting. Just that one last chance to wiggle back into my life. But what had we talked about just last night? Give him a chance to apologize. Fifteen minutes was enough to apologize if he had been rehearsing like I had.

  Crap, I thought as I got up to go to my closet, which had expanded significantly. Shopping really was as therapeutic as Jessa espoused and apparently I had been in desperate need of therapy. If I was going to play this in true form, I was going to have to look amazing, which, luckily, was getting easier and easier these days.

  Chaz was already waiting for me when I walked in the door. He stood at the pair of chairs in the far corner of the busy shop as if I was going to miss him somehow, as if I couldn’t smell him the moment I opened the door.

  With measured precision in my pace, I went to the counter, ordered my coffee and waited patiently as they made it before I even acknowledged he was there. Being friends with Jessa did teach you a thing or two regarding how to make men wait for it.

  I sat down across from him and he followed suit. I crossed my legs and sipped by coffee. “Fifteen minutes, Chaz.”

  He looked terrible. Iris hadn’t been exaggerating when she said idleness was not a good thing for him. Dark circles ringed his eyes and his hair was flat. And even the gold that used to dance like a halo around him seemed dull.

  “They’ve had me on hiatus since you were attacked.”

  “Iris told me.”

  “So I asked a few questions, cracked a few books on my own and found out a few things they’ve been keeping from us.”

  “Like what?” I asked as I sipped my coffee, the perfect calming agent for the way my nerves were jumping around like five-year-olds on a sugar high in a bounce house.

  Chaz leaned forward and I was awash in his smell for a moment, bringing back the memory of the night in bed, the way his hand trailed down my back, his hot lips on my neck. I closed my eyes and thought of barbed wire and puppy dogs and burnt tongues and anything that wasn’t him.

  He clasped his hands in front of him and began the narration. “A long time ago, before your prophecy was ever written, there was one about the resurrection of a demon. I think its Jovan. They’ve done everything they can to keep him in the Neveranth.”

  “Who’s Jovan?”

  “Think Keistral from Black Magic Mountain.”

  My jaw dropped. “You’ve been watching my movies?”

  “Needed my daily jolt of sarcasm,” he shrugged. “Jovan can’t be corporeal on this realm, he needs a host. The prophecy says that the Veil will be broken and he will cross over and possess a prideless panther to bring on the Great War.”

  “What’s the Great War?”

  Chaz gulped. “The final war of Those who Wander. It’s what determines the future of our kind as saviors or monsters.”

  I had to put my coffee down so he wouldn’t see my hand shaking. Plus this top was silk and I didn’t want to stain it right off the hanger. “But I was followed because of the prophesy I read.”

  Chaz nodded. “I think they knew you’d be bitten.”

  I looked down at my white knuckles in fists on my lap. Rage flooded through me and the pages of the magazines on the table before me fluttered as my energy swirled wildly around me. I had to force words through my clenched jaw. “But when they found out it was Haverty, they naturally assumed I would go evil and become this prideless panther?”

  Chaz nodded again, his brown eyes watching me steadily. “They don’t have the inside intel that we have about Spencer being disowned.”

  “Well, this is just another thing I’m not doing by the book.”

  “It’s more than that, Violet. They are letting it happen. They’ve cut me off, Iris. I think they are responsible for the wards that are set up around the city. Being a worker bee, they didn’t affect me but I felt them.”

  “Letting it happen!” I shrieked. The customers in the coffee shop all turned to me and I glared back at them. They were the ones who dropped their eyes.

  Frustrated, I needed to move. I needed to be outside. I jumped up, grabbed my coffee and headed for the door.

  He followed me out of the cafe and to my car. He grabbed my arm and spun me around.

  My coffee flew from my hand and landed elegantly upside down on my front windshield. The steaming liquid poured down the dusty glass making a caffeinated paste on the front of my car.

  I didn’t know if the ice water in my veins was from the loss of sixteen ounces of perfectly good caramel macchiato or if it was his need of me. But I was scared because he was scared. It radiated around him.

  “We’re a good team, Violet. What did you say? I watch your back and you work my nerves.”

  “What’s really going on here, Chaz?” I asked softly.

  His jaw clenched as he dropped his hand from my arm. He licked his lips and looked out at the unknowing city surrounding us. “The Powers aren’t doing anything about it. I think they want to use it as a cleansing. Jovan comes over, wipes out everyone who brought him here. The power vacuum lets them get a strong hold in Dallas, where they haven’t had one since Iris and kick his ass for good.”

  “But they risk starting the Great War. What kind of ace to they think they have up their sleeve?”

  He leaned against my car and jammed his hands in his coat pockets. “As much as I want Haverty in pieces, it can’t be like this. Jovan will decimate him, but how many others with him?”

  The answer echoed through me. Like someone had struck a pitch fork and put it to the top of my head, the vibration humming all the way down to my toes. “So screw them. We take care of it ourselves.”

  Chaz’s eyes snapped to mine.

  I gulped. The wild look in his eyes was overwhelming and the butterflies rammed into my stomach walls. I just wanted to reach out and caress his stubbled chin and lean against that broad c
hest, whisper in his ear that everything will be all right. But I restrained my hand to my chest.

  “We are going to need more info than Jessa and I can pull together. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re a little new to this saving the world thing.”

  He pushed off from the car and stood before me.

  “We work together until whatever happens, happens.”

  Chaz nodded.

  “So back to the phone calls. I’ll keep you in the loop as to what Jessa and I are doing.”

  “What about Haverty?”

  “We’ve put up protective spells against him at my house and her apartment. Even managed one at the coffee shop,” I narrated as I pointed to the new charm hanging above the doorway. “We are trying to keep our shields up and heads down until the darkest night.”

  Chaz nodded impressed.

  “Hey, we’re not small time anymore, buddy. You’re dealing with a Fairy Princess and a Guardian now, capital G.”

  Chaz smiled a small smile and his shoulders relaxed a fraction of an inch. But then the smile faded and he jammed his hands into his pockets. “So it’s a working relationship then?”

  “You walked out on any chance of their being another kind of us.”

  Chaz’s eyes hit the pavement between us.

  It sounded practiced as it came out and it was. I had been working on that line forever. Felt good to finally say it to a person and not the mirror, but saying it to him didn’t make me feel any better.

  He ducked his head further. That just made my stomach sink.

  “So what do we do next, fearless leader?”

  “Meeting Jessa for dinner in West Village.”

  “Isn’t that a little public?”

  “Precisely. Luckily, I’m best friends with a gorgeous woman and people tend to stare at her. It’s like a million extra eyes keeping us safe.”

  Chaz finally dared looking up. “See, you are good at this, Violet Jordan.”

  “I’m getting by on instincts and witty banter.”

  I turned back and opened the car door. “Meet me there.”

  With one last look at him, I got in and turned on the engine. He walked away and I watched him in the rearview mirror get to his black Challenger.

  Jessa was waiting in the window of the restaurant talking on the phone. I quickly slipped up beside her.

  “Yes, mom. I know . . . We have . . . Listen. I’m with Violet right now . . . No, you can’t talk to her.”

  And Jessa got the palest fear-stricken look on her face that I had ever seen. She gulped and handed me the phone. “My mother wants to talk to you.”

  I took in a deep breath as I took the foreign phone. “Hello, Mrs. Feychild.”

  “Violet, darling, how are you?” the woman asked. I knew she had to be at least in her fifties but she didn’t sound, or act, or dress a day older than Jessa. I had seen her in a few of the pictures Jessa had in her apartment. They looked exactly alike, dark hair, dark eyes, not fey like at all. And, knowing Jessa, she’d be just as fiery when she didn’t get her way.

  “Doing great, grabbing dinner. Then back to the fort.”

  “Don’t either of you girls cook?” There was the classic mom tone that I’d been saved from.

  “But the professionals do it so much better.”

  Her mother laughed. It was like the twinkling of a wind chime, soft and sweet. But then her laughter stopped and there was this chilly silence on the phone and I knew the conversation was just about to turn to business.

  “I want you to know you’re family now, Violet. Anything you need, just ask and you’ll get it. We are doing everything we can to break the barrier but those Cause idiots always think they are doing the right thing. Makes my head hurt.”

  Goose bumps ran up and down my arms. “Thank you, Mrs. Feychild.”

  “Just take care of my little buttercup.”

  “I will.”

  “Good night, dear.”

  Her mother hung up and I handed the phone back to Jessa.

  “What did she say?” she asked eagerly.

  “I think she just adopted me.”

  Jessa smacked my arm. “I’m being serious Violet.”

  “I am too. She said that if I ever needed anything, just ask.”

  “Wow. Well, sis, then you’re buying dinner.”

  “Why?”

  “Isn’t that was older sisters do?”

  “Shut up, buttercup,” I looked at her with a smile and drove us to dinner.

  Jessa glared back at her nickname. This really was like being sisters, almost too close for comfort.

  “So I have a surprise for you,” Jessa said.

  “What kind of surprise?” I asked wearily.

  “You and Chaz are good again, right?”

  “We talked. I don’t hate him and he’s on his way over.” I leaned across the little table. “Why?”

  Her smile reached from ear to ear. “You’re going to love this.”

  She reached into her beach bag–sized purse that was all the rage now and pulled out one of her hundred-page fashion magazines. “Found this this morning.”

  She opened the magazine to a marked page and handed it over.

  It was an underwear ad. Calvin Klein, by the logo on the bottom left. And it was Chaz, standing in a brightly lit window in nothing but a pair of tighty whities. Very arty in its black-and-white contrast, but very revealing, down to the perfect curve of his belly button.

  My gut reaction was to laugh, and then to hide it away. It was him though. The highlights were a little more golden and his skin was a little more tan than it was now. And clean shaven, don’t think I’d ever seen him really clean shaven except for the date that wasn’t a date and more of a horrible memory of what could have been before it wasn’t.

  I was trying my damndest to not let my eyes really study his chest. But they did and I wish they hadn’t. Perfection. Abs chest, legs, everything perfection.

  “That was under all those leather jackets and oversized button-ups?” Jessa laughed, feigning a hot spell and fanning herself. “Did you know he did this?”

  “He mentioned it,” I had to force thought to the language part of my brain and out of the gutter it was currently splashing around in. “He can get a lot of money in a short period of time, freeing him up for more paranormal endeavors.”

  “But the boy is hot!” Jessa exclaimed.

  “I know.”

  “And you kissed that.”

  “And he left me after I scared him to death.”

  After a brief glance over my shoulder, Jessa snatched the magazine back and I stared down at the black bar, still seeing the picture in my head.

  “Well, I hope I wasn’t wrong in thinking you would enjoy that,” she said as she folded the magazine back up and put it in her purse.

  “Enjoy what?” came from behind me.

  I jumped and spun around at the male voice.

  “Nothing,” I snapped as I gaped up at Chaz.

  I just stared at him. The vision of what was underneath that baggie black sweater made my mouth dry. Not that I hadn’t felt what was under them on a few occasional but to have the visual keep flashing before my eyes . . .

  “Catching flies,” Jessa whispered.

  I snapped my mouth shut.

  “What’s going on?” Chaz asked, his furrow in full force as his eyes bounced between the two of us.

  “Nothing,” Jessa repeated, fighting giggles. I couldn’t figure out if they were aimed at me or the previous discussion. “What’s the scoop?”

  “Chaz has been fighting the good fight.” I filled in.

  We turned to him, ready for a story.

  “I talked to this guy who thought he might know of a man who’s been looking for a guy to find him a key to the Neveranth.”

  Both of us girls gulped.

  “Really?” Jessa asked, looking over at me. “Anything else?”

  “Not really. Info gathering is usually a long hard business.”

  I wasn’t
paying attention as they went into detail as to where Chaz had found the information or when. I was just trying to keep my cheeks from flaring red as the picture flashed before my eyes. Unfortunately, my tasty thoughts of Chaz’s chest were destroyed by the sudden smell of dog. God, I hated that smell.

  I flinched and my brain went into hypersensitive mode. That’s all it was now, like flexing a muscle. Perked ears and focused eyes, I took in a deep breath and looked slowly around. I didn’t see anyone suspicious, but then again, we had a guardian, a panther, and a fairy princess at our table and we weren’t turning any heads.

  Chaz’s hand came to cover mine. “What’s going on?”

  “Dogs,” I whispered. “Not the ones from before. These are cleaner?”

  He squeezed my hand and stood up. My speeding heart pumped blood even faster through my veins and I caught a whiff of his wonderful smell, which made my panther stir a little in my chest.

  He motioned with his hand for us to stand. Jessa’s eyes were filled with panic. She hadn’t looked this scared, well, since the night at the party when I was attacked and Chaz came to the rescue. So it had been, what, four days since mortal terror and a near dead experience? Wondered if that was a record in one of those mystical books somewhere?

  I nodded to Jessa who slowly stood and grabbed her purse. I followed, keeping the senses perked.

  As Chaz led the way to the front of the diner, I could see the moment they both felt the beasts that I had smelled earlier. From behind, I watched as the feeling crept down their necks and they shivered in sync.

  Chaz held the door open for us and kept his eyes peeled on the crowd that had gathered on this Friday night in West Village.

  “Car’s this way,” he said as I passed him and he went to take my hand and lead me to the street.

  “My car’s in the lot,” I said back to him, making sure that both hands were casually in my pockets.

  “They know what you drive.”

  “Your tank can be heard for miles.”

  Chaz paused for a moment and his hazel eyes met mine. Something passed underneath them as his hand was held out between us empty. It dropped slowly to his side.

  Poor Jessa was stuck between us.

  “Let’s just go,” she said, pushing both of us towards the parking structure.