“Did what?”
“Dropped things. Are you a jaguar or an elephant?”
“I’m a stray cat, apparently. And your mother wants to neuter me.”
“She wouldn’t want to neuter you if you stayed quiet.” Neutering was the last thing he had to worry about. If she found him, she’d be overjoyed and run out of the house so we could get busy making grandchildren.
He grabbed me and picked me up. His eyes sparked with an amused light.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. “I’m mad at—”
His mouth closed on mine. His lips brushed me, teasing, coaxing, and I melted, opening my mouth. He brushed a single sensual lick across my tongue and I shivered. His scent swirled around me, amber and musk, and tangy sweet citrus, carrying me away to a secret place, where there was only Jim, my hot, crazy Jim, with his strong arms locked around me. His kiss grew intense, passionate, then possessive. Every stroke of his tongue said, “I want you.” I wrapped my legs about his hips and let him kiss me. Our tongues mingled, as we shared the same breath. He had no idea how beautiful he made me feel when he kissed me like this.
“Dali! What’s taking so long?”
I broke away from him.
He shook his head, his arms wrapped around me. “No.”
“I have to go.”
“No, you don’t.”
I wiggled and felt him. He was hard and ready for action.
“Jim, let me go. We can’t make out now.”
He nodded. “Yes, we can.”
“My mother is downstairs.”
He didn’t seem impressed.
“It’s that red thing, isn’t it?” I whispered.
“No, actually it was your little tank top and panties as you jumped out of bed this morning. Or specifically what was in them.”
“Dali?” my mother called.
I slumped onto him. “She isn’t going to let it go.”
“Which car are you taking?” he asked.
“Pooki.”
He set me down on the carpet. “I’ll catch up with you.”
Before I could say anything, Jim opened the window and jumped out of it. I sighed, yelled, “Coming, Mom!” and went to get dressed.
• • •
POOKI was my Plymouth Prowler. When you’re barely one hundred pounds and other shapeshifters make fun of you behind your back because you’re the only tiger who eats grass in the entire state, you have to do something to prove that you’re not a wimp. My thing was cars. I raced them. Unfortunately being half-blind meant I crashed a lot, but being a shapeshifter meant I walked away from most of it, so the risk balanced itself out. Jim kept forbidding me to race, as the alpha of Clan Cat. I kept disobeying him. Some things just had to be done. When I raced, I felt powerful and strong. I felt awesome. I couldn’t give that up no matter how many times I had mangled my cars.
Normally Pooki occupied a treasured spot in my garage, but a friend asked me to take care of his Corvette. He didn’t live in the best neighborhood and he was paranoid about his baby being stolen while he was out of town. So right now the Corvette chilled in the garage next to Rambo, my ’93 Mustang, and Pooki had to suffer the indignity of being parked in the driveway. I looked around. No sign of Jim. Hmm.
I unlocked Pooki, got in, and began to chant under my breath. The magic was in full swing and it took fifteen minutes to get the water engine running. Pooki had two engines, a gasoline one and the enchanted water one. Internal combustion engines refused to combust during magic, which made no scientific sense, because gasoline fumes still burned in open air. But trying to measure magic by Newtonian laws of physics and Gibbs’s thermodynamics was pointless. It didn’t just disobey those laws. Magic had no idea they existed.
The engine purred. I waited for an extra second, hoping Jim would jump into the car out of nowhere, but nothing happened. His scent was still on me. I sighed, backed out of the driveway, and drove down the street.
It was too much to hope for a whole day together. The Pack was keeping him busy.
I pulled up to the stop sign. The passenger door opened and Jim slid into the seat next to me. I clicked the locks closed. Ha-ha! He was trapped.
“I’m going to try to find Eyang Ida. She’s a nice old lady, who disappeared from her house and some sort of bad magic is involved.”
He nodded. “Can I come along?”
“Yes. Put your seat belt on.”
“I should drive,” he said.
I laughed.
“Dali,” he said, dropping into his “I’m a Serious Alpha Man” tone. “I’ve seen you drive.”
“Nobody drives Pooki but me. You know this. Seat belt.”
Jim clicked the seat belt in place and braced himself.
I stepped on the gas. We took the next turn at thirty miles per hour. Pooki didn’t quite careen, but he thought about it. Jim swore.
I laughed a little bit. “The magic is up. The fastest it will go is forty-five.”
Jim braced himself with his legs. If he were in his jaguar form, his fur would be standing up and all of his claws would be out, sunk into the upholstery.
We passed a crumbling wreck of an office building, jutting to the sky, its insides looted long ago by enterprising neighbors. Magic hated the by-products of technology, including pavement, computers, and tall buildings. Anything taller than three or four stories, unless it was built by hand and protected with spells, crumbled into dust. Atlanta’s entire downtown lay in ruins, and buildings still crashed without warning here and there. Most Atlantans didn’t care. Repeated exposure to fear-inducing stimuli creates familiarity, which in turn greatly reduces anxiety. We had acclimated to the chaos and technology. Falling buildings and monsters no longer terrified us. I wasn’t that afraid of monsters in the first place. I was one.