Chapter Thirty-Six

I didn’t believe for a minute that Mezareau would just give me the diamond and let me waltz out of Haiti.

However, I wasn’t going to tell him that.

The day passed slowly. Mezareau made me leave the Closed sign in the window. “Do you think I’m foolish enough to allow one of your Jäger-Sucher friends to just walk in and kill me?”

I had been hoping. There was only one problem.

“They think you’re dead.”

“Edward Mandenauer is no fool, either.”

True. From the beginning Edward hadn’t believed Mezareau was dead. But would Edward be able to figure out how to kill a wereleopard, then come back here in time to do so? As the day waned toward dusk, I had my doubts.

Looked like I was on my own. But that was nothing new.

I cleaned up the coffee, tossed the beignets, once my favorite food. The scent of fried dough and sugar now turned my stomach. Pretty much everything did. Would I soon be able to eat nothing but raw meat?

I’d never cared for it.

I got so bored, I began to sweep up glass and put my shop to rights. Mezareau spent his time paging through my library. I’d accumulated a lot of supernatural texts even before I’d begun to work for Edward.

I’d always been interested in the bizarre. How else would I have come up with the idea of becoming a voodoo priestess?

Night fell; the moon rose. I was compelled to enter my courtyard and stare at the nearly perfect orb.

“Sometimes I swear it sings to me.”

Mezareau had followed me out. He’d followed me everywhere today. I’d had to put my foot down at letting him follow me into the bathroom.

“Where’s your friend?” Mezareau asked.

I’d started to believe that Murphy wasn’t coming. What would Mezareau do once he figured it out? Tear apart the city, the county, the country, as he’d torn apart my shop?

“I’m right here.”

I turned, and there he was in the doorway. Murphy had come back for me.

My stomach fluttered. He was risking his life and his future. No one had ever done anything like that for me before. What did it mean?

I glanced at Mezareau and my stomach stopped fluttering. What did it matter?

“Where’s the diamond?” he demanded.

“Safe.”

I thought I was far enough away to avoid getting a knife to my throat again, but I was still unfamiliar with the speed at which Mezareau could move. The blade burned my neck before I knew it was coming.

“I’m through fucking around,” Mezareau snarled.

“OK, OK.” Murphy removed the stone from his pocket. “Put the knife down, and I’ll do the same with the diamond.”

The sharp edge lifted just a little.

“As soon as he does, Cassandra, get over here,” Murphy ordered.

The burn returned, and I hissed in pain.

“You want this or not?” Murphy snapped.

“You seem under the impression that you are in charge here. I could kill you with ease, Murphy.”

“Not as easily as you think.”

“Let’s find out.” Mezareau shoved me, and I stumbled on the uneven garden path, then fell.

When I glanced up, Mezareau had lifted his face and his hands to the moon. The silver glow streamed over him like a spotlight, and the edges of his silhouette shimmered, shifted, went indistinct.

The sheen from above seemed to shoot into his body, so bright I had to blink. When my eyes opened, a leopard stood where the bokor had been.

The beast appeared larger than the average leopard—not that I’d seen any except in the zoo. However, I didn’t think they ran to six feet, plus a tail, or weighed near 170 pounds.

His coat was shiny, tawny, spotted—I could see why leopards had once been poached almost to extinction. I wouldn’t mind wearing one of those on my back. Right now I’d kind of like to wear him —then he wouldn’t be staring at Murphy out of hungry emerald green eyes.

Of all the things that might bother me about this leopard, the eyes bothered me the most, because just like werewolves’ eyes, wereleopards’ eyes were human.

The growl that rumbled from his throat sounded really pissed off. Murphy didn’t appear scared. He was too busy staring at the beast with his mouth hanging open. I guess he believed in wereleopards now.

“Get inside!” I shouted, scrambling to my feet.

He didn’t listen, didn’t even glance my way, before he stepped into the courtyard and circled the leopard as the leopard circled him.

I looked for a weapon, spied the knife, thought better of it. Me with a knife, Mezareau with his teeth and claws, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Instead I glanced at the moon and knew what I had to do. Quickly I lifted my face, my hands, hoping, praying, my magic would be enough.

Silver spilled down my body like a waterfall. I’d thought the moon would be cool; instead it was fiery hot, racing through my blood, bubbling beneath the surface, pushing me toward a change.

I waited for the pain—a crunching of bone, the shifting of skin, the sprouting from nowhere of fur, snout, and tail. Instead, fireflies of light sparkled all around me—a hundred thousand Tinkerbells. I swayed, closed my eyes, and when I opened them I was shorter.

Probably had something to do with the paws.

Mezareau crouched, ready to spring, and I launched myself at him. He ducked, and I flew over his back, skidding in the damp grass, slamming headfirst into a fountain. I wasn’t used to this body yet, but Mezareau was.

I shook off the dizziness, no time for that, spinning just as the leopard launched himself into the air. They were too close to each other, too far away from me. I’d never reach them in time.

They say when you stare death in the face your entire life passes before your eyes. As I watched death sail toward Murphy, the times we’d shared tumbled through my mind.

Traveling through the mountains, sleeping under the stars, sharing our pasts, our pain, our bodies. I’d never shared with anyone else the things I’d shared with him. What would I do if I lost him?

I started to run, awkward in my new feet, but I couldn’t just stand there and watch him die.

A second before the leopard hit the man, Murphy thrust his hand toward Mezareau’s chest and the bokor exploded in a blazing ball of fire.

Murphy stumbled back from the flames, which were so bright and hot, Mezareau would be ashes in minutes. The knife clattered to the pavement as Murphy lifted his arm to shield his face.

How had he gotten the weapon? He must have taken advantage of the momentary distraction I’d provided by launching myself at Mezareau to retrieve it. Murphy always had been both quick and smart.

I shied away from the heat, skittery, nervous, though the smell of roasting flesh interested me more than it should. I guess Mezareau’s claim that I’d become more and more leopard, less and less woman, was true.

“That worked.” Murphy glanced at me and flinched. “You wanna change back? You’re freaking me out.”

Change back? I hoped I could.

Lifting my snout to the sky, I imagined myself a woman. I remained a leopard.

I whined and pawed at the ground. The only person who knew the rules was barbecuing in my backyard.

“Maybe calling to the moon would work,” Murphy suggested. “Seems like I’ve heard the call of the wild a lot lately. Mezareau must have been serenading us for a reason.”

Probably just to scare everyone, but it couldn’t hurt to try. I lifted my voice to the night, and somewhere in the distance a wolf howled.

Swell.

I didn’t have time to worry about that, because suddenly I felt the heat, saw the sparkles, and an instant later I crouched in my garden, naked.

“Have to say I like this direction much better.” Murphy handed me my clothes.

At least they weren’t torn, as they would have been if I’d been a werewolf. Bursting through seams and shoes must be a real pain. Literally. Magical shifting was so much neater.

While I dressed, Murphy collapsed on the rim of my fountain, leaning over to splash his face. “I didn’t expect him to shift into a leopard.”

“Have you been paying any attention over the past month? Wereleopard sorcerer. We’ve been over this.”

“Gotta see to believe.” He stood and brushed his fingers against the white streak in my hair. “What are we gonna do about you?”

“Me?”

“How do we make the leopard thing stop?”

I glanced at the ashes that had once been Mezareau. “You might have already stopped it.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. If I wasn’t a shape-shifter, Sarah was just dead.

“What do you mean?” Murphy asked.

“A lot of curses are broken when the curser dies.”

“How about this one?”

I lifted my face, my arms, to the moon. Immediately the silver sheen crashed down; I felt the telltale heat, saw the shimmer at the edge of my vision.

“Then again…” I dropped my arms and thought about England. The heat fell away, and the sparkles died. “A lot of them aren’t.”

Like the curse of  the crescent moon.

“You don’t sound too upset about being a wereleopard,” Murphy observed.

“I need to be. For Sarah.”

“When are you going to give that up? You can’t raise your child from the dead.”

“Actually, I can, if you’ll lend me your diamond.”

“I didn’t mean you aren’t able to.” His shoulders slumped. “I meant you can’t. It isn’t right.” He took a deep breath and whispered, “I don’t want you to.”

“I can’t just leave her there.”

For several long moments there was silence between us. I didn’t know what else to say.

“Why can’t you start a new life?” he asked.

“As a wereleopard?”

“I’m sure someone with your power, with the resources of the Jäger-Suchers behind you, could find a way out of that.”

“We probably shouldn’t mention this to them. They tend to get all weirded out about shape-shifters.”

“I can’t imagine why,” he muttered.

“I’ll give the diamond back as soon as I’m done,” I promised. “Or you could come with me to California.”

I was shocked to discover how much I wanted him to. I’d been alone since I’d lost Sarah, alone until I’d found him. And while I couldn’t bring myself to invite Murphy to share a life with me and my living zombie daughter, I couldn’t let him go, either. Not yet.

“You think I’m worried about the damn diamond?” Despite his words, he seemed more defeated than mad. “Take it, Cassandra.”

“No. I mean—I will for now. But you—”

“I thought I needed it, but I don’t.” He laughed, though the sound held no humor. “All I need is—”

Someone cleared his throat, and for an instant I imagined Mezareau had risen from the ashes. The bad guys just aren’t as easy to kill as they used to be.

But the bokor wasn’t standing in the center of my courtyard, holding the knife made of stone; it was Edward. I wasn’t sure who was worse.

Edward lifted his gaze from the knife to me, then to Murphy. “Which one of you is a wereleopard?”