CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Lily slapped her hand onto the tickled mark on the back of her neck and instinctively moved away from the front of the diner. Too many witnesses. She didn’t need to hear or see them to know someone was there.

On the way around the corner, she threw her elbows to ward off whoever was trailing her. “Stop touching me,” she whispered. “You got something to say, go ahead and say it.”

She didn’t have anything to say. Lily had barely rounded the fence into the quiet construction site of the new town hall when her legs were swept out from under her.

She threw her hands forward to break her fall and immediately rolled. She tried not to think about the sting of her palms or how hard her left knee had smacked the concrete. Having spent years twisting her body into unnatural contortions and putting all her force into leaps, she was used to falling hard and getting back up.

What she wasn’t used to was having someone there to immediately try to knock her over again.

That time, though, she was ready. She’d gotten lower and broadened her stance.

“I want my niece.” Josefina appeared near the fence, chest heaving, breath ragged. Eyes so angry. Her usually sweet features were contorted into an ugly frown that seemed rooted in her very soul.

“No,” Lily said. She threw her elbow back again. She knew better than to assume they were alone. There were three more Jaguars and Lily had to assume they had adopted the Musketeers’ “all for one and one for all” philosophy. As long as she could keep a buffer space around her body, she could hit hard, kick hard, shove hard, if she had to. She didn’t want to, but sentiment had no place in survival. She was going to be smart.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Lily said to Josefina, and, into the emptiness behind her, added, “Any of you.”

“Where is La Dama?” That was Estela’s voice, low and laced with quiet warning. In motion. First from behind Lily and ending near Josefina. She was moving, so Lily was going to keep moving, too. Cats had no qualms about attacking people from behind. They were about efficiency, not politeness.

Josefina breathed out a frustrated snarl, thick with tears. “Don’t care about her. Give me Martha!”

“I get it, Josefina, I swear, I do,” Lily said. Even now, she wanted to reach in and hug her. Josefina had lost her mother far too young, and likely her little sister. She probably thought Martha was all she had left. “But try to think long-term. Try to see the good in her decision. It’s hard for me to understand completely myself, but I know she was in her right mind.”

Lily felt that tickle on her neck again. She swatted away the hand tracing the mark and moved closer to the pile of bricks behind her. In her worst-case scenario, if no one showed up to give her assistance, she could put a brick in each hand and either throw them or swing them. She didn’t want to do that, but contrary to what Lance might have thought, her sense of self-preservation was high. She was capable of taking care of herself. She may not have been a shifter, but she had guts, and a heart to go with them.

“You think Nayeli wasn’t in her right mind, or maybe you don’t care if she was. But she sent French Fry after me because she knows I’m safe. She knows I’m going to be around twenty years from now and that I’m stable. You’re not.”

The cold hard truth had a way of triggering people, and Josefina was no exception. She launched herself at Lily, and before Lily pivoted away from the brick pile, scooping one up as she went, she caught the flash of feline fangs.

Josefina screamed wordlessly at her, lunging again and again to make her pain and heartache known, heating Lily’s face with her shouts. No words, just grief.

Lily didn’t have any words either. Just a brick that she was holding to protect herself from someone she’d actually liked a great deal, and hoped to like again someday. But survival was the rule of the day. She’d promised Nayeli she’d be around to take care of her little girl. “Get back,” she said to Estela. She couldn’t see her but she had that uncomfortable sense of having someone trying to approach from the rear.

She also had the sense that there were only two of them. No Blanca. No Guadalupe.

Where are they?

She swore under her breath and backed Josefina away with a one-armed shove.

They were all too split up. She didn’t know where Lance was, or Martha. They’d subdued him before and they could do it again. They could take Martha away, but worse, Lance could get hurt, and that pissed her off more than the idea of them jumping her. She’d be fine.

She fought like a girl.

“Where is La Dama?” Estela repeated.

Josefina swiped for Lily’s arm and Lily twisted Josefina’s around hers, pushing it back at the joint and shoving her foot against the back of the other woman’s knee. If Josefina had been thinking clearly, she would never have let Lily get so close. Josefina wasn’t using her logic or even animal instinct, just pain, and pain without a plan was no match against an organized opponent.

“Lily!”

Lance.

She couldn’t tell where he was shouting from, but he didn’t sound distressed, just worried.

She let out a breath of relief and kept quiet. The last thing she needed was to add any new variables to the conflict. Two against one wasn’t a fair fight, but Lily was still hoping it wouldn’t become an all-out brawl.

Lily treated Estela to another forceful sweep of her elbow. Estela must have thought she was slick, coming at her from different angles, but Lily was slick, too. She didn’t understand the physics of how the Jaguars moved from one dimension to the next, but wherever Estela was, she wasn’t all the way gone. Lily could hear the falls of her feet every time she made a renewed campaign, crunching the gravel softly, going from farther to nearer. Lily counted every step and tossed the brick to the other hand.

“Where are you?” Lance shouted.

“Shhh.” She pivoted away from Josefina’s sluggish attempt at a slap.

The Jaguar was tired.

Lily knew the feeling. She was tired, too, but she was going to perform through the exhaustion anyway. She’d trained for that for years, and back then, she was expected to do it with a smile on her face.

She didn’t have to smile anymore.

“I’m going to keep her,” Lily said to Josefina. “I understand that you hurt. I understand that she’s one of yours and maybe she’s all you have left, but you know what? Actually, hold that thought.”

She was getting really sick of Estela trying to poke at her neck and was starting to believe that the Jaguar wasn’t doing it just to amp up Lily’s irritation. She was acquainted with enough geeks of the supernatural sort that she should have remembered that marks and symbols boosted certain kinds of magic.

“Oh, ho ho,” she said, grabbing up another brick before backing away.

“Lily?” Lance shouted.

Echoes of Elephant Butte. The difference was that she wanted to answer and shout out, “It’s okay!” but she couldn’t call him over. Not yet.

“You think you’re on to something, huh? Divide and conquer? Is that your ploy?” Quickly running through possibilities in her brain, Lily launched a brick toward a wadded blue tarp. As she tossed the heavy thing, a ligament in her shoulder popped and so did her elbow. But the brick hit its moving target, sending Estela into a flying rage.

Lily knew this because the woman came out of the air hissing a warning.

If her cousins hadn’t been cats of a sort, Lily might have stood there with her knees knocking and palms sweating, waiting to die, but she’d had the privilege of learning that every shifter had a soft spot. Big and bad as she was, Estela had to have one, too.

Lily grabbed up the tarp before Estela could lunge at her again. “I was hoping we could be friends,” Lily said.

She had to make a quick choice. Both of the women were getting too close and Lily suspected they were there for different reasons. They weren’t fighting on one accord, but it didn’t matter. For the moment, Lily was their mutual enemy.

Pick pick pick.

“Lily!” Lance bellowed.

Josefina began to retreat into the air, so Lily tossed the tarp over her and threw her weight against Josefina’s midsection before she could disappear. She was acting on a hunch that with her being so tired, she wasn’t going to retreat completely.

In her half visible form, Josefina kicked and flailed beneath the plastic. Lily rolled her and tucked the tarp between her legs and under her body to tangle her up.

No sooner had she stood did Estela slap her hand onto the back of Lily’s neck and mutter something.

Lily shoved her away. “Stop.”

“What does it matter to you?” Estela spat. “You claim you don’t know where La Dama is? Fine. I bring her and you go. Leave Jaguars to do Jaguar business.”

“Right now, you being in Maria is my business, especially since you’re trying to use my body to call your goddess here, huh? Is that what you’re trying to do?”

No response from Estela, but the way she smoothed her hands over her tight plaits and stared at Lily through those bottomless pit eyes made her want to recoil.

Lily didn’t, though. She couldn’t flinch. She wasn’t going to run, because if nothing else, she was going to show she was worthy of that mark Lola put on her neck. Even if Estela didn’t understand, perhaps Josefina would, and one day, she’d come to terms with why her sister had done what she had. Maybe one day, if her magic was stable, she could be a true aunt to Martha and not just one more Jaguar.

“She wanted to give her a chance,” Lily said to the woman rising angrily from the tarp. “If she stays here, she might have a chance to find someone to connect with who’ll give her more than twenty years. She could live to a hundred. Do you understand that?”

Josefina scoffed with disgust. “Some man?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that she has the freedom to make a choice. Why don’t you want her to?”

“They always leave.” She pounded her chest and shook her head hard. “They want to change us.”

“But here’s the thing. If—”

“Lily!”

Lance appeared in the alleyway, frozen momentarily as he took in the sight.

She was shaking her head and waving him off when her father appeared behind him.

That was all the distraction the Jaguars needed. Estela’s hand seared against Lily’s neck and out of the corner of her eyes, she caught a flash of golden mottled fur.

There was a throb in her shoulder and in her neck, and all she could think as she tried to scramble onto all fours was I don’t have enough red blood cells left for this.

But she had anger. She was tired of telling people what she wasn’t going to do.

As she threw herself onto Josefina’s four-legged form and wrestled the screaming Cat to the ground, she vaguely registered a canine taking form.

And another Jaguar.

Estela.

There was so much blood on the ground, Lily mused as she clenched Josefina’s muzzle between her palms. Her shirt was soaking wet on the side and she was telling herself it was just sweat.

“I’m…going to be good to her,” Lily ground out, tightening her knees against the woman’s restricted limbs. They were both running out of gas. Lily dug deeper and would run on fumes if she had to. “Let me. She’ll be safe and well provided for. And she’ll know her aunt loves her. I won’t let her forget. I’ll tell her your name. I’ll tell her how your dancing made her mother blush.”

Josefina gave her jaguar head the closest thing to a shake that she could.

“It’s not…about you,” Lily said. “It’s about Nayeli. Nayeli wanted it. Think about why.”

That name must have been the password Josefina needed to unlock a little more energy. She threw Lily off and Lily couldn’t get her feet up in time to kick her away. Teeth and claws seared into her thigh, and she wouldn’t let herself waste thoughts on about what that might mean. She could worry about her shifter status later. For the moment, her concern was staying upright.

Lily scrambled up, lightheaded, trying without success to parse the sounds of animals fighting, her father freaking the hell out, and more footsteps on approach. More Coyotes, Diana in the front. They didn’t pile on Estela, though. They piled on Lance and the rest chased Josefina along the fence.

“Don’t hurt her,” Lily called out weakly, confusedly looking around for Estela because she really didn’t want to be bitten again.

Why are those Coyotes on Lance?

That didn’t make sense.

But then again, neither did the sight of a seven-plus-foot fallen angel holding a large panicking Cat out from his body and arching an eyebrow of curiosity at it.

“Oh goodie,” Lily slurred. “Tarik’s here.”

And then everything went dark.