Moonbound (Moonfate Serial Book 1) Page 4

  “I can perform.”

  Lola and the girls both turn to look at me in shock. I would too, if I were them. I can’t believe I just said that.

  “Yeah?” says the sorority chick. “I don’t think I know your band.”

  “That’s because I don’t have one.” Her snootiness sends a stiff bolt of courage up my spine. “I’m a solo act.”

  Sorority chick looks at me like I’m a calculus problem she’s trying to solve with a hangover from last night’s party. “What?”

  “I can sing and play some piano. And if you really don’t like it after I’m done, I’ll refund your money personally, okay?”

  What the hell am I doing? Yes, my mom spent ten years teaching me how to sing and play piano. And yes, I had my own little singer-songwriter act when I was in middle school. But I haven’t played in years.

  Lola raises her eyebrows at me as if to say, “Really, Honey Bunches of Oats?”

  I give a smile that’s much braver than I feel. Like my mother always used to say, commit to whatever you do on stage. If you do, no matter how bad your performance is, at least the audience will care.

  It must convince Lola, because she places her hands together in a gesture of prayer towards me before announcing, “Artemis is a real talent, folks. You’re in for a treat.”

  The pink posse heads back to their seats as I slowly walk up to the makeshift stage. I can feel the customers’ pre-emptive embarrassment, or maybe that’s just my own nerves.

  Calm down. You can do this, I tell myself.

  Settling onto the piano bench, I start to warm up, my fingers stretching from black key to white key and back again.

  I’m sure I’m going to do something easy, a collection of power chords, but then my right hand trips and lands into a tangle of sharps and flats that actually kind of sounds good.

  I take a breath so deep I’m sure I’ve sucked all the oxygen out of the room, then I sing the first thing that comes to mind.

  “By the waters, the waters, of Babylon.”

  With every note I dip deeper and deeper into the well of longing, grief and desire that’s been simmering inside me for ten years and just got unearthed last night.

  Since I saw him.

  Orion.

  God, I don’t even know what to think, let alone how I feel. Yet when I start to play, I can put all of my heart’s indescribable colors into sound. And let them go.

  “We lay down and wept, and wept for thee, Zion.”

  I had always thought the fervent, dreamy teenage girl I used to be died when my parents did. Or worse, that the werebeasts had stolen her somehow. I realize now that she’s still alive inside of me. She always was. That’s the thing about dreams: they only come to life when you share them. They’re like stories that way.

  The sorority sisters are standing now. At first I think they’re going to leave, but instead they’re moving toward the stage. They stumble around the chairs like they’re possessed. I notice this the way a star might notice a tsunami. It’s odd, but I feel so high.

  I crash through into the last chord change. Suspensions have infiltrated the piano like shadows, and the melody is different now, harsher, and almost all improvised. I’m more yelling than singing at this point.

  “We remember, we remember, we remember thee, Zion.”

  Everyone’s here now, gathered at the lip of the stage like little kids ready for story time: Lola, the pink posse, even another customer I didn’t see before who has a yellow polo.

  They look the way I did when I saw Orion in the dream for the first time. Captured. If I didn’t know that weremates don’t share the power to influence others with their voice, I’d think I was using a werecall.

  I lean away from the keys, the song ending abruptly along with whatever weird musical spell I’d cast. The crowd doesn’t shake their heads or anything; they just stop looking at me and start making their way back to their seats.

  Lola’s the only one who stays. “Wow, I had no idea you could do that. You’ve got to go on American Idol or The Voice or something.” Despite her praise, she sounds more confused than anything else, then she gives me a bright smile that’s charming in spite of the gap in her teeth. “Could you do some Elvis?”

  I wince, trying to find a way to tell her that Elvis probably won’t go over well with the pink posse. “How about some Beatles?”

  Lola nods.

  I play a couple more songs after that, but I keep the mood light and easy. My performances aren’t great, but I’ll take mediocre over dangerously weird any day of the week.

  Finally, after I play a weird pseudo-cover of Jellyfish Riot’s hit “Transformation Electric,” I decide that it’s time to end the show.

  “Thanks, guys,” I announce.

  Nobody claps, except Lola. I think some of the pink posse has even left. I can smell a bad Yelp review coming on. Oh, well, at least I tried. Now it’s time for the real work of the night: bartending.

  I leave the keyboard on the stage and make my way to the bar. When I reach my destination, Peter, the other bartender, sends a rag sliding over the counter toward me with a jowly nod. Not even a thanks for relieving him of his shift. I grab it and hang it up behind me, not watching him go. Asshole.

  “You’re Artemis, right?” asks a high but definitely male voice.

  I turn. At the other end of the bar, the guy with the yellow shirt fidgets with the coaster underneath his empty glass.

  Where do I know him from? “Yes. Can I get you another drink?”

  His nose wrinkles, a prim gesture that fits his slightly feminine face. “He didn’t say you were a weremate.”

  “What?” I hiss. My eyes dart around the bar, checking to see if anyone heard. Thankfully, no one is paying much attention to me.

  “Lawrence. He mentioned he had a roommate who worked at Bar Lola, but that’s about all he said.” His eyes lower. “Then again, he is one cagey guy, the beautiful bastard.”

  I take a deep breath and give him my best customer-service smile. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on, girl.” He rolls his eyes impatiently. “You’re showing your matemark off like it’s a new tattoo. You can stop pretending.”

  I look down at the counter and my wrist. Sure enough, like an idiot, in my rush to get out of the house I forgot to bandage up my mark and my crescent of white fur is on display for everyone to see. I fumble with my sleeve and bring my arms behind my back.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “I’m not a weremate,” I say. “I just have a condition.”

  He slams the glass down on the counter and gives a high-pitched “Ha!” that manages to echo through the room. “Fuck, and I thought I was living in denial. I should let my therapist have a crack at you. He’d implode with excitement.”

  The remaining sorority girls look up from their booth. The man glowers in their direction before swiveling toward them on his bar stool and rolling up the sleeve of his polo shirt.

  They settle down into a storm of whispers like this is middle-school gym class.

  When he turns back around, I see what he showed them. Over his biceps glimmers a slash of scales like a tattoo, iridescent and studded with spikes.

  Oh my God, I know why I thought I recognized his face before. It was because I had seen his picture. On Tracker.

  He’s Cooper Dunham. He’s the werepufferfish.

  Chapter Eight

  “I will not make the argument that every weremate has been in love with their werebeast. But I will say this. Eve chose to lay with Lucifer, Juliet chose to forsake her hunter heritage for Romeo, and even Red Riding Hood chose to stray from the path.

  None of them were forced.”

  Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and their Mates

  By Dr. Nina M. Strike

  My flight-or-fight response breaks. I freeze and stare in horror at the mark on his biceps. There is too much oxygen in this cramped bar. My pulse flutters like a dying baby bir
d.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “Nothing to do with you. So you can stop having a panic attack.” Cooper purses his lips and raises his eyebrows—an expression that looks very fish-like. “Lawrence just hasn’t been answering my calls, so I thought I’d try a different avenue of communication.”

  Slowly, the facts begin to assemble into a story that might make sense in an alternate universe. Lawrence had a one-night stand with the werepufferfish and hasn’t called him back. Because he never calls them back. And then his rejected lover found me. What, to ask me to put in a good word?

  “You won’t tell any other weres I’m here?”

  “Definitely not. You see…” He breathes out in one long blowfish sigh. “Maybe another Fireball whiskey first?”

  “Answers, then alcohol.”

  “Reversing that order makes life easier for everyone.”

  I cross my arms.

  He sucks in his cheeks, raises his eyebrows, and holds out his hand. “My name’s Cooper. Nice to meet you, Lawrence’s crazy weremate friend.”

  I look at his hand, half-expecting some kind of trap. Shifting inside the city limits is illegal. It has been since the 1700s, before everyone thought weres were extinct. Then again, murdering people is against the law, too, and that didn’t stop the werewolf and werebear from killing my parents.

  But he’s a pufferfish. What’s he going to do, wrap himself up into a sushi roll and try to poison me? A smile mutinies on my lips.

  “I already know who you are,” I say.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. I saw your profile on Tracker. How can you—”

  “Be gay?” He smirks like the smart-ass he no doubt is.

  “I was going to say, ‘Sound like a bro-y Reddit-nerd on your profile and actually be a gay werebeast,’ but sure.”

  He shrugs daintily and retracts his hand. “I keep the profile up because there are certain elements that can’t know about my preferences, but being a werebeast doesn’t actually require being heterosexual.”

  “Then what about me? What about all the other weremates? Can we ignore our matemark too?” Even as I ask the question, I know I’m doomed.

  He only gives me a small sad shake of his head and says, “Have you ever seen an underwater crop circle?”

  “What?” I shake my head at him, trying to dispel the verbal vertigo his tangent caused.

  Without any kind of explanation, he plucks a salt shaker from the counter and unscrews the cap.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  He stops, looks at me for a moment, and then dumps the salt onto the counter. Every single grain.

  “What the hell?” I hiss.

  Lola frowns at me. I mouth over Cooper’s shoulder, ”I’ll handle it.” I can’t chance Cooper telling Lola that I’m a weremate.

  She turns away, and I watch as Cooper takes his pinky finger and draws a series of patterns that looks like a crude Indian mandala in the pile of salt. “Okay, let’s say that the salt is sand, and we’re all underwater.”

  “Can’t you just come out and tell me what you’re doing?” I whisper.

  “I am. Okay, so this”—he gestures to the salt—“is the pufferfish’s mating ground. Male pufferfish draw patterns in the sand, and their mates”—he puts two fingers together and mimes a fish—“get to survey his fabulous interior decorating skills. Then the female puffer decides if the male is worthy of getting to fertilize her eggs. If he is, she deposits her eggs and leaves while the male stays with her young. The male and female never touch. Not so much as a hello.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  He gives me a sardonic glance. “The point is, there’s no animal gayer than a pufferfish.”

  “Is this some kind of weird stand-up routine?”

  “My matebond is very different from yours. Unlike you, I’m not bonded to anyone, really. This”—he gives a fancy gesture to his mark—“may as well be a tattoo.” He cocks his head. “Well, a tattoo that allows me to transform into a fish and relax in my swimming pool when I’m in the mood. Which, despite the long winter, is actually a lot more often than you’d think.”

  Holy crap is he quirky.

  And holy crap, how is there so much I didn’t know about werebeasts? I didn’t even know there were werepufferfish until this morning. Not to mention the whole mate-invading-my-mind-and-dreams-from-seventy-miles-away thing.

  What else am I missing?

  Maybe he’s just screwing with me.

  My eyes narrow. “How have I not heard about the different kinds of matemarks before?”

  “We weres try to keep a lot of our biology on the down-low. And most werebeasts do have strong matemarks—especially predators. Not that your scientists would ever know the difference, when you humans are still fixated on casting us as some kind of bad guy determined to voodoo our way into your females’ pants and slaughter your children. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Hence my calling it complicated.” He rolls his eyes, but it’s a good-natured sort of annoyance. “But I’d figure even the Spark Notes version might help you avoid your mate better.”

  “How do you even know I’m avoiding him?” I take the napkin and push the salt pile into my hand before dumping it in the trash.

  “Your smell. It’s classic anti-were spray, homemade too. Vinegar, chili peppers? All you’re missing is a silver cross to help you ‘fight your urges’.” He puts air quotes around the last part.

  I roll my eyes. “I’m not some idiot obsessed with old myths. And I don’t have any urges.”

  “Oh, trust me, ignoring the urges just makes it harder. Which I guess brings me to my point.” He gives a bitter sigh as he steeples his fingers in front of his blunt nose. “I think my employer may have found out about my preference for guys. And I have a feeling that if he discovers Lawrence and I had relations, he might try to set us right. He’s very much against any relationship outside of the werebeast-weremate bond. Something of a traditionalist. While he knows it’s not the same for fish as it is for wolves, it doesn’t really matter. The whole maintaining-tradition thing is kind of his quest.”

  The rest of his monologue blurs by me as I fixate on a phrase. “Set you right? What do you mean?” My familiar friend, anxiety, is waking up, slithering through my veins and turning them cold.

  “Well…” He holds up a finger for a long moment. “He might, I don’t know, rough up us a bit.” He twirls his index finger vaguely. “Bloody nose. Broken arm. Lost limb.”

  “Lost limb!”

  “Don’t you wish you gave me that drink first now? And probably got one for yourself, too?”

  Anger flares in my chest. All this time I had thought the danger from werebeasts would come when my mate found me. I never thought they would come after Lawrence. For what, being gay? That was so 1950s. Then again, werebeasts are practically Victorian legends.

  God, I’ve run my whole life. I’ve sacrificed any hope of a normal existence, and trouble still finds the people that I care about? Enough.

  I lean forward on my elbows, so close to him that my nose almost grazes his blunt one. “I want you to leave. I want to never see you and your kind again. Not near Lawrence and not near me. In fact, you’re going to do everything in your fishy little power to keep your fucking werebeast boss from following us, too.” I lean forward one more inch, my eyes boring into his. “Got it?”

  He’s not impressed with my intimidation attempt; instead, he looks at me with pity. “Look at it this way, at least you’ve got a really powerful werecall, girl.”

  “Only werebeasts have werecalls. And I’m not your girl.”

  “No,” he says. “You’re definitely not. Not with a werecall that strong. I can’t imagine how powerful your bond must be. Or how your mate hasn’t found you already. Well, he will soon, I guess.” He fiddles with something in his pocket, clenching it then letting go.

  My mouth dries, remembering Orion
. As if Cooper’s weird, gay-hating boss wasn’t enough.

  “Shut up.” I look down and start to clean the few stray salt granules that I didn’t catch the first time.

  Cooper runs his hands through his hair, making it stand even straighter and sharper. “You know, I’m all for fighting destiny, but I’m telling you, it’s not an easy battle. And if you refuse to admit it’s even happening, you’re gonna have a hard time winning it.”

  “Fuck off.” I throw it out there, not really expecting him to listen.

  I keep scrubbing, waiting for him to reply. Once I’m convinced I’ve got every stray speck, I look up, and to my surprise I find that he had listened.

  He’s gone.

  Chapter Nine

  It’s two a.m. I’ve just finished counting down the drawer and am working up how to tell Lola that I might have to duck out for a few days when she a heaves a giant sigh and walks over to me.

  “How’s the drawer doing?” she asks.

  I stare down at the short stacks of ones, fives, tens and twenties. There’s only one fifty-dollar bill, and it’s been there for weeks. “People must’ve used a lot of credit cards tonight.”

  She taps the old PC we use to ring up customers and shows today’s total. Five hundred dollars. Barely enough to cover rent. Lola closes the window quickly, probably hoping that I won’t see. Then she opens the drawer below the screen and pulls out an envelope, which she then sets on the counter.

  I stare at it, hoping it’s what I think it is. I need that check.

  She gives me a watery smile and takes my hands in hers weathered ones. I start at the sudden contact, but she doesn’t let me escape. “Thank you, Artemis, for singing tonight, and for dealing with that weirdo of a customer, and most of all for understanding.” She lets my hands go and picks up the envelope and waves it so it flops around. Its little plastic window crinkles. “About this being so late.”

  “No problem.” I take it and bite my lip, resisting the urge to open it now. I’m not sure how much is in it or if it will be enough. I pick up my purse, put the check inside, and am just about to head out when Lola taps me on the shoulder.