Open All Hours (Carnival Magic 2)
Eden Royce
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Copyright ©2015 Eden Royce
BIN: 07317-02359
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Changeling Press LLC
315 N. Centre St.
Martinsburg, WV 25404
www.ChangelingPress.com
Editor: Pat Sager
Cover Artist: Bryan Keller
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Open All Hours (Carnival Magic 2)
Eden Royce
Leesa Cobb is on the run. A victim of a vindictive witch, she has been cursed to change form into a black cat. Lost, terrified, and hungry she is drawn to the delightful smells and bright warmth of Ground Up, a twenty-four hour diner.
Vol, the owner of the diner and a grizzly bear shifter himself, takes pity on the little cat and gives Leesa one of the best meals of her life. Albeit on a dish on the floor without silverware! When Vol sees Leesa in her human form, he is immediately drawn to the ebony beauty. At first, he tells himself that he is helping her adjust to being a shifter, by having her work in the diner with him and learn to control her change. Soon he has to admit that he wants her in his bed as well as behind his bar.
At a nearby carnival they hear of a potion that may reverse the effects of the curse, turning Leesa to her fully human form once again. Will she find it? And if she does, will she give up the life she’s beginning to love? How can Vol convince her that he wants her no matter what her choice?
Leesa climbed out of her hybrid as silently as she could given the late hour. This deep in the Carolina woods, only the mosquitoes never seemed to sleep. She wished she could be back in bed, under the air conditioning getting her beauty rest, but the latest conversation with her boss still rang in her ears.
You need a story, Leesa, or I’m going to have to let you go
. That was the only reason her turning-forty-in-five-months ass was out after dark -- it had to be close to eleven -- getting her braids caught on pine trees. Lord, she was too old for this foolishness.
Her last big story had been almost a year ago. Since then, she’d been scooped by several other papers, and once even by an intern on the team. Hard to live that down at the office. Even one of the copy editors had asked her:
How’d you let a noob get the drop on you, Lees? Must be losing your touch
. She pulled her shoulder-length braids away from her face into a low ponytail. Not this time. She was in survival mode because the mortgage needed paying. Not to mention her savings account was dwindling. Leesa had also justified the purchase of a new digital camera that uploaded pictures to a cloud storage device without having to download them. She wasn’t sure how helpful that would be, but the salesman had been so convincing. This story -- and the paycheck that went with it -- had to be hers.
Leesa’s hiking boots moved easily, if not soundlessly, across the floor of thick decaying leaves and brittle branches deeper into the moonlit forest. If her hunch was right -- and it was, she could feel it -- then she’d find the cult leader and her followers out here. A few pictures and she could get an exclusive on what was happening in the dark woods of the Bible Belt. Satanic worship? Who knew? But whatever it was, no one else would be out here to try and beat her to the story. Her boss wanted results, so the reporters were encouraged to move on researched stories, not fairy tale nightmares.
This time, she had the story. Not sure anyone would believe it, that there were Satanists holding court in the woods, so pictures were needed. And the public had become so savvy -- or jaded -- that they tended not to believe anything and scanned any photos carefully for signs of alterations. These would be real snaps, not grainy and up for interpretation like the ones of the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot. Her story would be the scoop of the year and would secure her job for at least another six months. Long enough to make the jump to another paper, if need be. Maybe even enough to start her own online magazine. That was a dream that seemed more and more achievable by the minute and certainly worth a few uncomfortable hours.
The scent of fire drew her deeper into the forest to the edge of a clearing where the blaze of a bonfire lit the night like streetlamps: bright directly around the light, but making the deep shadows on the edges thicker and more playful with the flickering light. Several figures in dark hoods roamed the forest floor, drawing designs in the moist earth. One of the hooded drew out a bag and sprinkled something in the fire and it blazed up. Crouched next to a thick rooted tree, Leesa snapped away with her camera, getting shots of the figures and zooming in on the crude designs.
“This is great,” she whispered, her fingers flying over the buttons.
At the sound of her voice, one of the figures looked up to her hiding space. Leesa froze. Impossible. They couldn’t have heard her from that far away.
The figure pulled back the hood it wore, exposing its face. A woman.
Leesa thought it would be an ideal picture for the cover, but her fingers wouldn’t move. She was rooted to the spot as she watched in horror as the woman -- an elderly one, she could tell even from this distance -- lifted a hand and pointed to her.
The rest of the hoods turned to look.
A hum emerged from the group and Leesa could feel it vibrating through the earth, the dirt and rock she stood on. It grew stronger as it reached her, making the tiny pebbles under her feet slide away.
The older woman’s face was still visible and although it didn’t seem that she moved, Leesa could hear her voice clearly in her mind.
“You find us curious, little one? Curiosity is such an ugly thing to see in a person. But it is lovely in a cat.”
Leesa felt a sensation run up her back like stroking a pet’s fur the wrong way. It raced up her spine and set her teeth on edge. Wind flared up through the tall trees, and made her braids whip against her bare neck. She lifted a hand to rub away the sensation, and felt the downy pelt on the back of her hand graze her skin. Dimly, she thought,
I can move now. I’d better
--
Then the sight of her hand, with a dusting of silky black fur stopped her mind from working anymore. The camera slipped from her grasp and dangled around her neck. She didn’t drop it, but her paws -- paws? -- could not hold the machine any longer.
Something in her muscles thawed and she screamed. The old woman’s voice came to her mind again. Through a soft chuckle, she called, “Here kitty, kitty.”
Leesa felt her knees buckle and she dropped to the loamy ground.
Oh, God no. Get out! Run
! Her mind screamed and her body obeyed this time. She scrambled to her feet and fled through the woods. Her boots trampled the dead branches, but the skeletal tree arms scratched her face and neck. She batted at the trees with her paws as she ran, her body lowering to the ground with each footfall.
Her eyesight sharpened and she could see her car in the distance. Leesa ran toward it, trying to fish her keys out of her jeans. Finally, by extending a claw, she hooked the ring and pulled it free. It was no use, she couldn’t hold the ring and it dropped to the mossy ground.
No…
The crunch of footsteps was behind her and fear coursed through her again. Leesa abandoned her car and ran toward the road. She crossed it in a daze, ignoring the honks of frightened and furious drivers. Her clothes slid from her as she shrank in size.
Where do I go? Instinct rose to the surface of her brain and she thought of hiding. Of safety. What was that in the distance? She could see lights and the smell…
Leesa ran toward it even as her legs shortened and her upper body bent to the ground, changing her gait from two feet to four.
* * *
The concert lets out at midnight
, Vol thought as he took out bags of trash through the back door of the Ground Up diner.
Business will pick back up then.
It was rare to have a lull this time of night, but then Rattling Boys didn’t play in the Southeast that often anymore. He’d been to see them when they were a garage band, struggling to get gigs at local high school dances. Since their first album hit number one, they’d been whisked away to play venues worldwide. Let them have the all nighters; he was past the need to raise hell in the streets at all hours. At thirty-five, he could raise hell in his kitchen whenever he felt like it.
He threw the weighty bags of refuse into the tall silver garbage cans and jumped when he heard a frightened squall. Was it a seagull? Their cries sounded like the mewling of kittens and they tended to come further inland when the temperature dropped, looking for food. He moved closer to the trash cans and heard a scratching, scrabbling sound, like nails on cardboard.
“Who’s there?” he asked, his voice deepening as he brought himself up to his full height. Few people persisted in harassing him when his full six foot eight inches towered over them.
The scrabbling became more frantic and he could finally tell its direction. One of the empty cardboard boxes that had at one time contained cartons of free-range eggs for the diner moved.
Vol strode over and yanked the box up, prepared for a fight with anything -- a rat, a hungry gull, or a vicious dog. Instead, a pair of wide yellow eyes stared up at him in first fear, then wonder.
“Aw, darlin’, how’d you get in here?”
The small black cat let him reach down and slide his huge hand under her fuzzy belly. Once he made contact, it seemed to startle her into movement.
“No, you don’t.” He caught her mid-leap and brought her to his massive chest. “I’m not going to hurt you, little one.”
The cat trembled in his grip and looked down, then back up, giving a forlorn cry. He rubbed under its furry neck and was rewarded with a short rumbling purr. No collar, and while its body was light, it was sleek and muscular. So, it wasn’t a stray. He’d keep an eye out for whoever the little beauty belonged to. There was no way he was going to leave it to the October night. The temperature was plummeting and people had a suspicion of black cats. He knew as well as anyone that people tend to destroy what they didn’t understand. As he looked into the kitten’s frightened eyes and gently loosened her tiny claws from his T-shirt, he knew he wouldn’t let that happen to her.
Her? He hadn’t checked the little cat to find out her gender, but something just felt right to refer to her as a female. What was he going to do about keeping her until he could find her a home? He lived over the diner and health inspectors tended to drop in at any moment. Vol felt a tremor in the cat’s hollow belly and gave a chuckle. “Well, at least I can find you something to eat. The special’s tuna.”
Inside the restaurant was warm and well lit, the décor a fifties theme, complete with turquoise vinyl bar stools and a functioning jukebox.
Earth Angel
played from the speakers, the classic song covered quite well by a modern band. The wait staff was also modern in their choice to mix tattoos and piercings with biker and rockabilly clothing. A server came by with a full face of pinup girl makeup and a bald, tattooed skull. The low hum of chatter mixed with the sizzle from the flat-top grill, and the scent of seared meat made the kitten wail again.
“Two Tone!” Vol yelled from the back doorway.
A black man turned from the grill at the sound of his name. A large irregularly shaped mark covered one side of his cheek and descended to part of his neck in pale, white skin. “Yo, Vol. You been out there sleeping or something?” Tone looked around the wall that separated the kitchen from the back door.