Nine Lives

Twenty-Nine: Jack

Ravens caw from the trees overhead. Their eerie screeching echoes, sound bouncing off the old Victorian houses with their white balconies and brick walls. I try blocking it out. Replaying everything that just happened gives me a headache; what did happen? That book has to be at least fifty years old. How could it predict a Mortal and a Shifter falling in love, only to be doomed by themselves? The tiger part still confuses me though. Maybe there's still an entire other chapter to our life's trilogy. Maybe we haven't figured everything out.

By the time the rain starts, I'm sick of the cries of the ravens. Their creepy bird-eyes blink down on me. Black wings shuffling in the rain. I trudge down the road to where I parked my car, after all, walking from my house to Alice's is like death. It's about a mile of hills, an acre of forest, then one straight lane that goes on for however many miles until you stop at the biggest, scariest, possibly oldest Victorian nineteenth century house in this town. History isn't a huge part of our livelihood, but the houses here are probably older than dirt.

Finally, I reach the car. My mom's super-old, beat-up, rusting, pile-of-junk Pontiac Fiero tilts on the road. It's had a half-flat tire for a year now, but no one's ever gone to the trouble of repairing it. The bottoms of the doors are almost rusted shut, the one head light is out, and the leather backseat has a huge tear in it. I groan, open the door, and shudder as it creaks. The sound is horrifying if you hate hearing metal on metal. This is metal on rusted, un-oiled, fifty year old metal. To sum it up, this car sucks. But Mom never had the heart to get rid of it, it was her first car after all.

I start up the engine while pulling the door shut. Another car zooms by, a bright red, brand-new convertible, and narrowly misses my door.

"Slow down, ya jerk!" I scream. That's something I've never had any tolerance for: stupidity.

The engine makes the strangest noises, cracking and groaning, before actually starting up. Then I slowly cruise down the road. Why go any faster when the station only has one police car and my mind is too consumed with Alice.

A bird crows again and swoops down in front of the car. But it stops in mid-air. Everything freezes, in fact. I get a familiar feeling, like this has happened before. I just can't place when. Then the green trees turn grey. The sky turns white. The Fiero's light blue coloring is already faded, so the car doesn't change much. Everything is black and white except for myself. And the eerie girl walking straight towards my car.

I step out of my car and push aside raindrops in mid-fall. What is happening?

"Hello?" I call out to the girl. She wears dark jeans and a crop top with birds all over it. Straight dark hair hangs limply on her shoulders, but there's something else in her hair. Feathers. Black feathers, like a raven. Her hair seems to grow the feathers, the strands curled, wrapped, and knotted around the feathers' bases.

Now, she's fifty feet away, and still not responding. Twenty-five feet and things are looking grim. Fifteen feet, I make out chocolate brown eyes. Ten feet, a smile spreads across her pink lips. Six feet. Five feet. Four feet. Three. Two. One.

"Hello, Jack," she says with an indescribable voice. It's southern, her accent, but her words flow perfectly and harmonically with her tone. When she spoke, it was like a vibration, as if she was purring. She's entrancing.

"Hi," I say numbly. Maybe I'm too stressed or confused, but I feel like this girl is the one overwhelming me. My mind starts to get drowsy. It's like I'm drowning in thick, sticky honey. It's a feeling of revelation, I realize. This has happened before. Deja Vu. My memory loss.

"Have I met you before?"

The girl smiles wickedly, but it's still welcoming. "No. I think I'd remember meetin' a guy like you." Her expression falls, suddenly sullen. "It's possible you've met another one of us." I nod slowly.