“Which means what?”
“It means no one needs to do anything. The twins will be coming for me.”
“Why you?”
“Honestly? I couldn’t tell them apart, so I fucked up the face of one of them and—”
“Stop,” the cat ordered, holding up her hand. “Really?”
Max shrugged. “I like clarity.”
“What about plastic surgery?”
“Won’t help.” She held up her hand, released her ridiculously long claws. They glinted in the florescent light of the coffee shop. “I went down to the bone.”
Max retracted her claws. “So I wouldn’t worry if I were you. They’ll be coming for me. And then I’ll deal with them. Until then . . . don’t bother me anymore. Charlie finds out about my little arrangement with Hee-Haw and she’ll waste everybody.” She grinned. “My big sister is super protective.”
* * *
“Trust me,” Oriana said. “Team sports. That’s what you should do. And playing accomplishes several different things.”
Shen exchanged a glance with Stevie before they asked together, “Like what?”
“Exercise and friendship. From what I understand, people involved in team sports make friends.”
“Is being in a ballet corps considered a team sport?” Stevie asked.
“It’s a dog-fighting pit,” she coldly explained. “Only the strong survive. You wouldn’t last ten minutes.” She glanced over at Shen. “Neither would you. But,” she said, her demeanor abruptly changing back to casual friendliness, “we’re not talking about ballet. We’re talking about a team sport that would be perfect for you.”
Stevie glanced down at the tiny shorts, cropped top, fishnet stockings, and quad skates she currently held in her hands. “Yeahhhh . . . I don’t think this is it.”
“You haven’t even given it a try yet.”
“Because I am positive it’s not for me. I will never wear this shit. Ever.” She motioned to the locker room. “I’ll put it back.”
Shen watched Stevie as she headed away from the banked derby track. From the opposite direction he saw two women heading toward them. And one of those women was Blayne Thorpe. The current captain of the New York roller derby team and the woman Stevie had batted around just the day before.
Blayne was deep in the middle of regaling her Asian companion with a story so she didn’t see Stevie, and, thankfully, Stevie didn’t notice her.
But then Blayne caught sight of a possible newbie trying to escape her future as a derby girl—most likely the way Blayne thought of it—and she reached out and caught Stevie’s arm, sweetly asking, “Not leaving already, are—”
Startled, Stevie yanked her arm away and roared so loudly the chairs in the arena shook.
Blayne stumbled back until she hit the wall, eyes wide in panic. Her friend, a cutie tigon Shen sort of knew, immediately jumped in front of her, ready to protect Blayne.
But Stevie continued on, oblivious of the fear she was leaving in her wake.
“Hey! Look at that,” Kyle said, smiling. “Her meds are working.”
chapter TEN
Their first stop after roller derby was the minor league hockey team. Most of the players had dreams of moving up to the pro team, but Shen knew that there were a few who just played in the minor league for fun.
This hadn’t been his suggestion. It was Oriana’s and it seemed like a bad one since Stevie had just admitted she actually couldn’t skate.
“What do you mean, you can’t skate?” Oriana demanded.
“Why didn’t you tell us that when we were at the derby tryouts?”
“Two different types of skating.”
“Can you do either?”
“No.”
Oriana pushed a lock of hair off her face. “I’m so confused right now. Why did you agree to this?”
“Because I can learn to skate.”
“Anyone can learn to skate.”
“No. I mean, I can learn to skate faster than most people.”
Oriana rolled her eyes. “Honey—”
“No,” Stevie interrupted. “Really.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Physics.”
“Physics?”
“Yes. Physics. Once you understand physics, you can do pretty much anything.”
“Really?” Oriana smirked. “So you can do what I can do?”
“Yes. But I’m lacking your musculature and body type; both of which would be necessary for me to do what you do for any length of time.”
Kyle leaned forward and loudly whispered to his sister, “That’s a really nice way of calling you a genetic freak.”
Oriana unleashed her claws and nearly had them buried in her brother’s face, but, to Shen’s surprise and approval, Kyle jerked his head back out of clawing range.
“I also like my toes,” Stevie suddenly announced . . . for no obvious reason.
“What?” Oriana asked.
“I like my toes. You can’t be a dancer and have pretty toes. And from what Kyle has told me . . . you have some fucked-up hooves.”
Shen cringed as the She-jackal’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. But instead of trying to bury her claws into Stevie’s face as she had her brother’s, Oriana gestured to the ice they were standing on.
“Please,” she said with a cold smile, “show us physics.”
“Actually,” Shen quickly cut in, “how about we take off the skates and find something else for you to do.”
“No, no, no.” Oriana glared at him before flashing that fake smile at Stevie. “Please, show us what physics does for you.”
With a shrug, Stevie placed her left hand on Shen’s shoulder for balance, bent her left leg at the knee, and rested her right foot on her left thigh. She leaned down, still holding onto Shen, and studied the bottom of her skate.
When she was finished doing that, she crouched down and pressed both her hands against the stadium ice.
She straightened, continued to study the ice for another minute. Then, without warning, she started skating.
At first, it was an awkward, wobbly performance that had Oriana grimacing along with Shen. She opened her mouth to call Stevie back, maybe afraid that Stevie would only hurt herself on those skates. But Oriana didn’t get a word out before Stevie abruptly took off. Like an Olympic speed skater, she moved fast from one end of the rink to the other and back again until she reached their small group and slammed to a stop, a burst of ice hitting them all in the face.
“See?” Stevie said. “Physics! Isn’t physics great?”
The sound of disgust Kyle made was definitive, but Stevie chose to ignore it. She faced Shen, smiling wide.
“So, what did you—”
“You here to try out for the team?” a male voice boomed behind Stevie.
Stevie jerked and her body twisted, flying into the air. But the stadium ceiling was much too high for her to reach, so she wrapped herself around Shen instead.
“You really have to stop doing this,” Shen reminded her.
“Does this mean your meds are no longer working?” Oriana asked.
“If they weren’t working,” Stevie growled out, “I would be way worse by now.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“Don’t blame me,” Stevie argued. “Look at the size of him!”
Novikov was more than a foot taller than Shen and nearly as wide. He was also a trained hockey player who enjoyed hurting his enemies on the ice. Even worse . . . Stevie had just tried to kill his wife, Blayne, the day before. An event that made Novikov more dangerous than he was normally.
Shen decided to end this before it got out of hand.
“Look, Novikov, I understand you’re—”
The hybrid put his hand over Shen’s face. Shen assumed it was to stop him from talking.
“You trying out for the team?” Novikov asked Stevie.
Stevie, who was hanging off Shen’s left side, her legs wrapped around his waist, leaned forward.
“No,” Stevie said firmly.
Novikov frowned and it was horrifying. How did anyone risk going up against this guy in a hockey game? “Why not?”
“Don’t want to,” Stevie snipped back.
Shen pulled away from Novikov hand and leaned close to Stevie, whispering, “How about not pissing off the psychotic whose wife you just tried to kill?”
“I was not trying to kill her,” she whispered back. “I was playing with her.”
“You two do know I can hear you . . . right?” Novikov asked.
“I don’t want to play hockey,” Stevie insisted.
“Why not?”
“It’s boring.”
Novikov’s eyes widened and he moved back a bit on his skates as if he’d been struck. “It is not boring.”
“It is to me. But, then again, I’m brilliant and it takes a lot to keep me interested. Especially in the kind of thing that average people enjoy. Of course . . . I doubt you’d understand.”
Shen bit his tongue to prevent himself from laughing. He had to. The look on Novikov’s face . . .
He was just so devastated.
Giving a low, vicious growl that rolled past them, Novikov skated off.
“The dogs make that noise sometimes,” Stevie noted. “I wonder what it means.”
“I can’t believe you told him no.”
“He was rude to you,” she said. “He put his Gigantor hand over your face. Who does that?”
“Novikov,” Shen and the siblings said together.
“Well, it’s rude. Even for prodigies, there are rules. He needs to learn that.”
Shen put his arm around Stevie’s waist and hiked her up a little higher on his hip. “Look, I don’t want you not to play simply to piss off Novikov.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. I don’t want to play because I don’t want to have to put all this crap on every time. All this padding. And my shirt is huge. It’s like a dress.”
“We thought this would be a good alternative,” Oriana pointed out, “after your reaction to the derby outfit.”
“I’m looking for a little . . .” Stevie glanced down at herself. “Something between those two options.”
Kyle, who’d been pretty quiet this entire time, offered, “How about softball?”
* * *
Stevie snatched the softball out of the air with one hand, tossed away the bat she had in her other hand, and stalked over to Kyle and the others.
She held the ball under his nose. “You suggested a game that has a ball coming at my head at—” Stevie looked off and Kyle knew she was calculating something. “—seventy-three point five miles per hour? Does that really seem like a good thing to you?”
Kyle stared at his friend for a bit before replying, “I don’t know what the right answer is here.”
“Do you know how important my brain is?” Stevie asked. “Not just to the world but to the entire universe? Two years ago,” she ranted on, “I stopped this entire planet from being sucked into a black hole. Do you think I could have done that if I had brain damage to my head from this?” She shoved the ball closer to his nose. “Well . . . do you?”
Shen scratched his big bear head. “Wait . . . we were almost sucked into a black hole?”
Kyle and Stevie ignored Shen, and Kyle asked, “So I’m guessing softball’s out?”
Snarling, Stevie threw the ball down, hitting Kyle’s foot in the process.
“Owwww! Viper!”
“How fucking soft is that, Kyle?” she barked, heading back to the locker room. “How fucking soft is it?”
* * *
“I should just go home,” Stevie sighed once she was back in her shorts and T-shirt. It seemed she’d looked at all the team sports and none of them worked for her. They’d even stopped in at the football stadium, but she’d left three minutes later when she saw that most of the team was made up of gigantic bears who didn’t seem as worried as Stevie about traumatic brain injury.
“I’ve got a suggestion for you,” Shen said around the bamboo in his mouth.
“I think we should just end it,” she replied. “It’s . . . it’s just too hard.”
“One more,” he said, taking her hand.
He walked off, pulling her behind him. Kyle and Oriana brought up the rear.
Together, they took the elevator down a few floors until they arrived at a floor that was completely dedicated to one arena. As they walked down the hall toward the main doors, Stevie examined the framed shirts they passed. Shirts with claw marks, blood stains, and last names.
“Are these . . . memorials?”
“Don’t be silly,” Shen said as he kept walking, continuing to pull her along. “Memorials for game deaths are in the basement.”
Stevie tried to pull away at that point, but he kept walking, tossing over his shoulder, “Just kidding. Lighten up.”
They arrived at the big double doors, one of which was already open. He pulled her inside and she quickly realized they were in a soccer stadium.
A group was playing but she doubted they were pro players. Not when she saw Kyle’s oldest brother out in the middle of it all.
“Soccer?” she asked, looking up at Shen.
“Yes. Soccer. It’s perfect for you. Short bursts of running, which is great for your tiger side. But still competitive, which is good for your child prodigy side. Your hands aren’t at any major risk, and the ball is big and soft so your head is safe.”
“Except that a kicked soccer ball can reach eighty miles per hour.”
“Why do you even know that?” Oriana asked.
“That’s true,” Shen said, ignoring Oriana, “but you have a honey badger skull. A .38 wouldn’t even get past the stone-like strength of your bone structure.”
Deciding to ignore what could easily be seen as an insult, Stevie asked, “What made you think of this? For me, I mean.”
“Soccer is a great sport. Takes skill, dexterity, and physics. Not only that . . . pandas love soccer!” he cheered, pointing to a group of sturdy-looking giant panda bears. One had hold of a soccer ball and the others were trying to take it from her.
While she giggled and laughed, the others rolled her around, taking turns trying to get the ball. It seemed like a waste of time and energy, but Stevie couldn’t ignore the fact that they all seemed to be having a great time.
“Do you play soccer?”
“Used to. Played through high school on local shifter teams. Always had fun.”
“Hey,” Oriana cut in, “Kyle . . . is that our brother?”
“No way,” Kyle snorted. “He’d never . . . oh, my God! That is him!”
The siblings looked at each other for a brief moment before they yelled out together, “Coop!”
The world-renowned pianist turned around, which was when he was hit in the back of the head with a soccer ball that had just been kicked at him.
He didn’t move, but he looked annoyed, jaws clenching.
“Sor-ryyy!” someone called out before Coop jogged over to the stands.
“What are you guys doing here?” he asked.
“Shouldn’t we be asking that?” Kyle wanted to know. “What else have you not told us? How much are you hiding from us? Are you even our brother?”
“You act like you found me in a drug den. It’s soccer.”
Kyle’s lip curled in disgust and Oriana scrunched up her nose. She just looked confused. But Stevie didn’t know why. A lot of great artists did things on the side to relax, which was exactly what Stevie was looking for. Something she could enjoy that had no real consequences.
Coop stared at his siblings for a few extra seconds before shaking his head, seemingly dismissing them, and faced Stevie and Shen.
“So why are you here?” he asked again.
“Stevie is looking for a way to work out her stress without using Blayne Thorpe as a cat toy.”
Coop gave a little smile. “That’s probably a good idea.”
“So I was thinking,” S
hen went on, “soccer might be a good option for her.”
Coop nodded. “We have a lot of the smaller cats on the team. Some jackals and foxes. Not a lot of tigers but that’s because they like American football better. All that hitting and running bears down from behind.” He gestured to the people still playing. “These guys aren’t pro. Strictly for fun, exercise, and good times. We get to practice here in the afternoons before the pro players come in. Then we play the occasional weekend game every month or so with non-pro shifters from other boroughs, Philly and Jersey. It works out pretty well, even with my hell-on-earth schedule.” He dipped his head down a little so that he could look Stevie in the eyes. “You want to try it? We’re always looking for new players.”
Stevie wasn’t sure she wanted to do this, but she’d already failed at everything else. Might as well make it a clean sweep of failure.
“Okay.”
“Great.” Coop held his hand out so he could help her over the railing. “Let’s get you geared up.”
* * *
“Does it bother you that my very handsome brother is chatting up Stevie?”
Shen heard the question but didn’t realize anyone was talking to him until he raised his head from staring at his phone and saw that Oriana was smiling at him.
“Huh?”
“Do I actually need to repeat the question?”
“I’m just surprised you asked me a question. Didn’t you once call me ‘the help’?”
“I probably did.” She gestured toward the middle of the pitch, where Coop and Stevie continued to talk, “Everyone says how charming Cooper is. How friendly. Not like the rest of us at all.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”
“And they have a lot in common,” she went on, studying her brother and Stevie for a few seconds. “Music and all that.”
Shen looked over her head at her taller brother. “Why is she telling me this?”
“I think it’s her attempt to find out if you have any interest in Stevie.”
In a Badger Way Page 14