“Need from me?”
“Take out the lions.”
“No matter what you may have heard, my sisters do not kill on command.”
“What? No! I want you and your sisters to go up against them.”
“Like in a street fight? Because MacKilligans don’t really do that either. Once Max starts stabbing and Charlie starts shooting, you’ll have a bloodbath on your hands, and there’s all that clean up afterward. Although Max probably knows a few places we can bury some bodies.”
“No, no.” Ward held up her hands, eyes wide. “Please stop talking.” She briefly looked off, then said, “I don’t mean attack them physically. I’m talking about taking them on with karaoke.”
Stevie couldn’t help but let her lip curl in disgust. “Why?”
Ward began to pace around what Stevie now realized was a storage room. “A few years ago, we started having monthly sing-offs. We provide the karaoke machine filled with several thousand songs, from as far back as the thirties up to today, or a live band if you prefer that. And it was all going great. Everyone was having a great time. Then the cats got involved,” she sneered.
“You mean like the guy who was just butchering Pat Benatar?”
“No,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “That’s Mitch. He was in my wedding. He has a pass. In other words, we’ve made him an honorary canine.”
“But you know he can’t sing, right?”
“You’ve got to let that go. It’s Mitch—we love him!”
“So it’s other cats you have a problem with?”
Stevie saw a bit of fang peek out from under Ward’s lip before she hissed, “The Brunetti Pride.”
“Okay. And your problem with them is . . . ?”
“They keep winning.”
Stevie fought hard not to roll her eyes. “When you have competitions that happens. I used to win all the time too. And the other competitors hated me for it. That’s a ‘you’ problem, though. Not a ‘me’ problem.”
“You don’t understand. The Brunettis are very wealthy, very bitchy, and very trifling. They pay top dollar for their costumes and choreographers.”
Stevie snorted out a surprised laugh. “They use choreographers for karaoke?”
“One of those choreographers used to work with Madonna.”
“Wait. I’m going to ask one more time, because I’m sure I’m mishearing this. They hired one of Madonna’s choreographers to create an act so they could win a karaoke contest?”
“Yes.”
“What do they win? A yacht?”
Ward walked across the room to a table. When she turned back to face Stevie, she held a cheap-looking trophy.
“Seriously?” she asked.
“Yes. True,” Ward clarified, “this is for second place. But,” she pointed out, “the first place trophy is only slightly taller.”
Stevie clasped her hands together. “I understand that this means a lot to you. I really get that. Lions can be very irritating. But I create symphonies. I can master any instrument I hear played for more than ten minutes. Any instrument. And I’ve been able to do that since I was two. But singing is not one of my singular gifts.”
“You sisters can back you up. They can cover for any imperfections in your voice.”
“It’s not about covering. I know this is going to sound really narcissistic, but I’m a musical genius. And although I’ve been out of the field for a long while, I still have my reputation. I don’t want to ruin it in order to win a karaoke contest. You get that, right?”
“I do.”
“That being said . . . I don’t want to risk the Jean-Louis Parkers losing their rental house and—”
“No, no.” Ward shook her head. “All I said you had to do was come here with your sisters. You did that.” She slapped one hand against the other. “That whole thing is over as far as I’m concerned.”
“It is?”
“Dogs do not blackmail. Cats do. We just look at you like this . . .”
Big brown eyes gazed at Stevie. Giant brown eyes. She immediately thought of poor Benny, still at the vet, recovering from that gunshot wound. He would look at her like that when he wanted her bacon.
“Okay, okay!” Stevie said, quickly glancing away. “Let me think about it.”
* * *
Shen made his way to the bar, ordering another beer from the She-wolf server.
“Do you have any bamboo?” he asked now that he saw the place was run by shifters.
The server handed him his bottled beer. “Roasted, steamed, raw, or fried?”
“Fried, please.”
As Shen waited for his food, he looked out over the dance floor. He didn’t know if he was amused or disgusted by what wild dogs referred to as “dancing.”
“You!”
Shen turned toward the voice barking at him.
“Oh. Hi, Blayne.”
“Don’t ‘hi, Blayne’ me. You lied to Gwenie. And she’s here . . .” She glanced around. “. . . somewhere. And you’re going to tell her the truth.”
“I did lie. But I had to.”
“You had to?”
“Yeah. Your running around telling the world that you were attacked by a two-ton badger does nothing but put our friend in danger. In danger from us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll put it to you in the form of a question: How welcoming have most shifters been to you and Gwenie? To Bo? I mean, if you take out his winning hockey ways. Have they loved you as you are, ready to accept you as one of their own? Or do they treat you like a freak?”
“I understand what you’re saying—”
“Good.”
“—but I wasn’t telling everybody. I was telling Gwen. And both of us are hybrids.”
“I know you guys are. Look, the way you and Gwenie have always protected each other? Dose that with steroids and some backwoods form of military training and you’ve got Stevie’s sisters. And they would see you as a threat. And they extinguish any threat to their baby sister. Understand what I’m saying to you?”
“No.”
“Seriously?”
Blayne began to giggle, her shoulders hunching over.
“Blayne.”
“I’m sorry,” she replied, still laughing. “I just wanted to see your face. Totally worth it.”
* * *
Standing on the edge of the dance floor, Stevie stared at the stage and listened to more caterwauling.
“How ya holding up?”
Surprised, she glanced at the woman standing next to her. “What are you doing here?”
Oriana shrugged. “Kyle told me the wild dogs had asked you to come here. I had a feeling they were up to something like this.”
“Are you a regular at Wild Dog Nights?”
“No. Not a regular, but, more than once, our mother has insisted her older children attend these”—she sighed dramatically—“events. To suck up to her protégé’s mother.”
“It’s good your mom wants to teach others. I don’t.”
Oriana laughed. “My mom would say you’re still too young to care about passing on your skills to the next generation.”
“Good. Then I don’t feel so guilty.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Stevie admitted. “I’m thinking I’m going to . . .”
Stevie, sensing she was being watched, stopped talking and began looking around the room to find all the exits and anything she could use as a weapon.
“Hi!”
The voice surprised Stevie and she jumped back into Oriana, who managed to keep both of them from falling on the floor.
When she was no longer leaning on a shockingly strong and steady Oriana, Stevie nodded at the five She-cats standing way too close to her.
“Hello.”
“I’m Mary Marie Brunetti and these are my sisters.”
Stevie wanted to say, “So?” but instead she just said, “Nice to meet you all.”
> “Are you the ringer?” Mary Marie asked.
“Pardon?”
“The wild dogs brought you in, right? To go up against us?”
“Well, I don’t know about—”
“We are just so excited to hear you sing. Aren’t we, girls?” Brunetti’s sisters all clapped. “I looked up your name online—”
“How do you know my name?”
“—and you have quite the background. You’re into that classical music, right? You should do, like, ‘Ave Marie’ or something. These guys would eat that up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We cannot wait to hear what you’ll sing. They even have a piano up there, and I’m sure they have someone who can play and accompany you. It will be awesome. Right, girls?”
“Right!” the She-lions said in unison.
Brunetti placed her hand on Stevie’s forearm. Stevie gazed down at the excessively long painted nails touching her skin. “If you need anything, honey, you just let me know. We have extra costumes, makeup, a makeup artist. Whatever you need. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Talk to you later!”
Stevie watched the She-cats rush off in their ridiculously high heels.
“They seem nice,” Shen said, stepping in beside her.
Both Stevie and Oriana gaped at him.
“Are you kidding?” Oriana demanded.
“What? They did seem nice. Very friendly.”
“Yeah, Svetlana’s ‘nice’ like that,” she said with air quotes. “Like when she tells me, ‘Darlink, you performed so wonderful tonight. I know that in few more years, you will be quite good.’ Do you think that’s a compliment too, Shen?”
“I would have but now I don’t know.”
“Don’t be upset with him,” Stevie graciously explained to her friend. “He’s a panda and he’s used to everyone being nice to him because he’s so cute.”
“I’m going back to sit with Kyle,” Shen said. “That should tell you both exactly how I feel about this conversation.”
He walked off and Oriana asked, “So what are you going to do?”
* * *
Coop rested his chin in his palm, his elbow on the booth table in front of him. In silence, he watched what was going on just a few feet away from him.
“What is happening?” he asked Cherise, motioning to the MacKilligan sisters.
The three women were standing between their booth and the booth holding the Brunetti Pride and their feline friends, which just seemed weird.
Cherise stopped sipping the fruity alcoholic drink she’d been indulging in, purchased simply because it was a bright “and festive!” red and had an umbrella in it. His sister did love umbrellas.
“I think they’re trying to talk Stevie into getting up on stage.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“What?”
“Well . . .” Cooper didn’t really know how to explain it. Maybe it was the way Charlie insisted on stroking Stevie’s hair. Something he’d never seen either MacKilligan sister do for the others. Or maybe it was the way Max kept saying, “We’ll go with you. We wouldn’t let you do this alone.” Max was never nice to Stevie. Of course, Stevie wasn’t nice to Max. A situation that Coop didn’t question because that’s how some siblings were. They’d rather fight than be nice to each other. It didn’t break the bond they had as siblings.
But this all seemed really weird.
“Hiiiiiiii, Cooper.”
Coop kept his cringe inside and forced a smile at the She-lion leaning over the two connected booths.
“Hi, Denise,” he replied.
“You look very handsome tonight.”
“Thanks.” He knew she was waiting for a similar compliment from him, but he just pointed at his sister and said, “You remember Cherise.”
“Oh. Yeah. Hi.”
Cherise, again sucking up that brightly colored drink, waived her hand and smiled around her straw.
Denise’s older sister, Mary Marie, forced her way in.
“Hi, Cooper,” she said, leaning over a little more so he could see her cleavage. Something he didn’t really want to see. To be honest, he saw cleavage all the time. Some enhanced. Some natural. But he saw it so much that it took a lot more than that to catch his interest. He wasn’t some horny full-human male who would fuck anything that moved. He was a jackal looking for a future mate. He wanted something more than big tits and equally big nails. And although he didn’t care if a woman he might like already had a kid or two of her own, he didn’t like the fact that She-lions would have their kids with the lion males they kept around and then, when they felt they were done breeding, they’d start looking outside the Pride for males to have long-term relationships with. In other words, they didn’t want to have “freaks”—as he’d heard the Brunetti Pack refer to Blayne and Gwen whenever the pair passed by the Pride at one of these events.
“Hi, Mary Marie.” He returned his focus to the three MacKilligan sisters.
“You know them?” Mary Marie asked.
“Yes. They’re friends of the family.” Which was mostly true because anyone who could put up with Kyle for as long as the sisters had would always be considered family friends.
“Ahhh.” She leaned down a little closer. “Word is Jess Ward brought them in to compete against us. Not sure what some fancy musical prodigy can do, though. Maybe sing an aria my grandmother would love?”
Smirking, Coop replied, “Physics.”
“Huh?”
He didn’t bother to explain as Stevie had made the decision to go up on the stage with her two sisters.
While they skimmed through the karaoke machine’s offerings, Max’s wolverine friend pushed his way between Coop and Cherise.
“Hey, all,” he greeted the table. Then to Cherise, “My darling beauty.” Cherise smiled and waved around that damn straw in her mouth. He then nodded at Coop. “Dude.”
The wolverine caught sight of the Brunettis. Leaning across Coop, he took hold of Mary Marie’s hand. “My lady.”
“Hi ya.”
“I’m Dutch Alexander. And you are?”
“Mary Marie Brunetti. This is my sister Denise.”
“Lovely to meet you both,” he said, kissing the back of Mary Marie’s hand.
Denise tried to stick her hand out to get Dutch to kiss it, too, but an angry roar-and-snap from Mary Marie had her sister backing off.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” one of Mary Marie’s other sisters pointed out. “They’re using the band and not the machine.”
Delighted, Mary Marie clapped her hands together. “This is going to be awesome.”
But Coop knew that when a She-lion said “awesome” she meant “ridiculously horrible.” Especially when she saw the piano player join the rest of the band. To Mary Marie this meant “aria time,” which would be a resounding failure at a wild dog event. Something the locals already knew.
Stevie stood at the front of the stage. Her sisters were on either side of her, each of them behind her own mic.
Looking shy and small, she lowered her head. But Coop watched her hands. She was a lefty but she used her right since that was the one the piano player could see.
She snapped out four beats with her fingers and the piano player began. He wasn’t playing anything remotely new. It was definitely a “classic,” but hardly classical. No, it was a one-time doo-wop hit that became a rockabilly hit when Wanda Jackson—the queen of rockabilly—came out with her own version of “Riot in Cell Block #9.”
Wanda Jackson had always had one of those awesome, growly voices that belied her tiny size. A song that was perfect for Stevie MacKilligan and her sisters, Stevie’s backup singers.
Gawking, mouth open, Mary Marie and her sisters couldn’t take their eyes off the stage. Or the way the wild dog crowd not only cheered but stayed on the dance floor.
“I thought I heard she couldn’t sing,” Mary Marie demanded, looking at Coop.
“I told you. Physics.”
“W
hat does that mean?”
“Stevie always says that once you know how vocal chords work and how the laws of physics affect them, you can get your voice to make almost any sound you want.”
Dutch added, “She says she can’t sing and she’s right. Stevie can’t sing. But she can imitate anyone who can.”
“If you knew Wanda Jackson, who originated this version of this song, you’d see how much Stevie sounds like her. Right, Dutch?”
“Right, Coop.”
But that wasn’t all Stevie did. The kid had been on stage almost all of her life. Playing music herself or conducting entire orchestras of adults. And if there was one thing she had learned over all those years, it was stage presence.
And Stevie had stage presence in spades.
She owned that stage, singing to her audience. And her sisters weren’t schlubs either. They didn’t just back up their sister, they were right there with her, singing—and screaming, when the song called for it—and owning that stage. Plus, there were choreographed moves and some enjoyable sexiness to the whole thing.
When Stevie finished the last note, the entire room erupted into applause and a standing ovation. Something she was used to but the Brunetti Pride found endlessly upsetting.
But before the Pride could do anything, the crowd began to yell for more.
Stevie, grinning down at her audience, said, “Okay. One more. This is from Lillian Briggs. It’s just called ‘I.’ Enjoy.”
This song started with guitar rather than piano, and required Stevie to sing a lot faster, but she sounded just like Lillian Briggs. And again her sisters did a great job backing her up and dancing; the three moved to the edge of the stage as one unit to sing directly to the wild dog males who’d moved in close.
Leaning in to Dutch, Coop asked, “How did they manage to choreograph this in time for the show?”
“According to Max, after Stevie left her first career behind, she still needed to express herself musically—otherwise she’d get violent. So they used to go to private karaoke competitions.”
“I thought she hated karaoke. That’s what Jess just told me.”
“She hates karaoke with talentless people. No offense,” he added to Mary Marie, who hadn’t been listening, so appeared a tad confused. “But the people Stevie played with at these earlier events were rock stars and well-known musicians. It was just their way of enjoying themselves without the pressure of fans. Just a bunch of ridiculously rich and talented people hanging out . . . singing karaoke. And, of course, her sisters had to go because Stevie was underage. The MacKilligan sisters didn’t always win the competitions, but they always entertained.”
In a Badger Way Page 32