In a Badger Way

by Shelly Laurenston

  “Damn greedy bears. I don’t even recognize them.”

  But Stevie did recognize them, pushing her sister away and ordering her in a whisper, “Hide that damn gun! Now!”

  Taking a breath, Stevie opened the door and smiled at the two scowling women.

  “Kiki Li,” she said. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “My work. I’m Stevie Stasiuk.”

  Kiki raised an eyebrow. “Holy shit. You’ve grown.”

  Stevie stepped back, waved her hand. “Why don’t you both come in?”

  Shen’s sisters walked into the house. Kiki was wearing all black despite the heat outside. And the heels on her expensive-looking shoes had to be six inches high. How did she possibly walk in those things?

  Zhen Li, the middle sister Stevie assumed, was dressed in oil-stained jeans and a T-shirt that had Firestone written across it. Plus big work boots that didn’t seem to fit her small frame. The two sisters couldn’t look more different style-wise.

  Kiki seemed a little bit . . . angry, stepping up to Stevie and demanding, “We wanna see our brother.” And she said it as if she thought Stevie would tell her no, which was just weird.

  Stevie exchanged glances with Charlie and said, “He’s right outside . . . eating bamboo.”

  The Li sisters walked out and Charlie asked, “Kyle did something. . . didn’t he?”

  Cringing, Stevie replied, “Yeahhhh, I think he—”

  “Kyle!” they heard Shen suddenly bellow from outside.

  And now both sisters were cringing.

  “You pretended to be me?” Shen demanded, his hand on the back of Kyle’s neck. He had Kyle bent backward and was leaning over him, glaring into his face.

  “You wouldn’t introduce me. I had to do something!”

  “How did you even get my phone?”

  “Telling you that will only upset you more.”

  “And you told my sister I was being held as a sex slave?”

  “You should be more concerned she believed me. Or you, in this instance.”

  Shen popped his jaw and thought about bending the kid so far back that he broke his spine.

  “Let him up, Shen.” Kiki tapped Shen’s shoulder. “Look at him. He’s a little kid.”

  “I’m a prodigy,” Kyle insisted, still bent over. “And I’d love to show you my work.”

  “I am not rewarding bad behavior.”

  “Shen,” Kiki pushed. “Let him up.”

  Shen released Kyle. By now the MacKilligan sisters were outside, too, watching.

  “Thank you,” Kyle sneered at Shen before facing Kiki. “Some of my work is right in the garage.”

  “Kyle—” Shen began but the kid ignored him and escorted his sister into the MacKilligans’ garage, which he’d made into a temporary art studio for his work.

  Once they went inside, Shen turned to Zhen. Not even knowing Kyle, she cringed.

  * * *

  Oriana had her feet up on the small desk Kyle had in his studio, leaning back in the office chair, when the door opened and he walked in with an Asian woman who looked a lot like Shen. Maybe too much. Some features did not work on both men and women. But, despite that, Oriana liked the woman’s style. Everything she wore was designer, including the Jimmy Choo shoes.

  “My work is right over here,” Kyle said, moving across the garage.

  The woman stopped and studied Oriana.

  “I know you,” she said.

  “Do you?”

  “I’ve seen you dance. In Russia.”

  “Right. I danced with the Bolshoi a few years back.”

  “You did Giselle. It was very impressive. Especially for a dancer of your age at the time.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m Kiki Li. Shen’s sister.” Oriana liked that a woman who had made her own imprint on the world, whose very name carried power, added “Shen’s sister” to her intro. She found that kind of cool.

  “Oriana—”

  “Jean-Louis Parker. I never forget the names of talented people.”

  “Yes, yes, she’s great,” Kyle said, coming back and taking Kiki’s arm. He led her to his sculptures. He had a room full of small, medium, and large pieces. His older works were in storage somewhere. He wouldn’t tell anyone where because he didn’t want them to be stolen “by you commoners because you need money.”

  And while Oriana sat there, watching, Kiki went from piece to piece. She asked questions, had Kyle pull a few of the smaller ones forward. She took her time, didn’t seem to mind the heat of the garage—there was no air-conditioning—and didn’t rush.

  After more than an hour, the pair ended up near the desk Oriana had been lounging at.

  “Well?” Kyle asked, smiling. Eager.

  “Your work is technically brilliant.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But soulless.”

  Oriana winced, looking up from the book she’d been reading on her phone.

  “Soulless?” Kyle repeated, appearing stunned.

  “I look at your work,” Kiki said placidly, with no real emotion, “and I don’t feel anything. There’s no sorrow. No pain. No joy. Just . . . cold, soulless beauty.” She shrugged. “You can sell all these pieces and make a fortune. If that what’s you want. But if you want to be more than just a rich artist pumping out meaningless crap for the masses, you’ve got work to do. You need to find the soul of your art. Make me feel something, Kyle. I want to be able to say more than ‘it’s pretty.’”

  She patted his shoulder. “Good luck.”

  Then she and her expensive Jimmy Choos walked out of the garage, and Kyle was left standing there, staring at the spot she’d occupied.

  Oriana swung her legs off the desk and stood. She thought about just leaving. Most Jean-Louis Parkers were not good with raw emotions. She really wished her sister Toni was here. Or their dad. Even Coop. But they weren’t here. It was just her and the younger brother she used to throw down the stairs of their house on the West Coast. At least until her mother told her she had to stop.

  Then she thought about Svetlana and how that bitch had been critiquing Oriana’s work “to help, darlink. Just to help.” Although Oriana didn’t think Kiki—unlike Svetlana—was being mean, attempting to make Kyle insecure. She was just being direct. But sometimes direct could really hurt.

  She turned away from the door and walked over to her brother.

  “You don’t have to listen to her—”

  “She’s right,” Kyle said, shocking her. She’d thought for sure he’d dismiss Kiki the way he’d dismissed all of his critics over the years. “She’s right. I see it now.”

  Kyle looked at her with wounded eyes. “I don’t want it to be just pretty, Oriana. I want my work to have meaning for the ages. I want it to live for centuries.”

  “Then find your soul. Make your art for the centuries.”

  He nodded, but she hated the way he stared at the floor. She could literally feel her brother’s devastation. So she did what she’d never done before . . .

  Oriana wrapped her arms around her brother’s shoulders and hugged him hard. And she knew she’d done the right thing when he hugged her back, burying his face against the side of her neck.

  * * *

  “What did you say to him?” Shen asked his sister when she came out of the garage. The others had gone back into the house, but Shen and Stevie had waited outside.

  “I told him the truth,” Kiki admitted.

  Shen rolled his eyes and groaned. That was exactly what he’d been afraid of.

  “What?” his sister asked.

  “He’s seventeen. He’s a baby!”

  “He’s a prodigy and he didn’t want me to mollycoddle him. So I didn’t. I gave him the unvarnished truth so he could turn from ‘some artist’ into ‘the artist.’ I was doing what I do. That’s why he brought me here.”

  “What if you killed his spirit?” Shen wanted to know.

  “If a true
and honest critique that has nothing to do with personality kills his spirit . . . he was never meant to be an artist. But you,” she added, pointing at Shen, “know I’m right. I can see it on your face.”

  “He’s good.”

  “But he could be great. I want great. Anybody can be good. Now I’m going inside. I’d like something to drink. Why don’t you come with me?” she asked Stevie.

  “I’ll be right in,” Stevie promised.

  She nodded and left them.

  “You okay?” Stevie asked Shen when they were alone.

  “I knew this would happen. My sister is—”

  “Direct.”

  “That’s the nice way of putting it.”

  “It’s the only way. If I thought she was just being a destructive twat, you know I’d say something.”

  Shen smiled. “Yes. I know now that you’d say something.”

  She looked over at the garage. “Maybe I should talk to Kyle, though.”

  “Oriana’s in there with him.”

  That made Stevie feel better. No matter how much the Jean-Louis Parkers bickered among themselves, Stevie knew they still protected each other when necessary. Not the way Charlie and Max did, but with the same determination. Just less bloodshed.

  Stevie went up on her toes, kissed Shen’s cheek.

  “What’s that for?” he asked, his cheeks turning a touch red.

  “Because all this time you weren’t being a dick . . . just protecting Kyle from your sister.”

  “He’s a kid. I had to do something.”

  chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  Kiki didn’t consider herself a hard ass. She was direct, yes, but not a hard ass. In her opinion, hard asses were people who said mean things simply to be mean. They seemed to get a kick out of breaking people down and, if they felt like it after, building them back up. Kiki, however, just told people the honest truth if they asked.

  The kid had asked.

  Besides, why would she go out of her way to hurt him? She didn’t care that he’d used her brother’s phone to lure her here. People had done weirder and unhealthier things to get her attention. To get her to mention them in her magazine, online, or on TV. Even if the mention was bad, they wanted it, because it would get them publicity. To be truthful—and when was she not?—she’d known it wasn’t her brother texting her. “Trapped” as a sex slave? Her brother would never say he was trapped in that situation.

  Kyle Jean-Louis Parker, though . . . he had true potential. He had a future. She could see it. Of course, it didn’t hurt he was gorgeous, even as a slightly pimply seventeen-year-old. He had that shoulder-length hair the color of his jackal fur—people probably assumed he dyed it to look like that but Kiki knew better—those golden eyes, and those sharp, angled cheekbones. Even better, he had those long legs that gave him a good height, but he wasn’t freakishly tall or buff like the grizzlies and polar bears, who often had to live in their own enclaves so full-humans didn’t question why so many very large men and women had an unhealthy love of honey. But Kyle was a good-looking jackal whose entire family easily slipped into the full-human world without seeming strange or different. Except for their inherent talent.

  And Kiki had seen Kyle’s sister dance at the Bolshoi a few years back. Oriana hadn’t even been an adult yet, but what Kiki had seen had blown her away. The beautiful lines, the delicate skill, all combined with the muscles and strength of an animal that could drag a much larger gazelle back to its den to feed the rest of its family.

  But unlike Kyle, Oriana put her entire self out on that stage. Her skill alone would make her a great dancer but what made her brilliant was what she gave to the audience. What she revealed through a look, a move. She exposed everything while fully clothed. That was something that couldn’t be taught. Couldn’t be learned.

  Kyle had to find that soulfulness and put it in his work the way his sister did. Then the kid would have a chance.

  Of course, Kiki could have left after she’d blown the kid’s world up; she and Zhen could have headed back to the safety of Manhattan for some drinks and an expensive lunch at the latest hot spot downtown. But she wanted to get to know, at least a little, this woman who’d caught her baby brother’s eye.

  Kiki didn’t care that Stevie Stasiuk was a hybrid. That she was part cat, part badger. She didn’t care that she was, at least physically, one of the whitest white girls she’d met in a long time with that pale skin and dyed, dark blond hair. All she cared about was that this one-time prodigy wasn’t an asshole to Shen. When people were as brilliant as she knew Stevie to be, they could be huge assholes because they felt they were better than everyone else. And Stevie was a genius on two fronts: science and music. She could slide from one to the other like an eel in water.

  In fact, Kiki had already heard rumors that Stevie might have written a brilliant ballet, and New York was already sitting up and taking notice, people ready to spend a fortune on tickets just to hear Stasiuk’s music one more time.

  And yet . . . this woman who could have anything she wanted, live anywhere she wanted, do anything she wanted, was in a relatively small, old-ish kitchen with a seemingly new oven and refrigerator, bickering with her sisters. One black. The other Chinese. The three of them didn’t look remotely alike, but Stevie had introduced them as her sisters, so who was Kiki to question?

  The middle sister, Max, appeared freshly showered, still towel-drying her hair. The eldest sister, Charlie, was covered in flour and, at some point, she dropped a pile of what she called “bamboo buns” on the table and gestured to them.

  Zhen immediately grabbed one, taking a bite and crossing her eyes in delight at the taste. Then she elbowed Kiki. A grizzly was hanging outside the kitchen window, sniffing the air.

  “Hey, Charlie,” the grizzly greeted her. “Thought I smelled—”

  Charlie closed the window in the grizzly’s face.

  “Not cool, MacKilligan!” the bear barked, but Charlie didn’t seem too disturbed by it.

  The back screen door opened and Shen came in. He looked right at Kiki.

  “Good job. You destroyed another artist.”

  “Don’t be so overdramatic.”

  “Kyle will be fine,” Stevie said, handing each of the pandas in the room a big stalk of Chinese bamboo. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Are you his mentor?” Kiki asked.

  “I wouldn’t say that. I don’t know anything about sculpting. Instead I’m more his . . . pre-psychologist. We’re both sure he’ll need one in a few years, so I’m prepping him for that. Speaking of which . . .” She glanced at her watch and dug into the backpack next to her chair. After a few seconds, she pulled out a bottle of prescription pills.

  Stevie shook a pill into her palm and Charlie smoothly placed a bottle of water in front of her younger sister. Max took the pill bottle from Stevie, put the cap back on, and returned it to Stevie’s backpack. Then, for some reason, Max slapped the back of her sister’s head while she was taking her pill, which led to a little bit of choking . . . followed by yelling.

  “If I choke and die, it’ll be your fault!”

  “I would never be so lucky!”

  The doorbell rang and Max calmly stated, “I’ll get it.”

  Zhen grabbed another bamboo bun. “So . . . you’re on medication?” she asked Stevie.

  Kiki winced and their brother barked, “Zhen!”

  Their sister didn’t say much, but when Zhen finally did talk . . . oy.

  “What are you doing?” Kiki softly asked her through clenched teeth.

  “She’s dating our brother,” Zhen replied, softly and also through clenched teeth. “What if she’s a nut?”

  “It’s rude.”

  “This from a woman who just destroyed some kid’s will to live.”

  “It is not the same thing.”

  “You do know we can hear you, right?” Charlie asked.

  Stevie held up her hand. “It’s okay. Really.” She smiled at Zhen. “I have a panic disorder and bo
uts of depression. But I manage both with medication and therapy.”

  “It’s really none of our business,” Kiki said.

  “Like hell it’s not,” Zhen snapped.

  “Like hell it is,” Charlie growled.

  “Charlie,” Stevie said, quickly raising her hand at her sister. “You promised. Just last night.”

  “Zhen,” Shen said, “maybe you and Kiki should just head out.”

  “You’re throwing me out because I’m worried about you?”

  “I’m throwing you out because you’re being rude.”

  “Uh, guys . . . ?”

  Max stood in the kitchen doorway, a weird smile on her face.

  “What?” Charlie asked.

  Max stepped to the side and Niles Van Holtz and Ulrich Van Holtz moved into the kitchen.

  Kiki knew both men. She’d written more than once about the Van Holtz Steakhouse chain. But why they were in the MacKilligan house, Kiki had no idea.

  “Oh, come on!” Charlie shouted. “Now I’m just being tested!”

  Stevie jumped from her seat and faced her sister. “You promised.”

  “But—”

  “You promised!”

  “You never said they’d be standing in my kitchen!”

  “Aaaaaaah!” the former prodigy screamed.

  “Do not start that ag—”

  “Aaaaaaah!”

  “I can’t believe you’re do—”

  “Aaaaaaah!”

  “Fine!”

  * * *

  Shen let out a relieved breath. His sisters probably hadn’t noticed, but Charlie had a holstered .380 semiautomatic attached to the back of her jean shorts; the flour-covered red T-shirt that reached past her waist hid it from sight.

  But once Stevie screamed a little into her sister’s annoyed face, Charlie released the butt of her weapon and dropped both her arms to her sides.

  He hadn’t been worried that Charlie would harm his sisters. He knew she wouldn’t—although Zhen was clearly testing the hybrid’s patience—but take out two Van Holtz males standing in her kitchen? Yeah. That she might do, which would look awful in front of his sisters.

  Oh! And it would be wrong, too. Definitely wrong.

  Shen was thinking it was about time to get his sisters out of here when he noticed that the room had fallen ominously silent.