Owl Be Bear For You (Camp Shifter Book 1)
Page 9
Told me what?
“This is all my fault.” And then, to Mara’s utter surprise, Nonnie began to cry. Tears made their way down the wrinkled paths of Nonnie’s face, one dropping perfectly onto the wrinkled paper as Nonnie leaned forward and her shoulders shook with sobs.
Mara froze. What was happening? Nonnie was apologizing to her for the fact that Mara was a shifter? Was Mara in the middle of a crazy dream and none of this was actually happening? On what planet did her shifter-hating grandmother apologize for the fact that Mara had just been called by Camp Shifter?
“Nonnie!” she gasped. “What are you saying?”
An ambulance drove past the house at the exact moment that her grandmother lifted her head and looked at Mara. The loud ring of the siren’s warning forced Mara and Nonnie not to speak. In the stillness, cacophony filling the outside world with a sudden rush of emergency, the skin on Mara’s arms began to tingle.
Whatever Nonnie was about to tell her would change her life.
It was that kind of day already, so Mara wondered how much more she was about to learn. There had to be a limit, right?
Right?
As the ambulance sirens receded, Nonnie pulled herself up to her full height and cleared her throat. Turning, she looked at the coffee maker. Her eyes closed. And she slowly sat back down.
“Mara, dear, would you make an old woman a nice cup of coffee and add a few fingers of scotch to it?”
Mara’s eyebrows shot up. Nonnie very rarely drank. Whatever she needed to tell her, it had to be bad if it required fermented reinforcements.
Mara did as told, wordless, because what could she possibly say? Seconds ticked by, the only sound in the kitchen the movement of Mara’s hands. This grate of the glass coffee pot against the metal setting. The clink of the coffee pot’s lip against the mug as she poured. The snick of the refrigerator door opening as she found the milk. The pouring. The twisting. The endless sequence of tiny sounds all adding up to handing her grandmother a cup of spiked coffee that she had asked for so she could tell Mara some sort of hidden truth.
Anticipation nearly killed her.
Holding her own cup of coffee, with a liberal dose of alcohol in it as well, Mara allowed herself to sit down across the table from Nonnie. Every fiber of her being was on alert.
“Go ahead,” she urged her grandmother. “Let’s just lay it all out.”
Nonnie’s head jerked at her words. “That’s very blunt of you.”
The cowering fear that Mara felt just an hour ago was gone. Poof! Vanished.
“You’re apologizing to me for the fact that I’m a shifter, Nonnie.” Mara leaned forward, holding her grandmother’s gaze. “When I got that stupid letter today, I came home terrified that you were going to disown me. The last words I expected out of your mouth were I’m sorry.” Mara’s hands shook horribly as she pulled the coffee mug to her lips and took a sip.
Nonnie took a long, slow gulp of her coffee. Mara watched her throat spasm as she drank about half the cup, set it down softly, and sighed.
“It’s time to tell you, then.”
“What? I’m Harry Potter? The Boy Who Lived?” Mara joked.
Except Nonnie didn’t laugh.
“No, Mara. But I can explain why you got that letter.” Nonnie tapped the paper twice with her index finger, the knuckles gnarled with arthritis.
“How would you know anything about—”
“Because your mother and father were both shifters, honey.”
Chapter 16