by Lena North
My second attempt at interacting with her was foiled by another squeal.
“Sherry!”
She reached into a cupboard to the side and brought out a crystal decanter and glasses. The content of the carafe was dark red.
It looked like blood.
“Uh,” I wheezed, but then the smell hit my nostrils.
What the hell was that?
“Beetroot sherry,” she explained happily. “I make it myself.”
Oh, God.
***
Getting up to Mrs. Decateur – yes same name as the street she was living on – had been hard. Getting back down proved to be harder, and it did this because we were so highly inebriated we could not be described as anything other than shit-faced.
Or, “Shee-it-faced,” as Joel giggled when we stumbled along the side of the road.
A six feet six widget, giggling like a five-year-old girl while he tried to adjust his red mohawk which was partially coming out of its rubber band wasn’t attractive. It was funny, but not attractive.
“Sherry-sherry lady, going through emotion,” Elsa sang.
Mrs. Decateur had made us listen to old hits from the eighties, and she was apparently a huge fan of a German band called Modern Talking. There was not one modern thing about them, but I had to admit that after five glasses of beetroot sherry, their songs had been catchy.
“Pretty sure the lady is called Cheri,” Joel said with a frown.
“Love is where you find it” Elsa belted out. “Listen to your heaaaaaart!”
I stopped and stared at her.
“Your mouth is purple,” I shared.
She stopped singing and stretched the tip of her tongue out far enough to wiggle it in front of her eyes. It was about as attractive as Joel’s giggle.
“Sure is,” she agreed. “Oopsie.”
Joel was about to say something when I felt a familiar warmth wash over me.
No.
No, no, no.
Not now. Not when I was drunk off my ass and had a purple mouth from drinking way too much beetroot homebrew.
“Hey, babe,” Rafael said. “Any luck so far?”
“Not really,” I said, although I did this with my mouth mostly closed, so it came out a bit garbled.
“Okay. Didn’t think so,” he said. “This is my buddy, Gabe.”
My head swiveled around to look at the man who apparently felt it was okay to walk around with a leather manbag in a strap around his wrist.
He was tall, built, blonde and stunning. I tried to picture him with a cognac-colored murse dangling from his hand. I couldn’t do it.
“Hello,” he said, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Hey,” I mumbled, and added, “Sorry about your bag. We'll find it.”
Since I didn’t open my mouth, it came out as, “Shoy bo bag. Yill kindi.”
His eyes widened, and he turned to Rafael who was staring at me.
“This is who you employed?”
“Hey,” I snapped.
“You are drunk,” Gabe stated, which was accurate.
I didn’t like the condescending tone of his voice, though, so I put a hand in front of my mouth and glared at him.
“And you are a manbag-wearing moron,” I retorted.
“Kitty,” Rafael said.
It sounded as if he was trying not to laugh.
“Carrying the sacred rocks of Machaerus in my hands weren’t exactly practical.”
“I’m pretty sure the sacred rocks of Macarena would have been good in a plastic bag, preferably one from the Harley-store or Bass pro shop. Or else you could have used a backpack like a normal man.”
“Machaerus. The fortress where John the bap –”
“Whatever.”
We were glaring angrily at each other, although my upper body was teetering from side to side and I was pretty sure my eyes had crossed ever so slightly.
“Remove your hand,” Gabe ordered.
“No.”
His brows went up, and he turned with a hoarse hiss toward Rafael.
“You get it now?” Rafael asked with a smirk.
“Get what?” I snapped
“Kitty, please tell me why you have your hand over your mouth,” Rafael said, and I closed my eyes.
“Nuh-huh,” I murmured.
“Jesus,” Joel muttered.
“What’s our cousin doing here?” Gabe asked, sounding surprised.
I opened my eyes and stared into Rafael’s now laughing ones.
“We’ve had lots of sherry,” Elsa informed everyone. “Lots,” she added as a clarification, but since she was swaying, it might not have been needed to add that particular piece of clarity.
“Beetroot,” Joel said.
“Kitty?” Rafael asked, and I stuck the tip of my tongue out.
***
I tried to sneak into the house without my father noticing the state of me, and it did not work. This was partly because I walked right into him, but mostly because Elsa was still singing Modern Talking. Loudly, although she had moved on to sing about her brother Louie, which was kind of funny since Joel’s brother was called Louis, so I was also laughing just about as loudly as she was singing.
“Karaoke night!” Grandpa Hunter yelled from the kitchen. “Elsa, you have to come too!”
“Kitty?”
I stared up at my father and tried to keep my eyes from crossing.
“Uh-huh,” I confirmed, in case he needed to know that the swaying, purple-mouthed individual in front of him was indeed his oldest daughter.
Dad was about to start scolding me when he noticed Rafael.
“Who are you?” he asked in a way I thought was rude.
Mostly because it was.
“Hello, Sir. I’m Rafael Moya, and I couldn’t let your daughter and her friends drive themselves up here, so I took Kitty home in my car.”
Wow. He sounded like a grown-up.
“Huh,” Dad said, clearly unhappy about an unknown man visiting whilst looking like sex-on-legs and standing close to his daughter’s back.
He was however quite aware that he should be grateful someone had taken care of us, and that if Rafael hadn’t stood where he stood, I would have fallen over backward. The conflicting emotions passing over his face made him look like he needed to poop. Urgently.
“What are you?” Dad asked when the silence stretched out into embarrassing, not even trying to hide how he was sniffing the air.
“Half angel, half satyr,” Rafael said calmly. “Kitty works for my uncle.”
My mouth fell open, which was unfortunate because Dad’s angry gaze saw the effects of Mrs. Decateur’s sherry and his eyes widened.
“What the hell have you done?”
“Um.”
“Hello everyone!” a happy voice chirped.
Yes! Saved by my elders.
“Grandma!” I squealed.
“You’ve been to see Genie, I see,” she said calmly.
“Genie?”
“Genie Decateur. We went to school together.”
Of course they did.
“I dated her,” Grandpa Hunter shared from the kitchen door. “Loony.”
I wasn’t sure if it was Mrs. Decateur, him or the date that had been loony, and since I suspected it could very well be all three, I decided not to ask. My head had also started pounding, and I wanted to lie down for a bit.
“We wanted to know about a bag that went missing in Cathedral Park,” I said. “She wasn’t talking.”
“That’s Genie,” Grandma sighed. “I’ll give her a call.”
She surveyed my appearance, mumbled a few words and my eyes widened. I heard Joel and Elsa exhale.
“You can remove hangovers?” I breathed out.
“Didn’t you even learn the useful stuff in witch class?” she snapped, pulled out her phone and walked off.
I hadn’t, actually, but I realized that I probably should have. This skill would have come in handy upon many occasions in the past, something I wasn’t g
oing to share with my father. Then I remembered what Rafael had said.
“Silenus is your uncle?” I asked.
“My mother’s older brother,” he said, which would indeed make the man his uncle.
“He’s fat,” I told Rafael.
“Satyrs usually are,” he said calmly. “Mom’s been on a diet since Cheri Cheri Lady played regularly on the radio.”
Oh, crap. They’d heard our wobbly descent down toward the parking lot.
“Angel?” Dad asked slowly. “Not making me happy. I know how the lot of you make girls do whatever you want.” He scowled and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Not happy at all,” he added as if we hadn’t heard him the first time which we had because his voice had been loud enough to be heard all over Nowhere.
“Kitty doesn’t obey me.”
There was complete silence on the porch, and then I started laughing. Smugly and with no little amount of glee.
“Can you guarantee that?” Dad asked and glared at him.
“If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster,” Rafael muttered.
“What?” Dad boomed, and I knew why he did this because I’d heard him say those exact words a million times.
My life was about to get complicated in a way I was not looking forward to.
“Sorry,” Rafael said. “Movie quote. Didn’t –”
“The Clint,” Dad wheezed.
“Yeah,” Rafael said, but added with a small grimace, “Clint Eastwood. The Rookie. Not his best movie, but –”
“What’s his best move?”
My eyes were darting back and forth between them, and I tried desperately to think about something to say that would stop what I saw happening in front of me. It was like a snowball, rolling down a very steep hill getting bigger and scarier by the second, and unfortunately, my mind might not be drunk anymore, but it was blank
Please, I murmured to myself. Please, please, please don’t say –
“Dirty Harry, of course.”
Shit.
“Do you own a house?” Dad blurted out.
“Live in a condo, but I have a small shack by the beach.”
Oh, God.
“You have a shack by the beach,” Dad repeated.
“It’s kind of funky and needs –”
I saw my father open his mouth when he realized that he had a fellow Clint Eastwood fan who also happened to be the owner of a fixer-upper, and one by the beach, in front of him. Since I knew what he was about to do, I stepped in close and growled, “If you yell, I will rip out your intestines and wrap them around your throat.”
Joel and Elsa had laughed since our fourth glass of sherry and kept doing it. I heard one of my brothers snicker somewhere in the vicinity. After a stunned silence, also Rafael started laughing.
“We’re wolves, son,” Dad said coolly. “She isn’t joking.”
Rafael’s laughter died a quick death.
“Dinner’s ready,” Janie called from the kitchen, and I knew she’d heard every word, so I knew what that meant.
Dad knew it too.
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” he asked Rafael.
“It would be my pleasure.”
“Excellent,” I said and got surprised looks from around the porch. “I’m off to work. See you all later.”
Then I turned around and fled.
Chapter Eleven
Pookie
I was running as fast as possible.
This was in no way something I enjoyed doing, which meant I rarely did and hence struggled a little getting enough oxygen into my lungs.
We were chasing a dog, and not any old dog at all.
Pookie.
Last time I’d seen the stupid animal, he’d just relieved himself all over my leg, after which I’d growled. He’d peed some more before he disappeared, although out of fear and not on me. Pookie had apparently been gone since then, and the distraught owner had tried to find him with limited success.
When Grandma showed up at Tiaso’s with a wide grin, I knew she’d talked to Genie Decateur in person. I knew this because her mouth was purple, although the fact that she was shee-it-faced was another indication. She managed to convey what Mrs. Decateur had shared about the dog running off with the manbag, and it took me a while to realize that the danged culprit was my nemesis, Pookie. It took Joel a lot less time, and he hooted with glee.
Jackson had been in the bar, and he hadn’t heard about why I had been forced to move back home, but Joel shared the story in a perfectly ridiculously embellished way. I thought Jack would never stop laughing, so I told him Rafael was having dinner with my parents.
That shut him up.
The rest of the shift was eerily calm, except for the minor scuffle when Grandma Hazel decided to try her dancing skills at the pole. One of the bikers puked, although that could have been due to the thirteen jaeger-shots he’d consumed in less than half an hour. Three biker-babes started cheering, and Silenus clapped his hands, which in no way helped me to get Grandma off the stage sooner rather than immediately. She pouted a bit, but I bribed her with a margarita containing absolutely no alcohol which settled her down until my shift was over. Jackson trailed Grandma and me home and helped me wrestle her into the guest house and into bed.
Grandpa Hunter waited for us on the porch, looking serious. At least, I think that’s the look he aimed for. He’d pursed his mouth, lowered his brows and was shaking his head from side to side, snorting rhythmically. It looked exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.
“Pow-pow,” he said and pointed at Jackson.
“What?” Jackson asked which I found eminently understandable.
“We need to have a small meeting, and I can’t say the other word because it’s disrespectful and offensive.”
“Just like your goddamned swim trunks then,” I snapped.
“Whatever. We need to talk, Jackson. You have angelic issues.”
“I heard,” Jackson said calmly. “I’m not too worried, Hunter. The dude’s a douche.”
“A douche who knows every line from every Clint Eastwood movie ever made and owns a fixer upper by the beach. One who gets up after dinner and does the dishes like a goddamned pussy, without anyone asking him to do it. And who plays ball after dinner with her brothers, and does it well but still lets them win.”
By the sound of things, my family had enjoyed having Rafael over for dinner.
“Huh,” Jackson said.
“I’m going to bed,” I said and moved.
This move was stopped abruptly by Jack’s firm hand on my upper arm.
“Guess my timeline changed,” he murmured and pulled me closer.
I was acutely aware that my grandfather was less than three feet away, staring curiously at us.
“Wh –”
I wanted to ask what he meant but I couldn’t.
The reason I couldn’t was that his mouth was on mine and we were kissing. I could have labeled this as him kissing me, but that would have been a big fat lie, unfortunately. When his tongue slid into my mouth, I immediately experienced a minor leakage of brain cells and kissed him back. Enthusiastically.
“Wow,” I breathed when he straightened.
“Go to bed Kitty,” he murmured, turned me around and pushed me toward the door in a way that probably was supposed to be gentle but due to his wolf-genes mostly was a shove that made me stumble a little.
I had no clue what to say, so I said nothing at all and walked inside.
“Excellent,” I heard Gramps say. “Now, about the karaoke-night. I have an idea…”
I did not want to know what crazy ideas he’d unleash on Jack, so I kept walking and didn’t stop until I was face down on my bed.
Joel and Elsa picked me up the next morning, took one look at me and started laughing.
“What?” I asked sourly.
“Kitty and Jackson, sitting in a tree, k-i-s –”
“Shut up,” I snarled. “How the hell did you know he kissed me last night?”
&
nbsp; “Aura,” Elsa said and waved her hand in a wide circle in front of me.
“He told me,” Joel said.
I stared at him.
“Told you?” I echoed.
“Well, perhaps not me, exactly. He told his brother. In a chat.”
Aha. Jackson really should have known better.
“What did he say?” I asked, and cringed because it was such a high schooley thing to ask.
“That he kissed you.”
“That’s all?”
“They moved on to discuss the rash Parker got on his balls after shaving them, and how it looked like something he got after visiting a bar in Hong Kong. Then they talked for a very, very long time about chasing rabbits. It all ended with a discussion about shitting after eating Mexican versus Indian food.”
I closed my eyes and wondered if pouring bleach in my ears could erase what I’d just heard.
“Holy shit,” Elsa whispered.
“Not really,” Joel said with a grin. “More like diarrhea, if the Vik-Hansen boys are to be trusted.”
“Let’s go find Pookie,” I said, trying my best to not think about any of the things Joel had shared.
I parked Grandma Hazel’s pink monstrosity next to Joel’s small car, stepped out and spotted Pookie immediately. He was ambling around with what could only be described as an incredibly smug doggy-grin all over his snout and raised a leg to pee happily on some bushes.
I took a step forward which made Pookie notice my presence, and he froze immediately. Then he fell crotch first into the bushes, and a high-pitched wail echoed over Cathedral Park.
Pookie clearly remembered me.
“Go left,” I shouted to Joel. “Go right,” I ordered Elsa and charged straight ahead myself.
Pookie was in better shape than me, and also clearly desperate to get away. I jumped over a bench, crashed through the rhododendron bushes, legs pumping and arms waving wildly. The damned dog took a right turn toward the river, and I followed. Joel was shouting something, I heard Elsa laughing hysterically, but my wolf part was kicking in, and all I could see was the small creature running away from me.
Chase him. I had to chase him. Hunt the tiny thing down and –
“Hello.”
I growled.
“Are you jogging too?”
I glanced to the side and stumbled, but kept going. A man was running next to me. He was in a pair of rather tight tights and an equally tight tee. What the actual fu –