by Lena North
That would suck, but everything already hurt so whatever.
I took a deep breath and threw myself against the door. The creaking sound gave me hope, so I braced and prepared to try again.
“Kitty?”
I froze and stared straight ahead.
Was that… Al?
“Open the goddamned cabinet!” I shouted and pushed at the doors with my shoulder.
Then I suddenly fell out of the cabinet and straight into Al’s arms.
We stared at each other for a stunned second, but then he crouched to place me on the floor.
“What the –” he cut himself off, looked around and grabbed a knife from a set decorating the wall.
My hands were swiftly cut loose, and I whimpered when blood returned to my arms and legs.
“We should leave,” Lulu said. “Now.”
Al dropped the knife and stared at her.
“You’re talking,” he rasped out.
“So are you,” she retorted and looked at me. “Leave? Now?”
“Yes,” I squealed.
Without further ado, we were running, or in my case mostly limping, following a small black cat toward an entrance which suddenly seemed weirdly familiar. I’d been in this house before.
Al threw the door open, and we burst out on Decateur Street.
“That fucking asshole!” I shouted.
Then we stopped and stared at a rather substantial crowd of people standing on the sidewalk outside the house.
My parents and grandparents were staring back at me. Joel, Elsa, Pen, Jackson, and Rafael were surrounding them, and they also stared at me.
There was a lot of staring going on, one might say.
“Kitty?” Grandma Hazel asked finally as if she’d never seen me before.
“Yes?” I asked back.
“You’re hugging a cat,” Dad said.
Lulu had indeed jumped into my arms, and I held her small warm body close to my chest. Being half a werewolf, I was supposed to dislike felines intensely, but I didn’t.
Her scent soothed me and felt sweet and soft and happy.
“What the hell?” I shrieked. “I was kidnapped. Some a-hole locked me into a goddamned tiny cabinet. If it weren’t for my pal, Al, I would have died in there. Who cares if I’m hugging a cat?”
Dad winced and walked toward me, eyeing Lulu carefully.
“We were coming for you, honey,” he said. “Jackson and I were tracking and picked up your scent.”
“I scryed and came as soon as I’d turned out the fire in the backyard,” Grandma said.
“I asked the keychain,” Rafael said.
“Got the license plate,” Joel murmured. “Hacked into security cameras and found the car.”
Big tears started rolling down my cheeks. They had all searched for me and had indeed been there to break me out of Genie Decateur’s kitchen cabinet.
“Kitty,” Jackson murmured gently.
“Kitty,” Rafael murmured gently.
I looked at them and moved toward the man I knew I could rely on whatever happened.
“Dad,” I sniffled and walked straight into my father’s arms.
He howled and reared back, staring at Lulu.
“She bit me,” he snarled.
“Did not,” Lulu said. “I yawned, and he walked into my mouth.”
***
“I was powerwalking,” Al said.
We were in my parents’ house in Nowhere, I had shared what happened to me. Elsa and Joel had explained how a flash had made them both faint and how I’d been gone when they woke up, and Al was about to tell everyone how he’d saved me.
“Powerwalking,” Dad echoed as if the concept was unfamiliar to him, which it probably was.
My dad was not a powerwalking kind of man.
“Yup,” Al said. “My woman read an article about Nordic walking and got me a set of poles, but I’m not ancient. I’m also not too hip on looking ridiculous, so I hid them in Cathedral Park. Was on my way to get them when a car stopped next to me. Fat, fugly dude carried someone inside, and I recognized the butt. Waited. Went inside. Let Kitty out, and here we are.”
“You recognized my butt?”
“Of course,” Al said. “It’s –”
The sound Dad made was angry, and it stopped Al from further describing my derriere.
“Biff,” Jackson murmured. “You really can’t blame the man.”
Dad growled at him too, but Jackson growled back.
When this had gone on for a while, I lost interest, so I leaned my head on Joel’s shoulder and drifted off toward dreamland. Lulu was on my lap, and she’d been sleeping for a while already.
“Kitty,” someone murmured, and I managed to raise my heavy lids. “Did you see who kidnapped you?”
“Saw his sleeve. Stains of beetrooty purple on it. I was at Genie Decateur’s house. My guess?” I mumbled and didn’t wait for anyone to confirm that they indeed wanted to hear what my guess was. “Malachï.”
“Yes,” Lulu hissed suddenly. “He brought you to the house.”
“How would you know,” Dad asked sourly.
He had apparently still not forgiven Lulu for yawning in a way that made it possible for her to credibly claim she hadn’t bit him.
Which she totally had.
“I used to be his familiar.”
I looked down on the small animal perched on my lap.
“Used to be?”
“I’m your familiar now,” she declared.
“Okay,” I said and felt a wash of warmth pass through my core.
Then she started purring.
The silence surrounding me was well beyond stupefied.
“But you’re a werewolf,” Jackson said, which I knew I was, so I didn’t respond.
“You’re a little stupid, but you’re hot, so I forgive you,” Lulu informed him with what looked like a smirk on her cat-face.
“Bet this will be interesting,” Rafael said and leaned forward to let his hand glide over Lulu’s head.
“You’re hot too,” she said, tilted her head back and looked at me. “I’m gonna like living with you, my little Kitty-cat.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Procreationist
Dad went with Grandma Hazel to find out what had happened to Genie Decateur and came back purple-mouthed and drunk off his Scandinavian werewolf-ass. I was eating breakfast when they got back so when my mouth dropped open, a piece of bacon fell out of my mouth and onto the table. Through the open window, I heard my father, the werewolf alpha and sheriff in my hometown, sing.
“Kaaalinka, kalinka, kalinka moya!”
My brows went up. Was that… Russian?
“Vashadu yashibashi malinka, malinka moya!”
He tried to move his feet in a dance that was not something I’d seen performed locally and assumed he was also attempting to dance in Russian.
Grandma Hazel was dancing too, but she was laughing so hard she had to double over, and since she kept dancing with her skinny butt in the air, it looked kind of funky. Dad had raised both his hands and was alternating between snapping his fingers and clapping his hands.
Sometimes his hands missed each other, and when he suddenly slapped himself in the head instead, both he and Grandma Hazel cheered loudly.
“Holy crap,” Elsa breathed out.
“I agree,” Pen said genially. “His accent is godawful.”
Elsa’s head snapped around, and she speared him with a hard glare. This was the twelfth hard glare she’d speared him with since he showed up on a bicycle early that morning.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped.
“Waiting for you to let me impregnate you,” he said with a sweet smile.
Joel started laughing.
Janie tore her eyes from the spectacle outside to stare at Pen.
Then Jackson walked through the back door, closed it quietly and sat down at the table.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Huh,” I ras
ped out and gestured toward the two fools in the front yard.
Grandma Hazel straightened abruptly and threw her hands out, which made her stumble a little.
“I never knew you were such a great dancer, Biff,” she squealed, and declared, “I’ll teach you how to pole-dance.”
“Yes!” Dad yelled and pumped his hands in the air as if he’d won an Olympic gold medal. Or the lottery. Or whateverthefudge. “I always wanted to pole-dance!”
Slowly, I leaned forward and rested my forehead on the table.
“Kill me now,” I mumbled.
“Why?” Pen asked, sounding utterly confused. “I think he’d be good at it. He’s got some serious hip-action going.”
I straightened, and we stared in silence at my father and grandmother humping imaginary poles and shaking their shoulders. They were singing, and my brows went up when they shared loudly that they both apparently had been to a motherfucking mountaintop where they had heard motherfuckers talk. Or something.
“Right,” Janie said calmly and stood up.
When she had gotten the situation in hand, and the two drunken fools had sobered up, helped by a few select chants from Grandma, we sat on the porch.
“Dad,” I murmured.
“Not a word,” he growled.
“We won’t ever talk about it,” Jackson promised solemnly and earned himself a grateful look. He winked at me and added, just as solemnly, “But we’ll never forget.”
“So,” I said loudly before Dad could maul Jackson. “Did you find Genie?”
“Yes,” Grandma Hazel said. “We found her in the basement, locked into the laundry room.”
“Is she okay?” Elsa asked.
“Sure. She was quite happy, actually. Got all her washing and drying done, which is why we were celebrating.”
Yikes. Genie Decateur was apparently made of sterner stuff than me.
“She confirmed that it was Malachï who kidnapped you, Kitty and that he did it because you’re investigating his activities,” Dad said with a sigh in the general direction of me. “He needed money to fund the kind of life your sister would find acceptable, and he decided to supplement his income with payoffs from the bordellos.”
“So, let’s go and talk to the Grand Wizard,” I said impatiently.
“He’s on a retreat somewhere up in the mountains,” Dad muttered. “Contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Back tomorrow.”
“Okay, then we’ll go talk to Blaïse tomorrow. Will you go with me?” I asked.
“I will go and talk to Blaïse. You may come with me,” Dad countered.
We stared at each other, and I should have backed down, but I didn’t.
“Guess it’ll be good if you’re there, Biff,” Jackson murmured. “You’ll have something to talk about, after all.”
Every head on the porch turned toward Jack, and he was grinning. Widely.
“Yeah?” Dad grunted suspiciously, indicating that Jack’s grin was just a little too cocky.
Which it was.
“Sure,” Jackson said casually. “You’ve both been to a motherfuckin’ mountaintop, so –”
I hadn’t known it was possible to run that fast whilst laughing hysterically.
Or run almost that fast whilst roaring angrily for that matter.
***
Since Silenus had told me to not show up for work on account of what he labeled, “my ordeal,” Janie asked me to do her shopping.
Or, yeah. It wasn’t her asking me as much as it was her ordering me.
“Grocery store and pharmacy,” she said, handed me two lists and her credit card.
It felt like being fifteen again, and I was about to tell her I’d pay when I remembered my condo payment. It was due in less than a week, and I’d counted my cash.
If tips kept coming and I found the damned lovebird, I’d make it.
If I bought groceries, I wouldn’t.
Fifteen again it was.
Since I was in no hurry, I chatted with the guy who worked in the pharmacy while he punched the stuff from Janie’s list into the register. Pat was a wolf, had been in my class in high school and had had an enormous crush on Elsa. He still had one if the number of questions he asked me about her was any indication. I steered the conversation into the break-in they’d had, mostly because I wasn’t sure what would happen with Elsa and the perpetually good-humored Pentagon.
“It was the weirdest thing,” Pat said. “Nothing was stolen.”
“Really?” I asked.
“It looked like things were moved around. Almost like when we’ve done a stock take.”
“Someone had been here to count your inventory?” I asked, thinking that yes, indeed.
That was weird.
“Only –”
Patrick stopped speaking and blushed a little.
“Only what?”
“Products for men,” he muttered and bagged my items speedily.
Oh, shit.
I had a fairly good idea what products for men he was talking about.
Viagra.
Which meant I knew who had broken in to check the stock.
Grandpa Hunter, Howl and Yowl.
Well, shit. I had to get that situation sorted out before they got themselves arrested.
Karma was on my side because an immediate solution presented itself in the form of Becky from the community center ambling innocently along the sidewalk as I exited the grocery store. I waved her down and started chatting about the weather. When that topic was exhausted, which was two sentences later, I figured I’d been polite enough and that there was nothing to do but to lay it all out.
“Do you want to procreate with my grandfather?” I asked.
Becky walked into a lamp post and didn’t step back from it.
“Nuuh,” she said.
I watched the pretty woman standing there with her nose pressed to the steel and wondered if gramps’ genetic superiority would outweigh her stupidity, or if any kids they might have would perhaps be half-witted.
“He says you do,” I informed her, which made her back away from the lamp post and glare at me.
“No,” she snapped.
“Says you want his genes,” I elaborated.
She stared at me for a long time and then she closed her eyes.
“The old fool should get a hearing apparatus,” she muttered.
“What?” I asked, not following her train of thought.
Her eyes snapped open, and she glared at me in a way that made me take a step away from her.
“I asked him to give me his jeans,” she snarled. “As in; his pants,” she added, and I took another step backward, just in case. “Because it was,” she inhaled deeply and bellowed, “LAUNDRY DAY.”
Okay. Alright. Jeez. Calm the hell down.
This was what I thought but didn’t dare to say because her eyes were suddenly yellow which meant she was close to shifting.
And I really didn’t want to get mauled.
“Okay,” I said soothingly.
“I told him I wanted his jeans and if he didn’t want to give them to me, he should give them to Maria or any of the girls,” Becky snarled.
Okay, well that explained why he thought there were scores of women ready to procreate with him.
“I’ll talk to Gramps,” I said quickly. “Simple misunderstanding.”
“Why would I want to hump that old goat?”
I had no answer to that question and consequently said nothing at all.
“Talk to him,” she snapped and walked away.
I waited until she was far enough away to not hear me, and snarled back at her, “I already told you I would.”
Then I went home, put the groceries away, and walked up the stairs to Grandpa Hunter’s borrowed studio above the garage.
“Hey, Kitty,” he said with a happy smile.
I sat down and sighed.
“I have shit to tell you,” murmured.
It had occurred to me that he might be upset about the fact
that he wasn’t going to be quite as sexually active as he’d anticipated.
“Okidoki,” he said, sat down and watched me with eyes that were just as happy as his smile.
There wasn’t anything else to do.
I had to tell him.
“I talked to Becky and you misunderstood because she never wanted your genes but instead she wanted your jeans as in your pants because she was going to wash them for you, so the procreation part is out of the question and you have taken all that Viagra for nothing.”
Then I inhaled, which I needed, and leaned back.
He blinked a few times and then he grinned.
“It wasn’t for nothing,” he said calmly. “I enjoyed having a boner.”
“Yuh?” I managed to say, and immediately wished I hadn’t made it sound quite as much like a question.
“It’s been a while,” Grandpa Hunter elaborated happily. “It also made getting my willy into the crotch enlarger a lot easier.”
Oh, God.
This was the exact moment I would die, I was sure of it.
Since I didn’t and since Grandpa didn’t say anything, I sucked in air and changed the topic.
“What will you do about the club? Dissolve it?”
“Absolutely not,” Gramps protested. “We can’t do that now when so many of the local boys have applied for membership. Howl is teaching them the signal tomorrow.”
I blinked, but he grinned as he raised a hand, stuck his thumb in his left ear and wiggled his fingers.
“We’re thumbing our ears at the stupid white supremacists,” he explained.
“The expression is to thumb your nose.”
“We’re unique,” he retorted.
They were that.
“But –”
Gramps interrupted me, which was good because I wasn’t sure what to say.
“We’ll just change the statutes. I’ll reword it. Take out the part about being procreationists. I’ll replace it with a paragraph about being shuffleboard players.”
Okay. That was a pretty harmless activity.
“What will you do with the rest of the, um… pills?” I asked.
“Maybe Jackson wants them?”
I was pretty sure Jack didn’t need them.
“No,” I said, and hoped he wouldn’t ask me for details.