Bite Me

“Again,” Livy felt the need to make clear, “little tolerance for those kinds of girls.”

  “I feel bad,” Vic told Shen as they headed toward the car he kept in long-term parking at the airport for when he came into town.

  “About what?”

  “Livy. I had no idea her dad passed away.”

  “Doesn’t seem like they were close.”

  “So? He’s still her father.”

  “Not everyone is as close to their family as you are.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you and me are close to our families. My father dies? I’m sitting alone in my house for a few weeks, sobbing and eating bamboo stalks in his honor. But not everybody deals with death the way I do.”

  “Still . . . I feel like I should do something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you had some ideas.”

  “You know what helps me have great ideas?”

  Vic sighed. “A free dinner?”

  “At a steakhouse that’s not afraid to include raw bamboo on the menu.”

  “You want me to pay for us to go to the Van Holtz Steak House?” A shifter-run establishment that catered to all species and breeds and was the only restaurant Vic could think of that offered raw bamboo as a side dish.

  Shen raised and lowered his hands in the air before digging another short bamboo stalk out of the pack he kept in his denim jacket pocket. “You want ideas, don’t you? My ideas ain’t free.”

  Livy walked into her apartment, leaving her bag by the door. She didn’t bother to turn the lights on. Not much to see. Some crappy furniture she’d bought on sale. A TV she left on when home as background noise. And piles of books. She liked to read. Something her parents adored about her when she was only three, but became less a fan of when she’d rather spend time reading than taking the family’s fun and informative “How to remove wallets from back pockets without getting caught” tutorials, held every couple of weeks for the youngest kids.

  But the reality of Livy’s apartment couldn’t be avoided. It was set up to make it easy to abandon at the first sign of trouble. And she only had this place because Toni kept insisting, “You have to have your own place. You have to live like a normal person.” Apparently Toni didn’t think a series of “safe houses” set up all over the world by Livy’s family was living like a normal person.

  So Livy had plunked down money on this one bedroom that didn’t actually have a bed. On the rare times she stayed here, she slept on the couch and used the bedroom as an office slash art studio.

  Yet as soon as Livy stepped inside that particular room, she had to walk out again. The reality was that although Livy had been doing photography, she hadn’t been doing any real “art.”

  She didn’t know when it happened. When that font of constant creativity dried up. Creativity had been with her since she was six, when she began to play with a camera that her father had brought home from a small home burglary he’d done one night when he needed a little extra cash. There’d been film inside and once she’d used it all, she’d insisted her father have the film developed. Even her parents had been shocked at how good some of the pictures were. And not one had been a simple family photo or picture of a flower. Far from it. The images included shots of some homeless in the downtown area, teenage children smoking pot, and a full-blood bear that had been caught wandering around town. That had really freaked out her mother when it was obvious from the pics that Livy had spent time in the bear’s lap, and her parents finally realized that their six-year-old daughter was wandering around the town alone when they were out of the house, working on their next heist, or arguing about something ridiculous.

  Of course their attempts to curb their daughter’s wandering ways lasted about . . . a week until their next heist came up. Then Livy was free to start down the photography path. She’d read every book she could get her hands on. From straight technical to those big coffee table books from the likes of Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange. She studied all magazines, including fashion, teaching herself to understand lighting and shadow. When she was older, she purchased old cameras and camera equipment, took them apart, and then taught herself to put them back together again, so she understood her equipment inside and out.

  Honestly, as far back as Livy could remember, she was never without her camera. Whether it was around her neck, hanging off her shoulder, or in easy reach inside her bag, Livy always had it because she never knew when some image was going to catch her attention.

  But for the last year . . . that hadn’t been the case. She’d kept her camera on her but she’d found herself using it less and less. Until eventually it got buried at the bottom of her backpack right along with the lipstick she never used and the gum she’d forgotten had been in there.

  What people didn’t understand, though, was losing that desire, losing her interest in photography and in art, hurt Livy. Physically. Right in her chest. And forcing herself to come up with something interesting for her day job at the Sports Center hurt just as much. It was like pulling teeth without anesthesia. Every shot she took was like torture. She didn’t know why, though. She’d done regular photography to pay the bills for years. She’d been an assistant—a sometimes thankless job depending on whom you worked for—a set dresser on fashion shoots. She’d even worked in a mall portrait studio that involved interacting with annoying families. She’d done every menial task necessary because it was all about photography, and every additional dime she got went toward her art.

  So then what the hell was going on? Why was it such a struggle for her now?

  Livy didn’t know. What she did know was that she had a gallery show coming up in the next few weeks and absolutely nothing new. She kept promising the curator that she would have something new. Something new, powerful, and amazing. But she was lying her ass off. She had nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Livy walked back to her living room and sat down on the edge of her couch.

  There were some artists who used the pain of loss—like losing her father—to really explore the powerful demons that drove them.

  Livy, however, picked up the remote for her TV and turned it on.

  As she stretched out on the couch, her cell phone vibrated. She reached down and pulled it out of her back pocket. It was Vic.

  Again, if you need anything . . . or if you want to talk. I’m here.

  Livy smiled a little. Vic wasn’t nearly as terrifying as he looked. He was just a nice guy. She sent him a “thanks” back and tossed her phone onto the coffee table.

  “What did you say?” Shen asked while enjoying his steak with a side of garlic-infused raw bamboo.

  “Just told her I’m here if she needs me.” Vic put his phone on the table.

  “That was nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  Shen stared at him a moment before asking, “You don’t think it’s enough, do you?”

  “Her father died! That’s huge. Don’t you think that’s huge?”

  “It would be huge for me. Huge for you. She seemed to be just rolling along. I saw her once with that same expression when she was eating a chocolate fudge sundae at a restaurant in the Sports Center. Which is pretty much no expression. How can a person not have an expression while eating a chocolate fudge sundae?”

  “That’s how you judge people? By their expression when they’re eating chocolate fudge sundaes?”

  “Or because the only time I’ve seen her expression change is when she attacked that lion male football player.”

  “He was asking for it. He patted her ass.”

  “True. He did. But I still think tearing off part of his scalp was an overreaction. Especially when we both know how calculated that was. You know how lion males are about their hair.”

  Vic looked down at his meal. A seventy-two-ounce prime rib with a pepper-honey glaze. Perfect for both his tiger and grizzly sides.

  “I just think I should do something for her,” Vic admitted.

 
“Send her flowers.”

  Vic and Shen looked up from their meals at the same time, stared at each other, and finally said together, “Nah.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Livy stepped out of the elevator and headed toward her office. As she walked, she heard her name. People calling out a greeting of some kind, but she didn’t reply. She wasn’t big on greetings. She found them irritating.

  Moving down the hall, Livy didn’t look into the other offices. She didn’t look up at the people walking by. She just kept her head down and traveled on. That was how Livy mostly traveled . . . unless she had her camera out.

  Livy pushed open the door to her office and stepped inside. She didn’t have a giant office on the underground floors of the Sports Center, where shifters of all kinds came to play their dangerous shifter games, but it was still a good size for what was essentially a staff photographer position.

  Two or three years ago, Livy never would have come to the Sports Center. She’d never have had a reason. But financially things had changed. At one time, Livy had been on her way up. She’d traveled to many parts of the world and taken the kind of photographs that she knew future artists would study. But then, well . . . she’d had some . . . issues. A few editors she’d argued with. A few countries she’d pissed off. And her family’s reputation always haunted her.

  Her cousin Jake had, on more than one occasion, kindly offered to give her a whole new identity. He could have, too. That was his specialty. But Livy didn’t believe in running. Whether it was running from who she was or running from a pissed-off hyena, it went against everything she’d been taught by her parents.

  Honey badgers don’t run. They fight.

  Of course, it was kind of hard to fight when a country revoked one’s visa to get their dislike of you across.

  Although, at first, none of that mattered. Sure, they could take away her visas, deny her access to the Louvre without armed guards shadowing her, and keep forcing her to go to goddamn anger management classes. But the one thing they could never do was take her art from her.

  Unfortunately, though, it seemed she’d done that to herself.

  After a year of taking pictures of guys who considered sports an actual career, Livy no longer thought of herself as an artist. She was once considered a prodigy, but now she was just some chick who took pretty pictures of physically perfect people. It was not a challenge.

  It was a job.

  Livy dropped her backpack on the floor and plopped into the chair behind her desk. There were stacks of proofs for her to review. Pictures of shifters from tristate teams that played football, hockey, soccer, basketball, and whatever else that she didn’t give a shit about.

  These were the pro teams. Or as Livy liked to call them, the “teams with all the penises.”

  Okay. True. That wasn’t fair. Unlike full-human sports, there were many females on the pro shifter teams. But most of them were She-bears and big-armed tigresses. So Livy wasn’t sure that counted.

  Livy sat at her desk, staring straight ahead, her phone vibrating in her back pocket, her PC pinging away, telling her that e-mail was arriving.

  Livy ignored it all.

  But she couldn’t really ignore the tall, beautiful woman who suddenly filled her doorway. Well, she could ignore her, but she’d tried that before and got hit in the face for her trouble. The reasoning? “I was worried you were dead. . . . I was just checking that you weren’t. Aren’t you glad someone cares?” Cella Malone had asked at the time with no sense of irony.

  “Hey, Livy.” And here came the requisite sad face. The expression everyone used when someone they knew had a death in the family, but they didn’t actually know the person who’d died. Toni had burst into tears at the news. But she’d known Damon Kowalski well, once even managing to get Livy’s father to pay for art school by using an extreme level of guilt.

  More sad face from the She-tiger who coached the New York Carnivores hockey team. “How ya doin’, hon?”

  Livy briefly debated not answering and seeing if the female would just leave, but . . . she wasn’t in the mood to be hit. Again.

  “I’m fine.”

  Cella gave her the “Be brave, little one. Be brave” expression.

  Unable to keep up the façade anymore—and for Livy, five seconds of keeping up the façade was damn near a record—she asked, “Need something, Cella?”

  “I know it’s your first day back . . .” And Livy watched the She-tiger actually struggle with the mere idea of giving Livy work “at this difficult time.”

  Putting it down to Irish-Catholic guilt, something even Catholic honey badgers never worried about, Livy decided to let the woman off the hook.

  “It’s all right,” Livy soothed. “I, uh, need something to do to get my mind off things.” That was what people said when they were going through mourning, right? It sounded right. Like something she heard on one of those made-for-TV movies she’d had on in the background last night while she was up playing computer games.

  “If you’re sure,” Cella hedged.

  “I’m sure. What do you need?”

  Malone held up an eight-by-ten picture of one of her players. “Is it possible we can make him look less . . . serial killer-y?”

  Livy stared at the picture. “The man is seven-five, he weighs nearly five hundred pounds, and he’s missing part of his face.”

  “Not missing it.” Malone looked at the picture. “Those are just claw marks . . . from his wife. A lovely She-lion.” She leaned in a bit and whispered, “Given during the throes of passion, I’ve heard.”

  “So I don’t need to put ‘How to Stop Domestic Violence’ pamphlets in his locker?”

  The She-tiger gazed at Livy, not getting the tacky joke at all. Before this job, Livy had spent most of her time with full-humans. Like most HBs, who either hung around other HBs or full-humans. It was rare for a honey badger to be around so many other breeds and species of shifters, and Livy often had to remind herself that life among shifters was . . . different. Shifter males often respected their mates because if they didn’t they knew the repercussions would be swift and long-term. Cops were rarely involved. Shelters never used. So those tacky jokes she heard around full-humans—that she, tragically, was not above using—most shifters never got.

  Livy’s father once pushed Livy’s mother during a fight, around the time his drinking had just begun to get bad. Joan Kowalski retaliated by pinning his hand to the kitchen table with a steak knife. The move, of course, didn’t kill him . . . but it reminded Damon how far he could go with a fellow shifter. Especially a female one.

  “Do you want me to take the scars out? Or rebuild his jaw?” Livy finally asked when the She-tiger continued to just stare at her.

  “I don’t know if his fans would like that.” Cella continued to study the pictures. “Maybe we could put a hat on him.”

  Livy scratched her cheek. “A hat? You want me to take the picture with him wearing a hat?”

  “Uh-huh. Just cover his face a bit.”

  A couple of years ago, this would be where Livy would jump up, snarl she couldn’t work under these conditions, and storm out. Unless the photo editor was rude about his feedback; then Livy would just go for his face. This time, though, the fight completely out of her, Livy just shrugged and said, “Sure. Let’s use a hat.”

  Malone blinked and now studied Livy. “Really? You don’t mind?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay.” Malone placed the photo on Livy’s desk and walked to the doorway. She stopped, looked back at Livy, nodded, and walked out.

  Once she was alone, Livy spun her chair away from the door so that she faced the wall behind her. She had some proofs of shots she was planning to use for her gallery show but she didn’t even see them. She didn’t see anything. She just stared straight ahead and waited. For what? Livy had no idea.

  “How do you tolerate that noise?” Dee-Ann Smith asked, her cold, dead, dog-like eyes glaring. She sat behind a desk with absolutely nothing o
n it. No computer. No paper. No phone. Not even a little lamp. There was just a chair on one side, two chairs on the other, and a metal desk in between. And there was just something so damn disturbing about that. The woman had missed her true calling as a Soviet agent during the Cold War. The Communists might have actually won with her on their side.

  Vic shrugged. “What noise?”

  “That noise.” She pointed at Shen, who sat next to him, munching on his bamboo.

  “What about it?” Vic asked her.

  “That doesn’t annoy you?”

  “Not as much as it’s obviously annoying you.” Vic raised his hands, then lowered them. “Did you hear anything I just told you?”

  Before Dee-Ann could answer, Cella Malone suddenly slid into the doorway, her shoulder hitting the defenseless wood there.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Cella said, smiling at Vic and Shen. “What are we talking about?”

  “Was wondering if that bamboo eatin’ gets on ol’ Vic’s nerves.”

  Vic’s mouth dropped open at Dee’s words. That was her main concern?

  Cella, now standing beside Dee on the other side of the desk, placed her hands on her hips and stared down at Shen. “I think I could get used to it. Besides, as a male, there are definitely worse things he could be doing.”

  Dee grunted. “You have a point.”

  “And let’s face it, you canines have a very low tolerance for sounds.”

  “All shifters are sensitive to sound.”

  “We are, but you guys get weirded out by the most minor noises. And when I’m traveling with the team and we all hear a siren, only the canines start all that goddamn howling.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a good howl, feline. Better than hissin’ like a slowly deflating air bag.”

  “I’m getting cranky,” Vic announced and he watched the two females slowly turn their attention directly on him. “Cranky,” he growled out between clenched teeth.

  “Problem?” Dee-Ann asked him.

  “Why did I come all this way if it was a waste of time?”