She blinked again, slowly. “But I’m on the Pill.”
“You’re lying.” It would only occur to him later to wonder why she had lied about such a thing.
“Well.” That seemed to give her pause. “You could wear a condom.”
“No.”
“Oh, so you’re one of those guys.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but they don’t work,” he explained, as patiently as he could while climbing over the coffee table to stay away from her. “I guess latex doesn’t stop werewolf sperm.”
“Oh.” Weirdly (what the hell was going on?) she seemed pleased at the idea. “I guess you won’t believe me if I tell you I’ve got a diaphragm in the bathroom.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“But we haven’t had dessert!” she wailed, gesturing to the dishes of fresh pie.
And I plan on keeping it that way.
Eight
Annoyingly, she could drive as fast as he could run, or almost, because he had barely slammed and locked his front door when she was hammering on it.
“Cole! Come on, don’t be a baby. Let me in and we’ll talk about this!”
“No!” he yelled back, resting against his front door. If he let her in, they were going to mate. If you put your hand in the fire you got burned, if you jumped into mud you got dirty, and if an ovulating female got too close to a werewolf, he got laid. They both did.
“Why are you acting like this?”
“I don’t want a baby!”
“Then stop acting like one!”
Argh. Faulty human hearing. “I didn’t say I wasn’t acting like one, I said I didn’t want one.”
“But why don’t you?”
“Because I don’t even know you!” he lied. Of all the reasons not to mate with a healthy, gorgeous, sweetly rounded, helpful, intelligent female, not “knowing” her was the least of it. “Now get back into your car and go away!”
“You know, the full moon’s over seven days away,” she said. “I looked it up. It’s not like you’re going to burst into hair right this second.”
“It’s four days away,” he corrected her. “Get lost.”
“Are we really going to have a conversation like this through your door?”
“Not if you get lost.”
She was silent. Thank God! He slumped to the floor, still throbbing, still wanting her. But he could never do that to any woman—curse her with a half man/half beast, a child who didn’t know, and a father who couldn’t help—never mind someone like Charlene. He wouldn’t go near her while she was ovulating. In fact, he was starting to think it was a good idea to stay away from her altogether.
The thought made his heart hurt, actually cramp like when you swam too long and your legs burned. He ignored it; his personal feelings about someone he barely knew—
(yes, that’s right, you don’t even know her)
(is that the human in you, or the werewolf? maybe werewolves make up their minds a little quicker)
He slapped his hands over his eyes and shook his head. How would he know? Anyway, it was a perfect example of why he shouldn’t knock Charlene up. What if his son or daughter wanted to know these things in twenty years?
What the hell could he tell him or her? “Sorry, I was supposed to find out but I got your mom pregnant and settled in Mysteria instead, and never got around to finding my people. Well, good luck and all.”
Never.
He could hear Charlene rustling around the side of his house, doubtless looking for a way to get in. Silly bunny; she had no chance. He wished she would give up and break a window. Argh! He meant give up and go home, yeah, go home, that’s what he wanted.
He heard a double click, and instantly realized what had happened. As Char stepped through the back door, he howled, “Rae!”
“What?” the ghost asked petulantly. “Nobody’s gotten any in this place for decades. I think you should go for it.”
“I had no interest in it before—”
“So—what? That’s an electric drill in your pants?”
“—and I’m sure not doing it if you’re going to watch!”
“Oh, calm down, princess. After all these years, I’ve decided sex is fundamentally boring, at least from a voyeur’s point of view. I’ll be in the basement. Did you know the tap’s been leaking since last night?”
“Go fuck yourself, Rae!”
No answer. Just as well. Somewhere, Mama Zee could probably sense he had been swearing, not to mention rude to a lady. A dead lady, but still.
Charlene was stamping down the hall toward him, her breasts jiggling with every stamp. He tried to look at her face for about a second, immediately gave up the battle, and turned to scrabble at the locked door. His fingers were suddenly too big, the lock the size of a pin head.
If the neighborhood could see him now, the neighborhood enforcer scrambling to escape from a woman who barely came up to his chin . . .
Her arms were around him and she was raining kisses on the back of his neck. He groaned and fought the door as if it was a living thing, but it stubbornly resisted him.
“Come on,” she said, and there was a note of sad urgency in her voice. “I need you. In more ways than you can ever imagine.”
“We can’t,” he groaned. He stopped clawing at the door, and stood still in her arms, leaning his sweaty forehead on the (annoyingly closed) door.
“We have to. I have to.”
“I can’t do it to you.”
“I think,” she whispered, reaching around and cupping his jeans where the zipper came together, “you can.”
“You have no idea what you’re getting into.”
“That’s okay,” she said, turning him around. He kissed her, sucked on her full lower lip, even nipped her lightly. She just wriggled closer. “Neither do you.”
Nine
“God, God . . .”
“That’s funny, that’s just what I was saying,” she teased. They were resting on the living room floor, clothes strewn everywhere, and she had slid a chubby thigh over his legs and was stroking his ribs. “Repeatedly. Loudly.”
It had been, to put it mildly, a hectic half hour. Kissing and sucking and stroking and sliding . . . and then they had really gotten down to business. She had been everything he imagined: athletic and indefatigable, with the lips of a devil and the hands of an angel. He wanted to go again. He would go again. Except . . .
“What if you’re pregnant?” he asked anxiously.
“Boy, you are really harshing my buzz. No afterglow at all, huh? No?” She saw he was leaning over her propped up on an elbow in a pose of tense waiting, and answered him, obviously quite puzzled. “Cole, what is the big deal? I told you I was on the Pill.”
“Yes, but that was a lie.”
She pressed her lips together. “And the pitiful remnants of the afterglow . . . gone. Yes, okay, it was a lie. I admit, I wanted to get you into bed. Forgot about that damn nose of yours for two seconds. But I still don’t understand what the big deal is. I wouldn’t tie you down—what year do you think this is? What town, for that matter?”
“But the baby—”
“Ah, the baby.” She said it with such admiration and longing, he was a little afraid of her.
“What if it’s—like me?”
She smiled. “What if it is?”
He got up, starting putting his clothes on. “You’re not getting this at all.”
“Obviously. So explain it to me.”
“I could never make you understand. Now get out.” He paused. “Please.”
“Okay, okay.” She slipped into her blouse, found her underpants wadded up in a corner, stepped into them. “Your postcoital grumpiness has been duly noted.”
“So has your total indifference toward the consequences of intimate relations.”
“What are you, a woman now? And nobody held a gun to your head, I might add. And I might not be pregnant, you know. Maybe you’re not the big ole stud you think you are. How a
bout that?”
“I am, though,” he said gloomily, holding the door open for her. She hopped out, half-dressed and trying to slip into her sneakers.
“Don’t call me!” she yelled as he shut the door.
“Don’t worry,” he muttered.
It was only after she left that he remembered she was supposed to take him around to other supernatural creatures, try to track down his herd.
His lifelong dream, his goal, and it had all flown out of his head right about the time he ripped off her bra. Fucking great. Reason #238 to stay the hell away.
Ten
The child—not a child anymore, a woman in her thirties—had dark hair, long strong legs, and Charlene’s owlish eyes. “Anything?” she was asking him, keeping well away from him, as was her habit. “You can’t tell me anything?”
“I’m sorry.” His voice surprised him; it was old, cracked. “I came here and met your mother and that was the end of it.”
“But what about our people?”
He shrugged, then coughed an old man’s cough. Though they were sitting on the porch of his beloved red house, the paint had long faded; now it was his beloved pink house. Many of the windows were broken, but he was too indifferent to fix them—he didn’t feel much in the way of cold, anyway.
Charlene, of course, was years dead. It was just him and the whelp, a woman who avoided him—lived in Reno, of all places—unless she needed something.
“What about my grandparents?”
“Dead.” The black mare was standing patiently on the porch next to his rocking chair and he reached out a wrinkled hand and stroked her velvety nose. “They’re all dead.”
“But these—these things happen to me all the time, things I can’t control.”
“I know.”
“And I’m stronger than everybody. And faster. Everyone else seems like a clumsy—I don’t know—it’s like they’re monkeys or something. I don’t really feel like I belong with them.”
“I know.”
“I can’t marry one of them.”
He yawned. “Then don’t.”
The mare nickered into his palm and he saw the For Sale sign was up again in his yard, facing the house instead of the road, and this time it read DEATH LIVES HERE.
“Dad, you have to help me.”
“I can’t.”
“Dad.”
“Sorry.” The sign changed while he watched: HA. HA. HA.
“But who am I?” the woman asked as she faded from sight, like a ghost.
“I don’t know,” he told her fading figure. “I never knew myself, either.”
The mare nickered again, almost like laughing. The sign now read: TOO BAD, SO SAD, LIE DOWN AND BE BAD.
“Gosh,” Rae’s voice said from behind him. “Don’t you think you should wake up now? This is a doozy of a nightmare. I mean, blech.”
He blinked and coughed his dry old man cough again. His hands were wrinkled claws. He looked at the horse, standing so patiently by his chair.
“Shoo!” Rae said. “Get lost! Go scare somebody else, you creepy nag!”
Startled, the horse clopped down the steps and galloped off.
And he woke up in the middle of a sweaty bed. His hands were normal. He was still young. It had all been a—
“Fucking night mares, they’re always causing trouble,” Rae said from nowhere, and was that a note of sympathy in her voice? “It was just a bad dream, Cole.”
Or a vision of things to come. He leaped out of bed, intent on finding Charlene. He’d been avoiding her for three days, but he had to warn her. Make her understand. And if she didn’t understand, he—he didn’t know.
But . . . like she said, maybe she wasn’t pregnant. Maybe the situation would be salvaged. He would have to leave Mysteria, but the alternative was worse. He had no animosity toward the night mare; she had shown him a future he wanted no part of, a future he needed reminding of, and given him time to fix things.
“I’ve got to see her,” he told Rae, striding toward the door.
“Good plan, Cole. May I suggest clothes? Or at least boxers?”
“Oh. Right. Thanks again.”
“I must say, you’re the most interesting roomie I’ve ever had. Everyone else usually moves out by now.”
“Can we talk about this later, please?”
“Oh, fine, ignore the ghost, see if I care. It’s not like I have feelings or anything!” That last was almost shouted as he slammed the door on his way out. He made a mental note to make it up to her—how, exactly, does one make it up to a ghost?
A problem for later. Right now: Charlene.
Eleven
He bounded up the steps to her house and, before his fist could land on the door, it opened and he fell through the doorway.
“For a werewolf,” she observed, looking down at him, “you’re remarkably clumsy.”
“Buh,” he replied, because she was wearing a Vikings jersey and nothing else. He had never had much interest in organized sports, but he had a sudden urge to watch every Vikings game ever televised.
“You do not,” she observed, “look well. Everything all right?”
He climbed to his feet. “Sorry about barging in on you like that.” A lie, but he had to start somewhere.
“You didn’t really barge,” she pointed out, walking toward the kitchen, big hips rolling sweetly beneath the purple and white. “I heard you jogging down the lane—don’t you ever drive? We live five miles apart, you know. Then, zip! Like the Marathon Man. Is it safe? Anyway, I had the door open by the time you came up the walk.”
“Uh-huh.” It all went over his head, and who cared? He had other things to worry about. He followed her, trying not to obviously sniff. “Why are you up so late? Oh, of course. Vampire beater-upper business.”
“Ah. Yes. About that. I’m not.”
“Not pregnant?”
She froze in the midst of pouring a glass of milk for herself. “Now how would I know that already? It’s been, what? Half an hour since we did it?”
“Seventy-six hours.”
She gave him an odd look and he crept closer. He needed a really good whiff of her hair or her neck, skin on skin would be even better. In fact, best of all would be—
“Riiiiight,” she replied. “Anyway, I’m not a vampire beater-upper. I made the whole thing up.”
“The whole thing?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have dealings with the, uh, depraved underworld of the dead?”
She shook her head. He literally didn’t know what to think: his mind was as blank as a broken TV. The enormity of the lie actually distracted him from the other problem. “But—why?”
“Why do you think? I wanted an excuse to be close to you. You picked out the one house for sale and bought it so damn fast, I had to think of something else. Something you wanted. The truth is, I wouldn’t know a vampire if he came up and slapped me in the face.”
“You’re pretty close to that now,” he said, getting pissed.
“Oh, Cole, stop it. You’d suck up your own barf before you’d hit a woman. And I’m sorry to sound like such a bitch.”
Her switches in temperament were dazzling. “What?” he managed.
“Well, it was a crummy thing to do. I’ve been just sick about it and I wanted to—you know. Get all the cards on the table, as the saying goes.”
“But—”
“Justin really is a werewolf, though,” she added anxiously, watching his face.
Justin—some strange male werewolf—was the last thing on his mind right now. “I don’t—” he began.
“I’m sure he can help you. I can’t, though. I’ve got other stuff to worry about. Stuff you can’t even dream of, so don’t bug me about it,” she added, going from truthful to contrite to defiant in about ten seconds.
He stared at her. “I knew you were lying about part of it, but I didn’t think you were lying about all of it.”
“How does it work, exactly?” she asked. “
It’s not like your nose is a lie detector—I mean, it is, and obviously a pretty good one compared to most people’s equipment, but how could you know exactly what was a lie and what wasn’t?”
The irony of the woman who claimed to be able to help him find his herd asking about something as fundamental as scenting was not lost on him.
“I just assumed you were anxious about your work—I was distracted by, uh, other things.” He looked down at his hands. He should, by rights, be strangling her right now. But he had gone along with the lie, hadn’t he? To get laid. To see those fabulous breasts. To be with her. The most important quest of his life and he hadn’t asked any questions. The neighborhood was right: all muscle, no brains.
Charlene put a chubby hand over his, looked up at him earnestly, and said, oblivious of her milk mustache, “I really did have my reasons. I don’t blame you for being mmpphhh-phargle.”
She mmpphh-phargled because he tugged her into his embrace and buried his nose in her hair. Then he held her at arm’s length and almost shouted, “You’re pregnant!”
“I am?” She looked thrilled. “Noooooo. Really? You can really tell so quickly?”
“Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!”
“Yes!” She broke out of his embrace, clasped her arms around herself, and spun around in a tight circle. “I don’t suppose you can tell whether it’s a boy or a girl?”
“Charlene, this is a very serious business. You have to stop—stop dancing around your kitchen and listen to me.”
“It’s more serious than you know,” she reminded him, “but I’m listening.”
He stopped. What was there to say now? Stay or go; it was still the same choice it had always been. Only now infinitely more complicated. He didn’t handle complicated well. He tended, in fact, to handle it by leaving.
“What do you mean, more serious than you know? What’s your agenda?” he asked, stalling for time. Stay or go? Have sex with her or throttle her? No, wait. That wasn’t the question.
“I have to have a baby,” she explained. “Do you want a glass of milk?”
“No. Why?”
“I’m a mial.”
He blinked. The name meant nothing to him. “What?”