She was startled and touched by other you. Many people would have said back to normal, and she would not have taken offense. She loved that Edward had so easily grasped that she wasn’t part human and part wolf; she was all Pack. It was a tricky concept for non-Pack to grasp, and the centuries of negative press from fairy tales didn’t help.
“Oh my God,” he said, looking horror-struck. “You’re awake. Oh, Rachael, I’m so sor—”
“Shut up now, will you?” she said kindly. From the look of him, Edward had been up most of the night with her. He had that starry-eyed need-a-nap-but-too-keyed-up-to-sleep expression. He had seemed to spend the night waiting for her to do something. All night he’d waited, and there had been no way (beyond the obvious) to tell him that curling up in a hobbit hole listening to crickets and the evening breeze was the plan. She believed he’d finally caught on around four o’clock in the morning. “You had cause.”
“I didn’t, Rache. You’re nice to say so, but I absolutely didn’t.” Forgetting he had an armful of grocery bags, he rushed to her side of the bed. Regret. Regret. Sorrow. Shame. “I was such an asshole.”
“I know you’re sorry, Edward. No need to keep on about it.”
“Mmmm . . . nope.” He appeared to do some sort of inner analyzing. “Nope. I’m still crushed with remorse and feel the need to keep cowering and groveling. Not that you didn’t leave tons of clues, because you did, but you even told me (more than once!) and I still took that as my cue to try for Douche Bag of the Year.”
She started laughing at his given title, but he didn’t so much as smile. “For a guy who considered himself open to paranormal shenanigans of any kind, I turned out to be stupidly close-minded.”
“And a contender for Douche Bag of the Year,” she teased. His face, pale with tension, suddenly lit, and this time he was laughing with her. “Have you considered where you’re going to display the trophy?”
“I should probably have a case made, huh? Listen, I just got back from Cub Foods . . .” She rose from the bed and padded after him to the kitchen. “You were all out of raw hamburger and milk and Pop-Tarts.”
“I loathe—”
“Yeah, well, they’re for me, so just back off. Also, it’s un-American not to like Pop-Tarts.”
“Why do I hate America?” she mused aloud. “Because I sure do. America and everything she stands for, including Pop-Tarts. Hatred fills me at the mere thought of a chocolate fudge Pop-Tart.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what I’d expect from a Cape Cod liberal pinko werewolf.”
“Hey!”
“You heard me,” he said smugly.
“I’m no pinko, you ape-evolved troglodyte.”
“Hurtful.” He sighed, putting on an expression so pious and sugar-sweet she wondered if he’d have an insulin reaction. “So, so hurtful.” He brightened. “And here! See? I got the seventy-thirty hamburger mix. By the way, the explanation for your unstoppable appetite for everything in the world finally occurred to me about four A.M. And again, let me say to myself: duh.”
“And eggs and juice and pork chops,” she said approvingly.
“I didn’t know . . . I thought maybe you’d be pretty hungry once the sun came up.”
She smiled at his anxious expression. “Don’t worry, I hardly ever eat people anymore.”
“Ho-ho-ho. But seriously: please don’t eat people. I figured you’d be hungry.”
“Nope. That Ziploc o’ Meat bag is still holding me. But this was thoughtful . . . I keep telling you, you shouldn’t pay for me to eat. Ever. You realize if you keep it up, you’ll eventually have to take out a loan.”
“I know, now.” He laughed, then tentatively reached for her. “Did anyone ever tell you, you’re gorgeous on all fours?”
“Well, of course you’d think so,” she teased, delighted to see him blush. She hadn’t thought he’d flee. Hadn’t thought. But there was no way to ever truly know about someone until they were facing what you feared.
“That, yeah, ask me if I think bluff sex could cure all the world’s problems—but I meant—I meant your other self. Those four legs.”
“People have told me that, yes.” She reached up to push his bangs to the side, out of his eyes. “But only other Pack members. You’re the first—I mean, you’re my first—” Now it was her turn to blush. Fair’s fair, she thought ruefully. “I’ve never slept with anyone who wasn’t Pack.”
“Ah, but you know the old saying. Once you go off Pack, you can’t wait to head back. No. Wait. That’s not it.” He pulled her into his arms and nuzzled her neck. “Once you renounce the Pack, you have to try out for track? Now that you’ve been exposed to Pack, you’re gonna have to hire yourself a hack? Closer, I think . . .”
She reached down, past the waistband of his shorts, and found him already thickening. “The next time we need a motto, I promise you’ll be the first one we call.” She squeezed gently and heard his soft groan. “The very, very first.” Lust. Lust. Lust. “Have I mentioned . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I love your scent.”
“Ummmm . . .”
“I absolutely love it.” Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. He was unzipping his fly to give her more room, but she ignored it. Squeeze. Release. “You know the only thing I like better than how you smell?”
His groan was drawn out and his eyes were rolling up; he tried to speak and could not.
“How you taste.”
Forty-two
“What now?”
Rachael stretched beside him. They’d made it back to her bedroom . . . eventually. “Food?”
“I was thinking about the long term.”
“More food?”
He jabbed her in the ribs and she shrieked and jabbed back. “Agh! Yes, yes, we’ll stop by a slaughterhouse on the way to the bluffs and you can gorge until you blow up.”
“Ooooh. Too mean.”
“For reals?” His smile had faded at once as he watched her face.
“No, but . . . borderline. More a girl thing—does this wolf form make my butt look big?—than a Pack thing, though, in your defense.”
“Got it. No more slaughterhouse jokes. Are there any racial slurs I need to be aware of? Wait. Not racial slurs . . . species slurs? Anything I should watch out for? Hey, wolfie! Would that be super uncool?”
“Yes, but not for the reason you think.”
“Har-har. You still haven’t answered my question.” He had hopped off the bed and was searching for his underwear. “What now? You know. With us. With this. What’s next for us? As a couple, I mean.” He colored, and she didn’t think he was blushing about putting his Batman boxers back on. “Assuming there’s an us. Y’know, going forward if we’re already an us. But if you didn’t think so, it’s okay.” He was stepping into his jeans and talking faster. “I’m not saying I thought so, or assumed you thought so, but if you did I’d be okay with that.”
She tried not to stare as he babbled, but the man looked like he was only seconds from going up in a blaze of spontaneous combustion. It was impossible not to stare.
“If you’re in it just to have a little fun, I wouldn’t . . . I mean, I wouldn’t expect—maybe we should just go our separate ways now. Not that I want to! I’m just okay if you want to.”
“Wow. Shut up now, okay?”
“Yes ma’am.” There was no mistaking the relief in his tone.
“Are you all right? Maybe you should sit down.”
“Now that I’m not trying to think and talk at the same time, it’s safe for both of us.”
“This is new territory for me, too.” One of the places they’d lingered was her little shower, which had been too small to have any serious fun, but large enough for considerable foreplay. So she was clean yet rumpled. Not that snoozing in her hobbit hole would have gotten her paws dirty, but habit was strong.
She found clean panties and, for a wonder, a bra the same color. Rachael had nothing but admiration for women who wore matching underwear, but she had never been up to the
strain, not to mention the organizational skills. She opened the closet and pulled out a loose, comfortable linen shift in sky blue. Something to match blue flats . . .
She pulled the shift over her head. “Some of my girlfriends have dated guys who weren’t Pack, but my cousin Michael is the only one I know who took one to mate.”
“Yeah? Really? Ooh, I love it, Romeo and Juliet as told by the Pack. His family has too many secrets, and her family Just Doesn’t Understand. Together, they—”
“Married quite without problems or interference of any kind, and had two children.”
“Story-wise, it’s pretty dull. But real-life wise, it’s kind of a relief.”
She stepped into the bathroom and grabbed a brush. “Our kind—sorry about the term—our kind don’t have a problem mating with non-Pack. The cubs—excuse me, the children of those matings tend to be exceptional. So of course my cousins are.” She grinned as she pulled the brush through her dark locks. “His eldest, Lara, she’ll be our next leader, and she’s already leading the family through all sorts of trials, you wouldn’t even believe it. She’s Michael all over again, really, and karma can be a real bitch. She—”
She glanced at Edward, who was listening with rapt attention. “Oh. Sorry, didn’t mean to do the my-niece-is-betterthan-yours thing.”
“Sounds like she is, though! I don’t mind. I’d love to hear about everybody in your family. Although I’m punching Michael in the Adam’s apple when I meet him. Punk’s got a lotta nerve sending you out here like some kind of lycanthropic homing pigeon. Go here, come there, keep an eye out and make a report . . . ha!”
“I wouldn’t advise punching Michael anywhere, and my point is, there won’t be a need for any of that you-can’t-stopour-love! nonsense. Assuming we would even need to go there in the first place. Ah, nuts. I said go there. That’s officially over now, right? I have to be careful. I don’t want to accidentally revive that stupid, stupid saying . . .”
“Okay, I know I fucked up by assuming you were the undead nemesis of all mankind earlier, but I think I earned a couple of points on the positive side when I didn’t flee screaming into the night once you popped fur, right?”
“Oh my God.”
“Right?”
“Popped fur? Really?”
“Shush. But I did, right? You look really, really pretty in that, by the way. Do you have to be somewhere? I’ve never seen you primp. Maybe I should primp.” He widened his eyes and blinked slowly. “You’re getting veerrrry sleepy. You want . . . to have . . . more sex. With me!” He blinked harder and slower.
“You look like a hoot owl when you do that. One with a degree in accounting. I’ll stop primping if you promise to never primp again. And as far as having to be somewhere, I’m going to return the shoes the vampire queen lent me.”
“Awesome! Let me find a shirt and I’ll be ready.”
“I’m certain my plans for returning footgear to its rightful owner don’t include you.”
“Too bad! The last time you went there, they threw a knife at your head. Who knows what they’ll do next time?”
“Technically they threw the back of a knife at my head. You have to admit, it sounds much less dangerous if you think of it that way.”
“Yeah, you can consider me not comforted. I’m goin’.” He had found his shirt, dark green with white lettering: “I’m Not Unemployed, I’m a Consultant!” “Want to call first? We could call first. Although they apparently don’t mind the pop-in. Would you believe her friggin’ phone number is on the newsletter? At least, a number she says she can be reached at.”
“I saw that as well.”
Edward shook his head. “That’s no way to run an undead empire. Accessibility? Keeping polite zombies and lending shoes to werewolves while making sure pregnant women get proper prenatal care? The whole thing’s too weird and twisted for words.”
“Phoning ahead. Hmm. That’s not a terrible idea.” She’d let Edward call, and while he was killing time playing around with a voice mail account, she could give some thought to the pros and cons of not knocking him unconscious and leaving without him.
She was an accountant, and almost any problem, any situation, could be broken down into numbers. So: would letting Edward meet the vampires be good for him or bad for him, and to what degree?
Oh, and the other thing she’d been wondering about: where did he get all those terrific shirts?
Forty-three
“It’s ringing!” Edward clutched the phone and kept half an eye on Rachael, who was just too cute for words in her little blue dress. With matching shoes, even. Rachael could look good in a dress made from Filet-O-Fish boxes. “It’s ringing. I’m gonna—hello?”
“Hello?”
“Uh, yeah, could I speak to the queen of the vampires? Please,” he added. They probably see being polite as classy, not weak. Right? Hmm. Better hope so.
“You’ve got her.”
“Oh. Oh! You’re her? I mean, it’s you?”
“It’s me.”
“Well, listen good, sweetheart!” He ignored Rachael’s groan. “I don’t know what cataclysmic world-killing nefarious plan you have for taking over the world now that I know you’re not secretly my girlfriend, but I’m here to tell you it’s not gonna happen. I’m gonna make you regret the first dark thought you ever thought! Had, I mean!”
“Is this the host from the Hastings Green Mill?” a pleasant contralto asked.
“Uh, no.”
“Satan, then?”
“Really? You think I could be Satan? My voice must be much deeper and scarier than I thought.” It was wrong to find this terrific fun, right? He never dreamed his voice could be confused with the Lord of Lies.
“Satan is . . . uh . . . yes, the person who is Satan can be very dark and scary, and yes, you do sound a little bit like . . . like the person who is Satan.”
This is getting weirder even faster than I thought it would. “Does Satan honestly have your number?” he asked breathlessly. This was the most interesting conversation he’d had in months. “Satan? The Dark Prince himself, he calls you?”
For what? Nefarious doings with the queen of the shambling eternally thirsty undead? Playdates? To talk about which movie based on a Marvel superhero or a Disney World ride they would go see together? What? Oh, he had to find out! Actually, if the things he’d heard about the queen were true, she’d probably tell him.
“Seriously, I think that’s amazing. I know it’s not cool to own that, but I’ll admit it: that is seriously cool.”
“What is?”
“Satan having your number. He’s got it, right? Don’t let this all be for nothing. Don’t let me get my hopes up like that.”
The woman laughed. “The landline, sure. Everybody’s got the landline.”
“So it’s true! This is so typical. The bad guys always act like they’ve never read a bestseller or seen a movie.”
“Bad guys? Now listen here, mister, I’m not the bad guy!” The pleasant contralto had a slight midwestern twang. Now was now-oo, here was hee-er, bad was bee-ed. Hilarious! “And I don’t appreciate random phone calls from fellas who tell me I am the bad guy.”
“Don’t get huffy. If you don’t want random calls, don’t list your number in a nationally mailed newsletter. Besides, you are the queen of the vampires.”
“Okay, yeah, I’ve got that going against me, but if you overlook that one little thing, you’d see I’m a good guy. Oh . . . who is this, anyway?”
“Listen, despicable vampire queen—”
“Oh, now that’s just rude.”
“Sorry,” he said, immediately chastened. Meanwhile, Rachael had buried her head in her hands and was moaning and rocking back and forth like someone trying to find her happy place. He gave her a big smile and flashed her a thumbs-up, but, weirdly, she wasn’t comforted. “It’s just, I always had a feeling I’d meet you someday, or somebody like you, so I kind of wrote the script for that meeting in my head.”
“
And I’m not following your script?” she said, sounding like she was cheering up.
“No, not at all,” he soothed.
“Really?”
“Oh, we’re totally beyond my script. Years beyond.”
“Well, okay then.” Hmm, the queen of the vampires could turn a frown upside down in no time. “No harm done. What’s your name again?”
“I’m Edward B—” Rachael was making slashing-acrossthe-throat motions. Now she was miming hanging up the phone. Now she was miming strangling him. “Hey, it’s none of your business what my name is, Miss Nosy Parker Vampire Queen! But I am gonna be stopping by your lair with my hot new werewolf girlfriend, who wants to return some shoes, and we wanted to show we’re civilized by calling first. So we’re calling first. Bask in how civilized we are. Go on. Bask!”
“Some shoes . . . is your hot new werewolf girlfriend a medium-tall brunette? With big brown pansy eyes? And kind of a permanent tight-ass expression until she smiles?”
Wow. “Yeah, but it’s more a serious expression than a tight-ass one. Like a sexy librarian.”
“I pray she was careful with them.”
“You pray? With what?” A rosary? Shyeah. A Bible? Ha!
“The shoes! And I’m praying for them, not with them. I’ve never even met you, but I can already tell you’re incredibly weird. Are they okay? She didn’t scuff them or step in dog shit or anything, did she?”
“How should I know?” He covered the phone. “The vampire queen wants to know if the shoes are okay.”
Rachael, who’d given up with the slashing motions and just stood there listening with an appalled look on her face, nodded. “Sure. They’re fine. I’ve barely worn them. Just to here from her house. And now to her house from here.”
“Hear that? The blue thingies are safe and sound.”
“They’re not thingies. Little boys have thingies. You probably have a thingy.”
“Uh . . .” Out of nowhere, the queen’s voice had gotten deep and scary.
“Those are Beverly Feldman Bonvivant flats in navy blue.”
Little girl from The Exorcist deep and scary. “Okay.”