The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf (16 page)

“Actually, I was thinking of the Glacier. We could see Mo and Cooper. It would be fun.”

Clay looked confused but shrugged. “Who am I to turn down one of Mo’s burgers?”

“I’ll pick you up?” I offered, then suddenly remembered that my truck was at the bottom of a ravine. “Hmm. No, wait, I think you’ll have to drive.”

O
N FRIDAY MORNING, I
walked outside to find a tow truck unloading my truck in the little side lot by the community center. It hurt to see the scraped, dented side panels, the huge crater the trees had left on the passenger’s side. The fender was bent to hell where the truck had tugged it up the incline. It was a wonder the tow truck had managed to winch it up from the ravine at all.

I could still smell Nick’s scent, mingled with mine, wafting from the rear compartment. The scent made all previous empty chest aches feel like a mild tickle. I actually had to bend over and brace my hands against my knees as the tow-truck driver lowered the winch and gently dropped my poor baby to the concrete. He stepped out, a rangy, weathered man in his forties, wearing blue overalls that stated his name was Wesley.

“Hi, can I help you?” I asked, straightening and doing my best to function like a normal person. “Did the state police send you?”

“Nope,” he said, unhooking a chain from under my truck’s tires.

There was something off about his smell; he definitely wasn’t human. He wasn’t a werewolf, either. He was definitely a were but something little, which was sort of funny, given that he looked as if he was blown out of a straw. I sniffed again. A weasel?
Oh, come on.
This guy was a were-weasel that ran around with “Hi, my name is Wesley” stitched on his shirt? Some people had no sense of irony.

“OK, do you just drive around the wilderness rescuing random were-creatures’ stalled vehicles?” I asked, my tone just a little bit snotty.

“Nope.”

“Do you ever say anything besides nope?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nope.“

I laughed, which made his lips twitch. “The bill’s taken care of. Your cousin Caleb says you should call him.”

With a chortle at my shocked expression, he drove away, taking the north road through the preserve. I dashed into my office to grab my cell phone and dial Caleb’s number.

“Y’ello?” my cousin and packmate mumbled into the phone, using his “being held hostage” voice, which he only used when he was conducting surveillance.

“Hey, cuz! You got a mullet yet?” I sang cheerfully into the phone . . . because it annoyed him.

He sighed. “Hi, Mags.”

“Everything OK?” I asked. Normally, Caleb, who spent his time on the road using his werewolf senses to track down society’s misfits for a handsome fee, loved a good Dog the Bounty Hunter joke. “Who was the were-weasel who just dropped my truck off? And how the heck did he manage to yank it up a forty-percent incline?”

“Wesley’s done some work on my truck,” Caleb said. “He replaces a lot of my windows.”

I snorted. As a not-quite-legitimate bounty hunter, Caleb came into contact with people who did not like being delivered back to the people they owed money to. And sometimes they took out their “feelings” on his truck.

“He’s a good guy. And he gets into those hard-to-reach places. Samson called, told me what happened to your truck. I thought Wesley could lend a hand.”

“Well, thanks, I appreciate it. But is it causing you pain in some way? Why do you sound so weird?”

“Wesley took a look under the truck when he was hooking up the chain. He said your brake line looked worn. But not from use or age. He said it looked like something sharp had been scraped over the brake line over and over until it was ready to rupture. Maggie, have you pissed anybody off lately? Besides Cooper? Or Samson? Or Mo? Or your mom? Or—”

“I get it, I get it,” I grumbled, considering the question. “Honestly, other than that little problem last summer with Eli, I haven’t gotten into any more scrapes than I normally would.”

“That’s not saying much.” He snorted.

“Thanks,” I muttered. “Seriously, I’ve been a relatively nice girl.” Caleb snorted again. I shot back, “I said relatively! So, what, you think someone tampered with my brakes because I was a smart-ass to them? Or maybe it was a rabbit out for revenge for all the little bunnies I’ve eaten? Seriously, I rarely leave the valley. Who would mess with my truck?”

“I don’t know, Mags,” he said. “I just think you need to be careful.”

“I live in a veritable fortress, surrounded by burly protective relatives willing to kill for me. And not to mention, I sort of kick ass myself.”

“Yeah, but you’re not invincible,” Caleb argued.

“Fine. If I see a rabbit dressed in camo trying to jimmy the screen door with a hunting knife, I’ll call for help.”

“Somehow I get the feeling you’re not taking me very seriously.” He sighed.

“And you would be right,” I told him. “But I will keep an eye out, I promise, just to humor you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

Caleb kept me on the phone for another twenty minutes, asking about various relatives, which meant he had to be worried. He tried to avoid talking on the phone whenever possible. I hung up, unsure what to think. How likely was it that someone had tampered with my brakes?

I shrugged out of my jacket and slid under the frame. There were clods of dirt, pine needles, and dead grass spotting the worn chrome. I inched my way under the axle . . . and realized I didn’t know
nearly as much about big engines as I thought I did. I recognized the bottom of the transmission and the fuel line. I found the brake drum and followed the thumb’s-width plastic rope with my fingertips. It was smooth and unmarked until it reached the point lowest to the ground. I frowned. It wasn’t cut, exactly, but it was definitely damaged. And the tear didn’t look like something that would occur over a long period of time. As far as I could tell, I’d hit some debris on the road and ripped it myself, which wasn’t surprising, considering the tumble the truck took off the road.

I leaned closer to inspect the rupture in the line and picked up the faint scent of dryer sheets, the sort of clean, floral fabric-softener stuff my mom was always using. I chuckled. Wesley didn’t look like the April Fresh type. But maybe he had a concerned she-weasel mate at home.

I heard two of my older uncles arguing loudly between their front stoops over a borrowed power tool. Apparently, they’d decided to use other power tools to settle the dispute, so I crawled out from under the truck. Distracted by senior citizens armed with band saws and extension cords, I abandoned my defunct vehicle and didn’t give the brakes another thought.

N
ICK SENT ME
a freaking apology pie.

Several, in fact. First, it was apple-raisin, then Mo’s famous chess pie, then French silk, each delivered to my door every day by my decreasingly bemused sister-in-law.

“I’m charging him mileage,” Mo told me as she
walked through my front door and placed the chocolate “too fluffy to look real” meringue masterpiece in my hands. I could see the delicate little chocolate shavings speckling the crusty brown dome through the plastic carrying case. Mo slapped the note into my palm. It just said, “Please.”

This was the saddest pie of all. The previous pies had at least told me Nick was sorry and that he wanted to start fresh.

“He’s moved on to meringue,” Mo said, shaking her head. “This does not bode well.”

“I honestly don’t know how to respond to this,” I said, taking the pie into the kitchen. Mo collected the empty pie tins from the counter. Pie never lasted long in our house. Samson had taken to stopping by the house every night to make sure no pie was left behind. As long as Mo was making daily deliveries, he said I could stay mad at Nick forever.

“I’ll talk to him,” I promised her. “Even though I really don’t want to.”

“You should,” Mo countered. “He asked this morning if I could get enough peaches to make a cobbler.”

“No one says they’re sorry with cobbler.”

“Yeah, ’cause saying it with pie is super-normal,” she retorted.

W
ORKING WITH MY
hands generally helped me sort through whatever had me wound up. The weird swooshy, acidy feeling that twisted through my chest whenever I thought of Nick or Clay had me taking apart the village’s snow blower piece by piece.

At least my emotional turmoil was serving some purpose. Part of the problem with having an aging population was elderly werewolves’ increasing inability to negotiate icy streets and sidewalks. We couldn’t afford to replace the snow blower, but we also couldn’t afford the cost of adding a Broken Hip Wing onto the clinic. Hence my need to squeeze one more year out of the twenty-year-old snow blower.

I’d replaced the belts, the oil, and the spark plugs and was now praying that it wouldn’t literally blow a gasket or part of my hand as I fired it up. I grinned like a madwoman when the diesel engine roared to life. Then a cloud of black smoke spiraled up from somewhere just out of reach, and I heard the first signs of stalling.

“Stupid, useless piece of crap!” I yelled, the sound of the engine whining and sputtering to its death covering the worst of my curses.

“It’s nice to see that some things, like your naturally even temper, never change.”

I looked up and saw my grandfather standing in the doorway, clearly amused.

“I thought I would come by and pay my favorite granddaughter a visit,” Pops said, winking at me.

At eighty-two, Noah Graham was sort of the Robert Redford of the Alaskan werewolf community. He was still blessed with a headful of iron-gray hair and the blue-green eyes Cooper had inherited. He also appeared to be in his early sixties, which was one of the perks of being a werewolf. Our bodies are resilient because of the constant phasing, lots of collagen.
As long as we keep up with the sunscreen, we can look young well into our golden years.

But we aged, like everybody else. Pops had had what Dr. Moder called a “minor episode” the year before, which scared the hell out of all of us. We’d all babied him shamelessly, which irritated his independent soul. He finally blew up and tossed a quart of chicken noodle soup at my aunt Maisie. That was when I knew he was getting better.

Pops and I had always had a close relationship. Most girls confided in their mothers when they were worried about a test or upset with a friend . . . or going through “weird new body parts” anxiety. I relied on my grandfather. Cooper and Samson went to him with their problems, and I figured I should, too. So far, with the rare exception of what we will only call the Training Bra Incident, it had worked out pretty well.

I kissed his cheek. “Don’t let your five other granddaughters hear you say that.”

He shrugged as he hitched himself into the seat of a defunct tractor-mower. “Well, you’re each my favorite in some way.”

“Nice save, Pops.” I snickered, handing him a bag of the Reese’s Pieces he favored. “How are you feeling?”

“I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t start every conversation that way,” he said, cocking a gray eyebrow at me.

“Force of habit.”

“I’m fine,” he told me, tugging my hair gently. “How is the search for a new truck?”

“Stalled,” I griped. “Bad pun intended.”

“You know I enjoy bad puns.”

I chuckled. “I haven’t had time to go look for another one. Fortunately, I don’t leave the valley much, except to visit Grundy. I can run there, so it’s not a huge deal.”

“Yes, I know,” he said quietly. “I saw your aunt Billie earlier. She seems to be having a good day. She was playing Legos with Paul and Ronnie.”

“She thought they were Eli and Cooper, didn’t she?” I asked.

“Probably,” he said, nodding. “But she was happy and smiling. And at this point, we should be grateful she can have days like that. Alicia told me to thank you again for sending the aunties over to help at night while she bathes the boys and gets them to bed. She says it’s been a big help.”

I shrugged. “That’s why we’re here. Nobody should have to shoulder all that responsibility alone.” Pops smirked at me. “Oh, hush,” I told him. “We’re not talking about me.”