The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf (25 page)

Despite Nick hinting, nudging, and downright pleading, I’d yet to tell anyone about the “bagging” incident. I occasionally woke up from nightmares, clawing at the nonexistent bag over my face, but I hadn’t told anyone about that, either.

Instead, I was devoting a lot of energy to ensuring the pack’s safety. I checked the brakes on every vehicle in the valley. Hell, I checked the village’s cistern to make sure there was no tampering with the water supply. But nothing. Every once in a while, one of us would catch the scent of a strange wolf near the border of our territory but never close to any of the buildings. And I never caught another whiff of fabric softener outside the laundry room.

Every day that passed without incident put me more on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And now I was waiting for my favorite paranormal investigator to drop.

I thought that surely someone with multiple graduate degrees would know not to put that much distance between himself and terra firma. Particularly when the wind chill was somewhere near “guaranteed frostbite” and the branches
were slick with snow and ice. But as I drew closer, I found him propped against an alarmingly thin pine branch, wiring a black plastic box against an even less stable-looking branch at least three stories up. My idiot cousin was napping in a little burrow he’d hollowed out in the snow at the tree’s base.

Nick had a black cannonball-shaped helmet on and weird metal cleats clamped over his boots. They seemed to be shoved into the bark of the tree, giving him a toehold. But the idea that a flimsy piece of metal was the only thing holding him up there was making my stomach pitch to my knees.

“Nicholas Thatcher, what in the hell do you think you’re doing up there?”

He chuckled. “I’m almost done, Mags. I’ll be down in a minute.”

“That doesn’t answer the question!” I yelled, finally waking Samson.

“What’s going on?” Samson mumbled.

“Some spotter you are,” I grumbled, kicking at Samson’s shins. Samson made a halfhearted attempt at an obscene gesture and seemed to be considering continuing his nap.

“Look out below!” Nick yelled, depositing his tool belt near my feet. He yanked his cleats out of the bark and turned, facing the tree trunk. He dropped suddenly, and I let out a scream, before realizing that he was just hopping down to the next branch. He carefully and methodically chose each movement, mapping a route toward the ground. In my head, his descent was on fast-forward, and every
branch looked as if it was ready to snap. Frankly, I was ready to snap.

“Hi!” Nick’s cheeks were flushed pink with excitement and the cold wind. He looked so happy and sweet . . . and the moment his feet touched the ground, I smacked his shoulders until my hands hurt.

“What in the hell were you thinking, Nick Thatcher?” I growled as he dodged my fists of fury. “Are you trying to kill yourself ?”

“Suddenly, I’m glad I have the helmet on.” He grunted as he put his hand on my forehead and held me a safe swinging distance away. Samson snickered and scratched his belly, stretching his arms lazily over his head. “Maggie, stop!”

“Total overreaction, Midget,” Samson told me. “I watched him like a hawk the whole time.”

“You watched your eyelids the whole time,” I shot back as Nick rifled through the duffel bag at the base of the tree. “And you, I count on you to be the adult in this weird-ass buddy comedy, Nick! How could you trust your ‘not dying in a plummet from a tree’ to Samson? What were you even doing up there?”

“This,” Nick said, clicking a little black remote that looked like a garage-door opener. A little red light on the remote switched on . . . and I was left considerably unimpressed. Then Nick brought out a little portable TV and showed me a video feed that focused on my mother’s front door. He toggled a switch on the TV, and the screen showed the front of my office, then the school, the north perimeter, the east and south boundaries of the packlands.

“This one will show the western view of the valley,” he said, pointing up at what I now realized was a security camera. He pulled out a map of the valley, with orange circles marking where he’d placed the cameras. “They’re on full power right now, but I’m switching them over to thermal-sensor mode. They’ll only pick up a feed when a warm body passes. So we don’t end up with two hours’ worth of windy tree-branch footage.”

“Unless it was a tree branch that cut the brakes on your truck,” Samson said, tenting his fingers and arching his brow at the wavering tree limbs supervil-lain-style.

Nick chuckled. “I can’t cover the whole valley. And it might take a few weeks to work out all of the kinks, but I thought it could help, right?”

Suddenly, I felt really bad about hitting him.

“Someone owes someone an apology,” Samson sang under his breath.

“I do. I’m sorry,” I said. Nick beamed at me. “This is great.”

“I think I hear Mom calling me!” Samson announced, scrambling to his feet.

“Did that seem sort of abrupt to you?” Nick asked, staring after Samson as he ran toward home.

Without Samson there as a buffer, Nick suddenly seemed too close. What little emotional space I’d been able to put between us had sort of been shredded by the whole naked-assault-victim vulnerability thing. I stepped away and took the portable monitor. “So, show me how to work this.”

Nick was in full professor mode, taking fifteen
minutes to explain how the little monitor could bounce among the various feeds and wirelessly upload clips to my office computer. I thought I was going to have to start fanning my face to keep from bursting into flames. Curse his sexy brains!

Using the toggle thing, he scanned past the signal coming from my mom’s front door and did a cartoonish double-take. “What the?”

Nick squinted at the screen, aghast at the image of what appeared to be a dozen or so of my male cousins, lined up in front of my house with their pants around their ankles and their bare asses aimed directly at the camera. There were enough full moons to orbit Jupiter.

“You really shouldn’t have shown Samson where the cameras are,” I muttered.

“How did he organize that so quickly?” Nick asked, nodding toward Samson’s naked rear at the end of the butt-cheek chorus line.

“Well, when properly motivated, Samson can do just about anything. We’re fortunate that his main interests are food and pranks.”

“I mean, I can see grabbing one or two guys, but so many? He could take over the world,” Nick marveled.

I snorted. “As long as the world’s governments could be cowed into submission by a bottomless army, yes.”

He shuddered. “Well, there’s an image that will never leave my head. Thanks for that.”

“I do what I can.”

* * *

F
ULL-BLOWN WINTER CLOSED
in on the valley like a fist. The temperatures dive-bombed below freezing, putting us all in instinctual panic mode. And even though we spent the better part of the year preparing our houses, putting up food, winterizing our vehicles, I still ended up scrambling around, helping my aunt Doris patch a weak spot on her roof, helping Samson with last-minute runs to the bulk warehouse store in Burney for toilet paper and batteries. Clay and I took a day trip to a big pharmacy in Burney, where we could stock up on Billie’s meds. When the snow blew in and covered the valley in a fluffy white blanket and I finally had a chance to stop and breathe, I sort of collapsed and slept for two days.

Weeks passed, the holidays came and went, and even with the relative quiet, I was scared to relax into the season, to give myself downtime. I used pack morale as an excuse. Werewolves tend to get sort of restless when we’re boxed in. Little disagreements over a poker game or the last buffalo wing can turn into full-on duels to the death if you’re not careful. So, I spent a good portion of my day sending my family members on random errands, finding some weird chores that needed to be done, or sending them on extra patrols around the perimeter. I organized checkers tournaments, darning bees, Scrabble nights. I basically became the pack’s cruise director.

The pathways between Grundy and the valley were kept warm. Mom worried too much for Mo to drive the baby from Grundy, so she phased every few days so she could run over and visit Eva. Neither
snow nor sleet nor an act of God would keep my mother from snuggling that fuzzy-headed baby.

Eva seemed to be on some sort of mission to work her evil/cute baby magic on me. Ever since she’d started toddling around on those chubby little legs, she’d been targeting me, the least enthusiastic baby person in the room. I think she enjoyed the challenge, which proved that we were related.

Eva would tug on my pants leg until I picked her up. And then she’d basically stare me down with those big blue-gray eyes of hers, daring me not to snuggle her. It was like facing down a tiny, diapered mastermind.

And of course, I caved. I snuggled her. I babbled. I read her
Where the Wild Things Are
until I was hoarse. I actually found myself watching my language.
Shudder.

Every once in a while, I’d bury my face in the talcum-powder-scented fluff on her head and have a little “maybe I am ready for a baby” twinge. And then I would slap myself. Because my smart-ass karma combined with my genes might create some sort of evil superbaby. I just wasn’t ready. Imagine baby-proofing for that.

Being around Nick so much wasn’t exactly helping my hormone surges. He’d bought a snowmobile, so he could visit every other day. He’d stopped the interviews, but he still liked hanging out with Samson and Pops, whom he was determined to win over. I wasn’t sure what he was doing with his research, but Nick told me he was working on something that wouldn’t result in me kicking his ass, so I was happy.

Mom was already a fan, but he met some resistance from some very unfriendly uncles. But I think that was more traditional “we don’t want you sullying our little girl” hazing than anything else. Clay usually made some excuse to get out of their card games, but I think that was mostly because of the “I want your woman” vibe Nick was still giving off.

Nick stayed in Samson’s guest room most nights, which had me worried. Samson seemed to think of him as some sort of human chew toy. For instance, just the other night, I’d come home to find Samson in my mother’s living room, holding Nick upside-down in some half-nelson wrestling hold.

“Hey, Midget, Nick won’t tell me whether he has sisters. I figure, he’s pretty, he would have to have pretty sisters.”

“You’re a sick man, Samson,” Nick said, his face reddened by the sudden flow of blood to his head.

“But you laughed, so what does that make you?”

Nick deadpanned, “Humoring you.”

“Samson, put him down!” I cried.

“But he’s so light and portable,” he said, jiggling a bemused Nick.

“When you wonder why we don’t introduce humans to our pack’s secrets, this is why,” I told Nick.

Samson jostled Nick again to get his attention. “OK, Dr. Werewolf Whisperer, you told me you could get out this. Now, the rules are: One, no punching me in the junk. And two, see rule one. Let’s go.”

“This is not healthy.” I sighed, shaking my head. “Even for werewolves, this is messed up.”

Nick grinned at me, bent at his waist, and did some weird finger-strike thing against the back of Samson’s kneecaps. Samson yowled and dropped to his knees, bringing Nick’s head precariously close to the floor. Nick stopped short of cracking his skull by catching himself with his hands. He sprang to his feet and put Samson in a headlock.

I think Samson was more shocked than strong-armed.

“Never fuck with a guy who worships at the altar of Vulcan martial arts,” Nick told my cousin as he administered a merciless noogie.

“Seriously, you Vulcan-nerve-pinched him?” I barely suppressed the grin that threatened to split my cheeks.

“Awesome!” Samson exclaimed, shaking Nick off like a troublesome Pomeranian. Nick was flung ass-over-teakettle onto the couch. “You’ll have to show me how to do that sometime,” Samson said before he wandered into the kitchen looking for food.

Nick hopped up from the couch. He was warm and slightly sweaty. I could feel the happy thrum of his heartbeat under his skin. I cleared my throat and stepped back from him before I did anything drastic. “You in one piece?”

“It’s kind of fun. I never had a big brother growing up. I always wanted to be hung upside-down by my ankles.”

“I worry about you,” I told him.

“Guess who’s been invited to guest-lecture at University of Alaska’s Anchorage campus?” he asked, grinning.

“Mo?” I suggested. “They have a great culinary department there.”

He frowned. “Me. They’ve asked me to lecture on shape-shifting creatures and their prevalence in northwestern American tribal culture.”

“In academic terms, I’m pretty sure that was supposed to get me all hot and bothered.”

He grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “Well, I want you to come with me. We can snowmobile as far as the highway and then drive in. We can go to a movie or some of the bookstores. There’s a restaurant I wanted to try. I just think it would be sort of cool to get you all to myself for a little while.” Then he added hastily, “As a friend. We can spend time together without things getting all naked and confusing.”