“Don’t worry about Charlie and her sisters. I’ll talk to them myself. Now if both of you will just follow me, I have someone else you should talk to.”
“Someone I actually want to speak with?” Van asked.
Walking toward the house, Imani did nothing but laugh.
*
“We have to go in there.”
“We don’t have to do anything,” Tock reminded Max as all five of them stared at the front door. “You, however . . .”
“My sister is very sensitive when she’s upset. I don’t want her to—”
“Kill us all?” Nelle asked.
“She wouldn’t. I don’t think.”
“Why don’t you go in first,” Streep helpfully suggested, “and if we don’t hear your dying screams, we’ll follow about ten minutes later.”
“We are honey badgers,” Max reminded them. “I can’t believe you’re all being such limp dicks about this. We are afraid of nothing.”
“Except your sister,” Mads muttered.
“What’s going on?” asked a deep voice from behind them.
The grizzly and his triplet siblings stared at them . . . and then the weapons now aimed at the bears.
“I thought we discussed your not pointing guns at us,” the female triplet said. Tock could barely tell the three of them apart. She just knew the female because of her scent, her slightly smaller size, and her voice. It was not as low as that of her two brothers. Other than that, all three Dunns might as well be clones of each other.
“Don’t sneak up on us, then,” Max said.
“We’re bears. How could we sneak up on you?” She gestured to the big yard next to the house. “And there’s nothing here but bears.”
“I smell muffins,” one of the male triplets announced before pushing past them and walking into the house.
“Hey!” a sun bear complained from the yard. “How come those bears just get to walk into the house?”
“Because,” Max snapped back, “one of them is fucking my sister!”
“Oh.”
Max faced her team. “Although, quite honestly, I can never tell which one.”
“I know!”
“Right?”
“I thought it was just me.”
Now that the bears had gone in—meaning they’d be the first to die if Charlie MacKilligan was “in a mood”—the badgers followed. The whole house smelled amazing. So many baked goods. Tock was betting Charlie hadn’t gotten any sleep. She must have been up all night doing whatever she did in the kitchen.
Tock could only make two things: jerk chicken and latkes. Both sides of her family loved her latkes.
But the stuff Charlie made . . . she was like a magician in the kitchen.
As they walked through the living room, they saw a spread of fresh baked goods on the dining room table, the sideboard, and the top of the china cabinet. The kitchen table and counters were also covered.
The woman really should open her own bakery.
But instead of a stressed-out Charlie ready to destroy, they found a relaxed, laughing Charlie sitting at the kitchen table. Her newest sister, Nat Malone, sat on her lap, Max’s wolverine friend, Dutch, in a chair to the right, and the young jackal, Kyle Jean-Louis Parker, in the seat at the other end of the table. They all seemed to be relaxed and happy. Enjoying themselves.
Tock was relieved. No running for her life. But Max seemed strangely calm. Usually, there was nothing calm about Max. A calm Max made Tock nervous.
“I see the Xanax worked,” Max noted, watching the triplets pile their plates high with the available food.
“I didn’t take it,” Charlie said.
“You didn’t?”
“Nope. I ended up teaching our baby sister here how to bake.”
“But you said you didn’t know how to teach people to bake,” Max replied. “That you just knew how to do it, but you didn’t know how to pass any recipes on.”
“Maybe she just didn’t want you to burn down the house,” Nat Malone said.
The kid was deaf, having lost her hearing when she was much younger, but she was pretty good at reading lips. Although with the other Malones, she only used sign language. All the brothers had mastered it so they could communicate with Nat. Tock kind of loved that. Shifters weren’t always the best when one of their own was a little different.
“Where’s Zé?” Charlie asked before Max could respond to her youngest sister by dragging her to the floor and kicking the crap out of her.
“He’s with Stevie and Shen. Stevie wanted to go to her lab to conduct tests on whatever they got from Tock, and I knew you’d want her to have more protection than a goofy panda.” Then she turned to Nat. “I would not burn the house down,” she snapped at the kid. “And why are you sitting in her lap?”
Max hadn’t even known she had another sister until very recently. None of the three sisters had known about Nat. Because their father was the worst. Freddy MacKilligan: con artist, lowlife, impregnator. Just the worst. But Max and her sisters would never hold the sins of the father against the kid because people did that to them all the time. The whole MacKilligan family loathed Freddy so much, they barely acknowledged his daughters’ existence, much less invited them to holiday dinners. Charlie’s mom had done the best she could to raise her daughter and two of his children that were not her own, but then she was killed. Charlie’s grandfather took the three girls in, but his pack didn’t really want them around. When Max graduated from high school and Stevie, just fourteen, had already earned several degrees, they left the pack and started off on their own.
The fact that the three of them had survived still amazed Tock a bit.
“I heard you already did burn the house down,” the kid said to Max, smirking, before wrapping her arms around Charlie’s neck. “And I’m on her lap because I wanted a hug from my big sister!”
Max leaned in close so Nat could see her mouth. “That fire was not due to baking. Now get your hands off my sister!”
“Max,” Charlie warned, “be nice.”
“But . . . but I thought we were all sisters!” Nat said, sniffing, before burying her face in her hands.
Charlie was so busy ordering Max to “Apologize! Apologize right now!” that she didn’t notice Nat giving Max the finger with both hands by pushing her fists into her eyes while raising the middle finger of each hand. All the while, her shoulders shook and she made sobbing sounds.
Dutch quickly stood up and walked out the back door before Max could see how hard he was laughing. Kyle simply got up, put his plate and milk glass in the sink, and headed to his rented space in the basement.
The triplet bears, having helped themselves to all the food they might need for the next ten minutes, grabbed three gallons of milk from the fridge and headed off toward the living room and TV.
“Now!” Charlie bellowed when Max refused to speak.
“Fine. I’m sor—”
“She can’t see you,” Charlie reminded her.
Max rolled her eyes before tapping the kid’s shoulder. Nat slowly looked up at her older sister and patiently waited. Her eyes did look wet, if not as teary as Streep’s would have been. But Streep had a real talent when it came to fake tears. She could turn them off and on like a faucet in a fancy hotel.