An American Werewolf in Hoboken (19 page)

Inching closer, she listened again to the wet snarfing. Oh, that was definitely a Fluffy sound, she thought, relaxing. JC patted her thigh and called to the dog. “C’mere, buddy. I’ll bring you back home.”

In that instant, the motion-sensor light winked and shot a glaring beam over the bin to the garage’s right.

The animal, caught in the bright shaft of light, stopped what he was doing and looked up, freezing.

Usually, she wasn’t much of a screamer. So she looked again, just to be sure she wasn’t screaming like some city girl out here in the country over some harmless forest animal.

Nope—not city-related at all. This was definitely a reason to scream.

The loudest, most bloodcurdling scream she could summon.

JC opened her mouth wide as terror took over and her lungs gathered steam.

* * *

Max flew around the side of the house, locating JC by her scent long before he saw her frozen in place, her shrill screech hurting his sensitive ears.

He stopped dead just behind her.

Oh. Shit.

Oh holy, holy shit.

Max grabbed her by the arm, pushing her behind him, and she clutched onto his shirt and huddled against his back.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” she screamed, the horror in her shaky voice breaking him.

“It’s okay, J. I promise, it’s okay. Calm down,” he soothed, knowing full well there was nothing
okay
about this, and if she didn’t end up scarred for life, she’d definitely end up with nightmares.

And poor Jerry. Immobile under the glare of the motion-sensor light, a small forest animal half in, half out of his mouth—stuck in half-shift.

Tufts of his hair poked from his face in angry tangles of black and gray. His feet—with their long, sharp claws—were sticking out of his shredded sneakers and his chest, covered in patchy hair, had only a few bits of material from his shirt hanging from it.

Oh, Jesus, this was absolutely not how he’d wanted to explain weres to JC.

“Jerry,” Max said with a gentle tone. “It’s okay, bud. Just stay calm, okay?” When Jerry got worked up, if he was upset or too excited, it took forever to calm him. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Jerry. Just relax.”

JC suddenly found her voice, her fingers gripping his shirt tighter. “
Nothing wrong
?” she squeaked. “Are you insane? He’s eating an animal! Wait—you know his
name
?”

Max held out an imploring hand to Jerry. “Jerry, just stay put. It’s fine, buddy. You’re fine. Don’t move, Jerry.”

Jerry’s panicked eyes, gleaming red in shift, darted from Max’s face to the clearing in the woods.

“Jerry,” Derrick called from behind them. “Hold tight, buddy. I’m coming.” He swept past Max and JC, thumping Max on the shoulder. “I got this. You go…deal.”

Max turned around, gripping JC by the shoulders, catching a glimpse of his mother and sisters just beyond where he stood, huddled together with worry on their faces. “Honey. I know you’re freaked out right now. But I just need you to stay as calm as possible.”

She shook her head hard as though it would block out what she’d just seen, her dark hair swirling around her face as the wind lashed it against her cheeks. “You know him? You
know
him?” she squealed.

His lips went flat. The time for reckoning had come. “Yes. He’s my cousin on my mother’s side.”

Horror filled her face again, tearing him apart. “Your cousin?”

“Yes. Remember when I said we had to talk? Jerry is part of what we have to talk about. So let’s go inside, we’ll sit down, and we’ll talk.”

JC gulped at the air, her body shaking under his touch. “Is he sick? Oh God. I’m sorry. I never would’ve screamed like that, but…” She paused, covering her mouth with a fist, clearly trying to put her thoughts into words. “Is he sick, Max? I didn’t mean to embarrass him. Oh God. I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

It would be so easy to lie right now—at least for the moment. “No, J. Jerry’s not sick.”

Faith was behind JC in seconds, running her hands over JC’s shivering arms. “I made coffee. Come inside, sweetie. It’s cold. Come inside and just listen.”

Horror turned to suspicion when JC began to back away, shaking off Max’s and Faith’s hands. She stabbed a finger in the air, her eyes wild and afraid. Jesus, he hated seeing her afraid. “Is this some kind of sick cult? Some government experiment? Am I here because you want to experiment on
me
?” she shrieked into the howl of the wind.

Max shook his head, his pulse thumping in his ears. “
No
. No, honey. That’s not what this is. I swear to you, nothing
X-Files
about this. I know you’re afraid. I know you want to call Viv right now and demand she come get you. I know you want to run away, but please, please listen to me, and if what I tell you still makes you afraid of me—I’ll take you home. I don’t ever want you to be afraid of me.”

* * *

She sat at the far end of the kitchen in the small circle of puffy chairs by the back door while a subdued bunch of Adamses made coffee—like normal people. Not crazy, hairy people who ate small woodland creatures.

And she was terrified. Her hands hadn’t stopped shaking since she’d seen whatever Jerry was.

Jerry’s not sick, J.

What the hell was he then?

Her thoughts raced. If she at least appeared calm, if she appeared as though she were cooperating, maybe she could find a way to get the hell out of here before they did whatever crazy people did to their guinea pigs.

Max crossed the room with a steaming mug of coffee, his ruggedly handsome face lined with worry. He was still so beautiful, even in deception.

She forced herself not to shrink away when he handed her the coffee she absolutely wasn’t going to drink. Who knew what they’d put in it? What if they put something in it that made her break out in a ball of hair and crave field mice?

Oh Jesus.

Faith appeared behind him, her smile of sympathy for her son so real, JC almost believed it. “We’ll let you two talk. If you need me, I’ll be in my room.”

As everyone vacated the kitchen, the silence ate at her.

Max cleared his throat, dropping into a chair opposite her. His eyes searched hers before he said, “Jerry isn’t some kind of government experiment. Jerry isn’t sick either. He doesn’t have a disease.”

She swallowed, forcing her voice to calm. “You said that.”

“I’m sorry he scared you, but
he
scares easily, and the last thing I needed him doing was bolting.”

“Right. Who’d want poor Jerry running off?”

Running a hand through his hair, he sighed. “I’m sorry, J. This wasn’t how I wanted you to find out.”

Find out
what
? “So this is what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Yes. It’s not something I’ve ever had to do before. I’m new to this.”

She sat silently, replaying over and over in her mind how she’d missed the signs Max was crazy. Because all this rational talk
screamed
crazy.

He reached between them, placing his palm on her knee. “Do you want me to just say it?”

Do not move. Don’t flinch. Don’t show him your fear.
“Please.”

“I’m a werewolf.”

Yep. That had crazy engraved in it. “Okay.”

Max cocked his head, his blue eyes filled with confusion. “What?”

“I said okay. You’re a werewolf.”

“Jerry’s a werewolf, too. But he has trouble shifting fully. Sometimes he gets stuck.”

“That must be hard for Jerry. Poor Jerry.”

“Jerry’s harmless—he’s just a little broken. He’s different than me.”

JC looked right at him and repeated the word. “Different.”

“Yes. Jerry has, for lack of a better term, a birth defect of sorts. I don’t.”

“How awful for Jerry,” she said, hoping she displayed enough sympathy for poor, small-animal-eating, hairy Jerry.

“You’re not really hearing me, are you?”

Her heart sped up. “I heard everything you said. Jerry’s a sad panda werewolf and you’re just a plain old werewolf.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for explaining.”

Max’s face held concern. “You’re in shock, JC.”

“No. This isn’t shock. Why would your being a werewolf shock me? What you see here is total acceptance.”

“J?”

“Yes?”

He squeezed her knee as if to jar her from said shock. “I’m really a werewolf.”

“I think that’s awesome.”

“There’s something else.”

“If you tell me your mother is Little Red Riding Hood, I’m out.”

He cracked a smile, a smile she’d once thought so odd on his rugged face, but still so Max. “Well, Derrick can be a pig, but no. I just mean, there’s more to this story than my just being a werewolf.”

“That’s not Little Red Riding Hood. That’s the Three Little Pigs. You know, huff and puff and I’ll blow your house down?”

“What?”

Now JC sighed. “You have your fairytales mixed up. Derrick can’t be a pig if he’s in Little Red Riding Hood. He’d be a wolf.”
Hah!

“Right. So like I said, there’s more to this than just the werewolf part.”

Stay composed. Look him right in the eye. Pretend you’re not crawling out of your skin.
“All ears.”

“About Fluffy.”

Fluffy…
She wanted to run home and bury her face in his fur and cry. A lot. “What about him?”

“I’m Fluffy.”

Her eyes must have widened at his admission because he squeezed her knee again.
Calm, calm, calm. Stay with the calm.
“You’re Fluffy. Got it.”

“J, you’re not hearing me. I really am Fluffy. You adopted me in the shelter because you’re supposed to be with me. I got caught by Animal Control before I could find you.” He shook his head as though he were clearing cobwebs. “This is coming out all wrong.”

“No. I hear you loud and clear. You’re Fluffy and a werewolf because I’m supposed to be with you.”

“Wait. Let me start from the beginning. When you’re a werewolf, and you get to be a certain age, you’re sent on a journey for your life mate. My journey took me to you in Hoboken, but while I was in shift, Animal Control caught me. They put me in the shelter and you showed up to adopt me. That wasn’t just by chance.”

She didn’t know how much longer she could hold on to the last ounce of sanity she possessed, but by hell, she was going to cling to it for as long as it took to get out of that house.

Setting the coffee on the table next to her, she clenched her hands together in her lap. “If you’re Fluffy, how is it that I dropped him off just today at the dog spa? If you’re Fluffy, why haven’t I gotten panicked calls that he somehow escaped?” Was the dog spa in on this, too?

“I had someone pretend to be me, uh, Fluffy. A stand-in, so to speak. He’s a friend of mine. I shifted into my human form and switched places with him.”

Shifted? Sweet hell on fire.
“Okay, so let’s forget Fluffy for a minute. What you’re saying is, it was our destiny to meet?”

He nodded, smiling. “That’s exactly right.”

“Perfect.”

“Don’t you want to know why?”

“Nope. I’m a believer.”

He leaned forward now, his face directly in front of hers. Grabbing her shoulders, he gave her a gentle shake. “I’m Fluffy. I can prove it.”

His hands didn’t feel threatening, but then, they didn’t feel like werewolf hands either. “You don’t have to.”

“Do you remember when Jess came over? When he was trying to get you to come back to him, and while you were answering the door I ate your steak?”

Had she told him about that incident? Probably. They’d talked about a lot of things. “I remember.”

“Do you remember the trip to the vet and Killer?”

The dachshund. “I do. He was very cute.”

“You’re still not hearing me, J. You never told me about Killer. You never told me about Jess other than he was one of your exes, and you never told me Fluffy ate your steak.”

Oh, she had
so
. Hadn’t she? “I thought I had.”

“No. You didn’t. You also didn’t tell me about Adele at the doggie spa, but I was there today when she called me the prettiest, biggest boy she’d ever seen.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa.
They’d talked about many things on the four-hour ride here, but
Adele
hadn’t been one of them.

Max’s eyes lit up. “Do you see? Did you ever tell me about Manny and Dan back at the shelter? Or about the stop at PetSmart on the way home where you spent almost two hours looking for the proper food for me? Did you tell me you were ‘this close’ to falling for me just before you came over for tuna noodle casserole—or did you tell
Fluffy
?”

Her mouth fell open. None of this made any sense. It was impossible. He must be bugging her apartment…

But was he bugging the shelter and PetSmart and the doggie spa?

Max’s face went from urgent to worried again. “I’m Fluffy, honey, and I did it because I didn’t know how to get myself the hell
out
of it. I pretended to be Fluffy so you wouldn’t be sick with worry like you were when you thought he ran away. I kept doing it because he—
I
made you happy as Fluffy. I knew it would be a while before I could tell you the truth about me, and I didn’t want you up nights worried about what could be happening to him out on the streets alone.” He grated a sigh. “I mean
me
.”

That was it. Her composure snapped, her mind blocking out the possibility that Max was telling the truth, despite some heavy-duty evidence to the contrary. There was an explanation for all of this, just like there was at the end of every
X-Files
episode.

“So you’re telling me that when you got the call from the magical wizard of life mates, you came all the way to Hoboken to find me, got caught by Animal Control, let me adopt you, then played double agent werewolf-slash-my-dog, all in an effort to—
what
?”

The guilt on his face was very real. Imagined in Max’s mind or not, he could win an award or two with that one expression. “So I had time to get to know you. How would you have reacted if I’d just shown up at your door and said, ‘Ding-dong, life mate calling’?” So I rented the apartment next door, and I dated you like anyone else who was human would. I didn’t want you to think I was crazy.”