The Accidental Werewolf 2: Something About Harry (Accidentally Paranormal Novel) (3 page)

Oh, if he was nothing, Harry Emmerson was thorough. “I did just as the site asked.”

“Did you
really
read the checklist and click all the little buttons that nut Marty put on the website to determine what kind of paranormal crisis you’re in?”

Harry winced in shame as though someone could see him. “I did.”

“And what did that crazy technology say you were, Harry?”

“A . . .”

“Oh, c’mon, Harry,” Nina cajoled on a cackle—one that had a hint of devilry to it. “Be a man here. Please. Because all the other dudes in crisis have been really upstanding and manly. You don’t want to land in the Sissy’s Hall of Fame, do you? You’ll be labeled and that’s never happy-clappy. So spit it out so Nina can make all your supernatural boo-boos better.”

“Other men have had a crisis of this nature?” On some small, insane level, that was almost comforting to know. Of course, that information could all be an incredible hoax on behalf of this OOPS and their muscle Nina. Again, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d missed blatantly obvious cues.

“Men, women—whatever. You name it, we’ve fucking counseled it. Now on with it, Harry Ralph Emmerson. What did the website checklist tell you?”

He paused for a moment, noting a strange hum of vibration in his ears and an even stranger pull of his muscles. It was as if they were trying to force their way out of his skin.

Shaking off the unfamiliar sensations, Harry gritted his teeth and spewed the information the website had given him. “Its determination was that I’m a werewolf. Ridiculous, of course, and I’m sure you’ve all spent hours upon hours laughing about some of the results for these inane assessments. So what I really need to know is, what’s happening to me?” Did he really want to know?

Yes, Harry. A real man would want to know.

He nodded to himself. Right. Grrrr, manly.

“So I got a question for ya and don’t lie to me either. I can smell a bullshitter like I can smell a bag of O neg—even over the phone. It’s all part of the fucking vampire charm.”

“No lying. Swear it, Crypt Keeper. Ask away,” he ground out his assurance, clamping a free hand down on his thigh to attempt to still the shaking that had begun in his calves and wormed its way upward.

“You feelin’ a little like Chewie, Harry?”

Now a
Star Wars
reference he totally got. He forced himself to say the word from his clenched teeth as sweat soaked his furry brow. “Yes.” May the force be with him.

“You got some big, shiny teeth poking out of your head?”

Gripping the phone tighter in his hands, Harry replied—reluctantly, but reply he did. “Yes.”

“You thinkin’ about swallowin’ a herd of sheep whole?”

Well, not sheep per se—maybe some cattle . . . He rolled his head on his neck then moved it from side to side, noting a sharp crack. “I’m definitely hungry.” Sooo hungry.

“Does your face feel like it’s gonna split the fuck apart and explode into tiny pieces?”

That made him pause. His free hand instantly went to his fur-covered jaw and then he scowled with displeasure. “More cracking wise at my expense?”

Nina snorted. “It’s the only part of this fucked-up job that brings me a deep sense of satisfaction, Harry.”

“So all of these signs mean I’m a werewolf?” he asked, trying to keep the awkward high-pitched keen to his voice steady just as his eyes rolled to the back of his head and his pin-striped shirt split open with a harsh rip of material while buttons flew haphazardly, pinging against the steel table he hid under.

“I’m leanin’ toward a big, fat yes, Harry. Wow. Marty’s gonna blow a blond gasket over this shit. Me, Harry? I’m not so excited. We’ve done an accidental werewolf already. I’m bored with shifters who look like dogs, full moon festivals and buckets o’ Nair. I need something more, Harry. A new adventure, ya know?”

“Is boredom going to factor badly for me in your choosing to take this case?” Because he didn’t know how to spice this up enough in order to entice OOPS to help him.

That worrisome thought reeled through his brain as his body began to quake, shivering in ripples of violent, jerking motions. He fought to control it, pushing back with the heels of his feet to position himself against the wall and waited for the voice on the other end of the line to answer.

Nina’s next words brought a small measure of comfort. Really small. “If fucking only, Harry. Look, we need to get this freak show on the road, and if I don’t help you, Wanda’s gonna nag, nag, nag the living snot out of me and call me a heartless biotch. Not that I care, but I have sensitive ears. All her whining makes them hurt. Anyway, the show. So, because I’m a suspicious bitch, and you could totally be full of shite—which, BTW, will show you a side of me you’ll fucking regret you’ve seen when you’re floatin’ around in the afterlife, I need more details.”

He growled his discontent—low—feral. Oh, Jesus. “Like?” he spat, his back arching with a tight snap while his limbs reared upward.

“Like how the fuck did this happen?”

“I don’t know, Crypt Keeper. All signs point to the vitaminwater I drank. It was the last thing I did before
thissss
happened,” he gritted out, marveling that one’s head really could perform spinning
Exorcist
-like acts. He knew. Because right now, his eyeballs were looking directly at the wall his
back
was pressed to.

Oh, hell.

“Harry, vitaminwater?” Nina repeated with a dull tone. “What the fuck kind of lame shit is that? If you’re one of those conspiracy nuts that thinks the FDA’s spikin’ shit with their special juice so they can create a super race of killing machines, just remember, I can sniff you out. I’ll beat yer ass just ’cus I can. Got that?”

As his head did a total three-sixty on his neck, and he was once again looking at the far wall as opposed to the wall he was flush with, he fought a sissy scream of terror.

“No tinfoil hats here.
Ssswear
,” Harry choked out, clenching his free hand on the corner of the wall to steady his wildly thrashing legs. The moment passed, and for a brief second, his body was calm.

Stretching his arms outward to ease the tight tension of muscle and skin, he said, “But I do know, this is . . . er . . . what’s happening to me, is very real. If my head flopping and turning around on my neck like one of those bobbleheads is any indication.”

“Shut the fucking front door!” Nina yelped just as the thrum of vibration reentered his body with an intense force of heat.

Harry, at war with the clothing peeling from his body, frowned. “Huh?”

“Dude, your head spun around on your flippin’ neck? Truth?”

“Yes!” he all but roared as he lost the battle with his trousers and they split apart, falling away from his lower body, leaving small clumps of thread.

There was excitement in Nina’s response—he smelled the emotion as sure as he smelled someone’s AKC registered Rhodesian Ridgeback but two miles away. On a farm. Yes. It definitely lived on a farm.

“Jesus Christ and Linda Blair. No fucking way. Marty can’t do that shit. I’m all atwitter, Harry. It’s like Dracula’s birthday and a Stephanie Meyer’s hootenanny all at the same time.”

“To have piqued your interest leaves me humbled and awed, Crypt Keeper. So does this mean you’ll come help now?” Hell. He hoped so. If someone didn’t help him soon, there’d be no sticky-hair-remover-device in the universe big enough to clean up the pile of fur he was leaving in his wake.

“Only because it sounds like you got some new whacked ability Marty doesn’t, and it means I can poke the shit out of her with it. But that’s the only reason, Harry. Otherwise, I’d just call Wanda to come brush out your hairy ass and throw you a sirloin. So where are you, my brotha?”

When the crunch of bone began and his fingers sprouted long, black claws, things began to get fuzzy. Heh. Fuzzy. What an ironic play on words. “Like my location?”

Nina’s response was full of exasperation. “Duh, dude. Somebody has to come out and investigate this shit. But I’m gonna remind your ass one last time, so don’t say I didn’t warn you, if you’re fucking with me—even though my vampy senses lean toward not so much—I’ll kill you from a hundred paces. Like boom, baby.”

The screech of metal ripped through the large room when Harry fell forward on his knees, knocking into the heavy table and toppling it. His eyes scanned the room with a hazy red film covering them, gripping the phone to his ear like a lifeline.

Nina’s urgent tone jolted him from the wonder of his uncanny vision. “Dude! What the hell is going on? Give me your location!”

The last words he was able to mutter before his face did sort of split apart and he acquired a gen-u-ine muzzle were, “Pack! I’m at Pack Cosmetics!”

CHAPTER

2

“Hoo boy,” Mara Flaherty heard her sister-in-law, Marty, mutter just as she jumped off the elevator. She was skimming her phone and probably the urgent tweets she’d received from Nina, who, according to Marty’s text to Mara, was manning the OOPS phones.

Mara skidded to a halt, stopping just short of her sister-in-law, scanning the halls to be sure Astrid, one of her closest friends at Pack, hadn’t followed her. When Marty had texted there was trouble in the lab, she’d said Mara should come alone.

She huffed a breath, peering down the maze of halls leading to Pack Cosmetic’s labs. “What’s with all the hush-hush? I was just down here an hour ago, and everything was fine. What’s wrong?”

Marty’s smooth, beautiful features scrunched up in a scowl. She gave a quick glance over her shoulder. “Are you alone? Or did Astrid and the rest of your pocket-protecting brigade tag along?”

Mara rolled her eyes at Marty’s reference to the small group of women, assorted lab techs and IT whizzes, she spent much of her time with at Pack. “Everyone’s gone home to complete the final piece of the puzzle in the jigsaw we jokingly call world domination.” She held up a hand. “Swear it. Now what’s up?”

“We have trouble, sunshine.”

Mara’s stomach clenched. She hated trouble—especially at Pack. She was always sure it was her fault—even when it had nothing to do with her department. “No. Please tell me it’s not Doreen from production again? I told her, if she didn’t quit speeding up the conveyor belts just to mess with the new employees, I’d put her in the filing room.”

“Nope, it’s not Doreen this time.” Marty held up her phone for Mara to see, the clang of her silver bracelets slapping together making Mara smile. Her sister-in-law and all her flashy bling made Mara happy. She was always dressed brightly, her hair was always perfect, and her clothes were to die for. But most of all, Marty’s fun personality had changed so much about their pack’s dynamics and rigid rules that there was hardly anyone in it who didn’t love her—or eventually fall in love with her.

No matter how bad a mood you were in, you could count on Marty to mother you. She was milk and cookies, a sympathetic ear, a soft vanilla-scented shoulder to cry on. She was home to Mara after four years of marriage to her brother Keegan.

Marty shoved the phone in her face. “Read.”

Noting Nina’s use of Twitter to convey her messages with Marty, Mara frowned. “Why does she tweet you instead of text? Aren’t you worried other people will see?”

Marty’s smile was sly. “Silly. Us solving a paranormal crisis right in front of all eighty-four of our followers makes for good marketing.”

Mara nodded with an encouraging grin. “Wow. Eighty-four now? Last count was at thirty-six. Go, team OOPS.”

Marty shoved the phone back at her. “So read.”

Mara focused on Marty’s phone. Her eyes went wide when she read Nina’s tweets.

OOPS@MissClairol#222
“911 at Pack. Go to lab. See Hairy Harry. Rawrrr!”

MissClairol#222@OOPS
“WTF, Team Edward? Busy here. English, pls!”

OOPS@MissClairol#222 “
Situation in ur lab at Pack. Go downstairs. Meet u ASAP.”

MissClairol#222@OOPS “???”

OOPS@MissClairol#222 “
Harry Emmerson says he’s trapped in Pack lab. Called me on hotline w/crisis. Go!”

What did Harry have to do with an OOPS emergency? It didn’t matter. She couldn’t read any more of the tweets because of the subject matter.

Harry.

Mara bit the inside of her cheek as her eyes flew to the lab doors. Please, God. Not
the
Harry Emmerson.

Marty planted a hand on her hip and peered into the doors of the dark lab, her brow furrowed. “I checked with personnel on the way down, Mara. We do have a Harry Emmerson working at Pack. In the accounting department.”

Mara’s nod was stiff. Yep. They had a Harry Emmerson in accounting. Harry Ralph Emmerson, to be precise. Born on May 18, 1973. Thirty-eight, six feet one, probably about two hundred pounds of fit, yummy, goodness. Size eleven shoe, FYI.

Loved all things sci-fi, running, working out at the Pack gym while totally unaware he was making all the female employees fan themselves because of his geeky hotness, lover of numbers and order, with a brain like a human calculator.

Driver of a conservative, but still attractive Jetta Volkswagen—diesel, for anyone who cared to know, and no stranger to a tennis court. The object of more fantasies amongst the unattached women at Pack than he’d ever realize—or maybe even believe. Oh, and single, single, single.

Marty waved her hand in front of Mara’s eyes and snapped her fingers. “Do you know him?”

Know him . . . not in the biblical sense of her choice. No. As a valued, and one of the few human employees of Pack Cosmetics? Yes. “Sort of,” she offered, vague and noncommittal, her eyes straying to the tile floor. “I see him sometimes in the cafeteria.”
And in my dreams. And in my daydreams. And in all sorts of places I shouldn’t.

Marty blew out a breath. “Well, apparently, Harry Emmerson’s had a little bit of an accident, and it happened here on Pack’s turf. So c’mon, let’s go see what the problem is.” She hooked her arm through Mara’s and tugged her toward the lab doors.

Mara frowned, pulling at her ID tag. An accident? She still wasn’t making the connection to how Harry’s Pack accident correlated to an OOPS accident . . .

Again, it didn’t matter. She was never showing her face to Harry Emmerson again—not willingly anyway.

Mara clung to Marty’s faux-fur vest and shook her head. “Oh, no. Absolutely not. I am not going in there.” She nodded toward the darkened lab with the surrounding glass windows. Not with hot, geekified, slurpilicious, totally-oblivious-to-her-existence Harry Emmerson on the other side of that door.

Emphatic no here.

“Honey?” Marty soothed, staring into her sister-in-law’s eyes. “We have to help him. It’s our duty as his employers to help him. At least give me a hand until Nina and Wanda arrive. He’s trapped in there. Plus, if what he says is true, he’s suffered a huge trauma.”

Ah, but it probably wasn’t the kind of trauma her self-esteem had suffered because Harry didn’t even know she existed. As far as Mara was concerned, he deserved all the trauma he got. How the trauma had happened, right here at Pack in the lab she’d just exited an hour ago, left Mara a little worried.

Which made her pause.

No. It couldn’t be. She shrugged off her concern and took in Marty’s pleading blue eyes. “I’m sorry he’s suffered a trauma, but I’m no trauma specialist. You three are. I just work here at Pack.” With Harry. Scrumpdelicious Harry.

“Mara Flaherty?”

“Marty Flaherty?”

“If you don’t help me, I’ll take away your lab coat and your pocket protector.”

Mara waffled. Oh, noes. Not her lab coat. It was new and shiny. “That’s a cheap shot. You’re a mean taskmaster, Marty.”

Marty’s snort was sarcastic. “Nina’s my best friend. Nobody does cheap shots better ’n me, honey.” But Marty’s eyes held sympathetic warmth when she made an obvious note of the fear her sister-in-law was displaying.

She brushed a strand of Mara’s hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “Why don’t you want to help me, sweetie? I don’t get it. Whenever there’s a Pack crisis, you’re the first one to roll up her sleeves and help out. This isn’t like you at all. So tell me what’s going on.”

Here’s what’s going on, dear SIL. I’m a dirty, dirty whore and once, long ago, and far, far away, I attempted, awkwardly, foolishly, and miserably failed, mind you, to seduce Harry Emmerson.
Totally against my better judgment, and worse, mostly against Pack rules
.

Since that night, she’d hidden behind her group of friends at lunch whenever possible, avoided and sometimes even run from Harry, due to her embarrassment.

Oh, God. She couldn’t say that to Marty. Never, as long as she lived, would she ever confess to what happened that night at the Pack Christmas party.

So she lied. Like all washed-up temptresses did. “Um, I’m afraid? So, so afraid.” Mara cocked her head in the direction of the sound of something smashing. “Whatever’s going on in there sounds pretty bad. Maybe he’s hurt and all gushy with blood. Ick.” She made a big show of wrinkling her nose. “I hate blood.”

Marty ran her tongue over her lips with a frown, her blond hair perfect and smooth under the lights of the hallway leading to the lab. “Afraid of blood. You? A lab tech and the woman who threatened to rip off her brother’s head and shit down his windpipe?”

Oh, stop. She’d just been joking. All her brothers ever did was razz her about her pathetic lack of dates, and during family dinner date night, mostly because the accusation was true, she’d flipped and made one little threat while she had Sloan in a choke hold. Now they all called her the Mara-nator. Ha. Ha.

“I was just joking. Sloan and Keegan are always harping on me about mating and having babies. They got the better of me, that’s all. It was just once . . .”

A low, definitely feral growl from behind the lab’s doors brought both women to silence.

But not for long. Not with Marty. “You did hear that, didn’t you?”

A thread of fear and a moment of startling realization accosted Mara all at once. Nuh-uh . . .

But wait. Here was a thought. If Harry were hurt, why wouldn’t he call 911? How the heck had he gotten hold of the OOPS hotline? Unless . . . Oh. The connection was becoming clearer.

Can ya hear it now, Mara?
She shook her head at the niggling voice. No way. She gulped, shuffling in her knee-high boots. It couldn’t be. “Did Nina say what this nine-one-one is about?”

“Somehow, according to the tweets Nina’s been sending me, this Harry Emmerson ended up inside the lab, and he claims he’s been turned into a werewolf. He took the test on the OOPS website and everything. Now, I don’t know about you, but my ears say he sure sounds like a werewolf. And if you let your nose do the walking, this Harry smells like one. Which means he needs help.”

Oh, bullshit. He was no more werewolf than she was vixen
.
“But Nina said she’d be here ASAP to help. She’s a vampire. She runs fast. Also, might I point out, Keegan already pitches a hissy every time you and your cohorts get involved in an OOPS case. Imagine the hell I’d get if I did, too . . .” Which was ridiculous. Mara, as well as anyone knew, if Marty wanted to do it, her brother wouldn’t dream of stopping her.

Sure, he groused. Sometimes he even complained out loud, but he loved his wife’s commitment to saving others who’d gone through what she’d gone through, whether he liked to admit it or not.

“And you always, always listen to your brother,” Marty jabbed with sarcasm and rolled her big, blue eyes. “Look, if you don’t want to help, I’ll go in alone. But sometimes, in situations like these, things get a little wonky. I only have so many limbs to use to my advantage. He might get loose.”

A high keening wail, one that sent shivers up Mara’s spine, made her grab Marty’s arm. “Wait!” The moment she thwarted her sister-in-law was the moment that first ludicrous suspicion moments ago turned into a terrifying thought.

Marty shrugged her off. “I can’t wait, Mara. He needs help. Jesus, it sounds like he’s giving birth in there. Now let go!”

She had no doubt Marty could handle Harry. None at all. But there was a little something else troubling her . . . She tightened her grip on Marty’s arm. “No!” Mara licked her lips in nervousness. “First I need to know something.”

Marty’s mouth pinched when Harry crashed against the door. “Hurry it up—he’s going to take the door out!”

“How did this accident allegedly happen?”

“Nina said something about vitaminwater. I don’t know the rest, and I don’t have time to scroll through the tweets. We have to help poor Harry!”

Mara’s gut clenched tight. Vitaminwater? Right. Harry liked vitaminwater. He drank one with his bologna and mustard sandwich on whole wheat every day at lunch and two when he worked out. He liked the kiwi-strawberry best.

But there was something Harry probably wasn’t going to like: the fact that the alleged vitaminwater he’d mistakenly sipped from wasn’t vitaminwater at all.

Because she’d grown weary of searching for her Prince Charming, Mad Scientist Mara had made a concoction for making werewolf babies sans a male werewolf—easily disguised in a bottle of vitaminwater.

If she couldn’t pull off something as simple as “Operation Seduction,” not just with Harry but with any man she found interesting and attractive, she surely couldn’t be trusted to obtain something like a sample for artificial insemination. Not to mention the guilt she’d harbor if she used a man to create a child he didn’t know about just to ease her burning desire to have children.

And in one crazy, ridiculously stupid, insane moment, single, childless Mara Flaherty had decided she didn’t need a husband or pack mate to have a family. She’d make one of her own. Lots of single women did it. But lots—nay,
most
—single women weren’t werewolves.

It wasn’t like there was a sperm bank for paranormals. She wanted a baby that was full werewolf. She didn’t know how to raise a half human, and there weren’t any half-human men beating down her door anyway. No one was beating down her door. Not even a Girl Scout selling Thin Mints.