The Accidental Werewolf 2: Something About Harry (Accidentally Paranormal Novel) (4 page)

Her as-yet-unfulfilled desire to be a mother had sent her to the lab after Pack hours and sometimes long into the night to create something that would make it possible for her dreams to come true. So she made her own baby formula. At that point, she wasn’t even sure it was going to work, but the ingredients of said baby-maker wouldn’t harm her, either.

Just an hour ago, in the midst of preparing to transfer it from a beaker to a secure vial, Mara had realized she couldn’t find any vials. A new batch of vials was four floors up. So she’d sterilized the empty vitaminwater bottle and dumped the serum into it, in order to keep it from being compromised for an extended period of time, until she could hunt down some vials.

Because just like Harry, she liked vitaminwater, too.

But then an emergency upstairs had arisen, and she’d been called away from the lab—a lab that no one was supposed to be in until tomorrow morning, long after she was gone and the evidence of her baby mama formula had been cleared.

Okay, so she’d forgotten the bottle. A bottle she’d left on the lab table just an hour ago.

A bottle Harry must have mistaken for his own.

Wow. Harry probably wouldn’t like that at all.

CHAPTER

3

Wanda and Nina skidded down Pack’s hall past a still stunned Mara, bursting through the doors of the lab just as Harry was about to go for Marty’s throat.

Nina went for him first, fangs flashing, her snarl ringing out through the coldly white room.

“No!” Mara screamed, her heart pressing against her ribs, a high-pitched panic to her shrill cry. “Don’t hurt him, Nina!”

Nina stopped short with a skid of her work boots seconds before Harry flew over her head in an arc of fur and slobbering drool, slamming into the far wall behind her. His groan matched his slide down the dented drywall, where he fell at Wanda’s booted feet, clearly unconscious.

“Oh, Harry!” Mara yelped from just outside the door, then bit her lip to hide her overly concerned reaction.

All eyes landed on Mara, narrow and suspicious.

Which, she noted, was a little uncomfortable.

Marty and Wanda were the first to react, scurrying to the lab’s closet to find extra lab coats to cover Harry’s naked form, chatting like girlfriends might if they’d just arrived at the prom instead of an accidental turning.

Nina sidled up to her, toeing Harry along the way with a light nudge in order to check his status. She clapped Mara on the shoulder. Her eerily pale, yet stunningly beautiful face loomed down at her. “How’s it going?”

Mara looked down at her white tennis shoes, pinching off a rush of tears. “Not quite the way I’d hoped my Monday night would turn out. But
c’est la vie
, right?”

Nina nodded, her cascading dark hair tucked into her signature hoodie, rippled over her shoulders. “Yeah,
c’est
whatever. Me neither, kidlet. I should fucking be at home watching
Revenge
and hanging out with Charlie.”

If she could just avoid Nina’s prying eyes and her all-seeing, emotion-reading mind-meld, maybe she’d go home and watch
Revenge
, too. Whatever that was. “How is Charlie?” Charlie, Nina’s infant gifted to her by a genie, was one of the myriad reasons Mara wanted a baby. Charlie, and Marty and Keegan’s daughter, her niece Hollis.

“She’s good. Real good.”

“Crawling yet?”

Nina smiled with such serene beauty, if Mara didn’t know her, she’d swear she was someone else. “Nah. Seems the half of her that’s a vampire is beating down the genie half of her. She’s growing faster than most vampires do, or so Clay tells me, but it’s slow going.”

Mara nodded her understanding of the vampire aging process. Clay, mated to Casey, one of Nina’s best friends and Wanda’s sister, was the only other vampire in the world who had unwillingly turned offspring—that they knew of, anyway.

Naomi, Clay and Casey’s daughter, had been turned as a young child way back in the days of Vikings, so they had some iffy knowledge on the subject of vampiric aging. Nina’s baby, Charlie, was one of the first half-vampire infants physically born to a vampire.

Mara rocked back on her heels, fiddling with the pencil that held her thick hair up on top of her head. “So teething in perpetuity, huh?”

Nina made a face. “Teething in what?”

“It means eternity.” Harry popped his darkly delicious head upward and groaned from the floor, just completing his return to human form.

Nina rolled her coal black eyes. “Look. It’s your soul mate, Mara. He likes words, too. And he fucking likes ’em big.”

Yet another thing they had in common. How uncanny. Oh, Astrid and the girls would just love this.

Harry groaned once more before passing out in a lump of lovely naked limbs and drywall dust.

“So, girlie,” Nina drawled, unzipping her hoodie to reveal a navy blue T-shirt that read
WHEN I WANT YOU TO SPEAK, I’LL RIP OFF THE DUCT TAPE
. “Talk to me. And keep that shit real. Got it?”

Must. Avoid. Nina’s. Eyes. Mara looked down at the white floor, following the thready gray pattern woven into it. “Yep, real. My shit’s always real.”

“Good. Then why don’t you tell me what the frig all that screaming was about?”

“Screaming?”

One of her almond-shaped eyes scrunched up as she sucked in her cheeks. This was Irritated Nina. Only mildly so, if Mara was judging correctly. Meaning she was still safe. The Nina you didn’t want to see was Irate Nina. According to numerous reports, Irate Nina was a sight you couldn’t unsee.

She pushed the black hoodie off her head with long fingers. “Remember the word
real
? Sure you do, kiddo. It’s the one I told you to keep this situation in. I know it ain’t a big word like perpetuity, but words aren’t my thing. Now fists? That’s my thing.” She cracked her knuckles and formed a fist to show Mara just how much her thing they were.

Mara winced, taking a step back. She might have the strength of ten humans, but she preferred talking things through rather than resolving them physically. “I just didn’t want you to hurt him. From what Marty’s told me, it’s a delicate time in his change from human to werewolf. He didn’t mean to lunge at Marty, I’m sure. He doesn’t know what he’s doing right now. You do. You know, with your
real
fists.”

Nina smacked her lips in understanding. “So you’re hot for this dude.”

“So unbelievably hot.”

“And he knows?”

“No. And if you tell him . . .” She’d what?

“
You’ll what
?”

“Use really big words when I squeak my protests shortly before dying of humiliation?”

Nina draped an arm around Mara’s shoulders, pulling her close. Mara let her head rest just above the vampire’s armpit. “We’re doing a girlfriend thing here, aren’t we, Short-Shot? You know how I feel about that shit. It’s enough with Wanda and Marty and their bullshit girl-talk. I’m not sure I want to add another chick to my ‘don’t rat a bitch out’ list.”

“Please
?”

“Do you know what happened to Harry, and does it have anything to do with you?” Nina pressed.

Oh, God. “Like did I, with malice, turn him into a werewolf?”
Nice subterfuge, Mara.

Nina’s eyebrow rose as did her level of suspicion, Mara was sure. “Patience. I got like twelve point two seconds left of it. Like with
anything.
Do you know how he was turned, or did you have something to do with him turning into a fucking werewolf?”

“What would make you ask me that? Me. Quiet, geeky lab rat?”

“Because you’re a quiet, geeky lab rat.”

Mara did her best imitation of a scoff. “That you would even consider such a thing.”

“Makes me?”

“Mean and scary?”

“And in-fucking-tuitive?”

She slapped her hands on her thighs in exasperation. “Oh, my God, Nina! What is it with you lately? It’s like you’re everywhere these days. Quit rooting around in my conscience or whatever you do. Just knock it off. It’s spooky.”

“It’s called fine-tuning my vampire superpowers. It helps. Like now, when I can tell some shit’s gone down that involves you and your wicken-schtick. I just don’t know how the two add up—yet.”

“My
wicken-schtick
? That’s not even a word, Nina.”

Nina twisted a loose strand of Mara’s hair around her forefinger and tugged her head downward, forcing Mara’s eyes upward to meet hers. “It’s your lady-garden, and you’re stalling.”

Mara was astounded at just how fine-tuned Nina’s emotion readings had become. She lifted her chin, tightening the hold Nina had on her hair, making her eyes wide and her expression vulnerable. She was hoping for the “Thumper” look. “You can read my wicken-schtick? I feel violated.”

“You wanna feel beat the fuck up?”

“No. But thank you.”

She released her hold on Mara, setting her upright. “I can sense that your lady parts are involved in this, in that Harry makes your libido turn to mush. Your blood was pumping a mile o’ fucking minute, and your heart might’a pushed its way outta your chest given another couple of seconds. And that scream? That whiny shit wasn’t from a chick who’s detached and hardly knows the guy. It was one of those, ‘please don’t mess up his pretty hair or pop his perfect nose off his face.’”

“You think his nose is perfect?” Mara rather thought it was just a little hooked to the right, which only made her want him more.

“I think something really bad’s gonna happen to you.”

“I don’t like bad things.”

Nina leered at her, flashing her fangs. “I do.”

“What a relief. Somebody has to like them. We couldn’t have the bad things left unloved. It would leave an imbalance of far too much good.”

Nina planted her hands on Mara’s shoulders, clamping them with warning fingers. “Quit dickin’ around.”

Oh, there was going to be hell to pay now. No one in her pack was ever going to let her forget this once word got around. In fact, she could be prosecuted by the council. If only her excitement hadn’t overruled filling her supply bin.

Mara put her cheek to Nina’s cool hand and closed her eyes. “We’re friends, right? We have nothing in common, that’s true, but I’d like to think that because I’m related to your best friend, you’d take a hit for me—back me up, so to speak.” Caressing Nina’s cool skin with her very hot cheek, she smiled up at her while she toyed with the strings to Nina’s hoodie, tying them in a neat bow, giving the strings a pat.

“Why are you throwin’ shade, Mara? Just say it, for the love of.”

How do you just say ‘I made a werewolf baby potion because no one else seems to want to have babies with me but myself’?
How?

“One last chance. I’ll ask again. This happened how, Mara?” Nina prodded, picking Mara’s cheek off her hand to jam her hands into the front pocket of her hoodie.

Wanda and Marty’s heads popped up in simultaneous acts of curiosity.

Marty sent a question to Nina and Mara with nothing but her eyes. They all knew each other that well after five years of friendship.

Mara pulled out the pencil holding her hair up and brought it directly to her mouth to have something to nervous-chew. “You’ll never believe it.”

“Mara Flaherty, did you just use those words in front of us?
Us
?” Wanda squealed. She tucked the lab coat under Harry’s square jaw and gave his shoulder a pat before climbing over the debris left from the debacle of his first werewolf shift.

Marty followed, her silver bracelets clinking together in jarring fashion, her boots clacking against the toppled steel lab chairs. She gazed at Nina expectantly. “Up to speed, please.”

Nina tilted her head in Mara’s direction. “Talk to werewolf junior here.”

Three beautiful women, on a sliding scale of ghetto/military chic to Audrey Hepburn classic, waited.

She took a shuddering breath before she began. “So before any of you say anything, before you judge, before I rationalize, let me just give you the basics. I wanted to have a baby. No one seems to want to mate with me. That hurts. It hurts when a single pack member isn’t interested in you—even after you’ve watched your sister-in-law turn on the charm and woo everyone from here to Albany just because she smiled, then try to do the same thing, and experience epic failure. And yes, Marty, I’m looking at you.”

Marty’s brow furrowed, but her eyes held a flash of hurt. “So what happened to Harry is my fault?”

Her stomach churned. No. She loved Marty—even if she wanted to be a little more like her, and the way she’d gone about that was to spew her envy in an unfavorable fashion. “No. I love you. I’m just telling you what led me to this place. It isn’t just you, it’s everyone like you. Women who flirt with ease.”

Marty pursed her lips. “I’m a married woman. I absolutely no longer flirt.”

Mara shook her finger. “You always respect your boundaries, and I know you love Keegan. What I mean is you have a charisma, a way of sucking people into your vortex without even trying. You do it all the time. With everyone. Not just men, but women, children. You could run a cult. Women like you should bottle that kind of charm for women like me.”

“I’m not sure if I feel complimented or insulted, Mara.”

Mara sighed. Saying this out loud for the first time just didn’t sound like it had in her head. “It’s a compliment. A huge one. Here’s what I mean. I’m dreadful at playing the vixen. I couldn’t seduce a fifth-grader out of some Chiclets. I’m just not sexy enough. I don’t have that ‘it’ factor. I don’t have any factors. I’m also not getting any younger.”

“What does this have to do with what happened to Harry?” Wanda asked, her face riddled with her confusion.

Mara’s voice grew husky, her eyes straying back to the floor. “Just listen. Anyway, after discovering I was probably always going to be single, I watched a lot of TV about single women, lesbian couples, and so on. People just like me who wanted children, but didn’t necessarily have a partner or a vagina to achieve it. Documentary style, of course. And I decided I didn’t need a baby daddy, but it’s not like they have paranormal sperm banks just waiting to offer up good DNA. I knew it would be hard enough to have a baby alone, because the pack frowns on that without mates, and you all know they encourage us to keep the lines of the breed strong.”

Wanda cocked her head at Mara. “They do have your average, everyday sperm banks, Mara. Did you skip that documentary on Netflix?”