The Accidental Werewolf 2: Something About Harry (Accidentally Paranormal Novel) (8 page)

Without hesitation, Mimi dropped to the floor beside her, the crinkle of her footie pajamas music to Mara’s ears. She nodded her curly head at Nina. “It was my mom’s. Who are you?”

“Jesus,” Harry muttered in obvious disgust, turning and stalking his way back toward the kitchen.

Mara trotted behind him to keep up, zipping around his large body when they hit the living room, still in semi-disarray. She stumbled over a pair of sneakers, righting herself just in time to almost crash into Barbie’s Dreamhouse.

Marty’s golden head popped through the front door at just that moment, Wanda’s just behind it. Her eyes found Mara’s. “Is it safe? Or does Harry still want us all to die slow, torturous deaths?”

Harry jammed his clenched fists into his shorts. “What is it with you women? I said we’re fine. I’m fine. Why won’t you just go away and leave me alone?”

Marty and Wanda slid inside, shutting the door behind them. “We’re women. It’s what we do. Henpeck. Look, Harry, you and I, we need to have a talk. It’s obvious you’re struggling.” To prove it, Marty tugged on a random patch of hair sprouting from his chin. “I understand. I can help.”

“Damn,” he muttered under his breath. “I just shaved when I got home. Will this never stop?”

Marty gave him a look of complete understanding, her warm, blue eyes in sync with his. “I know exactly where you’re coming from. I get it. I experienced several of the problems you’re having and then some. Nobody gets it better than me. So if you’ll just lend me your ear—”

Harry gave another of his low hums, a clear warning signal.

“Or I could sit on you and make you give her your ear,” Wanda interrupted, dropping her purse on the kitchen counter with a huff. “I know what you’re thinking, too. And no, I can’t read minds like Nina, but it’s what all of our male clientele think. You’re thinking, ‘If I have to, I can take her’.” Wanda winked and chuckled, cracking her knuckles. “But you’d be a fool at this stage of the game to think that. I look innocent enough, but I could take on a team of Navy Seals without so much as disturbing a hair on my head.” Strolling up to him, Wanda did something she rarely, if ever, did. She flashed her fangs at him, her manner especially threatening.

Harry’s eyes bulged, but his lips remained firmly clamped in the “off” position.

With a long finger, Wanda dabbed at the side of her lip before saying, “I’m half vampire, half werewolf, Harry. Twice the fun of the average paranormal. You’d know that if you hadn’t left Pack in such a silly huff. Stubborn is not the card to play with me, my friend. Now, either hear us out, or I’ll have to muss my dress in order to make you—which, by the way, is linen and wrinkles easily. I don’t like to be mussed, Harry. Don’t make me muss. Also, despite the fact that I have to drink it to survive, not a fan of blood. You don’t want me to make you bloody, Harry, do you? Not after you’ve healed so nicely since your spectacular crash into the lab’s wall. Ball’s in your court, Harry. Shoot to score.”

Harry looked down with more astonishment at his arms and hands, scratched and bruised but an hour ago, now almost completely healed. “Jesus,” he murmured.

Marty and Wanda planted their hands on their hips and waited, almost daring Harry to defy their offer to help. The tension in the room grew thick and cloying, making Mara’s heart pound. She hated tension and discord. She hated that she’d done this to Harry and created so much of it.

Harry was at it again—assessing, evaluating—until the silence choked Mara. “Why don’t I make coffee or something? Do you like coffee, Harry?” she blurted. Of course he liked coffee, and the occasional cinnamon bun to go along with it.
You know that, Mara. You know everything there is to know about Harry.

Shoving the Barbie Dreamhouse accessories aside with her foot, Mara began to head for the kitchen when Harry said, “So are you threatening me again? I thought the Crypt Keeper was in charge of threats.”

Wanda’s nostrils flared as she peeled off her black driving gloves. “Not always. Sometimes I do the threatening. Nina’s mostly the muscle. But when I take the torch—you’d better believe it’s gone too far, and I’m fed up. Now, you have children to care for Harry. Children who, according to Nina’s texts, are out of control and in need of some serious guidance. How do you expect to handle not only these poor, innocent babies who’ve lost their parents, but a full-on shift? Because if the scene at the lab tonight was indicative of how you plan to appropriately deal with this, you’ve got trouble, big boy. You need someone to help you handle the change. So, yes. I’m threatening you. Because there are children involved, and there will be no scarred children as long as I’m here to prevent it. So again, I say ball’s in your court, Harry.
Shoot to score
.”

Please score, Harry.

Mara had heard all about how hard it was to convince the OOPS clients of their new life-altering changes in a million stories shared over family meals and at gatherings. She’d also heard about the danger the women had been in with these cases.

Thankfully, the only danger involved here involved helping Harry adjust. She could do that. She
would
do that. It wouldn’t be easy. Her crush on him was going to make it almost impossible, but then again, he was pretty cranky. Maybe he’d turn her off so much with his terse words and angry eyes she’d wash her hands of a year’s worth of fantasies.

Maybe.

“Then I guess I have no choice, do I?” Harry baited, his words tight.

Mara gulped in some air, not realizing she’d been holding her breath. “Then it’s settled. I’ll make coffee and Marty can tell you what happened to her. Okay?” She followed up her statement with a forced smile, slipping between tension-filled bodies and menacing eyes to get to the kitchen.

Her hands shook when she began to open cabinets as Marty’s voice, beginning the tale of how she and Mara’s brother Keegan had met, swirled in her ears.

They often laughed about Marty and Keegan’s love story. How ironic it was. How uncanny the two met the way they had. Mara could listen to it over and over. It made her sigh with dreamy happiness.

But when she flipped the tap on to fill the coffeepot, Harry wasn’t laughing. He was sitting in his recliner, arms crossed at his chest, stiff and unyielding.

Clearly, Marty’s quasi-charming story about some werewolf love wasn’t going to penetrate Harry’s wall of anger—not right now, anyway.

But she’d find a way to scale it.

If it killed her.

CHAPTER

5

Harry slipped out of his bathroom window at approximately two thirty in the morning, leaving the women of OOPS and Mara sound asleep on various pieces of furniture in his house, with Nina tucked next to Mimi’s side after a nightmare.

The frozen night air clawed at his face, but it didn’t sting the way it usually did. In fact, it felt refreshing to his overheated skin, soothing his bursts of unwarranted anger.

He made his way down his short driveway, rubbing his hands together, and flexing his fingers before he put his shoulder to the bumper of his Volkswagen and gave it a shove, pushing it down the driveway until it was on the road. Thankfully, the women had parked their big SUVs along the curb.

Before he nudged the bumper, he sucked in more of the cold air—still unsure. In all the werewolf talk Marty and the women had spouted, somewhere along the way he’d heard he now had superstrength, something he’d mentally planned to use to his advantage in order to keep from starting his car and waking the women, all of whom possessed super hearing.

Or something like that.

They’d offered to stay the night in case his shift happened against his will, and Fletcher and Mimi needed someone to look out for them. He wasn’t thrilled about these strange women having contact with his niece and nephew.

Yet innately, he sensed they meant no harm. How or why he was suddenly a good judge of character had to be chalked up to more of the fantastical—because he’d sucked ass at it for most of his life.

He’d been screwed by the character gauge he lacked more often than not. The one that set off alarms in your gut or imaginary warning bells in your ears. Donna used to tell him all the time, not only did he miss most social cues and lack a universal sense of humor, but he sucked when judging a person’s character.

At the time, he’d been convinced Donna just didn’t understand that “Beam me up, Scotty” or any of his sci-fi humor could be used in almost all situations and still be funny. Of course, that’s what Donna had said to him when he’d showed up at the bank to find out his ex-girlfriend, Brigitte, had drained his bank account and left him with a buck eighteen in his checking account.

An odd number to most, but to Harry—it was a message from Brigitte. She’d left him with just enough money to buy a cup of coffee in the cafeteria at Pack because he’d once said he’d die if he couldn’t have their coffee, and she’d joked she’d be sure, if she ever raped their mutual account, she wouldn’t let him die coffee-less.

“Okay, so point, Donna,” he muttered up at the clear, cold sky. “I lose all sense of reason when it comes to a woman I like. That’s why I’ve been sticking to my numbers and avoiding temptation. But what the hell am I supposed to do when a passel of women are the very persons I’m supposed to try to logically figure out?”

But the confidence he felt about the women and their genuine concern for his sister’s kids rang true. It was different this time. It wasn’t him pulling the covers over his head to hide from an inevitable clue Donna’d found—or he’d found and pretended it meant nothing when, in the scheme of things, it meant everything.

He didn’t feel a shred of doubt the women from OOPS wanted to help him with the kids.

The kids . . .

They were killing him in a slow agonizing slew of defiant acts and buckets of tears. No matter what he did, he was the enemy. He missed the hell out of the days when he’d been goofy Uncle Harry, but the way they’d responded to Nina and Mara had astonished him. They were no longer the sullen, pouty, disobedient children of the past few months. Suddenly, with Nina of all the unlikely suspects, everything was colorful rainbows and cotton candy giggles.

Mimi had crawled into her bed and cuddled with Nina like she was her new best friend until she’d fallen fast asleep, and Nina dropped a light kiss on the top of her curly head before tucking Coconut in and turning off the light. Nina was the Beast-Whisperer. If that wasn’t irony, what was?

It was only then that she’d returned to the snarling brute of a female he’d met via the phone, when she’d told him if he didn’t get his shit together and forget about finding a way to reverse this, she’d eat his kidneys like pâté.

He’d have been jealous of the kids’ reactions to Nina, if not for the notion that for the first time in such a long time, Fletcher and Mimi seemed to have found peace. Their laughter was open and free with her. Nina brought comfort and security to them in just a matter of seconds. Something he’d failed miserably at from the word go.

That hurt like hell. Yes, he blew at the little things like cutting their sandwiches into fun shapes and making smiley faces on pancakes with chocolate chips that melted faster than ice cream in July, leaving angry globs of brown in the batter.

Yes. He also blew at braiding Mimi’s hair, making sure Fletcher had his science binder on Thursdays, and remembering that Saturday night was always pizza night.

He was a no-nonsense, all-business kind of guy. That they were in school on time, even if they were a little rumpled and minus a binder, didn’t seem to count as love to them.

And he didn’t know how to show them, prove to them, that no matter what, Uncle Harry would take care of them, protect them—love them—at all costs.

Then there was Mara. A woman he’d found so incredibly attractive since he’d begun working at Pack, and not just because she was petite and rounded, but because she was as smart, if not smarter than him. So smart, she’d made a baby serum. Damn, that needed to be admired, but it would have to happen at another time when he wasn’t so appalled.

He’d kept his distance all this time for a reason—he wanted no repeats of Brigitte. Since her, he’d promised himself he’d focus on work and avoid any sort of female temptation until he at least had a savings account again.

Then Donna and her husband Caleb were killed and the kids had needed him. He didn’t have time for anything else other than focusing on their best interests.

But every chance he had, he’d watched Mara from afar—at lunch, when she dropped off her budget for the lab in his department—while she was strolling on her break around Pack’s manicured lawns with her posse of equally smart friends.

He watched, and he drooled, and he mourned what a jackass he was for realizing way too late she’d been showing interest in him at Pack’s Christmas party last year—or at least that’s what Dwyer from his department said—confirmed tonight by Nina.

And now, she’d turned him into a motherfucking werewolf. Maybe that had been the plan at the Christmas party last year? To seduce him and turn him into one of them? Maybe that was the goal within the corporation? To turn everyone into one of them? They claimed not true. But all maniacal plotters claimed the plan didn’t exist, didn’t they?

But then to what end? If Pack had been around for forty years—if the intent was to mass turn, why hadn’t they turned everyone into werewolves by now? Why wasn’t everyone on the planet a paranormal species of some kind?

He shook his head. His vivid imagination and his love of a good sci-fi story were getting the best of his powers of deduction. He didn’t sense the goal was world domination—or any domination. No matter how hard he tried to dislike the women of OOPS, he just couldn’t make it mesh with his gut feelings about them.

And now they were babysitting.

Mara, in particular, had been eager to offer her babysitting services while he “adjusted.” Of course, that was guilt talking—not attraction. She was the one who’d done this to him—she should feel guilty. And afraid.

If he’d heard correctly, some group of people, whose name had escaped him as he’d been thrust into consciousness, weren’t going to love the idea that Mara had turned an innocent into a werewolf.

But the idea that she’d been making a formula to impregnate herself left him infuriated and in awe of how brilliant she really was. Almost all of this left him in awe.

Werewolf.

Harry snorted, the cold air blowing from his mouth making puffy clouds. He wouldn’t deny what had happened to him back at Pack. There was no denying the excruciating physical changes his body had gone through back there. His bones had shifted. His flesh had separated, stretched, torn, and it hadn’t killed him. He’d molted into a werewolf.

Not a wolfman who walked on two legs and had an overabundance of hair, but an animal, one that walked on four legs and couldn’t speak a word but could understand everything going on around him.

He didn’t understand it. He almost didn’t want to—it was freakishly sci-fi. He’d even paused to wonder if his old high school friend and fellow geek, Anson Swarkowski, would be jealous. Because this was the stuff their high school fantasies were made of.

But the curious, academic side of him begged for an answer. How did someone’s entire physiological makeup simply change with one bite, or in his case, one sip? And if it could change one way, why couldn’t it change back?

If in fact this was all magical and mystical like Nina had declared, why couldn’t he find someone who possessed the magic to reverse it? If one existed, why couldn’t the other?

This is what had thrust him out into the frigid night and pushed him to find a solution.

He didn’t want to be a werewolf. Maybe when he’d been twelve, this nightmare of a graphic novel would have been super cool. Okay, maybe even when he’d been sixteen and sneaking off to Trekkie conventions, it still would have been cool.

But not now. Not when he had two children he was responsible for raising. How the hell was he going to hide something like this from them? Hang on, kids. Uncle Harry has to shift into the scariest thing you’ve ever seen because the full moon’s calling?

Add in the fact that he wanted to tear everyone’s throat out with his teeth and it didn’t make for a healthy role model.

And then there were the tufts of hair on his face that he’d shaved no less than three times during the course of the evening.

Sure. Nina and Marty said that would pass. His emotions would level out and he’d be right as fucking rain, in Nina’s words. He’d also be part of a pack and have an alpha leader, Marty’s husband Keegan, as per her welcome to the group conversation. But how did they know for sure his rampant desire to gnaw his way through Nina’s throat would pass? They had one example of a human turned werewolf.

Marty. While he’d listened to the outlandish tale of her “accident” he couldn’t help but wonder whether there was any hard-core, recorded proof to back up the fact that everything would be fucking right as rain. That he wouldn’t experience any backlash just because Marty hadn’t. What if something in him was irreparably damaged now—and just as Marty was the first case of eventual adjustment, maybe he’d be the first case of not so great adjustment?

What if.

No. He wanted this problem solved and he wanted it solved now.

Thanking whoever was in charge that he’d forgotten to lock his car when he got home tonight, he popped the door open and gave it another push until he’d rolled all the way down the small hill of his subdivision and hopped in.

Turning the key in the ignition, he clicked his phone on and looked at the ad on Craigslist again, fighting the impulse to label it ridiculous with his haughty science.

But, hello, he was a werewolf. That didn’t get much more ridiculous.

Who was he to say that this witch doctor that advertised on Craigslist, touting his ability to reverse all curses, was any less real or useful than the ladies of OOPS? Who knew the ladies of OOPS would really have been useful until they actually were?

Okay, so the witch doctor didn’t have a flashy website with glitter and a dozen testimonials like the women, but he’d been the only person to answer his email after a dozen or so inquiries to other alleged witch doctors and their ilk.

And he was open twenty-four-seven.

If he had any hope of getting away from those women who were convinced he couldn’t change this, now was the time.

As he hit the highway, heading toward the rural area where Guido the Witch Doctor was located, he had one thought.

Holy shit. I’m a werewolf.

Bet Anson Swarkowski wishes he were me.

* * *

“
O
H,
dude. You’ve done it now.” Nina pinned the man in the colorful headdress, whom Mara assumed was Guido, up against a wall with one hand, holding him by his throat to secure him there. His petrified face, thin and long, glowed white in the light of his establishment’s sign hanging just outside his shack.

Their arrival at Guido’s House of Witch Doctoring, after a long, torturous journey through the most rural areas of Buffalo, with Nina racing at breakneck speed to get to Harry before he did something stupid, had left Mara rattled. She’d finally fallen asleep, wedged into a corner of Harry’s very uncomfortable couch, only to be awakened an hour later to Nina’s colorful brand of swearing at Harry’s disappearance.

After skimming the history of his computer’s browser, in which her favorite genius had forgotten to clear his cache, they’d found a vast array of purported witch doctors’ websites and become privy to yet more information.