Pack of Freaks: Beasts Among Us - Book 2 Read online

  “You’re so silly,” I commented, as I squirted down his light hair with a water bottle.

  “No, you’re silly,” he giggled.

  “Are you sure about that?” I pulled my face into a serious mask.

  He studied me in the mirror, then nodded. “You’re silly.”

  “You caught me. Hold nice and still, and close your eyes.” I set to work straightening out his bangs.

  “How’s that look?” I turned him to face his mother.

  “Perfect,” she answered with a smile of her own.

  I turned him back to the mirror. “What do you think?”

  “Can it be spiky?” he asked, patting at the sides as he studied his reflection.

  “Absolutely, as long as it’s all right with your mom. Why don’t you ask her?” I turned him back to his mother.

  “Can I have spikes?” He gave her the cute face all kids make when they want something.

  She chuckled and nodded her head. “Sure.”

  “Do you want the whole thing spiked, or just the front?” I asked.

  “The whole thing. And I want it to be blue.”

  “I don’t have any blue, are normal colored spikes okay?”

  He pouted his lip out for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “I guess.”

  I popped open a tube of clear gel and squeezed a dime-sized dollop onto my palm and rubbed my hands together to spread it out. Running both hands through his hair made it stand up in all directions.

  “There, how’s that?” I gave him a moment to study it in the mirror.

  He gave me both thumbs up. “I like it!”

  “Good, let me get some of that hair off you before I set you loose.” I dumped a small amount of baby powder on a towel, wiping down his neck and ears, to keep the hair from sticking, then blew off the excess with my blow-dryer, and lowered the chair.

  As soon as he was loose, he ran over to his mother. “I got spikes!” He hopped on one foot with the rest of his limbs spreading out like a dancing starfish.

  “I can see that. Let’s go pay Gretchen, and then we can go shopping.”

  “I don’t want to.” He scowled.

  “Too bad,” his mother replied, giving him a loud kiss on the cheek.

  I swept up my hair and met them up front, waving goodbye as Mason chattered his mother out the door.

  “He’s so cute,” Meredith gushed.

  “Yeah, he’s fun. He tries to pull that birthday thing on me every time.” I chuckled, then searched out a drink.

  Cutting hair was thirsty work, especially when there are several blow-dryers running in the room.

  At lunch, I prowled around, hunting for the reek of zombies and magic. I wanted to know where exactly the monsters would be housed.

  I ran into Hades instead. He could be questioned.

  “So what’s Bob doing back here?” I asked, after sniffing the air to be sure there were no humans about to overhear our conversation.

  “Well, he’s decided to prove his loyalty to me by joining me in my banishment—which apparently means he’s going to stay on the property. Percy is not pleased.”

  I could imagine. “Um, is it gonna stink around here?”

  “No, the magic keeps the stench at bay, and Bob keeps in constant supply of fresh bodies. As soon as they start getting unsavory he puts them back to rest, then trolls the local newspapers and replaces them with new ones.”

  “I’m not going to see Penny walking around, am I?” I referred to my recently deceased coworker.

  “Not as far as I know. If I see anyone familiar, I’ll have a word with him. For the most part, they’ll be staying out of sight. I hope.”

  Gee, he sounded so certain.

  “That’s lovely. All right. I just better not see them around during business hours. I don’t want any of the clients seeing that uncle Joe has returned from death. I can’t imagine it would be good for business.”

  “Don’t worry, Gretchen, Percy has already informed me of her own personal rules, and they’re much stricter than yours. You ladies have nothing to worry about.”

  Just dead people walking around, enjoying the sunshine.

  I was curious about one thing. “Will they be, um, working?”

  “Sometimes, if I, or Bob, think up something for them to do. Currently, they’re making cider.”

  I grimaced, imagining a new slogan for the sides of the gallons of cider that Percy sold at farmer’s market: made from apples never touched by living hands! It could be our Halloween special.

  I kept half an eye out for the deadies as I walked back inside, but I neither saw nor smelt them, thank goodness.

  I’m really not sure what effect they would have on my wolf. If it was like any other dog, I’d probably want to roll in them. What an unpleasant thought.

  Meredith had developed another bout of shyness for the afternoon. This was how I liked her best. Her trying to be me just didn’t suit her at all.

  Amanda had left for home, leaving her appointment book with the rest of ours, just in case one of her clients called back to reschedule. When I spoke with her earlier, it sounded like most of her clients were fine with her move.

  My afternoon was uneventful, as I had only one more appointment, and it was a buzz cut. Easy peasy (one-two-threesy) in-and-out. At least he tipped well.

  As soon as I cleaned up and left the salon, Doug found me.

  “So what are you doing now?” he asked, falling into step with me.

  “You know, this is starting to get annoying. I want to be courted, not stalked.” I sped up.

  I needn’t have bothered, Doug stopped walking, standing in the middle of the hall with his shoulders slumped.

  I had told him that he needed to be more attentive if he wanted my human bits to fall in love with his own. There’s a difference between attentive and breathing down my neck.

  I wanted my bubble badly enough not to stop and apologize to him.

  He didn’t follow me up the stairs, and I escaped into my room and locked the door.

  I took a quick lukewarm shower to get rid of all the little hairs that liked to stick around at the end of the day, then changed into another set of black jeans, a dark purple tank top, and threw on a sweatshirt for appearance’s sake.

  It took quite a bit for me to get cold, even with the rapidly dropping temperatures outdoors. As a 100-some-odd pound human, I still seemed to carry around 400-some-odd pounds of furry wolf body, even if it wasn’t visible.

  The big, black, leather boots took a while to buckle and lace up, but I figured they were well worth it. They had a tendency to scare men away, not attract them, and I wasn’t in the mood to play coy, nor did I feel I should be. I was stuck with Doug, and I needed the rest of my boys to keep their distance.

  I still had a while before I needed to leave for practice, so I retrieved Clarissa, my old violin, and tuned her by ear, jamming alone for a while.

  I relaxed as the music swelled around me, lulling me through sound waves. At first, I forced myself to play slow and calm, but the music soon claimed me. It appeared mellow, though wild undertones colored its near-sentient sound. It sang to me, it cried to me, it soothed me.

  I didn’t hear the knock on my door, didn’t notice it open and shut, and someone sit on the edge of my bed.

  When I finally let the bow fall away from the strings, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I spotted Toni sitting on my bed.

  “Why don’t you play like that in public? I’ve never heard music like that before.” Her normally boisterous voice was hushed.

  “I’ve had 100 or so years to practice. People don’t know about us, and a human would never have the time to learn to play like that. It would be a dead giveaway.” I regretfully set my instrument in her worn case and closed the lid.

  Toni nodded her understanding. “I think there’s more to it than that. It feels like magic.” She stood, walked over to my bookcase, and picked up a photo of Doug and me in wolf form.

  “And what do y
ou know about magic?” The only magic she had ever witnessed was when Percy and Hades had dropped their glamours to help fix Doug.

  “Not much, but I know I’ve never felt anything like it in the real world.”

  I smiled at that. The real world. How little these people knew of the real world. They assumed that the history books were accurate. They were arrogant enough to believe they knew it all and silly enough to believe the fae were new to their world.

  “We tend to keep a low profile. I don’t know about magic in the music, but it keeps me calm. It’s a good outlet.”

  I walked over and took the photo from her hand. It was a close up of Doug and me before his first full moon, grinning doggy smiles.

  That first one had been interesting. We’d decided, wisely, I realize now, to keep separate for that first one, because I didn’t know how my wolf would react to his. I’d almost escaped from a slightly less kept up cage across the property. I’d had failure to cope for the entire three days, according to Percy.

  Doug hadn’t fared much better, sitting at the door and howling his head off. It’s a good thing we didn’t have any close neighbors because we would probably have driven them mental enough to call the cops about those damn dogs.

  I set the cheap frame carefully back, then looked things over to make sure everything else was as it was supposed to be.

  “How are things between Doug and you? I don’t see him hanging around quite so much.” Toni moved away from the bookshelf I was now guarding.

  That would probably be because I kept snapping at him. “Fine,” I lied.

  She smiled and shook her head at me. She knew I was full of crap, but apparently smart enough not to press me about it at present. “I’ll see you later, all right?”

  I nodded in return. “See you.”

  I waited for her to leave again, then double checked my duffle bag, to make sure everything was in order. I carried a big bag of goodies to band practice, which included my all-important electric violin, Lola. My ancient acoustic one didn’t have a prayer of competing with the distortion of Mark’s guitar.

  I checked to make sure I had extra strings, then went hunting for Doug.

  Hopefully, I hadn’t offended him too badly. I didn’t really care if he came to practice that night, actually, having him there might have been a bit distracting. I’d have to worry about him. Worrying about me was bad enough.

  I found him nowhere, so I left without him. He could be such a girl sometimes, throwing little pity parties.

  Whatever.

  I climbed into my old F150 Ford and flopped my duffel on the seat beside me before starting her up.

  My ride was uneventful, helped by the scanner I kept tuned to the police channels to avoid speeding tickets. My truck might not be the fastest thing on four wheels, but that didn’t mean I had to follow the speed limit did it? I figured not and pressed the ball of my foot into the gas pedal, gunning the engine around the turns.

  Despite my somewhat late start, I managed to get to Austin’s before anyone else.

  His wife met me in the front hall, wearing yellow dish gloves that were beginning to fray at the hems. “Hey, Gretchen. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?” She pulled the gloves off with some difficulty and shut the door behind me.

  “A bottle of water would be great, thanks.” I headed for the living room that functioned as practice quarters.

  Bottled water was better than glasses of it around all the electrical equipment our band toted around, along with the energy that sometimes carried us away. How I never wolfed out on stage, I’ll never know. Maybe it’s because I view music as a soothing thing, even if the tempo stated otherwise.

  With Austin nowhere in sight, I got to plug in and tune up without having to compete for sound waves with his snare and high hat. I can do it, but it’s so much easier when there are no distractions, which is why I try and get to practice early.

  My privacy was short-lived. Soon after unplugging from my tuner, Austin ran up from his basement rec room.

  “Hey, how’s work going?” he asked his usual question. He didn’t vary much from his script.

  “Fine.” I didn’t divulge my work woes to my boys. The boys in Chaos Theory definitely were not privy to my wolfy alter ego. I didn’t know how they’d react, so I decided to keep it under wraps. Better safe than sorry and all that.

  He picked up a pair of sticks from the floor and settled on his drum stool.

  I waited for him to count off, then joined his warm-up.

  The other two boys would have to join us along the way. The penalty for showing up late was having to tune while everyone else was playing. Thank goodness for electronic tuners which one could plug one’s instrument straight into.

  Mark and his newly shortened Mohawk arrived, followed closely by Scott.

  Scott was a shameless flirt. He’d dated Penny, though not seriously, then immediately came to me for comfort when she was murdered. I liked him well enough not to be outright cold, but I tried not to encourage him too much anymore. He didn’t need encouragement.

  When we were all tuned and plugged in, Mark called us to silence.

  “All right, so now we have to decide what, exactly, we want to put on this album. Does 12 songs sound like enough?” He rested his arms over the top of his guitar, which was balanced on a thick strap around his neck.

  “Fine by me,” I spoke up. I didn’t really care what ended up on the album, I was just excited to be making one.

  Of course, the night we were approached by the guy in charge of the recording studio, I was massively wolfy and may have played more fae than was prudent in public. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be an issue with anyone when I kept that part of me subdued.

  Practice continued smoothly, and we picked up a few favorites to perfect. We’d been playing together for a few years, so that perfection was mostly in the fine-tuning. Once we had a list, we would practice like crazy, then make the trip down to Portland in Austin’s big white van.

  I checked my phone as soon as practice was over and was relieved to see that it didn’t hold any messages for me.

  Either Doug wasn’t bothered that I left without him, or he was hiding out, letting it all smooth over on its own.

  No such luck. I’d just opened the door to my truck when his unique scent hit me.

  Doug loped out of the woods, hefted me up into my seat, then circled the truck to get in the other side.

  It caught me so by surprise that I let him. He must have run all the way there. He knew where Austin lived, though he’d never been there before. I wondered if he’d been waiting outside the whole time, or if he’d just arrived.

  I didn’t wonder enough to ask. Instead, I started the engine and backed out of the driveway, doing my best not to glance over. If I caught his eye, I would be hard-pressed to turn away. It’s a dominance thing, the wolf with the least dominance looks away first.

  I glued my eyes to the road and my hand away from the stereo, no matter how badly I wanted to turn up the music and kill the awkward silence. Apparently, Doug didn’t feel the need to talk. If he was trying to prove a point, I didn’t know what it was.

  The silence was unbearable. “What?” I asked, careful to keep my face forward.

  He said nothing and refused to look at me.

  I pulled into our driveway, slammed on my breaks, put my truck into park, then turned to look at him.

  He continued to stare out of the windshield, which gave me the opportunity to unbuckle.

  “Are you done?” he asked, his French accent thick with anger.

  “Done with what?”

  He shifted in his seat, finally looking me in the eye. “Whatever this game is you’re playing. I can’t figure it out.” His face was stormy, and the frustration rolled off him in waves.

  “There’s nothing to figure out,” I defended myself weakly.

  “You are possibly the most confusing person ever.”

  If he was confused by me, he should try being me. It would
help if my wolf and I could function on the same wavelength. Even though the wolf is me, it functions like a completely different personality at times.

  “When I get me figured out, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’m sorry I’m a bitch.” I kept my eye contact, and he didn’t back down.

  Instead, he scooted forward, kissed me, then pulled back far enough to mutter, “Forgiven.” He hopped out of the truck, leaving me thinking he was a glutton for punishment.

  My behavior would scare away even the most masochistic of men, but not Doug. He seemed to think he owed me something for introducing him to the changer and getting him away from the circus.

  Silly fool. I followed him at a distance to the house, then headed to bed. Maybe I’d wake up in a better frame of mind.

  Nearly every space in the supermarket parking lot was in use. I had to drive up and down the rows, then settled on an open spot near the exit. It wasn’t like I couldn’t walk the distance.

  As soon as I hopped out, one of the spots nearer the store opened up and a mini van immediately swooped in. I watched as a young mother with four kids tumbled out and headed in. Nope, I definitely was fine to walk. I walked by as the mom organized her gaggle of people puppies, seating the littlest in the shopping cart and buckling him in.

  “All right, Izzy, you and Beth shop this list.” The mom handed the oldest kid, who was maybe 11, a handwritten list. “Meet me in the breakfast aisle when you’re done, and don’t separate, understood?”

  The two girls nodded then selected their own cart and headed to the toiletry section, which was located on the opposite side of the store from the food.

  “Divide and conquer,” I said, giving the woman a smile. “I like it. You’re good at this mom thing.”

  She smiled back as she started pushing her cart. “They’re good kids. It’s totally all them, but thank you, I needed to hear that today.”

  I nodded and continued on my way to shop my own list.

  For some reason, Percy didn’t make beef jerky. Must have something to do with her being a vegetarian. But as I’m a meat-eating girl, I wanted to stock up.