“He’s still your responsibility!” Stevie argued.
“What playoffs?” Charlie asked.
“With my team.”
“What team?”
Max and Stevie stared at their sister.
“The pro basketball team I’m on?”
“You’re in the WNBA?”
“Do I look like I’d be in the WNBA?”
Charlie’s eyebrow rose. “Because you’re not black?”
“Because I’m not ten feet tall. Nor am I fully human sooooo . . . yeah. I’m on a shifter pro team, not the WNBA.”
“They were interested in you, though,” Stevie reminded her.
“Well . . . after they saw my game footage, yeah. But it wouldn’t be long before someone started asking questions and I’d end up having to hold back on the court, and you know I can’t do that. Besides, the shifter teams offered me more money. Full-human pro teams don’t pay women shit.”
“Because full-humans don’t have to worry about getting trapped in a room with a bunch of grizzly sows angrily demanding fair pay.”
Both sisters laughed at that visual until Charlie asked, “When did you join a pro anything, Max?”
“I don’t know . . . a decade ago?”
Charlie snorted. “Oh, come on.” She looked at Stevie but when her sister just gazed back . . . “Wait . . . really?”
Stevie winced a bit before she admitted, “She was voted MVP two years in a row.”
“Oh. Okay . . . uh.”
“It’s all right.” Max put her hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “You always have so much on your mind. I don’t take it personally. . . when you forget I ever existed because all you care about is Stevie.”
“Oh, puhleeze!” Stevie crowed. “Don’t even attempt to use me as your excuse for being a shitty person!”
Max turned on her baby sister. “Why can’t you ever let me do what I do?”
“Manipulating Charlie does not change the fact that Zé Vargas is your responsibility!”
“But I don’t wanna be helpful.” And Max knew she was whining. She couldn’t help it. She had more important things to do than help some sad sack who’d just found out what he really was.
Right?
“Didn’t he save your life?” Charlie asked. But she revised that when Max did nothing more than gaze at her silently. “Okay. Didn’t he attempt to save your life? And doesn’t it seem that he would have put his life at risk for you whether you were Max ‘Kill It Again’ MacKilligan or not?”
“Dammit, Charlie,” Max continued to whine. “I fucking hate you.”
“I’d hate me, too . . . because I’m always right. I understand how painful that must be for others who aren’t always right.”
* * *
Zé pulled the baking trays out of the oven and stared down at what Charlie had made.
“Croissants,” he sighed. “I love croissants.”
“I’m not usually a big fan but hers are great.” Shen pointed at several on the second tray. “She made those for me. They have bamboo in them.”
“You eat a lot of that, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “I’m a panda.”
“It’s a little on the nose, though, isn’t it?” Zé asked. “A Chinese guy who’s a panda?”
“Says the South American jaguar.”
“Touché.”
Shen tracked down an obscenely large plate of bacon that had been sitting in the warmer. Zé pulled out the orange juice and milk and plates and glassware.
As they sat down to eat, the back door opened and the three sisters returned.
Charlie pulled Max close as they stood in front of Zé.
“Max is going to assist you,” she announced.
“Assist me?”
With one arm over her sister’s shoulders, she swept the other in a wide arc. “Teach you the ways of our kind.”
“That sounds weirdly sexual. Is this a cult?”
Max rolled her eyes and started to walk off, but her sister yanked her back. When Max tried again, Charlie caught her around the neck and held her.
“This is a whole new world for you, Zé. You need someone to guide you.”
“And,” Zé said on a startled laugh, “you want it to be her?”
Charlie covered her mouth with her free hand to hide her own laugh and Max yanked the other forearm off her throat. “What does that mean?”
“I know,” Stevie cut in, adorably sitting on Shen’s lap, “that my sister may seem like a waste of space—”
“Hey!”
“—but she actually did help me when I started shifting.”
“And she knows more than I do,” Charlie admitted, grabbing one of the croissants off the plate. “I was so busy trying to keep everyone alive that I didn’t really have time to figure out the different scents of bears and cats and . . . whatever. And that sort of thing actually can help. Especially during a firefight.”
Zé glanced at Shen. “Lot of firefights among your kind?”
He was only being sarcastic but the “yes” he got from all three sisters was off-putting.
“Okay,” Zé agreed, not knowing what else to do. “Where do we start?”
“Our ancient blood rituals!” Max announced.
“No,” Charlie said immediately.
“Then let’s learn all the different poop smells!”
“No,” Stevie said, her lip curled in disgust.
“Answering the ancient question, does rat really taste like chicken?”
“Max!” both sisters barked.
The evil woman laughed. “I’m kidding! Everyone knows that the first lesson for any new shifter is how to lick their own ass.”
Zé thought for sure one of Max’s sisters was about to hit her, and he was going to let it happen. But out of the corner of his eye he saw the largest of the sisters’ dogs ease up to the table and take all the bacon in his giant maw.
“Put that bacon back, mister,” he softly ordered, without facing the animal.
The dog growled at him, but Zé was really hungry. He wasn’t giving up bacon without a fight.
“Put. It. Back.”
Another growl. So Zé snarled back.
The dog finally leaned forward and dropped the bacon back onto the plate before stepping away from the table and leaving the kitchen.
Now Zé glared down at the bacon, annoyed. “Ech. It has dog drool on it.” He looked at the three sisters. “Can one of you make me more? This time without the dog drool?”
Max slammed her hands on the table and brought her face close to Zé’s. “How, in all this time, did you not know you were a cat? How?”
chapter SEVEN
Imani found a comfortable seat against the wall, near the window. That’s where she sat and watched. It was her nature. Lions didn’t run around, chasing everything that moved. They simply waited and watched until something tasty and weak came along. It was what had made her very good at her job back in the day.
A job she had thought she’d left behind long ago. But she’d realized that she had to get involved this time. The de Medicis were ridiculously dangerous and would blow up the world before they’d let any of their direct bloodline be taken down. Even worse, they were naturally paranoid and inherently mean. The de Medici Pride was ruled by three brothers who seemed to love money more than they loved anything else, but even their love of money didn’t explain why they would involve themselves in human trafficking.