* * *
“We need to go back to the beginning!” Streep announced, arms thrown wide, smile gorgeous. “To where this all started!”
“You mean Africa?” Mads asked flatly, and Max was barely able to stop her laugh. Streep hated being laughed at.
“No,” she snapped back at Mads. “Not Africa. To where Zé began.” She rested her hands on the table, leaned in a bit. “You’re from Mexico, right?”
Vargas’s eyes narrowed and Max wondered how often that was people’s first choice when discussing his heritage.
“Yeah,” Streep cluelessly persisted. “Like Tijuana . . . oh, and . . . uh . . . Tijuana?”
Max covered her mouth with her hand, and Nelle pressed her face against Max’s bare shoulder to stop her own laughter, which did not help the situation.
After a pause, Vargas said, “No. I’m not from Mexico. Are you?”
Streep frowned, confused. “No. My family is from the Philippines. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Mads growled.
“What is with the tone?”
“Should we do a roundtable of everyone’s racial background? Maybe get some DNA tests done? Wouldn’t that be fun?”
The Streep-tears started immediately. Right after the trembling bottom lip.
“Why are you so mean to me?” Streep sobbed.
Tock pointed at the watch she had saved for since she was six years old, when she’d decided that her father didn’t understand the “concept of time” and what it meant to “manage my life.” A ten-thousand-dollar Swiss timepiece that was beyond precise. A watch that was in no way designed for the average person just looking to keep time.
Of course, Tock had informed them at their first team meeting as a junior high basketball team—when she only had a Timex watch with Minnie Mouse’s arms telling her the hours and minutes—that she managed her life in thirty-minute increments. If she got something done in ten minutes that meant she had another twenty to do whatever she wanted to do, but whatever she had booked had to be dealt with first. Whether it was homework, team practice, or wild boar hunting. When she booked practice, she expected all of them to honor the time commitment. And that expectation hadn’t changed in the last sixteen years.
“We have practice tonight in Manhattan. So what are we doing about Zé?” Tock demanded.
Streep stopped sobbing and glared at Tock. “Does my pain mean nothing to you?”
“I didn’t book time for your pain.”
“What do you suggest we do?” Nelle asked Tock.
“I’ll go to the Katzenhaus Library. The cats keep track of their people, and their library on Fifth digitally links to the library in Germany, which has even more extensive genealogical records.” She pulled out a small notebook with a leather cover and a very nice pen. She shoved both toward Zé. “Give me your full name, the names of your mother and father, and your address when you were a kid.”
Zé looked down at the notebook and pen and then at Tock.
“Now,” she pushed. At least this time she didn’t tap her watch. To everyone else, she said, “I’ll get his background. Maybe he has a local shifter relative who can help him.”
Tock stood up, took the pad and pen from Zé’s grasp as soon as he’d finished writing out his information, grabbed Mads by her T-shirt, and yanked her out of her chair. “You’ll come with me.”
“I don’t want to come with you.”
“I don’t care.”
“The Katzenhaus Library is only open to cats,” Streep reminded her. “They’re not going to let you in.”
“So you’ll come with us. You can get us in.”
“I’m not a cat either!”
“I’m sure you can charm our way in.”
“I’d rather stay—eep!”
With one hand around her neck, Tock lifted Streep up and out of her chair so she stood in front of them.
“We’ll meet the rest of you at practice,” Tock informed them.
“At the Sports Center?” Max asked, sounding surprisingly eager.
“Are you high?” Tock demanded. “Every playoff team is practicing there. Coach is meeting us at the old center on Staten Island. If you’re going to get to practice on time, you’ll need to be on the ferry by—”
Now Mads grabbed Tock and pushed her toward the door. Because they all knew that if Tock got too deep into obsessing about travel times, they’d be sitting where they were for another hour. At least.
“Love you guys!” Nelle called after them. “Aren’t they the best?” she asked Zé.
“Are they?”
“So what are we going to do?” Max asked, although she was already thinking about getting in some nap time before practice. She loved a good afternoon nap.
“I can get a new phone and call my team to let them know I’m alive.”
Max and Nelle just stared at him. They’d already told him once that was not a good idea. At least not at the moment. But they weren’t in the mood to say it again. Instead, they got their point across with staring. Then Nelle suggested, “Let’s get him some clothes.” She leaned in and whispered, “It’s strange . . . he smells like Dutch. But he’s not Dutch and it’s starting to weird me out. Aren’t you weirded out?”
“No.”
“Well, whatever. Let’s get him new clothes.” She smiled at Zé. “Won’t that be fun?”
Zé shook his head. “I don’t have any money.”
“Oh. No big. I have tons of money.” She stood, slinging her thirty-grand bag over her shoulder. “Come on, you two! Let’s get this big kitty-cat some clothes . . . and a scratching post!” She held up her phone. “I’ll call us a car.”
She headed outside and Max leaned back in her chair, smiling at Zé’s surly expression.
“It could be worse,” she told him. “You could be dead.”
“Do you mean dead when we were back in the Netherlands, or when your psychotic friends were debating whether to kill me?”
“Tomato, tomaht—”
“No,” Zé quickly cut in, a look of disgust on his face. “Dude . . . just no.”
* * *
Dez MacDermot, current head of the shifter division of the NYPD, gazed at the young lion male talking to her. The kid had been talking for about twenty minutes but he’d lost her interest ten minutes in.
According to her husband, Mace, fifteen minutes of “miscellaneous conversation” was about all she could handle. “Then you get real bitchy,” he’d say, grinning.
What annoyed her about this kid, though, was his condescension. He tried to pretend that he respected her but she knew better. She was used to that, though. Since she’d been part of this particular division of the NYPD she was accustomed to being dismissed by shifters. Because she was full-human. Her husband and child might be lions, but she was just a nice girl from Brooklyn . . . who happened to have a shifter as a mate.
Over time, the cops she worked with, and those who eventually worked for her, grew to respect Dez. Or, at the very least, tolerate her. Her onetime partner and still very close friend, Lou Crushek, explained it to her one day: “You’re a crazy human. You terrify them. Because there’s nothing more terrifying than a crazy human.”