“Oh, my God,” Zé gasped out. “I want to climb that tree.”
“At this time of day, it’s best to do it as human. But at night . . . all bets are off.”
“Pandas climb trees?”
“I don’t really climb,” Shen admitted. “I just hang from the lower branch and eat my bamboo.”
“And that makes you happy?”
“Stevie makes me happy. Hanging from a tree limb and eating bamboo . . . ? That’s just an enhancement to my happy.”
chapter THIRTEEN
Max watched her sister disconnect the call with Uncle Will. Their father had ripped off the Scottish side of the MacKilligans for one-hundred-million Sterling. One of the dumbest things that anyone could do. Honey badgers were not exactly known for their forgiving nature, but they were known for their love of money. They liked the security it provided, and if they had to break the law to ensure they had cash, they were willing to do that. Mostly because they were good at it.
They could break into—and out of—almost anything and had no problem working with full-humans. In fact, most badgers lived their entire existence among full-humans, avoiding the shifter world outside their own families.
When Max asked her mother why their kind did that, why they didn’t happily join in to all the things the shifter world offered—the restaurants, the sports, the shopping and, most importantly, the protection—she’d only smiled and said, “Because they can smell us coming a mile away.”
Max had only been seven when she’d asked that question, so she’d taken her mother literally. Of course other shifters could smell honey badgers coming a mile away! Especially if they unleashed their anal glands! But that wasn’t what her mother had meant.
Unlike full-humans, shifters knew better than to trust honey badgers. One never knew when a badger was going to get “fed up with your bullshit” and suddenly just slap the shit out of you or decide “I didn’t like the look on your face” and rip it off or one day simply steal everything you own because “you didn’t look like you really needed that Ming vase.”
Of course, not all honey badgers were like that, but as Max’s teammates had shown her, it wasn’t always easy to completely remove oneself from a honey badger family.
Even she and her sisters had realized that. No matter how much the MacKilligans on both sides of the Atlantic had made it abundantly clear they wanted nothing to do with Max, Stevie, and Charlie . . . here their relatives still were. Annoying Max and her sisters.
Of course, once Will got his money back from their dad—or he killed their dad—they would no longer have to deal with their cousins and aunts and uncles. That’s what Charlie and Stevie seemed to believe, but Max wasn’t so sure.
Max watched her baby sister’s face and knew that she was torturing herself. She had that look she got when she was worried about all the things that could go wrong. Like when she checked herself into a German hospital because she was giving herself panic attacks over Ebola. She’d made the mistake of reading an article about it. Just a general informational thing, but there’d been enough statistics in it for Stevie to figure out exactly how long it would take for the virus to completely wipe out the entire human population. Most scientists could and probably did figure out the same thing, but those same scientists went on about their day. Maybe made plans for their families if something bad ever happened. But not Stevie. She wanted to save the world and when she realized she couldn’t do that without the help of “worthless and uncaring human beings” she had a complete and utter meltdown.
She was in that therapeutic facility for four months before she was ready to check herself out. The psychiatrists were ready to release her after a month, once they got her on meds that helped control her ongoing panic attack, but Stevie kept telling them and Charlie, “I still need time. I’m not ready.”
It was what-ifs that made Stevie a brilliant scientist. It was also what made her “sick” sometimes. Max had realized that after knowing Stevie for less than six months, when they still expected her She-tiger mom to come back and get her daughter. Over the years, though, Max had found ways to distract her sister from her anxiety. Some worked most of the time, but only one way worked all of the time. Out of necessity, that was the one she used.
Sitting down at the table, leaning back in the chair, Max accused, “You’re going to open your big mouth to Charlie, aren’t you?”
Stevie lifted her gaze from the table. That deep-in-thought, I’m-about-to-flip-out gaze.
“No, I’m not.”
“You are,” Max insisted. “She’s gonna walk through the door, and as soon as you see her, you’re going to start running your fucking mouth.” Max did that thing Stevie really hated. She scrunched up her face and began speaking in a high-pitched voice that she always told Stevie was exactly how she sounded. It wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. Not at the moment. “‘Nan-nan-nan-nan-nannnnn. Oh, Charlie, he was here. I don’t know what to do. Wah-wah-wah!’ As soon as she comes in this fucking house!”
Stevie looked away, took in a breath, let it out . . . then exploded.
Pointing her finger and jumping up from her seat, Stevie screamed, “You are a fucking bitch and I wish I’d set you on fire when I had the chance!”
Max jumped up, too, making sure her chair went flying back and hitting the counter behind her. Big, clanging noises always set Stevie off. “I’m a fucking bitch? You are a worthless, whiny baby!”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Charlie bellowed, rushing into the kitchen from the front of the house and pushing Max and Stevie apart. “That is enough!”
“She started it!” They both screamed in unison.
“I don’t care! Stop it. Right now!”
They stopped screaming, but they kept glowering at each other. So, to keep the distraction going, Max shoved Stevie and Stevie shoved her back, and then the mutual headlocks began.
By the time Charlie had yanked them apart, Max had a bloody nose and Stevie a split lip.
Charlie shoved them in separate directions and raised her hands, pointing a finger at each of her sisters.
“That’s enough. Stevie, don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“As a matter of fact . . . I do! Because I have a life!” She made that sound Max always equated with the British ladies who starred in movies made from Jane Austen novels, before she stormed back to her room. All she was missing was a full skirt that she could lift when she made her exit.
Instead of laying into Max about giving Stevie “a break,” Charlie walked away from her sister and started pulling out what she needed to make her honey buns.
She was putting the supplies on the small counter under the window that looked out over the backyard when she suddenly leaned down and gave a low chuckle.
“You have to see this,” she said, motioning to Max.
Max came over to the counter and leaned down next to her sister so that both of them were resting their arms on the wood top. But when she looked outside, all she saw was Shen hanging from the big tree in the yard, which wasn’t exactly shocking. He did that most mornings and nights. He hung there with his knees over the lowest limb so his arms could easily reach the bag of bamboo that he placed under it.