“Oh! That cat!”
“Yes!”
“Don’t get that tone! I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment.”
“He’s been really worried about you! And he was the only one. The rest of us were just worried about what Charlie was going to do to the cops who arrested you.”
“Which was epicly terrifying!” Nelle admitted.
Stevie’s shoulders sagged. “She promised me she wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“She didn’t kill anyone,” Max reassured her.
“That we know of,” Tock muttered.
“And she didn’t touch one cop.” She motioned to her teammates. “Bring Stevie up to speed. I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find the cat.”
“He’s in the backyard,” Stevie told her.
Max nodded and headed through the living room. But when she reached the dining room, she heard Charlie in the kitchen—slamming bowls.
“Nope,” she said to no one in particular. Then she spun on her heel and went out through the front door.
* * *
Zé sat on the ground, his back against the trunk of the tree he’d climbed earlier that day. He’d completely forgotten about calling Kamatsu because he’d been sitting in a tree worried about Max and her teammates. He’d wanted to meet Charlie at the station but the car that Stevie had sent for him brought him back to Queens. When he complained, Stevie had said, “I do what Charlie tells me, because she’s not going to yell at me.”
He assumed she’d meant Charlie would yell at him. Unfortunately, he had no idea which precinct had a “shifter-only division.” And since he wasn’t about to wander around New York state looking for it—or to ask cops if they had any shifters working in their office—he just stayed at the house and hoped for the best.
“Are you listening to me? Because my next question is very important.”
Zé looked up at the kid he’d met about an hour ago. He apparently lived here with Max and her sisters. His name was Kyle. He was a great artist. Brilliant, in fact. A prodigy, like Stevie. And he enjoyed living with the MacKilligan sisters because they didn’t bother him. Not like his own family did, because his family didn’t understand boundaries.
And Zé knew this because the kid had told him all that and much, much more while he’d been standing there, blathering along as if Zé had done anything to warrant such an attack of annoying-ness.
“So,” the kid continued on, “have you ever done any nude modeling?”
“Okay, that’s it.” Zé got to his feet. “I’m out of here.”
He could track Max down later. Because this whole conversation was just weird.
“Are you ashamed of your body? You shouldn’t be. It’s quite nice.”
“You need to stop talking to me.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re freaking me out. And I don’t freak out easy.”
“How am I freaking you out?”
“Because you’re a teenage boy asking a grown man if he wants to pose nude for him. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were just a cop attempting to frame me.” The kid wanted to debate this but Zé held his hand up to silence him and walked away.
As he moved out from under the tree, he saw Max coming toward him from the front of the house.
He couldn’t believe how relieved he was to see her. He wanted to rush up to her but he waited where he was until she reached him.
“You’re back.”
“I am. You told my sister.”
“I did. I called Stevie but she put me on the phone with Charlie and I don’t like lying to her. Of the three of you, she does seem the most rational.”
“Most of the time.”
“Hi, Max,” the kid said, now standing near them.
“Heya, Kyle.”
“Zé won’t pose nude for me. I think he’s worried it will put his sexuality into question. Would you please convince him that he is a very virile heterosexual male and that as a woman, you would love to have sex with him, so he can feel confident in his straightness and see this as the artistic request that it is?”
“Sure!” Max said, nodding and smiling and walking. Walking right over to the back door of the house, opening the screen, and yelling into the house in a singsongy voice, “Char-lieeee! Kyle keeps asking Zé to pose nude for him and making the poor guy uncomfortable!”
Charlie’s voice, however, was not singsongy when she barked, “Goddammit, Kyle! Stop doing that! Or no cupcakes for you!”
Kyle blinked and was extremely calm when he asked Max, “Your sister is making cupcakes?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Fine. In honor of your sister’s cupcakes, I’ll let it go. But,” he added, “I consider what you just did a hate crime against art.”
“Of course you do.”
Kyle nodded at Zé. “Zé,” he said.
“Child,” Zé said back.
Zé watched Kyle walk to the garage and disappear inside, closing the door behind him.
“Why did he go into the garage? I’m worried what that implies.”
“Don’t. He turned it into an art studio.”
“So he really is an artist?”
“Yes. And a very good one. He’s also a little nuts.”
“Honestly, your entire house is kind of a freak show.”
“I know. Isn’t it great?” She pointed at Zé. “Did you ever get in touch with your girlfriend?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“The Japanese chick. At least I’m assuming she’s Japanese.”
“You mean Kamatsu? She’s not my girlfriend . . . and I completely forgot to track down her number. I need a laptop so I can get to my online storage.”
“I’ll get you a laptop. You wait here.” She looked at the back door but started to go around the house.
“Where are you going?”
“Charlie is anger-baking,” she said, stopping by one of the windows that looked out over the side yard. “And the last thing you want to do is walk into the middle of that.”
“Why?”
“Because she starts ranting. And when she starts, she doesn’t stop . . . for a long time. She has a lot of rage-stamina.”
“Do you and Stevie make up a lot of terms that involve your sister doing mundane things and anger?”
“Yes!” she replied. She pushed the window open and snuck her way into her own rental home so that she could avoid her sister . . . baking.
Zé let out a breath. “Utter freak show.”
“Hey! Cat!” a voice called out from behind Zé. He looked over his shoulder and saw an obscenely large man across the big yard on the other side of the chain-link fence. He motioned Zé over with several waves of his hand. With nothing else to do and a little curious about what the large man could want, Zé walked across the yard and around an in-ground pool he hadn’t noticed before.
“Yes?” he asked when he stood before the large man who had to be at least seven feet tall. Freak show!