“And brazen?”
“They just take what they want. I have several uncles and cousins like that. They just walk in and take what they want and dare you to call the cops on them. Brazen is what you do when you like going to jail sometimes or getting slapped around by people much bigger and stronger than you. There is, sadly, a little too much brazen in the MacKilligan bloodline. But since I don’t want my sisters to go to prison, I train them in the smart ways. And the smart way is no stealing from family, and everyone else never knows you were there.”
“And that means stabbing your sisters with forks?”
“No, no. I never stabbed Stevie. She doesn’t steal. She thinks it’s morally wrong.”
“She’s right.”
“Although she does love stealing magazines from doctor’s offices. Just to see if she can get away with it. And I’m okay with that—it keeps her natural skills sharp.”
“But you stabbed Max with a fork?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I stabbed her with a knife. More than once. But she was stealing from everybody, including the Pack, which would have ended much worse than getting us thrown out. Plus, she’s a little bit of a sociopath, so she doesn’t have a memory of pain the way normal people do. She doesn’t fear its reoccurrence.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I know. That one has taken a lot of work, but she’s come a long way. And Nat,” she added, gesturing to the empty window, “is a fast learner. I know that she’ll never try to steal my wallet from my bag again while I’m standing right there because she’s not a sociopath. She absolutely remembers pain. It’s a deterrent.”
“You know, Charlie, I’d prefer you not stab my baby sister.”
“You want me to punch her?”
“No!” He stopped, forced himself to calm down. He knew he couldn’t be his usual self with Charlie. She was . . . different. Not like anyone—full-human or shifter—he’d ever known. And unlike everyone else, she wasn’t scared of him. Not even a little. “We try to avoid abuse in our family. That’s kind of what Nat’s used to. What’s so funny?” he asked when she laughed.
“I’ve seen how you treat your baby brother.”
Keane let a snarl slip before he could stop it, but he quickly recovered. “The idiot—” He stopped, gave himself another second. He began again. “Dale is a bit of a momma’s boy.”
“So are the rest of you!” she retorted, still laughing. “All four of you are momma’s boys. You just give him shit because he enjoys his momma-boy status. Don’t hate the player, Keane, hate the game. And as much as you don’t want to believe it, Nat is not a cat. She’s a honey badger. Loud and proud about it, too. And if we’re not careful, she will go from trouble-making Rasputin right into Lucrezia Borgia territory, and then where will we be? I’ll tell you where: talking to your sweet little Nat through plexiglass at Rikers while she does twenty-five to life for—as her defense team will argue—accidentally poisoning someone to death. Is that what you want?”
“Uh . . . no.”
“Exactly. So let me handle it. Because, honestly, after Max . . . everyone else is a fucking cake walk.”
Keane didn’t know what else to say. What could he say? He didn’t think Charlie was wrong. He knew his sister. Better than he probably wanted to, and she was, in a word, trouble. Max MacKilligan was nearly thirty and hadn’t gone to prison yet, so maybe . . . ?
He started to walk toward the front door, but stopped to look back at Charlie.
“Lucrezia Borgia?”
“Dude . . . her father became pope despite his litter of children and many mistresses. Of course the Borgias were honey badgers. But,” she added with a smile, “they were the smart ones.”
With a nod, Keane walked out of the kitchen. He was near the front door when Charlie called out, “I gave Finn extra sauce for you guys. But don’t leave it in your car too long. The bears will start tearing that thing apart to get to it. Especially since it’s after dark.”
Keane took off running, pushing past both his brothers on the porch. He ran down the stairs and stopped on the sidewalk. That’s when Keane roared toward his SUV. Lions and wolves on other streets responded in annoyance and panic with their own roars and barks until Keane bellowed out, “Get your grizzly asses away from my SUV! That sauce belongs to the Malones!”
Chapter 10
“Why does Charlie want to see us?” Streep asked. She looked at Max. “What did you do?”
“Why do you guys always ask me that? It hurts my feelings.”
“You don’t have feelings.”
“And after I let you cry on my shoulder when these two were mean to you,” Max admonished Streep.
The front door opened and Charlie walked into Mads’s recently purchased house. Along with cash, Mads had given up one of her paintings to the former owners in order to secure the house. She didn’t mind. It had been worth it. She’d never had her own place before. She’d really only lived in the apartment above her great-grandmother’s store in Detroit. When she’d been forced to move back with her mother’s hyena clan, Mads hadn’t really lived with them. She was honey badger more than she’d ever been hyena, so she did what badgers do: She found small spaces to hide in. Sometimes in someone’s kitchen cabinet or under their bathroom sink or even under a couch. She avoided sleeping under strangers’ beds because she was too young to hear all that might be going on there. Then she’d met her teammates, and they invited her over to stay in their cabinets or under their sinks or under their couches. They were all honey badgers, too, which meant two things: their parents were unfazed to find a child badger sleeping in their cabinets; and all the honey badger parents hated hyenas anyway and didn’t blame the kid for not staying at her “official” home.
When Mads was finally old enough to move away from her mother, she rented an apartment for a while but didn’t really live there. Not after that time she’d come home to find a couple of the clan’s males standing outside, watching it. That’s when she went back to crashing in people’s cabinets. It was safer. Even if she had to break into a stranger’s house and risk arrest, it was safer than dealing with her mother and the rest of the Galendotter Hyena Clan.
When Charlie closed the front door behind her, Mads heard the coyote that had taken up residence in her house suddenly charge across the bedroom he had been sleeping in and race down to the first floor. He had already confronted her teammates, and that had worked out fine. Max had simply smiled at the wild animal, sending it fleeing deep into the house. It was disturbing but nothing they hadn’t seen before when it came to Max.
But Mads didn’t think Charlie had dealt with the coyote yet and she didn’t want anyone hurt. The coyote could be mean. Charlie could be meaner. As it was, Finn kind of hated the little guy. Then again, he wasn’t really a dog fan. “They just look dumb to me,” he’d say when he saw one of Charlie’s dogs running around her backyard.
Mads walked over to Charlie, planning to step in front of her to block the coyote from getting close. But the little bastard used Mads as a ladder, jumping at her and climbing up and over Mads’s shoulder before launching himself into Charlie’s arms.