“Do you have to wake me up like this every morning?” Dale yelled from his room.
Shay had thought his youngest brother was going to be gone for a few more days, but he should have known better. All Dale’s “buddies” were full-humans, which meant they were instinctually terrified of Dale’s “big” brothers. But when they annoyed Dale enough, they would also become terrified of him. They simply didn’t know why.
Chances were that once Dale hit his “growth spurt,” they would be terrified of him all the time. But that hadn’t happened yet. Instead, he just looked like your typical tall, skinny teenager who was about to go to college.
Shay didn’t know what was taking his brother so long. Shay hit his growth spurt when he was fifteen. Finn when he was sixteen. And Keane when he was thirteen! Making him one of the most complained about kids in junior high football in American history. Every parent on the opposing teams was sure that he was a thirty-five-year-old man trying to relive his glory years. Eventually, their mother had to find a shifter-only league on Long Island for cubs and pups. But both Keane and Shay still had to go into the older group because of their sheer size.
Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Shay sat up and ran his hands through his hair. Some people used an alarm clock or their phones to wake them up every morning. Shay just used the screaming of his family. For natural-born predators known for their silent hunting, the Malones certainly were a noisy gang of tigers.
Needing some orange juice and whatever meat he could find in one of the family refrigerators, Shay made his way downstairs. His mother still wasn’t back, and he had no idea when she would be. Once she and her sisters started gambling, they could be gone for a while. Shay didn’t get it, though. Gambling. Then again, he never found losing fun. With football, he had a modicum of control over things, but there was no control over poker or dice unless you cheated, and Shay didn’t cheat. He, like his brothers, found it distasteful.
Yawning and making cat sounds most past girlfriends found “weird and unholy,” Shay pulled the orange juice out of the refrigerator and put it on the kitchen table. He then opened a cabinet door and grabbed a glass. As he poured himself some orange juice, he stopped . . . and blinked. Putting the half-full glass down on the table, he opened the cabinet door again.
“Uhhhh . . . hi.”
With her body contorted so that she didn’t damage any of the glassware, Tock still managed to make it appear that being stuffed in a cabinet was normal. “Hey,” she grumbled.
“Need anything?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Shay closed the door again and finished pouring his juice. He was draining his second glass when Keane arrived in the kitchen.
“I cannot deal with those dogs being in our house.”
“Talk to your niece. I’m not getting involved.”
“You are involved. You brought those disgusting animals into our house and now we’re dealing with their offspring.”
“For eight weeks. Then we’ll give them away.”
“Who in the world would want puppies? I mean, besides Charlie?”
“Lots of people. Lots of people want puppies.”
Keane growled and went to the cabinet to grab his own glass. Shay didn’t turn around because he didn’t need to. He simply heard the cabinet door close and his brother snarl, “Why do badgers keep ending up in our cabinets? Did this one even bring Danish?”
“Tock, did you bring Danish?” Shay said loudly so she could hear him through the wooden door.
“No.”
Shay faced his brother. “No. She did not bring Danish.”
“Then get her out of our cabinet.”
“It could be worse,” he reminded Keane. “It could be like that time we had a racoon living inside our walls. It took us forever to get that thing out of there, and then we had to sanitize and repair everything. We won’t have that worry with Tock.”
“Are we sure?” Keane sneered before stomping off with his glass of juice.
Finn walked into the kitchen seconds after Keane walked out. “What’s going on?”
“Tock is in the cabinet.”
“Oh! Did she bring Danish?”
*
“Should I tell Mads that you’re here?” Finn asked through the cabinet door.
“I don’t care.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
A few seconds later, the cabinet door opened again and, to Tock’s surprise, she was faced not with one of the Malone brothers but with Shay’s daughter. Her father held her up so she could look directly at Tock.
“You don’t look fine,” the ten-year-old told her. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Coffee?” That actually sounded good.
“Yes. I make coffee for my mom all the time. She usually needs to spend a lot of time managing my brothers in the morning. I’m very self-sufficient.”
“That would be nice. Thank you.”
“Sure. I hope it’s okay, but I usually make it strong and black. Just the way my mom likes her—”
“Okay!” Shay barked, quickly closing the cabinet door before his daughter could finish that well-known phrase. And, for the first time in several hours, Tock laughed. Hard.
By the time the kid was pouring the coffee into a big mug with ROCKY MOUNTAINS written across the outside, Tock had slipped out of the cabinet and was now standing in the middle of the Malones’ kitchen.
“Here you go,” Dani said, handing her the mug.
“Thank you.” She took a sip, and the coffee was very good. “Where’s your father?”
“Daddy jumped in the shower before Uncle Keane because he takes too long in there. They argue about it all the time.”
Dani gestured to a chair at the kitchen table with a grand sweep of her arm. “Please, have a seat. And relax.”
Kind of charmed by Shay’s kid being quite the little awkward hostess, Tock sat down.
“Would you like some toast?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine.”
“Okay.” Grabbing her bright pink backpack from across the room, Dani sat down at the table, catty-corner from Tock.
Tock cringed. She was not in the mood to have a conversation with a kid. She was just not good at that sort of thing. For her, such conversations were always frustrating and uncomfortable; right now, she didn’t want to do anything but drink this delicious coffee and be annoyed thinking about her grandmother.
She loved her savta. She really did. But the way Mira wormed her way into people’s lives had always pissed Tock off. If she wanted to do that with heads of countries, that was fine. But treating everyone else the same way, especially family . . . Tock didn’t need that from her or anyone.
Still, after using the Malone kitchen cabinets as a hotel room, Tock knew it would be rude to tell the kid to stop talking to her. Especially since she was kind of sweet.
After ten minutes or so, Tock finally realized something . . .
The kid wasn’t talking to her. She just opened her pink backpack, pulled out a pink notebook, a pink, rhinestone-covered box of pencils, and a textbook. She opened the book and notebook, took out a pencil, sharpened it, and got to work. Quietly.