Mayor Callahan, she's a pain in my behind. No offense."
"None taken." I put the phone back down. I'd call her later.
Much later.
Maybe even tomorrow.
Andy came trotting in from the kitchen, shaking his head. "Nothing. He or she was wearing gloves or else very careful. But we have the wrappers, Tess. We'll figure this out."
"Great," I said glumly. "A candy-munching lunatic has been staking out my house and leaving me presents. Lucky me."
"I doubt he'll come back tonight," Susan said. "Especially if your tiger bodyguard hangs around."
"I'm not going anywhere, if that's okay with Tess," Jack called out from the kitchen, where he was running water to wash the dishes.
Yes, my fierce, ex-soldier, tiger shapeshifter loved to hand-wash dishes. Life is weird.
Especially my life.
Susan raised her eyebrows. "He heard us from here? With the water running?"
"Superior tiger hearing," Jack and I said at the same time.
"It's a thing," I told Susan. "And yes, I'll let Jack stay over. On the couch."
When Dead End's finest drove off, I locked my door and returned to the kitchen, where Jack was finishing up washing our few dishes.
"You can dry, if you feel like it," he said.
I didn't particularly feel like it, but I did like waking up to a clean kitchen, so I picked up a towel.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
I dried the soup pot and put it away. "Not really. What is there to say? Yet again, I seem to be a magnet for weird, dangerous trouble? I thought finding out that I have a grandmother—and that she's a banshee—was going to be the most bizarre thing that happened to me. But it's always something new. Was I a terrible person in a past life that I deserve all this?"
Lou, who'd finally deigned to jump down off the refrigerator, walked over and rubbed her head against my shin. I bent down and picked her up, cuddling her close. "I mean, you're the one who led rebel expeditions and probably made enemies right and left. All I've ever done is live in Dead End and work at the pawnshop. It doesn't make any sense."
"Unfortunately, life rarely makes sense," Jack said, in an uncharacteristically serious voice. "And bad things happen to good people far more often than is fair. That's why people like me exist. To protect people like you."
I raised my chin. "Okay, Mr. Protection. As I remember it, we've protected each other in all these adventures and troubles since you got back into town. Don't start thinking of me as a damsel in distress, or we're going to have a problem."
He grinned and raised his hands in surrender. "The last thing I want is another problem with you."
"How about a movie?" I suddenly wanted, very much, to be distracted from the box and its sender.
"Can we watch An American Werewolf in London? That one always makes me laugh. When I watched it with actual American werewolves when I was in London, we were at this pub—"
"Okay, okay. But you have to promise to tell me more about the story than it's a 'sacred werewolf secret' or some such crap." I opened a cupboard. "Popcorn?"
"Do you even have to ask? I'll melt the butter."
So the two cats and I (Jack laughing and Lou hissing whenever a werewolf showed up on screen) watched a movie, ate popcorn, and didn't say another word about the Incident. I was almost even too preoccupied with everything that had happened to think any thoughts about jumping into Jack's lap and kissing him.
At ten or so, when the movie was over and I was falling asleep sitting up, Jack suddenly scooped me up off the couch and carried me to my bedroom.
This might have been romantic if it hadn't freaked me completely out. We hadn't even had our first date yet, so him carrying me to bed was way too much and way too soon and…
"Tess."
I could hear the laughter in his voice.
"Yes?"
"Stop thinking so hard. I'm not making a move. You were practically asleep, so I'm taking you to bed."
"Oh." I didn't know whether I was relieved or disappointed.
He put me down at the doorway to my room, briefly rested his cheek on the top of my head, and then stepped back.
"Okay. Go get into your Donald Duck PJs—those still show up in my dreams sometimes, by the way—and get some sleep. We'll figure this out tomorrow."
My cheeks heated up at the mention of me in his dreams, but I didn't ask.
"Jack?"
"Yes?"
I swallowed, hard. "Let's finally go