Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles #3) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,112

him. “It’s not a race thing.”

“Are you sure?” Because the man was a big, blond, Aryan-looking motherfucker. And it definitely sounded like a race thing.

Max came to stand beside Zé. Pointed through the glass at the guard. “See that hair? That’s a mane. A lion mane. He’s a cat.”

“Uh-huh.”

She now pointed at Zé for the “lion’s” benefit. “He’s a cat, too.”

The guard looked Zé over. Then looked over Max and her teammates. “You need to choose a better class of friends, house cat.”

Zé grabbed the big metal handles on the glass doors and told Max, “I’m going to tear these fucking doors off.”

“Calm down,” the guard said. “Calm down.” He unlocked the doors and pushed them open. “No need to get bitchy.”

Zé stepped back so that Max and the others could walk through first and not be locked out again. Especially since he wasn’t exactly sure what they were looking for. He needed their help in this foreign world.

Once the ladies were inside, he followed, matching the guard glare for glare until he turned the corner to enter the main room.

“You’re responsible for your friends!” the guard yelled after them. “They steal anything, bucko, it’s on.”

“Bucko?” Zé snarled, turning around, but Max grabbed his arm and pulled him away. “What an asshole.”

“Lion males vary. Some are great. I know a few I just love to hang with. Others . . . you want to throw them from a very high building, headfirst. “

“If you really want to get them, though,” Nelle said softly, “go for the hair. They’ve got such a fucking thing about their hair.”

Walking onto the main floor, Zé felt like he was definitely in a snobby library with a lot of very snobby people working in it. These were not the helpful librarians he remembered from his grade school days, like Mrs. Juanita and Miss Frannie. Those two ladies didn’t have much to work with at his old public school but they did their best and they did it with a smile—when the kids weren’t going out of their way to make their lives hell.

But the librarians here . . . geez.

* * *

They went to the counter, where two males and one female ignored them. And continued to ignore them until Tock banged her fists on the wood and yelled, “Two minutes is too long to be standing here waiting!”

“Quiet, rodent!” a male cheetah snapped. “The cats here are attempting to expand their knowledge. Something that you should try.”

Tock was on the counter and almost over it when Mads grabbed her around the waist and yanked her off.

“We need your assistance,” Nelle said kindly.

“Do you have an appointment? We only assist those who have an appointment.”

Zé put his hands on the counter and leaned forward so that he was eye to eye with his fellow male cat. “You people are starting to really piss me off,” he growled. “Now, my friends are saying they need assistance—give it to them.”

The cheetah hissed. Zé snarled back.

“Good Lord!” the female said, pushing the cheetah out of the way and taking over. “I swear. You house cats and your drama.”

“Bengal tiger,” Max said to him so he understood the insult.

“I can’t express to you how much I do not care what she is.”

“Knowing what they are makes it easier to know whether to run or not.”

“How can I help you?” the tiger asked, wide gold eyes blinking at them.

Tock, calm once more—she never let her rage linger the way most honey badgers did—said with a hand wave toward Zé, “We’d like familial information on this jaguar.”

The tiger nodded. “Of course. How far back would you like to go?”

“The beginning of time?” Mads asked flatly and Max had to ball her fingers into a fist and dig her nails into her palm so as not to laugh in the tiger’s face. She was the only one being helpful, after all. It would be silly to piss her off.

“How about a shorter time span?” the tiger sweetly suggested. Maybe it was easier to be pleasant when you knew you were an apex predator. “For instance, three or four generations?”

“Actually,” Nelle said, “just one.”

“Just one? Ohhhh.” She leaned in and whispered to Zé, “Were you adopted?”

Zé leaned in and whispered back, “No.”

The tiger pushed a pad and pencil in front of him. “First name. Last name. Current address. Address where you grew up, if that’s different.”

Zé quickly printed out the information in architectural-type block letters and pushed the pad back across the smooth