shook her head. “No.”
And again Max threw up her hands. “What are you doing to me, woman?”
“Helping?”
* * *
“You know what?” Max said, deciding to end this. “We’ve got bigger issues than whether I—”
“Slaughtered a bunch of people?”
Max glowered at the cat before finishing with “—found Devon.”
“Like what?” Charlie asked, appearing extremely angry. Max knew that expression on her sister’s face. Knew what it meant. Her sister hated when Max went off to “do something stupid.” And “stupid” to Charlie was anything that involved violence but didn’t involve her as Max’s backup.
Fair enough. Charlie was awesome backup. Max would enter any dangerous situation if her sister was with her, but Charlie had enough shit to worry about on a daily basis. Why would Max add to that when Devon wasn’t her sisters’ problem? He was Max’s problem and only because her mother was still in prison and unable to deal with him on her own. Because Devon refused to believe that Max’s mother didn’t have the money from their last heist together. The heist that Freddy MacKilligan had managed to fuck up as only Freddy could.
If anyone had that money, it had probably been her father, but Max was sure he’d spent it or lost it a long time ago. Probably months or days even after the heist had ended with Devon and her mother in prison.
Devon didn’t want to hear any of that, though. He was convinced Renny Yang had his money and believed that Max was his way of getting it back.
Luckily, Max didn’t mind proving him wrong. But until she’d dealt with Devon properly, she’d have to find a way to distract Charlie from getting involved. And there was only one way to do that—with lunacy.
“Like our guest here,” Max replied, gesturing to the cat with a sweep of her hand. “Poor kitty doesn’t know he’s a kitty. He thinks he’s a boring full-human with no skills. We can’t let him continue to go through his life in such a sad, pathetic way.”
Her sisters focused on Vargas, but the cat was busy downing the last of those cinnamon buns. He was mid-chew when he realized they were all watching him, crumbs covering his mouth, green eyes bouncing from one woman to the other.
“Wha?” he asked around his food.
“We’re here to teach you about our ways,” Max informed him.
“No thank you.” He swallowed, took a sip of coffee. “I’m fine in my reality.”
“But your reality is wrong.”
“Is it? Or is my reality simply drug free?”
Max heard Stevie snort but she fought the urge to slap her sister on the back of the head.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but you need to accept the fact that you are a—”
“Cat. I’m a cat, according to you. In other words”—he pointed at the kitchen window near the stove—“I’m like him.”
Max looked and immediately picked up a spoon and hurled it at the window. The feral cat that she hated didn’t run, though, but simply hissed at her. Bastard!
“Is that any way to treat my kind?” Vargas asked, smirking.
“That is not your kind, idiot,” Max snarled. She was fed up with this. “You’re like us. A shifter. Your DNA is a combination of human and . . .” She gestured with her hand around his face. “. . . some kind of big cat.”
“Wait. I can tell.” Stevie ran around the table to Vargas’s side. She lifted strands of his hair and leaned in close, studying them. Vargas motioned to his empty plate. “Any more of these?”
Without a word of complaint, Charlie picked up his plate and went to where she had a large platter filled with cinnamon rolls. She brought back five for the cat.
“You’re just giving him food now?” Max asked.
“He’s a guest.”
“But I don’t get any?”
“You’re a liar.”
When Max focused on Vargas, he smiled around the big bite of roll he now had in his mouth.
“Jaguar!” Stevie announced, triumphant. “He’s a jaguar.” She returned to her seat. “It took a second because leopards have similar markings but if you really look, you can tell the difference. And he’s definitely jaguar. A black jaguar.” She winked at him. “Kind of rare.”
“What is happening?” Max demanded. Why were her sisters being so nice to someone who was being so . . . cat? He couldn’t be more cat if he was lounging in a tree with a gazelle carcass.
“Look,” Vargas said, wiping his mouth with a paper towel, “I appreciate you guys living in this fantasy universe. And