In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,111
don’t like ’em. And at the moment I don’t like you.”
“Thanks, Uncle Duff.”
Uncle Hamish stepped inside. “How much longer are they going to be here?”
“You do know this event is to mourn a loved one . . . right?”
“Those people don’t love anyone. And they’re cleaning out our supply of honey-covered peanuts.”
Lock mockingly gasped. “Not the peanuts!”
Duff slapped the plastic jar of cashews out of Lock’s hand.
“That was not mature.”
A small, thin woman appeared in the doorway. She was looking down the hallway but when she turned to them she immediately screamed out, “Bears!”
Hamish jumped back, his hands raised like he was trying to ward her off.
“Bears! Bears! Bears!” she loudly chanted, running into the room, grabbing the liquid detergent off the cart next to the washing machine they used to clean the bar rags. Then, still chanting, “Bears! Bears! Bears!” she ran back out, squealing a final, “Thank you!” as she disappeared around the corner.
“What the fuck was that?” Duff demanded.
But, to be really honest, Lock had absolutely no idea.
* * *
Stevie returned to her sisters. “Got detergent!” She ran to Max’s side, holding her breath, and dumped what was left in the half-filled bottle directly on her sister’s head and shoulders.
“Scrub that shit in!” Charlie ordered.
“Is this Tide?”
“Probably,” Stevie admitted, now standing by Charlie.
Max rubbed the household detergent on her body for a couple of minutes, then Charlie hit her with more water from the hose.
Stevie still didn’t know what her sister had been up to, but she knew one thing for sure. Max hadn’t gone near their father. Releasing her anal glands would work on almost everyone as a weapon except other badgers. Because Charlie and Stevie were hybrids, they found the smell gross and annoying, but it wouldn’t knock them out. Or suffocate them.
Yet Stevie had to admit, at least to herself, she felt a little bad for whoever had forced Max to go this particular battle route. It was the height of unpleasantness.
Max walked over to Charlie and bared her neck. “Well?”
Grudgingly, their big sister leaned in and took a couple of whiffs. She nodded. “I think we got it all.”
“Now can I go inside?”
Charlie waved her on before rolling her eyes at Stevie and following Max.
Once they were inside, with the door closed and bolted behind them, Charlie threw her arms wide and said to Max, “Should I even ask what happened to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I expected you to meet us here in a taxi. Maybe a little blood on you, if you had no other options. But you come back smelling like you’ve been engaged in biochemical warfare and covered in so much dirt that I can only assume you’ve been burrowing.”
“You could definitely say that things got a little . . . out of hand.”
Max ended the statement with a shrug that had Charlie rolling her eyes and Stevie doing the only thing she could think of—laughing.
* * *
“So what do I have to do?”
Shen, who’d been keeping his focus on the cranky, hard-drinking honey badgers, rather than his client, now looked at Kyle.
“What do you have to do about what?”
“About getting you to hook me up with your sister, Kiki?”
“You are a child. Way too young for her. And she has a wife.”
Kyle briefly closed his eyes. “Look, I know you commoners—”
“Seriously, dude?”
“—think everything is about sex. But that’s not what I’m talking about here and you know it. Your sister has power. True power. She can open doors for me that will take my work far into the future. My genius needs to be seen and loved and talked about for thousands of generations to come. Your sister can make that happen.”
“You actually believe the words you’re saying, don’t you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Shen had begun to tell the kid why he shouldn’t believe anything he said when someone grabbed his hand and began dragging him away from the bar. He turned and saw that it was Blayne. Poor, battered Blayne.
She dragged him through the crowd and down a back hallway until they reached a room. She pushed him inside and he found Gwen O’Neill sitting on a table, grinning at him.
Gwen was a pretty half-Chinese, half-Irish tigon from Philadelphia. Shen had always found Gwen fascinating because she had been on the local shifter roller derby team for years, but her seriously long nails were goddamn immaculate! How did she keep her nails like that? They were real, too, not acrylic. He’d asked!