In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,75
she sure did watch a lot of it. She called it “hate watching,” but Charlie didn’t have enough time in the day to watch shit she hated just to mock it.
Unless it was a bad horror movie. Nothing entertained her more than watching a bad horror movie with her sisters. Actually, any horror movie. The MacKilligan sisters loved horror movies. Anything but torture porn, as Max called it. Two hours of watching people being hacked to pieces or pierced with things was too much for Charlie or her sisters. They preferred movies with demons or ghosts or witches. Anything supernatural.
Horror movies had always allowed them to get lost in fantasy rather than dealing with the reality of their daily lives. True, her mother would have preferred that her “pup-pups” spend their free time watching something with unicorns or girlfriends with traveling pants, but even she knew that sort of thing just bored her daughters.
Charlie pulled a cold beer out of the fridge, thinking that maybe it was time for an Exorcist marathon for her and her sisters. The first and the third were their favorites and the most terrifying. But the second and fourth ones—and there were two fourth ones—were the worst and most fun to mock.
Positive it was always a good time for The Exorcist, Charlie started toward the living room, but stopped when she heard something behind her. She turned, studied the kitchen. Didn’t see anything out of place.
She sniffed the air, but Charlie was still learning how to sift out different scents and locate them. It was something that hadn’t been taught to her when she was a kid. Her mother hadn’t lived long enough, and when she moved in with her grandfather’s Pack, she had more things to worry about with her two sisters than sniffing out the raccoon who kept destroying the shed behind the Pack house.
Frustrated, Charlie started walking and sniffing, trying to track something . . .
“Gotcha!” a voice barked behind her, hands grabbing her waist.
Charlie brought her elbow back, breaking the nose of whoever was behind her. She switched her beer to her other hand and with her free hand reached over her shoulder, grabbed a handful of hair, yanked the male body around in front of her. Then she kicked that body in the chest, sending it careening down the stairs toward the backdoor that led into the yard.
The door was snatched open and Max appeared, naked and covered in dead bees that had stung her when she’d attacked their hive.
Their gazes caught and Max frowned, looking down at the body at her feet.
“Dutch! What are you doing here?” Max asked.
Max’s best friend glared at her, his hands covering his now bleeding nose. “Your sister attacked me!”
“You startled me!”
Max smirked at Charlie. “Right. That’s why you broke his nose. But once you got him in front of you . . .”
Now Charlie smirked. “Then I was just beating the shit out of him.”
Max laughed but Dutch didn’t.
Tossing her beer to her sister—which Max easily caught—Charlie asked, “When Stevie gets back . . . Exorcist marathon?”
“Exorcist marathon!” Max cheered back. “I’m so in!”
“Excuse me!” Dutch complained. “What about me? Your sister attacked me!”
“But,” Max said, pointing a finger at him, “she didn’t kill you. And that makes you special and a little blessed.”
Charlie nodded. “That’s true.”
* * *
Once Max put Dutch’s nose back into place and put an ice pack on it, she asked, “So really . . . why are you here? I thought you were working.”
“Still am.”
Max sat down at the kitchen table across from her wolverine friend. The lights were still off but Dutch didn’t seem to mind.
“What do you mean, you still are?” Max asked.
“Your Uncle Will. He’s on his way to the States. Private charter.”
“He’s coming for the funeral.”
“Yeah.”
“So?”
“The Group wants to keep an eye on him.”
“What does that have to do with you and me?”
“I’m here to make sure you and your sisters aren’t secretly in contact with him. I’m spying on you.”
“Oh.” Max nodded. “Well then . . . good job!”
“You know, old friend, you’re saying the right words, but that follow-up eye roll gives a vastly different message.”
* * *
“You met with her?” Matt’s brother demanded, stepping away from his desk. They shared the same home with their mother’s Pride. Still. But it had been for the best. James didn’t do well on his own. And local Prides didn’t really have any interest in him. For a lion male he was too quiet, too