He’s normally not so dumb.
Zuri: He didn’t forget the satellite phone, little brother. I watched him walk out the door with it.
Mischa: Should have sent me.
Zuri: We learned nine hundred years ago never to send you anywhere.
My eyes were wide, watching the texts continue as my siblings ribbed each other. Hasan never commented again, and Niko, the last of the males in the family, never commented at all. Gathering my courage, I started to ask what was probably a dumb question.
Jacky: Do I need to shut down the bar for the night?
The quick replies died off. I felt stupid. Of course, I should shut down the bar for a family meeting, and the full moon was Wednesday. I would be closed for two nights, which would kill my weekly revenue, but I could afford it.
Zuri: Ask a manager to watch the bar for a few hours.
Jacky: I don’t have a manager.
Mischa: Of course you don’t…
I groaned. Stupid, stupid question. There was no taking it back now, either.
Jacky: I’ll be fine. With the full moon soon, no one will notice.
Davor: Such faith in your customers. Do you even get business in that shithole area of Texas?
That one hit me in the chest. I looked up at my two customers, debating if I should snap a picture to tell him to fuck off. I took the picture, neither of them looking up from their drinks. I sent it into the chat, knowing it wouldn’t make too much of a difference.
Jacky: Look at that, jackass, I do!
Davor: You do us proud.
It didn’t take a genius to read the sarcasm there.
Zuri: Ask one of your dumb wolves to take over. I’m sure they know how to pour a beer. They’re male and canine.
Hisao: Yeah. If they’re going to live in your space, you might as well put them to work.
Niko: Leave her be.
Niko’s comment killed the entire conversation. My face was red with embarrassment as I put the phone down to find my ‘Full Moon - CLOSED’ sign. Part of the embarrassment was I felt like an idiot. The other part was Niko only spoke to defend me.
Niko was an anomaly. From what I could remember about my first four years as a werecat living with Hasan, he was even more standoffish than the rest of them and avoided everyone. He would come in, talk to Hasan, then leave, and I was never told where he would go or what he would do. He just disappeared. He was the youngest son, but for some reason, he garnered a lot of respect from the others, even if they weren’t always sure what to do with him. The longest conversation I ever had with him was a simple greeting and exchange of names. After that, nothing.
I’m an adult with a respectable business and once had an amazing, balanced life. How is it they make me feel like a child with all of ten words?
It was a frustration I’d dealt with since the morning I woke up to my new world of supernaturals. After nearly seven years not speaking to them, that hadn’t changed at all.
As my customers left, my phone buzzed again, and I checked it, frowning.
Niko: Are you okay?
Jacky: Fine.
Niko: Good. Remember, family meetings are video conference calls.
I didn’t remember that because I had never been in one. Well, that was about to change.
I was at my computer five minutes before the family meeting, setting up my headset and web camera. Since I never used a webcam for anything, I had to kick out my patrons due to a ‘family emergency,’ run to the store, buy it, and now I was fighting to set it up. I had no idea what the older werecats would be doing. From memory, they were pretty comfortable around technology, but I didn’t know what kind of setups they had or how this normally played out.
Or they just pay one of their staff to set it up. That’s a possibility.
I was told to download a program and install it, something I had also done earlier in the day. I opened it up to find I was instantly logged into a private server. I’d never seen or heard of the program before, and the file had been emailed to me. It wasn’t something I could find online.
Did one of them hire a programmer to make this? Probably Davor.
It logged me in as Jacqueline, of course. I couldn’t find a place to change it to Jacky, glaring at the name as I