That Rex Gotta Roar - Julia Mills Page 0,18

hell did I have to run into my first grade teacher, Miss MacElfresh?

“Because I’m the only one who can help you help that Mate of yours and his sweet little sister.”

Spinning on my toes before I had time to remember that I was scared, I spat, “How did you know what I was thinkin’? That’s just not right. Have you always been able to read minds? Dammit, that makes so much sense. No wonder I always got caught. What the hell, Miss M? Why you gotta do me that way? How did…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa," the Ghost of the one and only Muskrat Shifter, at least that we knew of because Miss M refused to talk about her kin, who taught grade school at Tallulu Parish Elementary for almost a million years, ordered, wagging her index finger at me just like she used to do in class. "Hold on just a second, I’m the one who called you down here. Been trying to get you to pay attention for months now. Can you tell me why in all the good sense you do not have, you, Clementine Sue Cooper, decided to flip the off switch on your Psychic abilities just when things were getting hotter than Jethro’s still in August?”

“Well, you see… it’s just that… Ummm, I found out that I had a… Meeting the guy that I’m supposed…”

"She lost her freakin' mind when she found out that she did truly have a Mate, and that he was in Tallulu Parish, and that she actually fell in love with him the minute she laid eyes on his T-Rex behind," Cassandra's snarky voice came flying across my lips. Slapping both hands over my mouth, and holding on tight, I thought I'd stopped the flow of information, but, of course, as usual, I was wrong.

From one heartbeat to the next, my vision blurred, my throat caught fire, and it felt like my insides were being hoovered to the outside. My tummy fell to my knees. My heart flew up to my chest. The bottom of my feet felt as if they were being attacked by a million and three fire ants… and that was all the best bits.

A slurping sound, something like a plunger trying to suck the cork out of the Hoover Dam, whipped and whopped around my head, behind my eyes, and out through both my ear holes. All the air, at least that's what I think we were breathing in the Other Way Round, within a three-foot radius of my bodacious booty swooshed and swirled and swished with the form and finesse of a rabid swarm of killer hornets hellbent on my destruction. With my body shaking so hard that there were no less than four different versions of the Ghost of Miss MacElfresh bumping into each other, twisting in on themselves, and generally making me dizzy, I was about to spew.

I wish that had been the worst part. I mean, come the hell and hootnannies on, didn’t I deserve a break? I’d been praying for a break. Weren’t you praying for me, too?

Well, the worst was yet to come. Trust me. Seriously, ya’ know I wouldn’t lie to you.

Starting at the very tip of the underneath of my big toes, shooting along the bottom of my feet, racing up the back of my legs, spinning around my waist, then jumping into my stomach like Hannah the Hippo…

(Yes, she's a real person and only weighs about ninety-five pounds dripping-ass-wet. You'll meet her one day. I'm sure of it.)

Like I was saying, my insides felt like the water in the county pool after Hannah, in her Hippo form, had just completed a perfect ten-point cannonball, when a ball of magic hit bottom in my tummy with all the force of a small earthquake. Doubling over, knowing I was about to throw up on Miss M's shoes for the fourth time in my life (I had a nervous stomach as a kid.), my jaws flew open just in time to get a mouth full of feathers and a Canary claw in the tongue for my troubles.

“Ack! Blech! Gah! Huuk! Gak! Blarg!” I spit, sputtered, and gagged.

Jerking upright with a bit too much force because I was literally choking to death, I ended up landing right on my badonkadonk with a bone-jarring thud. “What the… Do you people down here just get off on tryin’ to… Holy Canary crap on a crab covered cracker! What the hell are you doin’ out here?”

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