chapter EIGHTEEN
Berg walked out of the second-floor bathroom, freshly showered and shaved, a towel around his waist.
He was heading to his bedroom when he caught sight of his sister and brother staring into one of their extra bedrooms.
Berg walked over to them and looked into the bedroom. To his surprise, Charlie sat cross-legged on the mattress, her wrists resting on her knees, her eyes closed. He sensed she’d slept on the couch, but was using the bed to meditate. A strange decision, but she was doing it all quietly. Unobtrusively.
So what were his siblings doing? Why were they watching her like her head was spinning around?
He grabbed both by the back of their T-shirts and dragged them down the hall to his bedroom, shoving them inside.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a whisper.
“The question,” Britta said, “is what is she doing?”
“She’s meditating.”
“Why?” his siblings asked.
“Get out,” he ordered. “And leave her alone.”
They left without a word, and Berg dried off and put his clothes on. He stuffed his wallet into his back pocket and walked out of his room. He was about to head to the stairs but couldn’t help but go back to the bedroom and check on Charlie. She was still there, still meditating. But now that stupid dog had joined her. Big head resting against her hip, his wagging tail slapping against the bed.
He spotted Berg and leered at him again. Berg pointed at the dog, then used the same finger to draw a line across his throat.
It was childish, but he couldn’t help it. Damn dog.
Shaking off his annoyance, he headed downstairs and went into the living room. That’s where he found Stevie. She looked much calmer than she had the day before. Clearly her meds had kicked in, and Berg was surprised at how relieved that made him.
“Hi, Stevie. What’s up?”
“Is Charlie still here?”
“Yes. She’s upstairs—”
“Meditating,” his sister answered for him, coming into the room. “Does she do that sort of thing often?” His sister made it sound like they’d caught Charlie smoking meth. It was meditating, for God’s sake!
“She’s meditating?” Stevie’s smile was wide and bright. Very adorable. “I’m so happy! I gave her books on that a few years back but didn’t know she was actually using the techniques.”
“Why does a shifter need to meditate?” Britta asked.
“It’s to help with her GAD.”
Britta gripped Berg’s forearm.
“Ow!”
“What is that?” his sister demanded, gawking at Stevie. “Is that something we can catch? Is my brother going to die?”
“It just means general anxiety disorder. My sister has had it for years. Probably since after our mom died.” Stevie pressed her hand to her upper chest as if she were in front of an audience explaining the different kinds of disorders in the world. “I have panic personality disorder, which has elements of anxiety. But Charlie—not surprisingly—has anxiety disorder with some bouts of depression. The meds she takes help but one doctor told her, when she was about fifteen, that if she didn’t get control of her anxiety, she’d have a hole in her gut the size of Texas. I don’t want my big sister to have an ulcer, so we’ve been working on a way for her to manage her anxiety. She doesn’t need meds like mine, though. Her issues are much less . . . complicated.”
She held up a small plastic container with seven compartments. Each compartment had a letter representing the day of the week on it. “That’s why I brought her meds over. They may not be as complicated as mine, but she can’t just not take them. Especially the one for anxiety and the beta-blocker. The beta-blocker is to help with her racing heart issues.”
She nodded. “I’ll put them in the kitchen next to a glass of water. Along with her contacts, which just came in. That way she doesn’t have to worry about her glasses so much. Just make sure she takes her pills before she goes out, please.”
Stevie moved past them and out into the hall. She walked off, but a few seconds later, came back and went the other way. A minute after that, she ran back the other way.
“I found it!” she called out from the kitchen. “No need to help. I found it.”
“Are they all on meds?” Britta asked, staring at the empty hallway.
“I’m not,” Max said from behind them.
Berg and Britta turned to face Charlie’s middle sister and, together, brother and sister screamed and stepped away from her.
“Dear God, Max! What happened to your face?” Berg hysterically asked.
She shrugged, the quills in her face wiggling when she did. “A porcupine attacked me. Flung its quills at me.” She glanced around, seemingly not bothered by the many—many—quills hanging from her face like some weird, horrifying mask. “Charlie around?”
“She’s meditating.”
“Oh. I’ll wait. She knows how to get these out.” She stood there for a moment before announcing, “I’m going into the kitchen for water . . . do you have straws?”
“In the cabinets somewhere.”
“I’ll find them.”
She left the room and Berg and Britta counted down, “Three, two, one—”
“Max!” Stevie exploded from the kitchen. “What the fuck?”
“I was attacked. It flung its quills at me. It’s not my fault.”
Stevie appeared outside the living room, finger pointing at what they assumed was her sister. “You are such a liar, Max MacKilligan. Porcupines don’t fling their quills. They back up into whatever is attacking them. That means your face was down near its ass when it got you! What is wrong with you? Who attacks a porcupine?”
“If you’re going to make a big deal about it,” Max said as she walked back into the living room, “I’ll just leave.”
Without meaning to, both Berg and Britta yelped and jumped away from her again. The sight of her face was just that horrifying.
“Sorry,” Berg said when Max rolled her eyes. “But your face. It’s freaking us the fuck out.”
“Don’t apologize to her,” Stevie said. “She deserves what she got. Leave the porcupines alone, Max!”
“Are you done lecturing me, Mom?”
Eyes narrowing, Stevie gripped her sister’s shoulder with one hand and took hold of about six quills with the other. Then she yanked.
Max howled in pain and jerked back. “You bitch!”
She pushed past Stevie and disappeared down the hallway, calling out, “Charlie!”
Stevie grinned, the quills—bloody at the tips—still gripped in her hand. Then they all jumped yet again when they heard Dag’s startled roar of surprise.
A few seconds later, he stumbled into the living room. “What the fuck was in her face?”
* * *
It wasn’t that Charlie had really learned to calm her brain when she meditated, but she appreciated having a few minutes to herself to just sit. True, her brain was still sifting through the thousands of things she had to do every day, but it was a start. And so far she’d staved off any ulcer-like pain in her stomach—an improvement since she was fifteen and a doctor wondered what she was doing to herself to cause such problems—so she considered that a plus.
Her ridiculously enhanced hearing—both badger and wolf hearing being what it was—told her as soon as her sisters made an appearance at the Dunn house. She was also not surprised when she heard chatter, screams of horror, arguing and, eventually, more screams of horror. The MacKilligan sisters didn’t know how not to make an impression.
Still, she’d have preferred not to open her eyes and see Max standing in front of her with her entire face covered in porcupine quills.
“You’re the only human being I know who purposely fucks with porcupines.”
Max shrugged, the move making the quills wiggle. “He was under the beehive I was trying to get to.”
“You’re supposed to leave the beehives alone. We had this discussion.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I didn’t get anything.”
“Yes,” Charlie replied flatly. “I do so enjoy seeing my little sister used as a goddamn pin cushion.” She pointed. “Bathroom. Now.”
It took a lot of time to carefully extract the quills from Max’s face. They had a way of locking themselves under the flesh and she had to cut off the top part first to let out the air and then slip the quill out. It was the only way she knew of to remove them so as not to damage Max’s face more than it already was. The first time it had happened, when they were with the Pack, Charlie had found Max before any of the She-wolves. Before the She-wolves could discover what had happened, Charlie had ripped out most of the quills, causing damage to her sister’s face and, unfortunately, allowing a few quill tips to travel deep into the flesh. The She-wolves ended up taking Max to the doctor to get out the rest. It had not been pretty.
After that, though, Charlie had taken it upon herself to find a local vet and ask him the best way to remove quills.
“From your dog?” he’d asked.
“Uh . . . sure. The dog. The dog will have quills in his or her face.”
But no. Charlie had never met a dog that ended up in that situation. She knew it happened sometimes, but she’d never seen it. Her sister however . . .
After Charlie got all the quills out, she wiped Max’s face down with an antiseptic and told her not to pick at it when it started to scab. If she did everything right, she should be completely healed in about forty-eight hours.
“What happened with Dad after I left?” Charlie asked, scrubbing her soapy hands under the bathroom faucet.
“Your She-bear protector tossed him out on his ass.”
“Before Britta got there. Did you guys give him more money? Did he beg for you guys to protect him?”
“We didn’t give him anything. Even Stevie. Except for the couple of bucks she gave him when we were all outside, she seemed pretty done with him. I might be able to kill him anytime now.”
“Not if it’s going to send you to prison.”
“Who’d put me away for doing the world a favor?”
* * *
“Why do you smell like panda?” Britta asked Charlie’s sister.
“Shen Li’s at our house protecting the great sculptor prodigy Kyle Jean-Louis Parker.”
“So? Why do you smell like him?”
Berg cringed. His sister really didn’t know how not to be nosey. If she had a question she wanted answered, she didn’t let a little thing like politeness and civility get in her way.
“I kept hugging him.”
“You? You kept hugging a bear?”
“Yeah. The cutest bear ever! Unlike with you guys, I don’t feel nervous around him at all. I never sense he’s going to eat me or tear off my arms or whatever. I won’t have to use my bear spray on him,” she said with great certainty.
Britta turned toward Berg and asked low, “Should I tell her the truth?”
“No,” Berg replied quickly. “Let her live in her happy world and we’ll hope that she doesn’t have to use her bear spray on you.”
“Why?”
Berg shook his head, not willing to tell his sister the danger her eyes were in.
Charlie entered the living room with Max, and Berg was grateful to see the quills had been removed from Max’s face. Of course, now she looked like she was suffering from chicken pox, but that was still better than the quills.
Anything was better than the quills.
Charlie looked at her watch, her eyes narrowing. She brought her wrist closer to her face.
“You forgot your glasses,” Berg reminded her.
“Oh. Yeah.” She brushed her hand against the front of her T-shirt, the outside of her jean pocket, the entire collar of her T-shirt, then she turned in a circle, looking around the room.
“Your head,” he finally announced when he couldn’t stand it another second.
She brought her hands to her hair but it was a mess of curls and she seemed to be having trouble finding them.
He moved over in front of her and carefully pulled the glasses off, trying not to snag her hair. Once he had them loose, he used the bottom of Charlie’s T-shirt to give them a quick clean—something he’d seen her do often—before carefully placing them on her face. He made sure the frames fit perfectly on her nose and behind her ears before stepping back.
“We should get you one of those old lady chains so you can wear your glasses around your neck.”
“That’s never going to happen.”
“You’d look adorable.”
She grinned and Berg couldn’t help but smile back. They kept staring at each other until they seemed to realize at the same time that they were being watched by the women in the room.
Charlie looked away first, snarling at her sisters to get out.
“Your contacts arrived,” Stevie announced, sauntering by her sister. “I put them in the kitchen with your meds. I guess I could have mentioned that earlier . . . but then we wouldn’t have seen the whole putting your glasses on for you thing.”
“Such a gentleman,” Max teased, following her baby sister out the door.
Britta, however, silently refused to leave until Berg roared in her face again and again; then she walked out in a mild huff.
He cleared his throat, burying his fists in the front pocket of his jeans. “Can I see you later?” he asked, getting right to his goal. Afraid if he didn’t, he might never do it.
Charlie gave a little laugh. “Are you just a glutton for abuse? I can tell you right now, I’m not into leather and chains. So if you just like abuse—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just want to see you later.”
“And if the curse travels?”
“I’ll risk it.”
“Foolish and a sign of poor decision making.” She let out a breath. “But fine. I have to see my aunt today, but after that . . .”
“Do you need me to go with you?”
“Oh, God.” Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t do that to any person. Even an enemy. I’ll handle my aunt. But I’ll text you when I get back.”
“Sounds good.”
She looked around. “Where’s your sister?”
“Probably in the kitchen being haughty. Why?”
Charlie stepped onto the wood coffee table so that they were nearly eye level. Leaning in, she dropped her arms onto his shoulders and pressed her lips against his.
Berg smiled against her mouth, sliding his hands around her waist, pulling her in tighter. Her body pressed against his and he knew he’d been right last night. Charlie fit him perfectly.
He teased her mouth open with his tongue and for several minutes they simply stood there tasting each other, enjoying each other.
“Bitch, get off my coffee table,” Britta said as she passed through the living room. “That shit is a Lock MacRyrie original and cost me a small fortune.”
Laughing, Charlie pulled back, her arms still hanging over his shoulders. Staring down at the table she asked Berg, “Who?”
* * *
“We’re coming with you,” Charlie heard when she was scrunching gel into her hair with her fingers.
She was bent over at the waist, hair hanging down, so she waited until she straightened up before asking her sisters, who were standing in the bathroom doorway, “Why?”
“We just think it’s for the best,” Stevie said, attempting to make it seem like no big deal.
Charlie stared at her sisters before asking, “Is this because I punched her that time?”
“Of course not—”
“Yep.”
Stevie cringed before snapping at Max, “Would it kill you to lie just a little?”
“But it is because she punched her. And now we’re going to put them together in the same room, during the high-stress time of a wedding, to talk about Dad. If we’re not there . . . we’ll just be bailing Charlie out later.”
Stevie’s lips twisted, her gaze locked on a spot on the floor, before she finally admitted, “Max is right.”
“Fine.” Charlie studied her hair in the mirror, attempting to make her curls “act right,” as her mom used to put it. “But if that bitch starts anything—”
“And that’s why we have to go,” Max said before walking away. “We all know she’s going to start something.”
Stevie reached over and slapped Charlie’s arm.
“Ow.”
“And would it kill you not to prove Max right all the time?”
Before Charlie could answer that—it would have been, “Yes, it would”—Stevie had stomped off.