“I never said killed,” Charlie replied.
“Uh-huh.” Dr. Morgan stared at Charlie for nearly a minute before returning to her point. “And even now, all three of you are again in danger because of your father. And despite everything that has been going on—in the past and present—she”—she pointed at Stevie—“is the only one that needs a therapist. Did I get that right?”
“Yes,” Charlie and Max said in unison. When the doctor focused on her, Stevie shrugged.
Dr. Morgan let out a sigh and stood. “Okay.”
Watching the woman stretch so easily toward the ceiling, Stevie started to chant again, but Dr. Morgan’s sharp, “Do not shut your eyes,” made her stop immediately.
She came around the desk and motioned to Charlie. “Please,” she asked nicely, gesturing toward the door.
After reassuringly rubbing Stevie’s shoulder, Charlie stood and headed out the door. Dr. Morgan also gestured to Max, but she just shrugged and said, “Nah. I’m fine.”
The doctor reached over Stevie—and she couldn’t help but cringe away from her—and snatched Max up by the back of her neck. She held the tough extra flesh there that was part of the honey badger’s defenses.
“Hey!”
Dr. Morgan ignored Max and carried her out the door. That’s when Stevie’s chant changed.
“Please don’t eat my sisters. Please don’t eat my sisters. Please don’t eat my sisters.”
* * *
Dr. Kelly Lewis was in the middle of texting her mate a recent shot of her tits when there was a knock on her office door and her business partner walked in. A young, black woman was with her. She sort of smelled like wolf, but then again . . . she also didn’t. It was weird, but Kelly was used to weird. She liked weird.
She was a wolf that liked weird, which was good because the other weird thing was that Becca had a snarling, snapping honey badger dangling from her right hand.
Kelly didn’t know why and she wasn’t about to ask. She liked things to just unfold.
“This is Dr. Kelly Lewis,” Becca said to the young woman she ushered into Kelly’s office. “She’ll be helping you.”
“I don’t need help,” the woman replied.
“Oh, my sweet girl,” Becca laughed. “You so do.”
Then Becca and the violent badger were gone.
Kelly gestured to the free chair across her desk. “Please. Sit.”
“Look,” the woman began without sitting, “I really don’t have time for this and I’m really just here for my baby sister since she’s the one who really needs help . . . not that I don’t need help or whatever . . . I’m sure everyone needs help at some time in life and I’m no different, but I have so much going on and like with my aunt who keeps calling me but I don’t want to deal with that right now, because she’s probably calling me about poor, dead Great-Uncle Pete . . . or maybe she’s calling me for something else, but I can’t imagine why after we kept that polar bear from ruining my cousin’s wedding . . . of course, couldn’t have won that fight without Berg . . . then again we could have but not without killing the polar and his friends, which I’m glad we didn’t have to do because that would have really ruined the wedding and I’m sure Berg wouldn’t have liked that at all, which I would have hated because I really do love him . . . so much . . . and I like and am learning to love his siblings, but they’re triplets and the other two are always around, lurking, and you have no idea how off-putting it is to turn around in your kitchen and find three extremely large grizzlies standing behind you . . . lurking . . . but I guess it could be worse . . . true, the twin aunts no one knew about are trying to kill us, and I’m just waiting to find out how my father has fucked over our lives again with his unbelievable stupidity and someone is always trying to kidnap Stevie . . . plus Berg’s dog has this weird hacking thing going on and I want to get him to the vet before that turns into something, and I think there’s something wrong with the plumbing with our rental house, which, of course, has me again thinking about saving money so that I can actually purchase a house, plus life is a nightmarish gamble of car accidents and falling air conditioners and plane parts so you really need money for those unplanned scenarios that can occur at any time and, not to be too broad, but what about world politics and our risk as a country of getting into more wars and how long before there is a strike on American soil, which may or may not affect my sisters because we do travel a lot so we could be out of the country, but that doesn’t really protect us, now does it . . . but then again—”
“Okay,” Kelly finally cut in when she began to become concerned the woman would keep talking until every bit of air left her body and she would end up slumped over dead on Kelly’s very expensive rug, which she’d had flown in from Israel less than a month ago. “I’m going to stop you here and suggest that we start with something a little simpler than world politics and your dog’s hacking problem.”
“Simpler? Such as?”
Kelly gave a little smile before suggesting, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe . . . your name?”
* * *
Dr. Deb Ortiz-Paredes was marking corrections on her latest manuscript when her door was kicked open and Becca stomped into her office with a threatening honey badger dangling from her fist.
“I’ve got one for you.” She dropped the badger into a chair and then held the poor woman in place by pressing her hand against the top of her head. It was like she was trying to squash her.
“I have quite a full plate,” Deb replied, trying very hard not to laugh.
“Ohhhh, it doesn’t matter. This is one you make room for. Trust me.”
Deb placed the proofs on her desk aside and studied the growling female under Becca’s hand.
As a forensic psychologist who specialized in sociopaths and criminally violent schizophrenics, Deb knew that Becca had wonderful instincts . . . plus Deb had another book due after the one she was currently working on. So maybe her friend and business partner of the last fifteen years had found Deb her next study subject.
“Okay,” Deb told Kelly. “I can take it from here.”
“Great.” Kelly walked out, closing the door behind her.
The badger still sat in the chair, her gaze searching the room.
“So,” Deb began, “Ms.—”
“MacKilligan.”
“—Ms. MacKilligan.”
“Just call me Max.”
“Fine. Max. So what brings you here, Max?”
Deb expected a lot of “I don’t belong here” type stuff, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the woman’s gaze slid across the room and over Deb’s desk, until those dark, dark eyes locked on her, and the badger said nothing. Just stared at her.
Grinning, the jaguar leaned back in her chair and said, “Let’s begin . . . shall we?”
* * *
Dr. Morgan returned to her office, closed her door, and came over to her desk. She sat down and let out a sigh before grabbing a fresh legal pad from a stack on the table behind her desk. She spun her chair around, took out a pen, and looked at Stevie.
“Okay, Dr. MacKilligan,” she said, smiling at her. But, for once, Stevie didn’t feel threatened by that grizzly smile. It just seemed . . . friendly. Nice. Just a nice smile . . . from a man-eating grizzly bear. “First, let’s talk about what you need from me.”
chapter SIX
When Shen found the little rip in the wallpaper behind his head and began to pull at it—he thought maybe something was behind it and he wanted to see!—the pretty receptionist who had become a lot less nice the longer Shen sat in her waiting room came over and slapped his hand away.
“Can you not sit still for three minutes?”
“It’s been like ten hours.”
“Less than an hour. Just sit. And stop playing with everything. You’re worse than the grizzlies!”
Still bored, Shen took out his phone again and went to his favorite news sites, then checked his texts. A full-human woman he had been trying to set up a date with had finally gotten back to him but—to his horror—she was suggesting dinner with her parents. Shen couldn’t tell if she was trying to get him to run away screaming or was seriously asking him to dinner with her parents. For their first date.
Unsure, he forwarded the text to his two sisters. Kiki responded first with one emoji after another. All of them suggesting she was laughing hysterically at him.
Zhen texted back a simple message: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.
Shen was trying to figure out how to nicely decline the date since he didn’t like the idea of being one of those guys who simply didn’t respond. He had two sisters who had been forced to deal with assholes like that for years, and he wasn’t about to become one himself.
But before he could gently explain that he had to move back to China for the foreseeable future, the three sisters returned to the waiting room with what seemed to be three different therapists.
So each sister had gotten her own therapist? That actually made sense to Shen. A lot of sense.
The sisters stood silently as Stevie’s doctor arranged additional appointments and handed her a prescription slip. “You can get this filled downstairs. You’ll need to use our pharmacy, of course.”
Stevie nodded, but that was it.
Once done, and without a word, they headed to the elevator and went down to the pharmacy on the first floor. Another twenty minutes there to get the medication and then they were on the road heading back to Queens.
The sisters said nothing the entire way home, each looking out a window.
Shen stopped at the McDonald’s near the Queens house and picked up a few burgers and several large orders of fries. Each sister declined to order with a shake of her head and continued silence.
He parked the SUV in front of the house and everyone got out. Shen dropped off his food on the coffee table in the living room. He walked to the first-floor bathroom, washed his hands, then went to the refrigerator in the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water. On his way through the dining room, he grabbed one of his duffel bags filled with bamboo stalks and returned to the living room.