The place was pretty packed on this summer day, but Stevie managed to find them a table near the back. She ordered one of the delicious banana splits and Shen got something called “the Panda Palace.” She didn’t ask, but she was sure bamboo was going to be involved.
Once the waitress had gone to get their orders, Stevie asked, “Can I talk to you about something without you telling my sisters?”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“My sisters are concerned about me right now and they’ll ask you questions when we get back or later tonight when they think I’m asleep. They’ll get you when you least expect it, and before you know it, you’ll be telling them everything I said, but I don’t want to have this conversation with them for a reason. It’s something I need to work out for myself, but I need to talk to somebody about it and Kyle’s not here.”
“You do know Kyle’s seventeen, right?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“He’s a child. He should be coming to you for advice.”
“He does come to me. And despite Kyle’s age, he’s a very thoughtful young man. I, personally, believe that he’ll be a philosopher in his later years.”
Shen rolled his eyes and his lip curled in disgust before he let out, “Ech.” He motioned to her. “So what do you want to talk to me, a grown man, about?”
“Have you ever thought about what your life would be like if you didn’t shift?”
“No, because I know what it would be like. It would be miserable.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. Nothing is more awesome to me than”—he leaned in and lowered his voice—“shifting and hanging from a tree limb, in the sunshine . . . or snow and just being me. Oh!” he suddenly added. “Even better, getting a big ball, wrapping myself around it, and just rolling around a yard.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s the best. What do you like to do when you are . . .” He glanced around, saw the full-humans and vaguely finished, “. . . your other-self?”
Stevie gazed at the panda for several seconds before she admitted, “I like to play with Blayne. Or something Blayne-like.” She leaned forward. “Human toys are the best because they kind of fight back. And the screaming weirdly entertains me.”
“I get that. But that’s a typical predator thing.”
She nodded. “I guess.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Why?”
“At the end of the day we’re all human. When I”—he cleared his throat—“change, I’m still me. I still know what I’m doing.”
“You mean you have control.”
“Right.”
“But what if you don’t?”
“But I do.”
“Yeah, but I don’t.”
“Wait . . . I don’t . . .” Shen shook his head. “What are we talking about here?”
Stevie leaned in. “What if, with medication, I could stop shifting . . . forever?”
* * *
Max, covered in stolen honey and bee stings—and some of those truly aggressive bees that just wouldn’t let go—trotted through a hole in the back fence that she’d created and cut through the yard. When she reached the front fence, she shifted back to human and batted off the bees, pulled out the stingers, and leaned against the fence.
That’s when she caught sight of Berg and Dag circling an Escalade that had parked in front of the house.
The bears on this street didn’t like strangers in general, but since Max and her sisters had moved in, they’d been extra protective. Something that Max found extremely entertaining.
“I smell cat,” Dag announced to his brother.
Berg leaned in and took several sniffs against the window. “That’s a big cat . . . and . . .” He sniffed a few more times. “. . . And cheesesteak.”
“There’s cheesesteak?” Dag pressed his nose against the glass again. “That’s definitely cheesesteak.”
“We could order cheesesteaks from Jersey Mike’s.”
“Yeah . . . but I’m hungry now. And the window is open a little.” Dag forced his hands between the window and the metal of the vehicle. He then pushed hard, forcing the window down with a squealing sound that made even Max cringe a little.
Dag only managed to get it halfway down and couldn’t get his massive body inside. Although it was humorous to watch him try.
After the third attempt, Dag stood and stared at his brother over the top of the vehicle. Some unspoken words passed between the two triplets.
Berg went to the back of the vehicle and, again, after looking at each other, they both squatted down and Max watched, her mouth wide open, as the brothers lifted the Escalade up and tipped it toward Dag. Everything that was inside came rolling toward the window.
“Shake it left,” Dag ordered.
And they did. They shook the Escalade to the left.
“Right.”
Then the right. Then left again. Like someone trying to shake a certain color out of a box of M&M’s.
When none of that seemed to work, they dropped the vehicle and Berg went to stand by his brother’s side.
“Maybe we should just call Jersey Mike’s,” Dag suggested.
“Yeah. But we still don’t know whose Escalade this is.” Berg wrapped his hand around the inside of the open part of the window. “Maybe if it’s unlocked we can just—ooops.”
Max closed her eyes and lowered her head, giving herself a moment so she didn’t laugh out loud. Hysterically. But the vision of that bear standing there . . . holding that door in his hand . . . because he’d pulled it off the Escalade, was something that would be burned into her mind until she died.
“That was an accident,” Berg said—and Max believed him.
“I know,” Dag replied. “But since it’s open anyway . . .”
Dag leaned in and, eventually, ended up crawling inside, followed by Berg once he leaned the door he’d been holding against the SUV’s back end.
Together, the pair began to rip apart the inside of the vehicle, still looking for those cheesesteaks. Oh . . . and information. Apparently.
Max heard footsteps and looked to her right. A male was walking toward her, grinning as he eyed her naked body. The bears on Carthage Street had seen Max naked so many times, none of them reacted to it anymore. But this guy . . .
He stopped next to her and leaned against the fence, his elbow resting near her face.
He was good-looking and, Max could now smell, a male lion. A handsome, muscular cat who probably adored his foam green Escalade the way the dogs in their house loved their rubber toys.
“Hey,” he said, flashing a handsome grin. “How you doin’?”
Max could have played with him. But she wasn’t really in the mood. It had been a long day already and she just didn’t have the energy. So she simply nodded her head toward his SUV and watched the cat’s gold eyes grow impossibly wide before he took off running.
“Hey!” he screamed. “What the fuck—”
By the time the lion reached the SUV, Berg had already gotten out . . . and stood up. He was at least six-ten and wide. Oh, so very wide.
That didn’t seem to bother the proverbial king of the jungle. . . and New Yorker. He started yelling at a shocked—and a little hurt—Berg.
“What are you? Stupid? What the fuck are you doing in my truck? Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Dag got out, holding an empty brown paper bag. Max was guessing that bag had once held the cheesesteaks the bear kept smelling.
“Oh, what?” the lion demanded. “You think you and your boyfriend can scare me? You two think I’m afraid of you?”
But the Dunns really weren’t the problem. Nope. It was what surrounded the lion.
Max cleared her throat—she was still naked so she figured he’d notice anything she did at the moment—and he spun to face her, but instead faced an annoyed Britta. Although the bond of the triplets had not been tested quite as much or as doggedly as the MacKilligan sisters’ bond, Max had no doubt that Britta would go as far as Charlie should her two brothers ever be at risk.
And the male lion sensed that.
“Well—” he began.
But that’s when more bears showed up, slowly surrounding the cat. Britta was clearly angry, but the others were just curious. They didn’t like cats on their territory, but they really only chased the pack of wolves that lived several blocks over because the howling annoyed them so much.
Max watched the cat closely from her little spot, noticing how he kept his hands down by his sides. But his fingers twitched. Not a lot, but just enough to tell her what she needed to know.
The front door to the house opened and Charlie came out. She stood on the stoop and called out, “Hey, guys. There’s stuff on the table in the backyard if you’re interest—”
Most of the bears were gone before she finished her statement, jumping over the fence and tearing across the yard to reach the table in the back.
The Dunns, though, were still standing there. The boys confused, Britta just glaring.
That’s when Charlie said, “I’ve kept some stuff in the kitchen, but they’ll find it if you guys don’t get it now.”
Britta moved first, ramming her shoulder into the cat’s before she walked off toward the house. Her brothers soon followed, after Berg handed the SUV door back to the cat.
“Really?” he demanded of the bears’ backs.
Now, it was just the cat . . . and Max. While he tried to figure out how to put his door back on—useless, she’d heard the metal hinge bend then break—Max climbed over the fence and crept up behind the lion. She waited until he sensed her, and then she grabbed him by the shoulder and rammed her foot into the back of his leg. He dropped to one knee with a short roar and Max pressed her claws against the cat’s neck. Right by the artery.