Her left eyebrow arched, and he raised his hands between them to erect a wall, surrendering. “You need to stay out of trouble, mister,” she said, the serious set of her mouth sliding into a slow grin.
“Then what will I do for fun?” Max asked, one of his eyebrows rising to match her own as his voice lowered, softening into a faint rumble.
Instantly Amy stiffened, her flirting cooled, and she abruptly spun back to face me.
Max’s gaze fell from her face, the arm that had rested across the back of Amy’s chair dropped, and he stared at the table, more uncomfortable than I’d seen him act in years.
If Marvin hadn’t already been dead I would have wanted him dead just for that moment—for the awkward space his violence against Amy put between her and my little brother.
I cleared my throat and pushed past the thought. “We must all now pull our own weight—contribute to the family cause and work together, if we intend to stay.”
Max leaned back in his chair, his eyelids heavy. “So what do you suggest, brother?”
Before I could say a single word, Amy had turned on him, her head cocked, eyes flashing. “That you get a job.”
I nodded, holding back the smile edging at my lips.
“A job?” Max mused. “And what are werewolves—ex-werewolves,” he corrected snidely, “good for?”
“Bussing tables,” Amy quipped.
“Waiting tables,” Jessie suggested.
“Taking tickets or working the concession stand at the theater, or sweeping up in the theater.”
“Retail.”
“Fast food.”
I crossed my arms and watched Max, Pietr, and Cat grasp the seriousness of our predicament. They had never held jobs before, but then, we had never been in one place long enough to hold jobs. I picked at the tablecloth. This might require more paperwork—more forgeries—unless they all worked, as they said, “under the table.”
Cat gave a long, slow blink. “Dear god,” she whispered. “Retail? Pravda?”
Jessie and Amy snorted and said in unison, “Pravda.”
“I’d offer to try and get a job, too, but I’m as busy as I can be with the farm…,” Jessie apologized, reaching out a hand to Pietr’s.
He nodded. “I’ll keep doing odds and ends at the farm,” he offered. “That is a small something.…”
“A small something will not pay the bills,” I said firmly.
Amy toyed with a fork left on the table from lunch. “I’m living here now, so I should contribute. I think I can get something—maybe even temp work with one of the local agencies.”
“Temp work.” Jessie nodded. “Probably filling in at Aphrodite, but a temporary gig at a factory’s still better than nothing.”
“Okay,” Amy said with the groan that meant she’d made up her mind, “I’ll put in as many applications as I can—hit everything. And you”—she punched Max in the arm, the most physical affection I’d seen her easily display in front of us for quite a while—“will fill out every application I give you. Happily.”
“Gladly,” he muttered.
“Gleefully,” she added.
“Gleefully?” His eyes slid to catch hers and he groaned. “Must it be gleefully?”
“Yes,” she said, all serious. “I’m afraid gleefully is the least I’ll accept.”
“There is something above gleefully?” he asked her, a hint of fear coloring his tone. This was how they played now: carefully. Awkwardly.
But it was something.
“Of course there’s something above gleefully,” she said, her voice somber and low. She spun to face Jessie, startling her just enough so she jumped in her chair. “Jessie,” she hissed melodramatically. “What’s above gleefully?”
Jessie’s head hit the table in response. “I used up all my words with the lit assignment,” she apologized. “I could add Sarah to your speed dial, though…,” she offered slyly, her hand creeping across the table toward Amy’s ever-present phone.
Amy smacked it definitively, grinning at Jessie’s overacted yelp, and whipped back around to Max. “I’m sorry to report that although I am absolutely certain there is something above gleefully, I have no current means—and want no new ones,” she added over her shoulder to her best friend, “to tell you what it is precisely.”
“So I have to take your word on it?” Max asked, reaching up to stroke his stubbly chin in thought.
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do,” he conceded, but the subtext between them was much deeper than a discussion about linguistics and job applications. I had the definite feeling he was promising her something more. That he was promising to take her word on everything—every question he asked.
Relieved by his reply, a certain tightness in her shoulders released and she leaned back in her own chair, peering at Max a moment.
“Excellent strategy, Amy,” I congratulated her.
“And I’ll help Cat get some applications in at places that’ll suit her tastes,” Amy offered. “Think clothing stores, Cat,” she said with a wink.
“Oh! The shoe department,” Cat replied.
“Da, there is hope for everyone,” I muttered.
Marlaena
We’d been bedded down in the same place for two days when the sharp scent of woodsmoke filling the old house and leaking past its tattered curtains and out broken windows woke me. A welcome smell until my nose pricked and my eyes watered. Uncurling, I stretched and swallowed up my wolfkin side, feeling the fur pull back into my flesh like a million tiny pinpricks that woke my human senses more fully.
They stared at me, eyes stroking along my naked form, some curious, some hungry as I stepped to the fire’s side. They’d stacked firewood hastily in the center of the tile kitchen floor and lit it as safely as they could.
“Is there no fireplace?” I asked the group resting with snouts on their paws, my voice still gruff from both waking and the change.
Most of them were younger—timid things I’d picked up along the road, lost, wounded, or abandoned and still shy in their human skins and barely playful in their furs. Shyness was a luxury. The hard fact was the quiet ones had less chance of survival in our world than those of us who learned to be bold.