chapter TWELVE

chapter TWELVE“I’ve never had my own bed,” Mads announced as she stretched out on the double California king in the middle of the master bedroom. A bed that was perfect for a loving pair of grizzly or polar bears but was hilarious for one small badger who looked lost in the middle of it.“Never?”“Nope. I took whatever bed was empty or I slept on the couch or outside or crashed at one of my teammate’s if their parents didn’t care. Luckily they never did since I was such a nice kid.”Finalizing the house deal had taken no time at all because the bears could barely keep their mind on anything once they’d scented Charlie’s coffee cake. Even the black bear lawyer they brought along kept drooling while trying to point out where everyone should sign and had to wipe the contract with a paper towel, apologizing profusely, before the group took off with the cake, the lawyer quickly returning to grab up the signed papers. Finn had recorded the whole transaction on his phone so he wasn’t too worried about any last-minute double-dealing.In the end, though, it had all worked out fine. Everyone got what they wanted—Mads a new house and the bears a lot of cash, an expensive painting, and a cake they really desired more than anything else.The entire transaction took place outside on the hood of the lawyer’s car, which turned out to be a good thing. Because even Finn was shocked for a good long while by the way Nelle and her friend had decked out Mads’s new house. It wasn’t just some nice furniture shoved in so Mads had a place to sleep. The house had been fully decorated. Overnight. Not only the usual matching furniture, but art on the walls, appliances in the kitchen and laundry room, books on the shelves, and one of the bedrooms made into an office with a brand-new computer system and a Wi-Fi network that was already set up through the local cable company. All Mads had to do was enter her email and social media passwords.How all this had been done in less than twenty-four hours, Finn had no idea. He knew the truly rich had access to things that the “regular guy” simply didn’t, but this was impressive. The only room left untouched was the basement. Finn didn’t know why. Maybe because it needed so much work or because it was going to be some sort of sports shrine for the sports geek. Those giant cardboard cutouts of history’s great basketball players weren’t always easy to track down. Especially if she wanted them signed. And Mads would probably want them signed.After they went through the entire house, saw all the new furniture, Mads didn’t say much. Then again, she didn’t really need to. Her glaring eyes and low growling pretty much said it all. Still, Mads did seem to like the bed.“What about when you got older?” Finn asked, his hands stuffed in the front pockets of his jeans. “Where did you sleep then?”She sat up. “I’m talking about when I got older. When I was younger, I just slept in the cabinets or under the couch. But mostly outside except when temperatures went below zero because I didn’t always have access to a warm coat at night and I am made up of two African animals not used to the cold.”“You slept under the couch?”“Sometimes. I found life easier when I wasn’t noticed.”Losing his father when he was pretty young, Finn had always assumed he’d had a hard life. He was starting to realize there was a harder life to have. Especially if he had been raised by hyenas that hated him.Trying not to give a look of pity, Finn turned away and quickly opened a closet. Because he’d rather let her think he was a nosey cat instead of a pitying man. But as soon as he had the sliding door open, he gasped.“They left their mother’s clothes here?” he asked.“She did move to Florida,” Mads said, bouncing off the bed. “Maybe she didn’t need them and they moved out of the house so fast . . .”Mads pulled out a medium-sized tank top on a hanger and held it up for both of them to stare at.“Is that . . . is that . . .” Finn could barely say it, but he finally got it out. “Is that a Scottie Pippen basketball jersey? With his number? From when he was with the Bulls?” Finn was not a basketball fan but before they’d cut off contact with the rest of the Malones, the gamblers—and there were a lot of them among the uncles, aunts, and older cousins—were all sports lovers. Basketball, baseball, soccer. Even rugby. Anything they could bet on. So there was no way he hadn’t heard, in detail, about the Chicago Bulls. Especially Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. And the constant debate over whether Jordan was possibly a shifter of some kind—which he wasn’t.Mads put the tank back and quickly shuffled through the other tanks and T-shirts. Then she slid open another closet door and found nothing but jeans, basketball shorts, and, on the floor of the closet, an array of basketball sneakers and a bunch of Converse in multiple colors. All in one size. Finn was guessing Mads’s size.“These sneakers are all in my size.”“She got you clothes, too?”Mads slammed the door so hard that Finn cringed, his superstitious side worried that the attached mirror would shatter, bringing seven years of bad luck to Mads. Something she didn’t need at the moment. When the glass held steady, he reached out and slipped his arm around her waist, then pulled her back into the middle of the room.“Don’t do it,” he told her.“I’m going over there right now and tell her to take all her shit back!”“I know you want to—”“I have to.”“—but you’re not going to.”She stopped trying to pull his arm off her waist and looked up at him.“And why is that? Exactly?”“I know this seems—”“Obsessive? Ridiculous? Like she’s throwing her money in my poverty-stricken face?”“You have a twenty-five-million-dollar painting that she just used against you in an argument . . . she knows you are not poverty stricken.”“It’s just so presumptuous!”“She’s trying to be helpful. Can’t you just appreciate the gesture?”“No.”She tried again to pull herself out of his arms but then they both saw the coyote walk by the open bedroom door and the struggle immediately stopped. Because that wasn’t a shifter coyote. It was a full-blood coyote. Wandering around Mads’s new home.Stepping away from each other, they followed the canine as it walked down the stairs to the first floor, down the hallway, through the big living room, through the dining room, through a swinging door, and into the very large kitchen with the nice breakfast nook and the bar with the seating that separated it from the dining room. It went to the stainless-steel refrigerator and stared at the door until Mads finally went over and opened it.“Hey,” Finn noted, “the refrigerator is stocked.”“And the cabinets. There’s a ton of honey in all those cabinets except that set over there,” she said, pointing. “Those are empty.”“So you’ll have someplace to sleep?”“Yes.”The coyote pulled out a package of cooked turkey sausage and returned to the dining room.“Are you going to do something about that?” Finn asked.Mads shrugged. “About what?”“You have a wild animal in your house.”“So far you haven’t peed anywhere.”Finn glared. “I don’t mean me. I’m talking about that coyote. You can’t let that dirty thing wander around your house.”And the coyote did wander. After quickly devouring the sausage, it started walking again, heading back up the stairs; Finn and Mads followed.“Charlie says it’s good to have a dog around your house.” Mads pointed out.“A domesticated dog. Not something that crawled out from under your porch when the last family moved away. For all you know, it could be riddled with rabies.”“It’s not.”“How do you know?”“I can smell it.”“You can smell rabies? Really?”“Well . . . I’ve had it six times. Eventually you learn to either smell it on others or just lie down and die from it after all the foaming.”“How did you survive having it six times?”She shrugged. “How did I survive that fight with the Inland Taipan when I was on the school trip at that illegal zoo? I just did.”“What’s an Inland Taipan?”“A poisonous snake. One bite can kill up to a hundred people.”“And you?”“Passed out for a day. Vomited a lot. Stabbed Max with my claws when she found me in the woods, which I felt really bad about because we had a game coming up over the weekend.”“So you’re just going to keep him?”“Of course not. He’s a wild animal.” Her phone began to vibrate and she dug into her back pocket to pull it out. “But he lived here before me, so if he can get in . . .”Finn was going to respond to that bit of insanity but before he could, Mads connected to the call on her phone and as soon as she did, the screaming started.* * *Mads and Finn leaned away from the phone as her mother’s screaming came barreling out of the speaker.Mads was more than a little shocked. She’d never thought she’d hear from her mother again once Solveig died. The family had gone out of their way not to tell Mads her great-grandmother had died. Because they knew how much Solveig had meant to her. It was on purpose. They wanted her to be hurt. Part of that pain—in their minds anyway—was the continued silence. Never understanding that, if nothing else, she reveled in the continued silence of her family. Nothing irritated Mads more than a hyena laugh. She’d started fights in bars, completely sober, because of hyena laughter. Luckily, her fellow honey badgers loved a good random fight.This wasn’t laughter, though. It was hysterical screaming. So hysterical, Mads didn’t know what her mother was going on about.“What are you saying?” she managed to get in at one point. “I don’t understand anything you’re babbling about.”That just set her mother off all over again. Mads rolled her eyes and glanced at Finn. Poor guy just looked disturbed. Mads was sure Finn’s mother was much calmer and more rational. Psychotic in a fight? Of course. She was a tiger, after all. But any other time? Calm and rational whether dealing with her grown cubs or handling some crazed New York driver. Mads was sure Finn never got calls like this.“I think someone’s calling you,” he said.At first Mads didn’t know what he was talking about, but then she heard it over her mother’s yelling, too, and handed off the phone to him. She went into the master bedroom, walked past the bed where the coyote had made himself at home, and went to one of the windows. She unlatched it and threw it open.“What?” she screamed out.“Are you guys coming back or what?” Tock screamed up at her from the street.“Yeah! Sorry! My mother’s on the phone!”Tock frowned. “Why the fuck is she on the phone?”“I have no idea! But she’s pissed! She’s so busy screaming at me I can’t make out a word she’s saying!”“Hey!” a She-bear yelled at them from her stoop. “Are you two going to do that all the time now that you’ve moved in? All that screaming? This is a quiet neighborhood, ya know!”“We’re almost done!” Tock yelled at the She-bear. She looked up at Mads and yelled, “Find out what your mother’s screaming about and then come over when you’re done! I’ll let Charlie know you’ll be over in a couple of minutes! Okay?”“Yeah! Okay!”Tock turned back to the angry She-bear. “See?” Tock demanded in a yell. “Now we’re done!”Mads turned away from the window to find Finn standing in the doorway, gawking at her while still holding the phone her mother was screaming out of.“What?” she asked him, no longer yelling since she knew he could hear her.“The bears on this street are going to hate you.”* * *Mads took the phone back from him and began to yell into it, “I don’t understand a word you’re saying, Mummy. Mummy? I don’t understand you!”“Mummy?” Finn asked.“She hates when I call her that. Or Mom or Mommy or anything mother related. So I go for the very non-American, full British mother name. Like I’m talking to the Queen of England herself.”“You can’t call her mom?” he asked, now ignoring the continued ranting from the phone because he was so annoyed by this horrible female he’d never met. “What does she want you to call her? Bitch?”Finn cringed. The word was out of his mouth before he could even think to stop it but that had been shitty, even for a tiger. This evil female was still Mads’s mother.“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—” He stopped talking, because she was waving him off and laughing.“Mummy, please,” she said, still chuckling.“Stop calling me that!” her mother yelped. But the distraction was enough for Mads to get a word in.“I don’t know what you think I’ve done but—”“You’ve stolen the sword! You didn’t think we’d notice?”All humor left Mads’s face and she coldly replied, “I didn’t take the sword. Although it’s mine by right.”“It’s mine by blood! And we’ll get it back! Do you understand what I’m telling you, girl?”Mads let that statement sit for a moment before she replied with freezing calm, “Come for me, Freja, and I promise you’ll regret it.”Her mother exploded into more hysterical screaming that was unintelligible, and Mads closed her eyes, let out a breath. Finn reached over as if he was attempting to grasp the phone from her. Instead, he simply disconnected the call. When Mads opened her eyes in surprise, he threw up his hands and said, “Ooops. These big, clumsy mitts of mine.”The phone immediately began to ring again but Mads didn’t answer. She tapped on her screen, then announced, “Blocked. I’ve blocked my own mother. How unfortunate.”“And your grandmother?”“Oh, I blocked her a long time ago. Each time I have to buy a new phone it’s one of the first things I do.”“Good. So this sword . . . ?”“The family sword.”“From ancient Viking times? Pried from the dead hand of one of your ancestors’ enemies?”“No. Purchased from a Renn Faire in Norway back in 1952. But it looks very Viking, and Solveig told them, to their great annoyance, that it was going to me because I—unlike my mother and grandmother—am true Viking rather than just a shifter. They actually stole the damn thing from Solveig and always swore I’d never get it from them and I was always like, ‘Whatever.’ ”“So you didn’t steal it?”“I would never go back to that hoarder’s nest. The sword is in the main house, on the wall so you can easily see it, but you have to climb so much crap to reach it . . .” She visibly shuddered. “That’s why Solveig never went to get it herself. And I’d rather go to another Renn Faire in Jersey and buy one or travel back in time and fight Erik the Red for his goddamn sword than go back to that goddamn house.”“How do they live there?”“They don’t. They bought a bunch of trailers and they live on the property. At this point, they just use the house as storage.”Finn thought a moment. “If you didn’t steal the sword, though . . . who would go in that house and steal it?”“I think I know, and none of my teammates are going to like it.”* * *“All right, what the hell did you do?”Max turned away from the kitchen sink to find most of her teammates as well as Charlie, Stevie, and two of those idiot cats staring at her.“What did I do about what?” Max pointed at the Malones. “The cats are still alive so I’ve been good.”“Forget the cats, and answer me,” Tock pushed. “What did you do?”She knew she had to be careful here. This could be a trick question. Charlie had caught Max doing all sorts of shit with that line of questioning when she was younger.“Nothin’,” Max instinctively said.“Max MacKilligan, don’t you dare lie to me,” Tock barked. “Mads is on the phone with her mother right now getting yelled at. Why is she yelling at her?”“Why is that evil bitch calling her at all?” Streep chimed in.Now Max was confused and worried. She knew how cruel that family had been to Mads. Max, for one, had been goddamn gleeful when they’d cut off most contact with Mads. So why were they back now? “I have no idea why Freja’s calling her.” When that response elicited nothing but glares and arm crossing, she didn’t know what to say. “I swear. And let’s face it, I would have admitted it by now if I had done something. Under this brutal onslaught of ”—she looked around—“whatever this is.”The backdoor opened and Zé came up the short stairway that led into the kitchen. He had bamboo leaves stuck in his black hair, which meant he’d been under the tree where Stevie’s panda boyfriend ate his morning bamboo and Zé drank his morning coffee.He stopped as soon as he saw the inquisition and asked Max, “What did you do now?”“Is no one on my side?”“Of course I’m on your side. I . . .” Her eyebrows went up as she waited for Zé to tell her that he loved her in front of all these people. Something she knew he was not comfortable with, just as she was not comfortable with it, but that was okay. They said it to each other at night, when they were alone. That’s when it mattered anyway.“. . . tolerate you greatly,” he finally finished, which only made her laugh out loud. “But we both know that you love to start shit.”“Not with Mads’s family! I don’t start shit with them. We all know what they’ll do to her.”“What will they do to Mads?” Shay innocently asked.Tock shook her head. “Nothing good.”The front door opened and before Mads even entered the kitchen, Max was yelling, “It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!”Mads stood in the kitchen doorway, gazing at her. That other big idiot tiger stood right behind her.“What are you talking about?” Mads asked.“Everyone is saying I’m the reason your mother is calling you.”“I know none of you guys would ever purposely engage with my mother. Not after the Tova incident.”“Ahhh. The Tova incident,” Tock repeated, a faraway look in her eyes.“I think that was the last time any of us had any direct contact with the females of your family.”“What was the Tova incident?” Zé asked.Max chuckled.“Tova is Mads’s grandmother,” Streep replied before Mads could say a word, “and she didn’t want any of us hanging around Mads after basketball practice. So she decided it was a good idea to come to each one of us individually and threaten us that if she saw us around Mads, she’d make us pay. But she was really scary about it. Like mobster kind of scary. Like she’d break our legs or something. And since we were only in seventh grade, we all took it very seriously.”“Why would she do that?”“She didn’t want me to have a safety net,” Mads said as she pulled a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator. “A place I could go if things got tough at home. And it was always tough at home.”“We didn’t know that at the time,” Streep continued. “We’d just started hanging together. But threatening baby honey badgers . . . ? Huge mistake.”“Definite mistake,” Nelle said with a little laugh.“My parents did not like some hyena talking to their adored baby on school grounds,” Streep explained, “which they told her in no uncertain terms. And then, for some unknown reason, my mother shredded this purse Tova had.”“She did do that,” Mads said, dropping into an empty chair next to the kitchen table and opening the orange juice. She took a large swig directly from the carton before adding, “She loved that purse. It was Chanel. Stolen. But Chanel.”“Everyone in Denny’s was shocked.”“My father was appalled when he heard she’d had the gall to say a word to me while I was waiting for the family car to pick me up,” Nelle said. “So he had a couple of his bodyguards burn down that shed she had with a few of her prized racing cars in it.”“Oh, yeah.” Mads grinned. “That really pissed her off.”“She tried to bully me,” Tock said. “My parents were going to deal with it, but it got back to my grandparents before they could make a move. They were busy at the time in Belarus, I think. So they asked a few friends of theirs who had some important meeting in DC to take a quick break and handle it for them. You guys met them . . . Moshe, Rachel, Ben.”Mads spit out some of her juice.As she wiped her chin, she asked, “The lion triplets?”“Yeah. And you know how lions love hyenas. From what I understand it was a very nice, polite discussion, though, about how it was in Tova’s own best interest never to speak to me again or she would lose her entire face.”Everyone in the room chuckled a bit before turning their attention to Max, but she simply shrugged. “What?”“So what happened when she talked to you?” Tock asked.“She never talked to me. Not about Mads. She yelled horrible things to me from moving cars a few times, but that was about it. She kept it up, you know . . . until I left the state. Other than that . . .” Max shrugged again.“My grandmother didn’t talk to you directly at all?” Mads pushed.“No. I never heard from her.” Max thought a moment, then turned and faced her sister. She was busy mixing up batter for a fresh set of muffins for the growing group of work-at-home bears in their yard. Some had even brought their laptops and headphones so they could hold meetings and do work while waiting.“What?” her sister asked when she looked away from her stainless-steel bowl.“Did Mads’s grandmother say anything to you? Back then?”“When?”“When I started junior high. Started hanging around Mads. Did she stop you on the street or school or anything?”“No, actually, she just showed up at the Pack house. When all the adults were out. In fact, everyone was out . . . but me.”Shocked because Charlie had never said a word about it, Max moved closer to her sister. “Oh, my God! What happened?”“I . . . uh . . . buried her alive.”Max and Mads quickly covered their mouths. Max, to stop the laughter and Mads, probably to stop herself from spitting out more juice. The rest of Max’s teammates stepped as far back from Charlie as they could manage in the small kitchen. The Malones just appeared horrified, which Max really liked. Ungrateful bastards.Stevie, however, merely grabbed an apple from a bowl on the counter and took a healthy bite; the sound made everyone glare at her. She paused mid-chew to squeak out a “Sorry.”Max refocused on Charlie. “Soooo . . . what happened?”“I buried her alive. Well . . . first I punched her. Then I hit her with a shovel. Then I dragged her back to hyena territory. Then I buried her alive.”“Then . . . you . . . Why?”“I wasn’t going to bury her on Pack territory. Duh, Max.”“I don’t mean why did you bury her . . .” Max gritted her teeth. “I mean, why did you do any of that?”“Oh! She clearly came there looking for a fight. And I was kind of in the mood to give her one because Dad had already pissed me off that morning. What really set me off, though, was she grabbed my arm when I tried to walk away. I think she planned to drag me through the house looking for you. But you weren’t there. When I tried to explain that, she unleashed her claws in my arm, which I did not like. It hurt and I was already cranky. So I punched her. Now that I think of it”—she glanced off for a moment—“yeah, I punched her a couple of times because she didn’t let me go at the first punch. I was still learning my strength, and she was underestimating my strength. But by the third time . . . she was on the ground with a broken jaw and, I think, a broken eye socket. Of course, by then my hand hurt.”“I hate that,” Max said and her sister nodded.“The thing was, as I was shaking out my sore hand and she was mumbling what sounded like very racist curses at both me and Max, I came to the realization that we were on our own. You, me, Stevie. My grandfather had so much on his mind, and I didn’t want to get his Pack involved. They barely tolerated us being there as it was. You’d just started junior high. Stevie was doing her SATs and finding errors in the test booklets and training guides, so she was freaking out. And those hyenas lived right next door to us. Now I didn’t know much about hyenas. I knew they had a funny run. I could hear them laughing at night. They either had stripes or spots, and they were matriarchal. And she was an old female. That’s when I figured she was probably in charge to some degree, so if I made my point with her . . . I’d make my point.”“Meaning?”“That if we didn’t start letting people know they couldn’t fuck with us now, they would be fucking with us forever. So I figured I’d start off with her. And the one thing my mom always told me . . . no one wants to fuck with crazy people. Even shifters. So I grabbed the shovel, because Lucy, one of the elders in our Pack, had been doing a lot of gardening. And I hit the hyena a few times—”“A few times?” Tock repeated.“Well, she wouldn’t stay down.”“Right.”“And then I dragged her back to hyena territory, dug a hole, dropped her in it, covered it up, went back to the house, made waffles and bacon because I’d missed breakfast. Never heard from her after that, and Max never said a word about her soooo . . .”Charlie gave a nonchalant shrug and, with an extra-large ice cream scoop, carefully ladled batter into the muffin pans.“I knew Tova was alive, though,” Charlie suddenly added, startling everyone in the room. “Because I’d see her walking around town.”“That must have been comforting for you,” one of the Malones said with great sarcasm, which Charlie completely missed.“It was because I was worried I might have miscalculated. I was only fourteen or fifteen when this happened. I’d gone through puberty, but I was still figuring out how much strength I had. I was desperately trying not to crush her skull. Or take her head off completely. That would have defeated my purpose. It’s not like I was positive an old hyena could survive the head wound she already had and dig her way out of her own grave. But I was ever hopeful.”She put the bowl aside, opened the oven, and carefully placed the muffin trays inside. When she closed the oven door, she faced the room again.“I was also surprised, Mads, when Tova or your mother sent those hyena males here to drag you into that heist you didn’t want to do. You remember when that happened a little while ago?”Mads nodded. “I remember.”“I figured she just didn’t know I was also here. Because, otherwise, why would she challenge me? As I’ve gotten older, I’ve only gotten meaner, angrier, and more willing to bury her alive where she can’t dig herself out. I assume that shooting her Clan’s males in the legs and knees the way I did clearly got my point across. Don’t you think?” Gripping the orange juice carton, eyes wide, Mads simply nodded her head. “Yeah. I think so too. But, hey, if you need me to deal with her again, just give me a heads-up. I’d be happy to help.”Max looked at her teammates, grinned, and said, “Hear that, guys? Just give my sister a heads-up! She’d be happy to bury your enemies alive. Owwww, Charlie! I was just joking!”* * *It was like a herd of cattle stampeding, the way everyone rushed out of that kitchen. Mads wouldn’t necessarily say they were trying to get away from Charlie. But she wouldn’t say that any of them were trying to hang around her either. Not after the previous night’s fight with the Yuns and now hearing how a fourteen-year-old Charlie had handled Tova Galendotter. The reason Mads’s other teammates had let the adults in their lives handle Tova was because they’d been too young and scared to stand up to the adult hyena. But Charlie didn’t have a choice, so she’d done what none of them would have even thought about at the time. Challenged Tova head-on, but was wise and fast enough not to give Tova time to think. To strategize and plan. By the time the old bitch had dug herself out of that grave, she probably didn’t want to ever see Charlie MacKilligan again, much less face her head-on in public. And risk losing one more time, maybe in front of her entire Clan? In front of sisters and nieces who would happily rip the mantle of leadership from her? Nope. She wasn’t about to do that.In the end, Charlie’s plan worked brilliantly. She kept Tova away from Max and her grandfather’s entire Pack while unknowingly ensuring that Mads always had some place to go when she needed to escape. Whether it was Tock’s for the Meyerson-Jackson Seder. Streep’s family summer barbeques. Nelle’s for Lunar New Year. Or Max’s for any American holiday since, according to Max, “Those are the only holidays we know.” Her teammates were also there any time Mads needed a bed or a hot meal. They were her escape. Her safety net. Something that drove her grandmother crazy, and that was why Mads was loyal to them to this day.“Let’s make a run for it,” Streep suggested when they were in the dining room.“To where?” Tock asked.“And why?” Nelle interjected. “If Charlie wanted to kill us, she would have done it a long time ago. We should go to Mads’s new place.” Nelle smiled at Mads. “I’m sure there’s tons of fabulous seating that we can all take advantage of.”Mads jerked forward but someone grabbed her by the back of her T-shirt and yanked her away. She thought it was Max, but she ended up by Finn’s side.“That sounds like a great idea, Nelle,” Streep said, smiling.Unwilling to let this go, Mads told her teammate, “Only a freak buys someone else clothes and—”Finn’s hand covered her mouth, and no matter how she struggled, he wouldn’t move it.“What about the muffins?” Shay asked, his facial swelling thankfully reduced. The area was still a bright maroon, though, but Mads was sure the redness would go away in a few hours .“Didn’t you get enough muffins?” Keane asked.“I didn’t get any muffins. You and Finn ate them all. The only thing I got was scorpions and a near-death experience.”“The swelling wasn’t that bad,” Tock told him. “We only said we might have to do a tracheotomy. Might. In the end it was totally unnecessary.”“Forget it!” Max barked into the kitchen as she walked away. “I am not working with these cretins!” She stopped when she saw the group standing in the dining room and said directly to Keane, “And yeah, I’m talking about you.”Stevie also exited the kitchen. She moved toward the stairs but stopped long enough to say to Max, “Isn’t Charlie amazing? She will make such a wonderful aunt when I have my perfect panda-badger-tiger baby.” For emphasis, Stevie gently petted her stomach before heading up the stairs to the second floor.Mads pulled herself away from Finn and dove onto Max just as Tock did, the pair of them tackling their teammate against the opposite wall to stop her from going after her baby sister. With great effort they pinned her there until she calmed down and ordered them, “Get the fuck off me!”Motioning to Zé, Shay asked, “Don’t I know you?”“One of you . . . three,” he said, gesturing at the Malone brothers, “threw me through the living room window.”“No. I remember that. I mean . . . from years ago. I feel like I . . .” He snapped his fingers. “I sacked you!”“That sounds weirdly sexual,” Streep noted.“High school football. You were running back. I twisted you up like a pretzel.”“Yeah. I remember that. You sent me to the hospital,” Zé accused.Shay took a step back. “How is that possible?”“I didn’t know what I was.”“You didn’t?”“No. I didn’t know until”—he looked at Max over his shoulder—“how long have we known each other?”“I don’t know. Few days? Ten thousand years. Something in that range.”“Yeah. What Max said. You put me in the hospital. Orthopedic surgeon told me I’d probably never walk again. I briefly hated my grandfather because he didn’t seem as concerned about his only grandson as I thought he should be. Then I made a miraculous comeback and was the talk of the school year and even got a write-up in the New York Post. But, hey. Thanks for trying to destroy me.”“It was my pleasure.”“Do you still play?” Keane asked.“Football? Not since high school.”“You didn’t play in college?”“Joined the Marines instead.”“Why?”Zé frowned, as if he’d never heard the question before. “So I could fight for my country.”“Why?”“I really don’t know how to answer that.”“What position did you play? Quarterback?”“Running back.”“You should come to practice at Sports Center tonight for our pro team. We’re having our draft. You can try out.”“For running back? Aren’t I a little . . . ?”“Small?”“No. Old. Not that that’s any better. But won’t I be up against twenty-somethings?”“Most of them have barely aged out of sub-adulthood. You’ll have experience, strength, and general cat crankiness in your favor. You should stop by. That reminds me . . .”The eldest Malone brother pulled his phone out of his front pocket and began typing away with big thumbs. When he stopped a few seconds later, Max heard her sister call from the kitchen, “You want me to come to your football practice tonight?”“Yeah.”“Uh . . . okay.”Annoyed, Max called out, “Charlie, are you coming to my game tonight? It’s the playoffs.”“What? I have to go to those now?”“Charlie’s going to come to my child’s games, Max,” Stevie yelled from the second floor, “because she’s going to be such a great aunt!”Max was halfway up the stairs when Mads and Tock caught her by the ankles and dragged her back down and toward the front door, with her screaming all the way, “We aren’t done discussing this! I will bring you back to those German docs in Switzerland myself!”“Why can’t you be nice to your sister?” Mads asked, ignoring the fact that Max’s chin was hitting each of the stoop steps.“She’s so sweet,” Tock insisted. “And you’re just so mean!”“Oww!” Max complained when they slammed her body up against someone’s SUV bumper.“Sorry,” the pair said in unison as they dragged her all the way back to Mads’s new house.Evil bitches.