chapter THREE

chapter THREEThe SUV stopped in front of the Queens, New York, house that the MacKilligan sisters had been living in for quite a while now.Well, quite a while for them. The sisters really weren’t known for living in any one place for any length of time. The fact that Max had been able to make it through junior high and high school with the rest of them so that she could stay on the basketball team was an absolute triumph and was, Mads finally realized, the work of Charlie. The eldest MacKilligan sister had determined that both her younger sisters would have some kind of normalcy in their childhoods. Impossible at the end of the day, but what she did insist on was that they had a home at least until they finished high school. For Max that was when she was eighteen and graduated with the rest of her team. For Stevie that was the same year because she’d tested out of high school and went to Oxford University for something or other involving science.Mads truly didn’t think she’d ever see Max MacKilligan again after graduation. Or any of her other high school teammates. She’d assumed Tock would head back to Israel and Mossad, since that organization had been secretly working for years to recruit her. Streep would head for Hollywood or Broadway. And Nelle would move to Europe. As for her own plans . . . it had always been the WNBA, but then her high school coach had called and offered her a chance to be on the shifter-only team for Wisconsin. It was a good offer but . . . but . . . the WNBA had been her lifelong dream. Right? How could she not even try out?Then, of course, her coach reminded her. In the WNBA, she could never be what she truly was. Sure, Mads could pull her badass moves on a street court in Detroit with no questions asked, but on TV? With full-human women much taller than she would ever be?Mads was only five-eight!Okay. Fine. She was five-seven-and-three-quarters. But her crazy-ass shifter legs combined with her natural basketball skills gave her moves that would have any regular ref demanding drug tests for everyone involved. She could never be who she truly was among full-humans. Not only that, but how was the WNBA supposed to recruit her? She was never going to college. Mostly because she really didn’t want to, and her family would make sure that was not a good experience for her.So she went in for the Wisconsin Butchers’ training camp, unsure of what to expect. There were a number of shifters in her small town: her coach, Max’s Pack, her hyena Clan, and some other shifter families. But almost always they’d met in unsafe spaces. Spaces filled with full-humans. At training camp she was with nothing but her own kind. Different species of her own kind but still . . .Cats, dogs, and so many bears. Thankfully no hyenas, though. She’d had more than enough of them over the last eighteen years of her life. She was ready for anything else. But while she was on the floor, stretching out her legs, a basketball hit her in the back of her head. At first, she was afraid she was going to have to deal with goddamn hyenas!That did not mean, however, that she would put up with any more shit from hyenas that were not blood relations. That would not be happening! So she’d jumped up, ready not to start shit, but definitely to finish it! Even if it got her kicked out of training camp the first day. But then she saw Max MacKilligan grinning at her . . .“What the fuck are you doing here?” she’d asked, fighting the urge to hug her old teammate.“Training camp.”“I thought you were in England with your sisters.”“Three months and Stevie suddenly attacked me with a test monkey.” She grinned when Mads laughed. “That’s when Charlie suggested she take care of Stevie for a while and I head back to the States for a break. But she was adamant that if I got into any trouble, she would not bail me out, which really limited my options as to what I could do. Thankfully, Coach gave me a call. Suggested training camp.”“Did Stevie actually chuck the monkey at you?”“Who? Little Baby Goody Two-shoes who’d never, ever hurt another animal?”“And to think she threw that monkey at you.”“She trained that monkey to attack me. Then pretended that she didn’t.”“Maybe she didn’t. Maybe the monkey just hated you. Remember when all those racoons mounted that coordinated assault?”“That was not a coordinated assault. They all had rabies and . . . Is that Nelle?”It was Nelle. Her family had temporarily moved to San Francisco in order to plan a “family holiday,” which they all knew was code for a grand family heist. But as they’d been finalizing their plans, Nelle’s father and his brothers had made the decision that Nelle’s older sister would run point in Europe. At the time, the message was clear. At least to Nelle. They didn’t think she was ready for such a big job, but they did think her slightly older sister was.Nelle could have stormed out and returned to Wisconsin. Or gone off on her own. She had family still living in Hong Kong, provinces in China, and in Manhattan. She’d be welcome anywhere. She must have spent too much time around the rest of her teammates, though. Because instead of a dramatic storm off, she chose to punch her sister in the face—breaking her nose and jaw—and tossing her off the penthouse balcony of the Shaw Arms Hotel.As a honey badger, her sister suffered nothing more than a few broken bones and a temporarily crushed skull, but the family had been shocked. And impressed. Her father and uncles had immediately changed their minds and offered her the chance to go to Europe in her recovering sister’s place, but Nelle had surprised them again and turned them down. She didn’t want anyone’s “day-old dumplings.”So she’d packed up and headed back to Wisconsin and training camp.“Does this mean you won’t get any of that money?” Max asked, always concerned about the dollars when it came to family-related heists.“My daddy will never let me be poor,” Nelle told them. “Ever.” She glanced off. “My God, what would that even be like? Mads?”“What are you asking me for?”“Well, now you’ve made it awkward.”“Now I’ve made it awkward?”“Hey, bitches!” Streep announced in her grand entrance, arms stretched wide. She pushed past several annoyed cats and spun around so they could all see her brand-new fringed leather jacket. A style that had not been in fashion since the Donner party set out. “What do ya think? Fancy, right?”“Perhaps I should ask you,” Nelle said to Streep.“Ask me what?”“Anyway,” Mads cut in, “I thought you’d be headlining on Broadway by now.”“I tried. But every time I attempted to leave home, my parents would start sobbing and rending their clothes. But they couldn’t even get any real tears going. I don’t even have to try, and look . . .” She pointed at her face. “Just look.”And sure enough, without even changing her expression, tears began to pour out of both her eyes.“Even without the tears, though . . .”The tears immediately stopped and she shrugged. “I just love ’em so much. And we work together so well. Plussss . . .” She leaned in and whispered, “I get to do some other stuff I enjoy on my own. It all works out.” She straightened up, stopped whispering. “And let’s be honest, I am so damn talented, Hollywood will definitely wait for me.”“And humble,” Mads noted.“I am. Because that’s important when you accept your many awards.”“Hey.”Tock seemed to come from nowhere, appearing right next to them like a ghost. They’d hissed at her in warning but she didn’t budge. None of them startled easily but honey badgers considered other honey badgers dangerous predators, so what exactly did she expect?“I thought you were in Tel Aviv,” Max said.“Was.”“And?” When she didn’t answer right away, Max grinned. “What’cha do?”“Nothing.”“Oh, come on,” Streep pushed, scrunching her nose in an annoyingly adorable way. “You can tell us.”“Really. I didn’t do anything.”“Mossad again?” Mads guessed.Finally, Tock smirked.“Your mom found out?”She shook her head. “No. My father’s mother.”“Ohhhhh!” all Tock’s former teammates shouted in unison, arms raised in the air; everyone in the arena turned around to watch beings so small being so loud.“She was not happy when she found out they’d been recruiting me. Dragged me to someone’s office. Still don’t know who. No name on the building or on the office door. There was a lot of yelling. At some point, she mentioned Golda Meir. I still don’t know why.”“Was Golda a badger?”“No. A She-lion, but still . . . it was weird. A couple days later . . . I was on a plane back to Wisconsin. Then I got a call from Coach. Figured it had to be better than sitting around my house watching soap operas and arguing with my mother about whether I should go to college.”Streep looked around at the other She-predators warming up. “Think we have a chance to make the team?”“It isn’t whether we can make the team,” Max said, catching with one hand a basketball flung at her head.“Ooops,” a cheetah said, giving them all a fake smile. “My fault.”“No problem,” Max replied, before whipping the ball back so hard that they all heard the cheetah’s eye socket crack from the contact.“Owwwwww! You evil bitch!”“The question,” Max had calmly continued over the cheetah’s screams of pain, “is whether we can stay on the team.”“I can,” Mads had told them, her teammates all turning to gaze at her. “I’m a nice person. Good teammate. Try not to fling balls into people’s faces.”“She started it,” Max had insisted. But she’d insisted without anger.Max was rarely angry. The only time Mads had ever seen Max angry about anything was when it had to do with her sisters or their father.So now, seeing Max storm past the SUV, through the front yard, up the porch steps, across the porch, and into the house, slamming the front door behind her was, to say the least, unusual.“We should go home,” Tock immediately suggested.“Back to Wisconsin?” Streep asked.Tock frowned. “What?”“I don’t really have a home,” Mads noted.“You can’t keep living in cabinets.”“I find cabinets comfortable.”“All of you can crash at my family’s place in Manhattan,” Nelle offered.“So we can all listen to you and your sister argue every fucking night?” Tock asked. “Thanks! That sounds like such fun for everyone!”“The sarcasm wasn’t necessary.”“Let’s just drive into the city and get hotel rooms with the rest of the team,” Streep suggested.“It’s Max’s SUV,” Mads reminded Streep.“So?”“Wouldn’t it be wrong to steal it?”Nelle patted her knee. “You’re funny.”The front door of the MacKilligan house was snatched open and Max screamed from inside, “Would you bitches get in here!”“You know,” Streep noted, “when she screams like that . . . you can really see the familial resemblance between her and Charlie.”* * *“That Danish was good, though.”Finn closed his eyes so he only heard the cracking noise as his older brother clenched his jaw.“If one more person,” Keane growled low, “mentions that fucking Danish to me one more time . . .”“Just commenting,” Shay insisted.They stood in line, waiting to order fresh bagels. Finn always got the poppyseed. Keane the sesame. And Shay the salted. This place had been run by Orthodox Jewish bears since the thirties and although they weren’t fans of the cats—what bear was?—they knew that even cats loved a good bagel. And the Malone brothers were faithful customers. They came in at least four times a week. Sometimes twice a day since they also sold, ya know . . . Danish. Although today the Malones just wanted bagels.They reached the counter and, after the polite shifter nod different species usually exchanged, Keane ordered, “Dozen sesame, dozen salted, dozen poppyseed.”The bear growled in acknowledgment, pulled their order, and slammed the big paper bags on the counter. Keane threw the cash down and walked out, not waiting for change.He put the bags in the backseat of the SUV with Shay, who liked to stretch out, and drove to their next stop. Once they arrived, he parked and waited for the right moment.“Sure you want to do this?” Finn asked.“We needed information and he gave us information. And he fucked us over. That’s what we get for trusting full-humans.”“Think they know who set us up?”“We’ll find out.”“What do you think she was going to do with that cat?”Finn and Keane exchanged glances before looking over their shoulders at Shay.“What?” Keane asked.“The cat.”“What cat?”“The one that honey badger had. Do you really think that badger was going to blow up that cat?”“I don’t know,” Finn answered honestly. Because he didn’t. No one knew what badgers were going to do.Keane also answered honestly, but in the worst way possible. “Who cares?”Finn cringed. “You have to know that was the wrong answer.”“What do you mean, ‘who cares?’ ” Shay snapped. “What kind of fucking question is that?”“It was a house cat.”“It was a cat. It was one of us.”Slowly, with that glower he’d inherited from their father permanently etched onto his face, Keane snarled, “We are not house cats.”“We’re all cats, Keane,” Shay replied easily, never scared off by Keane’s face. “We should be looking out for each other. Protecting each other.”“You want us to look out for house cats?”“If not us . . . who?”“Gee, I don’t know. Any ten-year-old girl who dreams of unicorns and wants a kitten for Christmas?”“All I’m saying is we should have taken the cat away from that badger when she offered it up. For all we know, they ate it.”“Don’t be . . .” Finn stopped talking. He’d been set to argue the point but then realized he really couldn’t. “He’s right. They may have eaten it.”* * *“You know what?” Max asked after nearly an hour of glaring at the kitchen table while they all silently sat watching her glaring at the kitchen table. “I’m over this now.”“Really?” Tock muttered, glancing at Mads.“No. Really. I did think about sneaking into their home in the middle of the night and puncturing their lungs while they slept but then I thought . . . eh.”“We’re all so glad you rethought your plan,” Nelle told her.“It seemed petty.”They all nodded in agreement and made soft, approving sounds but they were probably all thinking the same thing at the moment: There was no way this was over. But at least Max was serious about not puncturing the cats’ lungs. Mads was grateful for that much.Max let out a breath. “It’s been a long day.”“It’s not even noon, dude,” Mads laughed. “And we still have to go to practice tonight in Staten Island, and I’m going to training in the city this afternoon.”“I’ll go with you.” Max nodded and smiled. “A good workout is just what I need. To soothe me.”“Is that possible?”“Shut up, Nelle.”The back door opened and a smiling Stevie practically skipped up the stairs and into the kitchen. She’d recently gotten involved with a very cute giant panda and she hadn’t really stopped grinning since. Mads remembered her as a stressed-out, easily panicked nine-year-old genius who was regularly startled by squirrels and tormented by the possum population . . . seemingly on purpose. For whatever reason, those little bastards hated her. Mads had been sure the poor kid would be dead from a heart attack before she was thirty, but lately she’d had some real hope for Max’s sister.She’d seemed downright . . . happy? A word Mads never would have used for Stevie. Ever.“Morning, everyone!” Stevie greeted them with a little wave.They all waved back.“Beautiful day, isn’t it?”As Stevie passed them Max noticed that a regular, non-shifting cat was resting on her shoulder, hiding underneath Stevie’s hair.Max let out a little snarl. “Why is that cat still here?”Tock suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, shit!” and sprinted away from the table and the room.“Because I want him to be,” Stevie snapped back at her sister. “I happen to like this cat. And Charlie tolerates it.”“That thing has attacked me a bunch of times.”“You started it!”Tock returned and put the kitten she had in her duffel bag into Stevie’s hands.“Here. I bequeath you another cat.”“But I don’t want another . . . awwwww! She’s a kitten!”Max’s left eye twitched and the right side of her lip curled. Mads also saw some fang.“I hate you,” she growled at Tock.“What was I supposed to do with it?”“Why did you even have a kitten?” Mads wanted to know.“I heard her cries, which of course attracted the predator in me, but then once I found her—”“You just couldn’t bring yourself to eat her?”“You’re hilarious.”Stevie stuck the kitten in her sister’s face. “Isn’t she adorable, Max? Look how adorable she is. She’s so damn adorable!”“Move her or she’s my breakfast.”“I’m so happy to have her,” Stevie said, pulling the kitten closer.“Now you’re going to have two cats?”“This is perfect for me,” Stevie informed Max.“Why is it perfect for you?”“I didn’t tell you?”Max rubbed her stomach and got up, looking through the cabinets for any food. “Tell me what?”“Oh . . . I’ve decided to have a baby.”Max froze in the middle of opening a cabinet door.“Now, the downside of that is I had to go off my meds, but I already have a plan for that. I think I can control my stress with diet. Anyway, the cats will be good training for me to be a mother. Because, honestly, who the fuck knows what’s going to come out of me . . . right? With these fucked-up MacKilligan genes!”With that, Stevie laughed and walked out of the kitchen with her two cats.Not sure how long Max would remain frozen next to that cabinet, the rest of them slowly pushed away from the table and carefully made their way toward the kitchen exit. But before they could reach it, the cabinet slammed shut. That was when they all bolted, trying to make it to freedom. But Mads just wasn’t fast enough.Max grabbed the back of her T-shirt and held her. Mads held her arms out toward her teammates. Tock began to come back toward her but Streep caught her arm and yanked her toward the front of the house.“Forget her! Just run!”Treacherous bitches!Mads was yanked back and shoved into a chair, with Max looming over her.“She’s having a baby?” she said directly into Mads’s face. “And has gone off her meds?”“I . . . uh . . . don’t really think this is . . . uh . . . any of my . . . uh . . . business . . .”Max leaned in closer, forcing Mads to tilt her head back as far as she could. “Dear God, what is happening?”