Breaking Badger

by Shelly Laurenston

  A few seconds later, she shot past the window, taking down Max and their baby sister in the process.

  “Wow,” Keane muttered. “That was impressive. Think Charlie would be interested in playing football?”

  * * *

  Finn took the briefcase with the money and carried the cake and icing with his other hand. Mads held the painting. They were just about to head toward the front door when Shay finally returned to the living room, his face bright red from all the scrubbing he must have done after having a scorpion sitting on his nose for half a second. It wasn’t just the redness of his face, though, that was the problem . . .

  “Uh-oh,” Tock said when she turned around and looked up at Finn’s brother.

  “Wha?” Shay asked seconds before he quickly guessed. “My fay isss wollen, i’n it?”

  “Uhhhh . . .”

  “Have one of your dogs lick it,” Keane unhelpfully suggested, making Finn laugh until Mads glared at him. Then he quickly looked away from her appalled gaze. “Should fix it right up.”

  Tock slammed her hands against Shay’s chest to stop him from going after Keane.

  “Your face is a little swollen,” Tock said.

  A little? It looked like someone had forced a softball into his cheek.

  “I’m eye-ing! I ’ow it!”

  “You’re not dying,” Tock told him, somehow understanding his idiot brother. “Even for regular full-humans that scorpion’s venom is very mild. You’re probably just having an allergic reaction.”

  “ ’Ix me, ’oman! ’ow!”

  “Calm down.” She spun Shay around and shoved him out of the room. “Streep, where do they keep their allergy stuff?”

  “Somewhere in the kitchen. I’ll come and help you look.”

  Streep followed them out and Finn followed Mads in the other direction. It wasn’t until they had the front door open that Nelle said from behind them, “Just so you’re not surprised, I went ahead and ordered some furniture for you.”

  Mads froze for a second, but then abruptly spun around so fast that Finn had to take a quick step back or find out if they looked good wearing each other’s clothes.

  “Why?” Mads demanded.

  Nelle leaned against the doorjamb separating the living room from the sunroom. “Because you needed furniture and we both know you weren’t going to have time to buy any.”

  She said that so casually it might have sounded like a friendly gesture and not massively presumptuous. But as a tiger that lived with Keane Malone, a massively presumptuous cat, Finn knew the signs when he saw them.

  “Oh, my God,” Mads snapped. “Seriously?”

  “What?”

  “You picked my furniture for me?”

  “No. Of course not.” She slipped one of her high heels on. “I had Sauveterre do it.”

  “Who?”

  “Sauveterre.”

  “Who the fuck is Sauveterre?”

  “You know. Charles Sauveterre.”

  “Do you mean Chuck?”

  Nelle put on her other shoe and turned an unsmiling face to her teammate. “You know he hates when you call him that.”

  “It’s his name.”

  “When he was twelve.”

  “In Iowa.”

  “His mother’s French.”

  “Canadian. She’s French-Canadian. And I don’t need Chuck picking out my furniture either!”

  “Look, the reason I had Sauveterre—”

  “Chuck.”

  “—do it is because we all know that it won’t just be you hanging out at your house. It’ll be all of us. And, quite honestly, you have the taste of a thirteen-year-old boy who really loves basketball.”

  “I do not.”

  “You do. Which means you’ll get one large TV for the living room that you’ll put on top of a cardboard box. A couple of those folding chairs that someone from the neighborhood will give you because they’ve upgraded their backyard furniture, and some TV trays, so we can all eat. A refrigerator and microwave for the kitchen and a box spring for the bedroom. That’ll be it. You know it. I know it.” She gestured to Finn. “Even this guy knows it. And I’m sorry, I can’t live that way. So I had Sauveterre—”

  “Chuck.”

  “—handle it. That way we can all be comfortable. And happy.”

  “He designs for those rich sheiks who buy those multimillion-dollar apartments in Manhattan but never live in them. I can’t afford the kind of furniture he’s going to buy!”

  “You have a twenty-five-million-dollar Kandinsky just sitting in a storage locker.”

  “For emergencies!”

  “You were about to give it away!”

  “To buy a house!”

  “In Queens!”

  “Hey! Hey! Hey!” Finn finally bellowed as the two females squared off, nose to nose with their fangs out.

  “Need some help in there, little brother?” Keane asked. Finn didn’t even have to look to know Keane was smirking. He could actually hear the smirk in the asshole’s voice.

  “No, I do not,” Finn barked back. “And you,” he said to Mads, “out the door. Now!”

  Using his body and the cake, he maneuvered the badger through the door, across the stoop, down the stairs, through the fence gate, and out onto the sidewalk.

  Once they were free of all the drama, he nodded across the street while asking, “You were really going to give away a twenty-five-million-dollar painting for that house?”

  “I got the painting, like, a decade ago, and hadn’t checked the recent value on it. And, to be quite honest, I’m not that big a fan of his work. I also don’t need you giving me shit about this, too.”

  “Fine. But if you want your friends staying off your back, you need to make smarter financial decisions in the moment.”

  “Teammates.”

  “What?”

  “They’re my teammates.”

  Finn couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I said ‘friends’ because I was being polite. But they’re not your friends and they’re not your teammates.”

  “So they’re my enemies?”

  “Wow.” Finn blinked. “No. They’re your family.” When she started to balk, he asked, “Do you think I’d put up with any of the shit I put up with from Keane or Shay if they weren’t my brothers? They irritate me in ways you can’t even imagine. Chances are I would have killed them a long time ago if we weren’t related. But I tolerate them because I love my mother and because our bond is deeper than Keane’s annoying habit of humming when he eats bacon. And only when he eats bacon. Or Shay’s inability to eat rabbits because he finds them cute and fluffy, which we all believed applied only to rabbits but now we see also extends to dogs. I mean, we’ve never eaten dogs because they’re disgusting, unclean beasts but he just finds them . . .” Finn shuddered at the next word he had to say. “. . . cute.”

  He let out a breath. “But they’re my brothers, so I tolerate their bullshit. They’re your sisters, so you tolerate their bullshit. That is just how it goes.” He gestured with the hand holding the briefcase. “Now let’s go buy you this house that is not worth a twenty-five-million-dollar painting.”

  “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

  “I don’t know how anyone can let that go. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard and I live with Shay Malone. Dog lover.”

  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.