Part of Ryan’s pack duties were to help with protection, and that included assisting wherever he might be needed. Right now, it was all hands on deck as the pack helped patrol the town, hoping to head off any more murders or body dumps.
Gilbert began to squirm on his barstool, looking uncomfortable with the topic.
Ryan shook his head. “No. Well, maybe, but not by me and not that I’ve heard about.”
“Good,” said Jeffrey, meaning it. Already, two pack mates had happened upon bodies. They’d done the right thing, going straight for pack help. He didn’t need any more of his wolves involved if he could help it. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know,” said Ryan before taking a drink of his beer. “Maybe nothing, but there was something different about the area near the old caves. Seemed darker than it should be. Gave me the willies too. Anyone else mention it?”
“No, but I’ll let Brett know just in case,” he said, making a mental note to tell his best friend, who happened to be the chief of police and a fellow pack mate.
“Did you smell anything?” asked Gilbert, perking slightly. “Anything sweet maybe?”
“Nothing sweet, but there was something,” confessed Ryan.
Jeffrey watched him closely. “What was it?”
“Nothing,” said Ryan.
“I’m not following,” replied Jeffrey.
“I didn’t smell anything,” repeated Ryan. “Like nothing. Not the woods, not the wet leaves, nothing. In that area, there was an absence of scents and sounds. It was eerie…or it was my imagination running away on me. Normally I’d have Robbie with me, but he’s working so much here now, I barely see him. Not that I’m complaining. This place is good for him.”
“Do me a favor and don’t go back out to that area in the woods unless another pack mate is with you,” said Jeffrey. “Might be nothing, but if it’s something…”
“Understood,” said Ryan, tapping the bar top. “I need to hit the head.”
“Want chili?” asked Robbie from the kitchen pass-through loudly, looking out at his brother.
“Yep,” said Ryan as he went in the direction of the restroom.
“Got yourself a good cook there,” said Gilbert with a nod to the opening in the wall that allowed food to be passed from the kitchen to the outer bar area.
“People are loving his food,” said Jeffrey. “Tried to offer him the position of manager here but he didn’t want it. Seems to enjoy cooking.”
“He’s doing better then, since he got back?” asked Gilbert.
Jeffrey didn’t like to discuss the personal business of his pack with non-pack members, but Gilbert and Robbie had a strange friendship. Though Gilbert had Robbie by a number of years, the two got along well, and Jeffrey knew Robbie often paid Gilbert’s cabin a visit whenever the weather got bad, just to be sure the man didn’t need anything.
And Gilbert was right. Robbie was doing better than he had been after he’d first gotten out of the military.
“Yeah, things are starting to look up for him,” said Jeffrey.
Robbie had suffered something of a setback in the last few months when it came to controlling his wolf side. No one knew how or why things had gotten out of hand, but they had. Jeffrey suspected it might have something to do with his time serving overseas. It’s why Jeffrey had reached out to a few of his friends who were trained to help servicemen and women with adjusting back to civilian life. They were also supernaturals, so they understood all the issues Robbie faced.
Robbie was a trusted pack member and held a pretty high ranking. The spot was in jeopardy if he couldn’t get his shifter side back under control. For the time being, he was sticking close to Jeffrey, and that meant taking on a job as a cook at the bar. Turns out, the guy had a real way with short orders and was especially gifted when it came to pizza making. He’d been busy instructing the daytime cook as well, making sure the entire food game was upped at the bar.
“Robbie had been doing really good when he first got back. Then it all changed. Can I ask when his problems started?” asked Gilbert, something off in his voice. “About three months ago?”
“Just over, why?” asked Jeffrey, curious as to how the man guessed the timeframe nearly on the nose.
“No reason. Just being nosy,” said Gilbert, looking a little green around the collar.
“Want me to have him make you a burger? He made chili earlier. I know you like that. I can put some in a bowl on the side,” offered Jeffrey, wondering when the last time was the man had eaten actual food and hadn’t just drank his calories.
Shaking his head, Gilbert focused on his beer. “Ever wish you were stronger? That what you were made of was more than it was?”
“You mean do I wish I was more alpha?” asked Jeffrey with a snort, hoping to help lighten the mood.
Gilbert let out a shaky laugh. “Guess I’m talking to the wrong man, huh?”
“Not at all,” said Jeffrey. “There are times I wish I had more mettle. That I could be what everyone thinks I should be. The prodigal son and all that shit. Why do you ask?”
Gilbert ran his finger through the condensation ring on the bar where his glass sat. “No reason. Just prying.”
“You having some regrets?” asked Jeffrey, wanting to help the man any way he could.
While Gilbert wasn’t a wolf-shifter, he was a shifter all the same. Granted, he was a deer-shifter, but still. That meant in some weird way, he was kin.
And shifters didn’t let shifters have existential crises alone.
“If regrets were pennies, I’d be a very rich man,” said Gilbert, looking defeated.
“Is everything all right with you and yours?”
Gilbert’s gaze darted away. “Yes. Ruttin’ season will be here before long. Not lookin’ forward to it.”
As a deer-shifter, Gilbert had a rough go of it from just about every group of supernaturals in Grimm Cove. It wasn’t as if being able to shift into Bambi held a lot of pull or anything.
Jeffrey was about to comment on Gilbert’s rutting season worries when movement from Elis and his crew up near the front of the bar caught his attention.
His jaw set.
He really hated slayers.
Each and every last one of them.
Especially the Van Helsings.
They were the worst.
Two
Dana
New York City…
“You’re not getting any younger, Dana.”
Ah, there it was. The ever-faithful reminder from my ninety-year-old grandmother that I had yet to settle down and start a family. The topic wasn’t new. It had been a sore point between us for the greater part of twenty years. Right about the time she’d realized that I’d gone to college to pursue a career, not a husband.
Not sure where she got the idea that I’d gone to Yale to land a man rather than a degree in law, but she had. Convincing her of anything different was a lot like trying to talk the spots off a leopard.
Wasn’t going to happen.
Over the years, I’d seen her pride in what I did start to show through, especially when I made the paper for putting away a particularly bad dude, but those moments were fewer and farther between than the ones where she pushed at me to find that special someone.
That person who completed me, or whatever else song-and-dance, chick-flick movies liked to pretend happened.
As if there was such a guy.
I liked to think I did just fine completing myself. What in the hell did I need with a man?
I was particularly bitter about the male species in general because one of my two besties was going through a rather ugly divorce at the moment. Poppy had said “I do” and put in her time, only to have it end the way it did.
She’d been married for nineteen years. While I’d never been a fan of her husband, Thomas, they’d seemed happy as a couple. She got into that whole gig of being a mom and a wife. I honestly couldn’t understand how or why, but it made her happy so that was all that mattere
d.
She’d popped out two crotch goblins, Tucker and Pepper, back at the start of her marriage, and they were now freshmen in college. They were also considerably easier to be around now that they were able to form full sentences and didn’t want me to pick them up and hold them. Plus, the risk they’d wet themselves had declined dramatically over the years.
That was always nice.
Seeing Poppy’s world shatter around her after Thomas announced he’d found someone new, and that he’d been sleeping around on her for the whole of their marriage, was enough to sour me to the idea of happily ever after.
Not that I wasn’t already on the side of not needing a man to make my life whole.
I’ll admit, there were times I wouldn’t mind rolling over at night to find someone I cared about there, rather than emptiness. And there were a few times, every now and again, when I’d like to be held and told everything would be all right. But those times weren’t enough to justify the heartache and complications relationships brought.
Back when I was still young and impressionable, I’d let myself fall for a guy’s charms. I’d bought into his promises of a future.
Of something more.
Sure, we’d both been teens, but I’d believed in the connection we’d had. I’d trusted it and I’d trusted him. In the end, I’d gotten my heart broken.
That had been the very same day I’d left for college, and it wasn’t something I talked about. Poppy and my other bestie, Marcy, knew I’d had a boyfriend all through high school and that it was serious, at least for me. They didn’t know much beyond that, which was fine.
The details weren’t important.
It wasn’t like he was part of my life anymore.
I knew it was silly to hold the entire male population at fault for the actions of one, but the idea of daring to open my heart to another guy always left me going back to how painful it had been to be dumped. And how lonely life had seemed the following months.
That was all in the past.
I’d buried it and focused on getting a great education and landing my dream job. I was an assistant district attorney in Manhattan—the greatest city on earth. As a born-and-bred New Yorker, I loved everything about the city, and was proud to help keep it a little bit safer. And I was damn proud of all I’d achieved in my career.
Yes, I could have done it with a family, but it would have been harder, I’m sure. I saw some of my peers juggling their family lives with work responsibilities. It didn’t look easy or fun, but they managed.
The most I had to worry about was checking in on Nonna Wilma, who, while opinionated on my lack of a real love life, loved me dearly. I loved her too. She was all the family I had left, and I didn’t like to think about what I’d do when she was no longer with me. Her age made that possibility a daily reality. One I did my best to pretend wasn’t a thing.
She was feisty, and I was fairly sure the higher-ups weren’t ready to handle her up there just yet. They were probably knee-deep in preparation-readiness drills all geared toward dealing with Hurricane Nonna.
“Well, when is it you plan to settle down?” Nonna demanded as she manned her station at the stove, stirring her homemade marinara sauce with great vigor. Pavarotti’s rendition of “Nessun Dorma” played in the background from a CD I’d gotten my grandmother years prior.
Try as I might to get her to move over to going fully digital with her music collection, it never panned out. I counted my win moving her from records to CDs and left well enough alone. It was better for everyone and my sanity. I just wished I could convince her to change the CDs every once in a while. It was a five-disc player, and she’d had the same five discs on rotation since I’d gotten it for her.
It was a darn shame the volume wasn’t higher. It could drown out her nonstop pestering on me finding a man.
“You just turned forty, and what do you have to show for it?” she asked, as if on cue.
A fantastic career, my own apartment, a good 401k, and so on, but none of that translated into anything she’d see as value because none of them were a husband.
Generationally, we were worlds apart. It had always been that way and would always remain so. That was fine. Explaining to her my side of things never really got me far. She was a hard-headed Italian woman who wasn’t about to change her mind or sway my way anytime soon.
Okay, ever.
To her, women got married when they were young. They had dinner on the table for their family by six every night and they were always dressed as if they might need to attend a nice luncheon at any random moment. They didn’t forgo the man and the baby carriage for a career.
No.
That simply wasn’t done.
Yet that was exactly what I’d picked. And she was quick to point out I chose the lifestyle—it didn’t choose me.
My mother didn’t have a choice. She had to go out and work in order to support us. My father, who I knew very little about, had passed away when I was little, leaving my mother and me on our own.
My grandmother had my grandfather’s pension, which hadn’t been a whole lot, and we’d gotten whatever government assistance we qualified for—which didn’t go very far for a family of three in New York City. Money was always tight, probably tighter than even I realized, when I was young.
There were countless times I’d find my mother sitting at the kitchen table with her nearly empty change jar out, counting and recounting the coins as if the second, third, or even tenth time would yield different results. She never let me see her cry, but I could hear her doing it when she thought I was asleep.
She busted her butt waiting tables and serving others for pennies on the dollar. She’d worked long hours and came home with blisters on her feet in order to put food on our table. And through it all, she never let me see the toll it took on her. She kept a brave face and tried her best to make it feel as if we weren’t stone-cold broke.
Back then, I didn’t realize we were. No one else had much around us either so it felt normal. But my mother would sit with me on the sofa as we watched whatever sitcom was popular at the time. She’d put an arm around me, draw me closer to her, kiss the top of my head, and ask me about school and my homework.
She’d then tell me that an education was key. To get as much as I could. And when it came time to apply for colleges and scholarships, she’d sat at the table with me, going through everything, helping me fine-tune my submissions.
The pure joy on her face when she’d learned I’d been accepted into Yale was something I carried with me to this very day. The memory was strong enough and life-altering enough to help me weather a million Nonna Wilma pushes for me to have a family rather than a career.
I could still vividly recall my mother’s excitement—and then the quick deflation of it when we realized the acceptance to Yale hadn’t come with the full ride we’d been hoping for. I’d tempered my enthusiasm and cast Yale out of my mind, thinking it unobtainable.
Then, just days later, my mother handed me an envelope. In it was a letter telling me I’d been granted a scholarship that would not only cover my tuition and books, but room, board, and a few extras as well. While I couldn’t remember applying to the foundation that had granted me the scholarship, that hadn’t mattered. I’d been given my golden ticket to the education she’d always wanted for me, and I hadn’t wanted to let her down.
She’d then had to deal with her mother, who, while happy for me, was not thrilled the university wasn’t in New York. In fact, Nonna wasn’t thrilled with a lot about the situation back then. I’d heard her and my mother arguing late one night about my scholarship. Nonna was of the opinion it had too many potential strings attached. That it opened the door to a past best left dead and buried.
To this day, I still didn’t know what she’d meant by that, but my mother had. And my mother had been adamant that my education was worth the price.
So when she was ripped from this world before her time, her burning desire for me to get a formal education
stuck with me. It drove me to succeed. To get all the schooling I could and to make something of myself—for her and for me. While she’d not lived to see those dreams come to fruition, I knew deep down that wherever she was in the afterlife, she was proud.
That was enough for me.
And that alone helped me deal with Nonna’s endless pushes for me to find a man and get married.
“You’re not listening to me, are you?” she asked, rapping her knuckles on the side of her small stove, yanking me from my thoughts.
I smiled. “Of course, I’m listening. Would I ignore you?”
She snorted. “In a heartbeat.”
The woman was barely taller than the stockpot she’d been planted in front of since my arrival nearly an hour ago. So far, I’d only been permitted to carry the pot of water for boiling pasta to the stovetop. That was where she’d drawn the line, turning the burner on herself as if I couldn’t be trusted to get the temperature right. Basically, I was only good for heavy lifting in her mind.
I wasn’t horrible in the kitchen. I just wasn’t the culinary ninja she was. She didn’t use a cookbook or follow any written recipes. Everything she did was basically muscle memory at her age. She went off sight, smell, and taste. Nothing more. And her food never disappointed.
She never seemed to tire while cooking. While I could cook—thanks to her tutelage—I didn’t like to. I didn’t confess that to her because it would fall along the same lines as telling her I was off pasta because of the carbs.
I’d tried that once and knew better than to attempt it again.
She’d ranted and raved for days about how she’d been raised on pasta just fine. I’d gotten so sick of hearing about it all that I drove over to her place and ate two huge bowls of it just to get her to let the topic drop.
Hexing with a Chance of Tornadoes: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Romance Novel (Grimm Cove Book 2) Page 2
