Really, Harry?
Oh, hell yes, he was. There was no other alternative. He was trapped with no chance of escape, and the option of calling 911 went out the window when his hairline had drastically changed.
“Harrrry,” Nina singsonged into his ear. “I’m getting bored. I explained bored, dude, right?”
Right. Bored made Nina cranky. Do not make the Nina cranky. Forewarned was forearmed. “And what do you charge for said services? By the hour? Pay as you go?”
“Well, if I was in charge, we’d charge. But I’m not. I’m just the muscle.”
His ears pricked—like really pricked. There wasn’t a sound around him that wasn’t overly exaggerated. “The muscle?”
“Yeah, you know, like when crazy-assed lunatics are making super vampire serums and some bent-out-of-shape nutjob djinn wants to steal a title from a nice kid who was accidentally turned into a genie? I’m the muscle they send in to take care of biz.”
Vampire serums and title-stealing djinns. That would take longer to process than . . . No. He couldn’t process that. Harry shoved the ridiculousness of that statement aside and plowed onward. “So, Muscle, who’s the brains in your organization? Maybe I should talk to him?”
Harry heard Nina’s chair scrape against the floor, and it wasn’t a nice scrape. It was an angry one. How he knew that, he didn’t know. He only knew that now he’d done it—razzed the beast.
“What makes you fucking think the brains belong to a man, you sexist cave dweller?”
Damn. He’d offended her. If he was clueless about general fodder and a good-natured ribbing, he was even more clueless when it came to women and their sensitivities. In other words, he often had no choice but to just shove his foot in his mouth before a conversation even started. It was sure to end up there anyway if he was left to captain the Good Ship Small Talk.
So he began again. With an apology. Because his sister Donna had always said that was the best way to make nice when you’d tripped over your tongue. “I’m sorry, Nina. It was a simple slip of a pronoun. One I regret. I just thought, in light of the fact that you claimed muscle as your title, a job sure to keep you a busy little bee, there would be someone else who’d claimed the other titles.”
“And you naturally thought that someone would be a man.”
Sexist pig here. “How not-of-this-century of me.”
“Look, I’m gonna get to the point here. First, in one way or another, we’re all the muscle. We’re three women with mad-ass ninja skills because we’re paranormal. Not that I wouldn’t cut a bitch before all this happened to me. I was tough enough already without the vampire shit added in. Anyway, sometimes we get the occasional mad-ass specialty ninja in to consult, but it’s mostly just us three chicks. And I’m the only chick you got right now. And we don’t charge. We’re non-profit, which means we personally bankroll this nutball scheme. And if Marty puts one more bullshit pair of shoes down on her expense report as necessary to meet and greet clients with? I’m gonna beat the feet right off her.”
“Marty,” he mumbled.
“Forget Marty. Just tell me what the problem is before I go all Girl, Interrupted on you.”
“I have a lot of hair.” Everywhere. Just everywhere. He held his hand up in the dim lighting and cringed as the confession spilled from his lips.
“Gillette.”
“What?”
“Gillette. They make good razors. Nice and sharp. Marty and Wanda highly reco.”
“Who are Marty and Wanda? And I don’t think a razor’s going to make a dent in this. I don’t think a case of razors can make a dent in this.”
“Marty the shoe whore and Wanda the peacemaker are the other two chicks in this out-of-control BFF venture to save this shit storm of a world. So what’re you thinking is going on here, Harry?”
“How the hell should I know? You’re the one who’s supposed to have the answers,” he groused, then frowned. Jesus, he was cranky. His normally even temper was fluctuating wildly.
If he’d angered Nina further, she was sparing him with her next words. “You musta thought it was something paranormal because you called a hotline that specializes in paranormal crisis. But, dude, we do clearly state you fucking need to read the checklist, click off your symptoms, and get a determination before you bother us with your trite bullshit, didn’t we? It’s all in bold letters right there on our website’s super annoying front page with all the eyeball bleeding fonts and the big letter X across the picture of the vampires that sparkle.”