Nina went for him first, fangs flashing, her snarl ringing out through the coldly white room.
“No!” Mara screamed, her heart pressing against her ribs, a high-pitched panic to her shrill cry. “Don’t hurt him, Nina!”
Nina stopped short with a skid of her work boots seconds before Harry flew over her head in an arc of fur and slobbering drool, slamming into the far wall behind her. His groan matched his slide down the dented drywall, where he fell at Wanda’s booted feet, clearly unconscious.
“Oh, Harry!” Mara yelped from just outside the door, then bit her lip to hide her overly concerned reaction.
All eyes landed on Mara, narrow and suspicious.
Which, she noted, was a little uncomfortable.
Marty and Wanda were the first to react, scurrying to the lab’s closet to find extra lab coats to cover Harry’s naked form, chatting like girlfriends might if they’d just arrived at the prom instead of an accidental turning.
Nina sidled up to her, toeing Harry along the way with a light nudge in order to check his status. She clapped Mara on the shoulder. Her eerily pale, yet stunningly beautiful face loomed down at her. “How’s it going?”
Mara looked down at her white tennis shoes, pinching off a rush of tears. “Not quite the way I’d hoped my Monday night would turn out. But c’est la vie, right?”
Nina nodded, her cascading dark hair tucked into her signature hoodie, rippled over her shoulders. “Yeah, c’est whatever. Me neither, kidlet. I should fucking be at home watching Revenge and hanging out with Charlie.”
If she could just avoid Nina’s prying eyes and her all-seeing, emotion-reading mind-meld, maybe she’d go home and watch Revenge, too. Whatever that was. “How is Charlie?” Charlie, Nina’s infant gifted to her by a genie, was one of the myriad reasons Mara wanted a baby. Charlie, and Marty and Keegan’s daughter, her niece Hollis.
“She’s good. Real good.”
“Crawling yet?”
Nina smiled with such serene beauty, if Mara didn’t know her, she’d swear she was someone else. “Nah. Seems the half of her that’s a vampire is beating down the genie half of her. She’s growing faster than most vampires do, or so Clay tells me, but it’s slow going.”
Mara nodded her understanding of the vampire aging process. Clay, mated to Casey, one of Nina’s best friends and Wanda’s sister, was the only other vampire in the world who had unwillingly turned offspring—that they knew of, anyway.
Naomi, Clay and Casey’s daughter, had been turned as a young child way back in the days of Vikings, so they had some iffy knowledge on the subject of vampiric aging. Nina’s baby, Charlie, was one of the first half-vampire infants physically born to a vampire.
Mara rocked back on her heels, fiddling with the pencil that held her thick hair up on top of her head. “So teething in perpetuity, huh?”
Nina made a face. “Teething in what?”
“It means eternity.” Harry popped his darkly delicious head upward and groaned from the floor, just completing his return to human form.
Nina rolled her coal black eyes. “Look. It’s your soul mate, Mara. He likes words, too. And he fucking likes ’em big.”
Yet another thing they had in common. How uncanny. Oh, Astrid and the girls would just love this.
Harry groaned once more before passing out in a lump of lovely naked limbs and drywall dust.
“So, girlie,” Nina drawled, unzipping her hoodie to reveal a navy blue T-shirt that read WHEN I WANT YOU TO SPEAK, I’LL RIP OFF THE DUCT TAPE. “Talk to me. And keep that shit real. Got it?”
Must. Avoid. Nina’s. Eyes. Mara looked down at the white floor, following the thready gray pattern woven into it. “Yep, real. My shit’s always real.”
“Good. Then why don’t you tell me what the frig all that screaming was about?”
“Screaming?”
One of her almond-shaped eyes scrunched up as she sucked in her cheeks. This was Irritated Nina. Only mildly so, if Mara was judging correctly. Meaning she was still safe. The Nina you didn’t want to see was Irate Nina. According to numerous reports, Irate Nina was a sight you couldn’t unsee.
She pushed the black hoodie off her head with long fingers. “Remember the word real? Sure you do, kiddo. It’s the one I told you to keep this situation in. I know it ain’t a big word like perpetuity, but words aren’t my thing. Now fists? That’s my thing.” She cracked her knuckles and formed a fist to show Mara just how much her thing they were.
Mara winced, taking a step back. She might have the strength of ten humans, but she preferred talking things through rather than resolving them physically. “I just didn’t want you to hurt him. From what Marty’s told me, it’s a delicate time in his change from human to werewolf. He didn’t mean to lunge at Marty, I’m sure. He doesn’t know what he’s doing right now. You do. You know, with your real fists.”