“I had that coming.” He wheezed.
“Yes, you did.”
“Well, I feel better,” Jane said, while McElray offered Finn a comforting pat on the back, giving me a scathing look that sprang from male solidarity. “Take him to the transport truck.”
“Come on, buddy,” McElray told him. “I think there’s an ice pack in the first-aid kit.”
“You really have a thing about kicking men in their giblets, Waldo.”
“Keep calling me ‘Waldo’ and see what happens, Dick.”
He shuddered and took a step back.
I took a deep breath and walked to Jane and the head shifter, who was spelling his name for her. “C-K-Y-O-U.”
Jane glared at him. “I’m sorry, I refuse to believe your full name is Eric ‘Eff You’ Kelley.”
Eric shrugged. The other shifters snickered. I rolled my eyes. My patience with monsters and their personality issues had officially come to an end. I stood next to Jane, rolling my shoulders and squaring off against Eric.
“OK, so this whole night has been an example of how terrible supernatural creatures are with communication,” I said. “All of you want the same thing, but you’re so quick to make with the fighting and the weird monster transformations that you don’t bother talking to each other and asking politely.” I turned to the Viking. “You guys want the information in the book to make your lives as shifters easier. Yes?”
Eric glowered at me.
“And what I am hearing from you, Jane, is that you are more than willing to share the information contained in the book with the shifter community.”
“Yes,” Jane said. “But not just with one family. That’s not fair. Though it should be noted that I don’t appreciate the Kelleys trying to kill someone in my employ. I tend to take that pretty seriously.”
“We’ll make it up to you.” Eric sighed.
“Don’t worry about me,” Jane told him. “Make it up to the employee you nearly killed.”
He turned to me.
“I will give you an itemized invoice for my pain and suffering,” I told him. “It will be several pages long.”
“Fair enough,” Eric grumbled.
“And you’ll replace the plane for the airline,” I told him.
“Fine.”
“Where do you even make all of this money?” I asked.
“We’re in the salvage business,” he said. “There’s a lot of money in garbage.”
“Good to know.”
Jane seemed pleased by this turn of events, her shoulders relaxing the more I spoke to Eric “Not Really His Legal Name” Kelley. She cleared her throat. “And I’ll tell you what, the first portion of the book I’ll give you will be the sections Anna said will help you track down the other shifter families. In fact, I have some people in our offices who helped program our human descendant genealogy program, and they’ll help you find the other shifter families. If you idiots put together a panel of major shifter factions who can decide how to proceed, set rules for yourself on public behavior and interactions with other supernatural creatures—translation: create accountability for yourselves—then I will consider trusting you with the entire book,” Jane said.
Eric’s thick yellow brows rose. “You want us to create a shifter Council?”
Jane helped Eric to his feet. “Yes, without coming out to the humans, because we wouldn’t ask you to do that until you’re comfortable. And if it makes you feel any better, we’ve been talking to the werewolves about doing the same thing.”
“Still trying to get used to the fact that werewolves are a thing.” I sighed.
Dick patted my shoulder. “Let it go, sweetheart.”
“Were you serious about the polka music?” I asked.
10
Now that you have endured your first wilderness experience with your vampire companion, your only task is to ask yourself: What challenge will I take on next?
—Where the Wild Things Bite: A Survival Guide for Camping with the Undead
Despite the fact that I had technically only known them for a few days, Jane’s friends threw a farewell barbecue for me in Jane’s backyard. Heck, some of them I was just meeting that night. But they all showed up, covered dishes in hands, at Jane’s house, to hang out in her beautiful garden, to give me a send-off.
I met more new people in two hours than I’d met in a year. (Because I didn’t count an outdoor shifter rumble as “socializing.”) Tess, she of the macaroni-and-cheese miracle, brought her vampire boyfriend, Sam, and more important, more macaroni. Jolene the werewolf was there—with her clothes on—and I got to meet her human husband, Zeb, and their two children. Iris, the clever gardener, was there to explain her landscape design, while her husband, Cal, looked on fondly. Iris’s little sister, Gigi, brought her boyfriend, Nik. I even met Dick’s improbable but lovely granddaughter, Nola, who also happened to be Jed’s girlfriend.