Pit Perfect, page 4
When I was six years old, my parents took me to an Election Day event in Paradise Falls. Council members were being chosen for the Witch-Shifter Coalition. There would be three witches and three Shifters elected to sit on the board and broker conflicts between the two paranormal groups. My father had been one of the candidates, and I remember feeling enormous pride at the way people looked at him, the respect they used when they spoke to him, and the support he received from the Felidae, or big cat Shifters in our community.
At one point in the evening, one of the werecougars, a Maureen Hobart, strolled up to my father, and I was certain she would shake his hand. Instead, she looked down at me, disgust apparent in her sneer.
“If you can’t do any better than produce runt offspring then you have no business leading our people.”
My stomach dropped as I received the full extent of her vitriol. Her hateful comment made me wonder if I was defective. I learned, at that moment, that there were people who had a gift for making other people feel small, a knack for cruelty that sliced fast and deep.
My mother’s response was swift. She punched Maureen in the face. “Keep your mouth shut, or I’ll rip out your vocal chords, and you’ll never speak again.”
That’s when I learned that sometimes bullies picked on the wrong people and got their spiteful derrieres handed to them. My father’s way of handling disputes tended to be more on the peace, love, and understanding side, but my mother had been a fierce and unapologetic protector.
I missed them so much.
Smooshie and I reached the diner and went inside. The toasty heat felt wonderful. Buzz and Freda sat in the corner booth, rolling silverware into napkins. I knew Buzz had heard me before I entered, but Freda jumped a little in surprise. She got up and smiled at me.
“Sorry, hon, there are no dogs allowed in here.” Her tone was apologetic.
My uncle stood up and patted Freda on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Freed. It’s not like we have anyone in here to complain.”
“All right.” Freda gestured to the empty diner. “Sit anywhere you like, hon.”
* * * *
While Freda busied herself elsewhere in the café, Buzz and I sat in a booth closer to the front of the diner. Smooshie had lain down on the floor, put her head on her paws, and fallen asleep. Every so often she’d let out a snore or a snuffle.
Two minutes with Buzz Mason, and I’d learned one important thing: The man could charm sugar off an ant’s back.
“So your truck needs some work, eh?”
“Yep. Poor Martha crapped out on me the second I got to town.”
“Huh. Fate must want you to stick around then.”
This from the man who’d told me not to stay? “I don’t believe in fate.”
“I do,” he said. His smile was open, friendly, and so much like Danny’s that it made my chest hurt.
“I wished you’d been able to meet my younger brother,” I said. “He was killed last year.” I couldn’t meet Buzz’s eyes. “Murdered. By the same people who’d killed my parents.”
“I’m so sorry, Lily.” He reached over and patted the top of my hand. I appreciated the small gesture of comfort.
“You would’ve loved Danny.”
Buzz’s mouth dropped, his eyes wide and unblinking. “Danny?”
“Short for Daniel.”
“They named their son after me?” He took that in, looking shell-shocked. Sorrow edged into his gaze. “All those years gone because of my pride. I’m a damned fool.”
“What’s done is done,” I said, repeating one of my dad’s favorite phrases. “My parents never mentioned you, Buzz. I didn’t know you existed until a month ago.” I put my elbows on the table. “What happened? How did you and my dad grow so far apart?”
“You know. It’s classic boy-meets-girl, girl-falls-for-boy’s-older-brother. Your mom and I were the same age and shared some classes in high school.” He smiled wistfully. “I’d loved her for as long as I could remember. But then your mother told me Jack smelled like pinecones and pumpkins. And he said that she smelled like butterscotch and whipped cream.” He shook his head. “Shifters can’t resist the mating scent. That primal response can’t be denied, no matter what. I understood that, but I couldn’t watch the woman I loved mate with my brother. I left Paradise Falls, and that was that.”
“Did you ever think about coming back?”
Buzz nodded. “Plenty of times, but I always talked myself out of it. Then it had been so long since I’d been home that I didn’t see the point of interrupting Jack and Constance’s life together. We didn’t part on the best of terms.” He swallowed hard. “I can’t believe he’s been gone all these years. I always imagined he and Constance were having this wonderful life.”
“They did up until the day they died.” I’d always felt safe with them. Loved. “Danny was seven when they were taken from us. I was barely eighteen.”
Buzz’s hand covered mine. “You’ve lost a lot.”
“We both have.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “I’ve never lived around humans before. Any pointers to get me by for the next couple of days?”
“Pretend you don’t see, hear, or smell as much stuff as you do. It weirds humans out.”
I laughed. “Good tip.”
“Oh, and if any parakind stuff is brought up, just pretend like it’s all fiction. I love being around humans. They are wonderfully complicated, but they’re clueless about the supernatural, and if you want to keep your secrets, you have to act just as clueless.” Buzz chuckled, his eyes settling on me. “You look a lot like your mom, Lily.”
“Scrawny?”
“Beautiful.”
I warmed at his compliment. “Thanks.”
“I have to get to prepping dinner. It starts getting busy in here after four on Sunday. Come back for an evening meal?”
“Parker Knowles is going to fix me some spaghetti.”
“He is, is he?”
“It’s just dinner, Buzz.”
He leaned close, almost conspiratorially. “It’s never just dinner, Lily.”
* * * *
I had a couple of hours before I was supposed to be at Parker’s, so I wandered around town a little with Smooshie. I’d grabbed a few white bags from Buzz, just in case I ran into that woman again.
I could hear a chorus of voices singing something about the Holy Ghost and allowed Smooshie to lead me in that direction. The sidewalk had been stained with salt, but at least it wasn’t slick. Good thing, because the way the dog was dragging me along, any ice would have landed me on my backside.
Pretty soon we were on the steps of a church built on a large corner lot. The singing was melodic and the harmonies decent. I’m no expert, but with my hearing, I could tell some singers were better than others. I went up the steps. The door was unlocked, so I went inside. My understanding of human religion was that all were welcome. I hoped it was true of dogs as well, because I wasn’t leaving Smooshie outside.
“Stop. Just stop,” I heard a shrill voice say as we stepped inside the entrance area.
I groaned. Not again. Katherine Kapersky. Did the woman have an evil clone factory? That would explain why she was seemingly everywhere.
I stood under the arch that separated the entrance from the fellowship hall. The Kapersky woman stood up on a stage at the back of the church with a choir of five women and three men who faced her. She wore a blue wraparound dress and pointed a finger at a young beachy-blonde in the front row who practically quivered under the scrutiny.
“If you can’t reach the F, Bridgette, you might find yourself out of a solo.” She snapped her fingers. “Now, tighten it up. No more cracking on the high notes.”
The perky blonde’s face darkened, but she didn’t say a word. Kapersky gestured to the pianist, and the chorus of voices started the song from the beginning.
A woman with dark hair, her blue eyes hard with anger and her mouth grimly set, entered the church behind me. Her arm brushed mine as she shoved past. I could smell lilacs and vodka on her, and the scent of a new baby. She either had an infant at home, or she babysat for one. I hoped she didn’t watch the kid when drinking the vodka.
Rex Kapersky, the minister, saw her and nodded. He pointed to a door on the right side of the stage. The woman nodded and glanced back once, tears cresting her eyes, before the two of them went inside.
I watched as Katherine, her expression curious and worried, expertly noted the entire exchange without missing a musical beat.
Chapter 5
Being from the north, I had a great pair of winter boots, water-proofed and fleece-lined. Shifters aren’t immune to the cold, especially not in human form, but Smooshie and I moved at a brisk walk. Between the boots and my wool coat, I didn’t suffer much.
Smooshie tried to dig up an evergreen bush, a mailbox, and a stop sign as we walked. And stopped. And walked. She pooped twice, and recalling Katherine Kapersky’s shrill warning, I picked it up. I wondered if Smooshie would be willing to dig a hole to bury her own poop. Carrying around another animal’s feces, even in a plastic bag, was a new and disturbing experience.
We passed a VFW hall, a hardware store, a pharmacy, and a Walmart Supercenter. I’d looked up Moonrise before making the decision to come here. According to the internet, it had a population of 18,576. Not a city, by any means, but large enough that it had a community college. I don’t know why it surprised me that it felt so roomy and spread out. Paradise Falls was minuscule by comparison.
By the time we made it back to Parker’s house, it was after five, and I was tired and cold. So was Smooshie.
“Get inside,” he said when he opened the door. “You’re growing icicles off your nose.”
Automatically, I put my fingers to my nose. No icicles. Ah. Dang it. I really needed to get used to a human’s propensity for exaggeration. Luckily, Parker took my coat and didn’t seem to notice my faux pas. I stared at his big biceps and his wide chest. I come from a town where some of the men are seven feet tall, but Parker wasn’t that tall. Still, I’m short, especially for a Shifter, and I still had to look up to see his face.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
“The spaghetti smells good.” Not that I could smell it particularly well over his aroma. Once again, I was overwhelmed by the pleasant scent of honey and mint.
“I hope you like a meat sauce.”
“The meatier, the better.” I do turn into a pure carnivore some of the time, and we cats like our meat.
“It’s my mom’s recipe. She was Italian.”
“Was?”
“She died when I was in high school.”
“I’m sorry.” I understood his loss all too well. “I lost my folks my senior year.”
“Still fresh, huh?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t get better, but it gets easier.”
“It was a while ago,” I said. “I’m okay now.”
He gave me an odd look. “You can’t be more than twenty or twenty-one.”
I smiled, startled at his observation. I couldn’t tell him that I was closer to forty than twenty. As my uncle said, I had to blend. “Yeah, uh…” I scrambled to think of an appropriate age. I went for ten years past high school. “Actually, I’m twenty-eight.”
“Wow, you look much younger.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I told him.
He laughed. “I’m twenty-five, and I feel older than dirt.”
“Well, you look great.” I grinned. “For dirt.” Was I flirting? Noooo. I couldn’t flirt. He is a human. I am a Shifter, I reminded myself. This is not a date. I am only visiting.
A large dog, even bigger than Smooshie, with the most beautiful silvery-blue fur, lay quietly in the corner of the kitchen. He was obviously an American pit bull mix. I think the other half of him was horse.
Smooshie slid across the floor to the dog and enthusiastically started sniffing his butt. “Smoosh!” I chastised. She unceremoniously ignored me and kept her examination going for a couple more seconds before Parker shooed her off.
He reached down and patted the giant dog’s head. “This here is Elvis.”
“I thought he left the building.”
Parker’s blue eye’s twinkled. “He’s a hunka-hunka burning love.”
“I can see that.” I kneeled down and let Elvis sniff my hand. “Is he a rescue too?”
“Sorta.” Parker held out a chair for me. Such a gentleman. “The truth is that he rescued me.”
“That must be a dog thing.” My brown-and-white girl put her head in my lap and looked at me with those liquid brown eyes. Once again, I felt my heart melting. “Such a good girl,” I told her. Her tail played a staccato rhythm on the table leg.
“Elvis is gorgeous.” Like you, I wanted to blurt. “What’s he mixed with?”
“Great Dane.”
Smooshie jumped up, practically throwing herself across my lap. Her enthusiasm knocked over the chair next to me, and she scrambled under the table to hide. Poor baby. I didn’t like to see her so skittish, and I wondered what her life had been like before Parker had taken her in. I got up and set the chair to rights. Smooshie grinned at me from underneath the table, but she didn’t come out. I sat back down and glanced at Elvis. “He didn’t even flinch. He’s really laid-back.”
Parker reached under the table and scratched Smooshie’s back. “Elvis has a chill personality, but he’s also had a lot of training.”
I opened my mouth to ask about the training, but Parker’s closed expression had me swallowing my question. Elvis seemed as laid-back as Parker. He was a patient man. I found I really liked that about him. Even with the white lie he’d told that woman earlier about it being nice to see her, my witchy-truth senses told me he was inherently an honest man. My Shifter hormones didn’t particularly care if the guy was noble or not, as long as he kept looking and smelling good, but I was trying to ignore them at the moment.
“Is it okay if I make you a plate?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He piled two bowls with spaghetti noodles and sauce. He finished them off by putting toasted garlic bread on the side. He set mine in front of me and handed me a fork and a napkin.
“Do you want tea, water, beer, or wine?”
“Let’s get crazy. How about a beer?”
“Domestic or foreign?”
“Domestic.”
“Whew,” he said. “It’s all I have.”
“What if I’d asked for foreign?”
“The liquor store is just a couple of blocks down. Not even a five-minute round trip.”
I laughed. The spaghetti noodles were long and twirled easily around my fork. “This looks really good.” I shoved the whole bundle into my mouth. It was the best spaghetti I’d ever eaten. “I’ll never eat sauce from a jar again,” I said after I swallowed. I licked the corner of my mouth, enjoying the tang. “So good.”
Parker’s eyes lit with pleasure as he watched me eat. “I’m glad you think so.”
There was an uncomfortable lull of silence, so I blurted out, “That reverend’s wife is a real piece of work.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Do tell.” I took another bite and chewed while I waited for him to dish.
“She’s got half the town out of their minds. She’s advocating for a new chain restaurant that has made a few restaurant owners angry, she won’t do anything about the dangerous missing stop sign by my dad’s, and she’s trying to get pit bulls banned from town.”
“Can she do that?”
“Missouri has a breed ban law, so yes, if she gets enough votes, she can.” He shook his head, his expression pinched, and his body tensed up. Elvis popped to his massive feet and padded next to his human. The big dog leaned into Parker’s thigh. Parker put his hand on Elvis’ head, closed his eyes and took a breath. He exhaled slowly and then opened his eyes. “Her own brother, Ed Miles, can’t stand her. She has so many people scared in town.”
“Even you?”
The corner of his mouth tugged up. “I’m not scared of her, but I wouldn’t put anything past her. It’s gonna be a real fight once she officially sets her sights on my shelter. Right now, though, Katherine Kapersky has bigger fish to fry than me.” He ate a bite of food. “I hear there is a new church being built outside of the city limits.”
I used my fork to gesture. “I saw several churches in town. Why is another one such a big deal?”
“It’s the same denomination as her husband’s church. Some of the Rev’s flock have already abandoned Sunday services. Once there’s an alternative, I wouldn’t be surprised if every one of his parishioners changed where they worshiped.”
I didn’t quite understand the approach humans took to honoring their deity. From what I understood, most everyone seemed to believe in one God. Why there were different rituals and expectations in worshipping didn’t make sense to me. I remembered how Katherine had admonished her brother for not being in church that morning. If her idea of keeping the pews filled included intimidation and meanness, I could see why people would prefer a Katherine-free zone.
“The Rev is a nice enough guy, but he’s clueless when it comes to his wife. Not only is she driving away his flock, she uses her power as the president of the town council to make people’s lives miserable.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I still don’t know how that happened. My dad used to be on the council. He says it was more than her charm that got her elected.”
I scooted forward. “What does that mean?”
Parker laughed. “You know I haven’t talked this much in a year. It’s nice talking to you.”
I felt a blush heat my face. I knew my witch talent played a part in Parker opening up to me, but still, the compliment made me happy. “Thanks.”
The conversation veered away from Katherine. Parker told me more about Moonrise, and I told him about surprising my “cousin” with an unexpected visit. Then he talked about his stint in the Army, though he didn’t go into too much detail. Before I knew it, three hours had passed, but with Parker, it had felt like five minutes.
