Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

13. The fur demon

13

THE FUR DEMON

HAZEL

I woke with a start, staring up at gold wallpaper with trellis roses. It took me only half the time it had the day before to remember where I was. In my new bedroom that needed a facelift in my new house that required extensive and expensive renovations in my new town that thought I was a bird-killing outsider who needed to be run out of town.

“Hello, morning panic, my old friend,” I grumbled, rolling over and tugging the duvet up to my chin.

The summer sun was already bright and streaming through the windows above the ancient wooden half shades. I really needed to think about window treatments.

Window treatments, bed linens, and clothes hangers for all of my many closets, including the new walk-in that Cam reluctantly said was possibly doable. Ooh, and a fluffy rug for under the bed. And some cool piece of art for above the wooden mantel. And a dresser.

I sat up. This was my first home of my own. The first place where I could choose the curtains and dishes, and hog all the bookshelf space. That was something worth fighting for?—

“Ahhhh! Get away from me, fur demon!”

Zoey’s indignant scream had me scrambling out of bed. I got my foot tangled in the sheets and nearly ended up on my ass, but the resounding thud and her shrill “You want a piece of me?” had me executing a ninja-like escape move.

I stumbled out of bed, grabbed the piano bench leg on the fly, and ran into the hallway.

Zoey’s room was in the front of the house. She’d chosen one of the smaller bedrooms with a view of Main Street, claiming the glimpse of civilization made her feel safer. It had wildly pink wallpaper and cherubs carved into the crown molding.

I found her standing on her four-poster bed with a suede ankle boot locked and loaded. Its mate was on the floor next to… Oh shit.

“Is that a raccoon?” I screeched.

“Go away, trash panda!” She hurled the second boot at the masked intruder. Hand-eye coordination never her strong suit, she missed by several feet.

“Oh my God, Zoey! Don’t make it mad!” The raccoon looked in my direction, and I gripped the bench leg in both hands like a light saber. “Shoo, wild animal. Begone.”

It sat on its fluffy haunches and clasped its hands. Or were they paws? Feet?

“I’m not sharing a room with wild animals,” she insisted.

“It’s not like I invited it to a slumber party, Zoey! Where did it come from?” I asked, inching my way into the room.

She danced on the bed. “How should I know? But guess where it ended up? In bed with me! ”

“Go away, sir or ma’am,” I said, making a shooing motion with the bench leg. The raccoon took a tentative step back. It looked confused as it divided its attention between us two mildly hysterical women.

“What are you doing?” Zoey demanded.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m shooing it.” I took another step forward.

“These things are garbage-eating rabies factories. Don’t let it bite your face off!”

“What’s with you and things biting faces off?” I asked, momentarily losing focus.

“Pay attention to the wild animal, Hazel!”

“I’m paying attention! I thought you were being murdered. My adrenaline is all over the place,” I shouted back.

Apparently the raccoon had had enough of our loud drama because it waddled over to the fireplace and disappeared inside. A distinct clawing noise came from the wall. At least that solved that particular mystery.

“Is it gone?” Zoey demanded, hugging a pillow to her face.

“I don’t know!”

“Well, go look!”

“You just told me not to get my face bitten off, and now you want me to stick my unscathed face in an enclosed space with a wild animal?”

“I woke up to a flea-carrying woodland monster in my bed because I’m a good friend and went along with your harebrained scheme! The least you can do is get your face bitten off for me!”

“Okay. Fine! I’ll look.” I tightened my grip on the bench leg and inched toward the fireplace.

“Is it still there?” she hissed.

“Be quiet.” I eased up to the tile surround. “Throw me your phone.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The only thing you’re worse at than driving is catching things. And I just got this phone last week to replace the one I lost down the sewer grate.”

I turned to her. “Do you want to do this? Because I’m starting to feel insulted, and when I feel insulted, the last thing I want to do is put my face on the line for the insulter.”

“Okay. Sorry! You’re not terrible at catching things.” Zoey didn’t sound very convincing, but she did unplug her phone from the charger on the nightstand. “Here. Catch.”

I misjudged her underhand toss and ended up bobbling the phone and the piano bench leg. Both landed on the floor with a resounding thunk .

“And this is why I didn’t want to sacrifice my phone. I didn’t even have time to put the screen protector on it,” she said, stomping a foot on the mattress. She had such a reputation for losing and breaking so many phones that her former agency had stopped issuing her one.

I recovered both the phone and the leg and turned on the flashlight function.

Before I could chicken out, I ducked down and aimed the light inside. Besides a militia of dust bunnies, the fireplace was empty. I crawled in farther and shined the light up.

Zoey whimpered. “Oh my God. If this is how my only client dies, I’m never going to work as an agent again.”

Daylight streamed from the top of the chimney, and I relaxed. “It’s gone,” I assured her, backing out of the fireplace.

“Thank you. Now, gimme back my phone,” Zoey demanded.

I tossed her the device, and she caught it before swan diving onto the bed.

I slumped to the floor and tried to slow my heartbeat. We stayed that way in silence for a few long minutes.

“I assume you’ll be moving to a hotel today?” I said finally.

She held up her phone. “My reservation at the Story Lake Lodge is confirmed.”

“Great. I’m gonna go shower off the panic sweats,” I said, scraping myself off the floor.

“I’ll start breakfast,” Zoey volunteered.

The shower in my bathroom wasn’t pretty, but at least the water pressure was also terrible. I stood in the claw-foot tub and eyed the pink-and-black tile, the ebony toilet. The aesthetics weren’t great, but the storage in the double vanity, the linen closet, and the skinny built-in cabinet made me giddy.

I dried off with one of the threadbare towels from the closet, wrapped my hair in a second, and dragged my bag of toiletries into the room. In a burst of post-raccoon shower energy, I unpacked everything, delighting in the absolute gluttony of space.

Still enjoying myself, I applied a fresh bandage—without mustaches—to my bird-fish wound, dried my hair, completed my full skin-care routine, and even slapped on a coat of mascara.

I nodded at my reflection in the so-hideous-it-was-charming gold swan mirror. This was the New and Improved Hazel Hart, who showered and wore mascara and wrangled raccoons. I just hoped she also happened to write books.

I dressed in my new Story Lake outfit since the rest of my laundry was still in the ancient dryer in the basement, put on my glasses, and jogged down the back staircase. I had two staircases. And a house the size of several of my apartments. And an ugly kitchen.

Zoey was manically stirring what looked to be her second large cup of instant coffee. There were two bowls of instant oatmeal steaming on the laminate counter next to the ancient microwave.

“Nice outfit.” She pretended to shade her eyes from the glaringly yellow shorts and tee.

“Kitchen supplies and the rest of the stuff from my apartment, including my non-wine-soaked wardrobe, are coming tomorrow.” I grabbed a plastic spoon out of the pack.

“Strawberries and cream is yours. I deserve the chocolate chip,” Zoey said, surfacing from her coffee. “And please tell me that includes the buttface’s espresso maker.”

My ex-husband had been a snob about many things, coffee included. Which was why we had dedicated an entire corner of valuable real estate in our apartment to a coffee bar.

“It does, but I don’t know where we’re going to get espresso beans around here.”

“We’ll steal some from Cactus Cam next time he’s working at the general store,” Zoey suggested.

I gave my lumpy oats a stir. “Sure. Why not add larceny to the list of reasons that people here hate me?”

“Think of it as fodder. For your book ,” she said pointedly.

My post-shower energy buzz waned as my anxiety sputtered back to life. I had to write. Starting today. And all I had was the vague idea to write down everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours but make it sexy and funny instead of mildly traumatizing.

What if I couldn’t do it? What if putting words on the page was a physical impossibility for me now? It happened to people. Some authors never recovered from their own personal “dark night of the soul.” They went back to being regular people who had to get real jobs that required time cards and pants and meetings that could have been emails.

I wasn’t cut out for that.

“So we need a car. We can’t live out here and depend on the kindness of sexy, grumpy strangers to get us around,” Zoey announced, pulling me from my inner whinings.

I scraped a hand through my clean hair. “Uh. Yeah. Sure. I’ll contact the rental company and see when I can get a new one.”

Zoey shook her head vehemently. “No way. First of all, no rental company is going to insure you after yesterday’s convertible mangling.”

“A bald eagle hit me in the head with a fish. Why does everyone keep acting like it’s my fault?”

“ I’m renting a car that you’re not allowed to drive. I will be your agent-chauffeur if it means you’ll sit your ass down and write some damn words.”

“We literally just moved here yesterday. Stop making it sound like I’m resting on my laurels.” I wondered why anyone would bother sitting on laurels. The leaves were so pointy.

“Then prove me wrong and go and write one hundred words right now.” She pointed in the direction of the library.

“Now? It’s barely nine in the morning. My brain doesn’t wake up until at least noon,” I hedged.

“Now,” Zoey said firmly. “You’ll feel better after you do it. Maybe we can put this crisis of confidence to bed one hundred words at a time.”

Grumbling, I snagged my morning caffeine of choice—a Wild Cherry Pepsi—from the fridge and trudged into the library.

It was warm, sunny, and almost completely barren. My laptop sat open and plugged in on the shabby wooden sewing table that Zoey—or the raccoon—had dusted off and moved into the alcove created by the half circle of windows overlooking the side yard. There was an old wooden chair with saggy caning behind the desk that looked about as comfortable as a pile of laurels. My trusty noise-canceling headphones sat perched on a notebook open to a blank page.

I’d focus better if I had an actual desk chair. And maybe some books on the shelves. And if I stocked up on fun office supplies. I liked the orderliness of fresh pens and colorful sticky notes.

“I don’t hear you typing,” Zoey sang from the kitchen.

“Bite me,” I called back.

In a huff, I tucked the soda into my armpit and closed the doors to the hallway. They didn’t exactly slam, but it was loud enough I was confident I’d gotten my point across.

Cautiously, I circled the table and pulled out the chair. “Okay, laptop. It’s just you and me. We used to be friends, remember?”

I sat. The caning groaned in protest. “Shut up, you.”

I definitely needed a cat. This room required one. And talking to a cat was less weird than talking to myself. Maybe I could tame the raccoon and become the eccentric writer lady with the pet raccoon?

Footsteps in the hall had me guiltily opening my writing program. And the software update prompt gave me a convenient reprieve to stare out the windows and drink my Pepsi.

“Think about the story,” I instructed myself and went to stand in the window. “Who is my lucky couple?”

An image of the scowling Cam behind the wheel of his truck popped into my head. I wondered what a normal day that didn’t involve saving women from eagles looked like. If I hired him, I’d have a front-row seat to his work, his daily life, his incredibly well-formed butt.

Plants. I need plants in here. The long viny kinds that could climb down the bookcases and add some life to the space. Of course, I’d have to remember to water them. But if I was in here writing every day, plant maintenance would become part of my routine.

I glanced over my shoulder. The update was complete. The new project was open.

I returned to the desk and sat. The blank page was aggressively white. I took a few minutes to fiddle with the document formatting to get it the way I liked. But soon I had nothing left to procrastinate on without raising Zoey’s suspicions.

“One hundred words,” I reminded myself. “I used to be able to do that in minutes. It’s muscle memory, right?”

The blinking cursor was a tiny billboard shouting about the pristine blankness of the document.

“What the fuck am I doing?” I read aloud as I typed. “Okay, me. Six words down, ninety-four to go.” Nodding at the word count, I slipped on my headphones, cued up my Write Your Ass Off playlist, and set the timer on my phone for twenty-five minutes.

“Where to start?” I muttered to myself over The Killers in my ears. Once again, my Handsome Cam-lookalike hero popped into my head. He was having a good day. No. A great day. The sun was shining, his truck window was down, and his favorite song was on the radio. Too bad it was all about to be ruined, I thought with an evil smirk.

“Zoey!” I burst through the library’s doors.

“What?” came her disembodied voice.

“Where are you?”

“Over here.”

I ducked my head into the kitchen and found it empty. “This place is too big for ‘over here’!”

“I’m in the sitting room or the parlor. I don’t remember which one is which,” she yelled back.

I found her performing body weight squats in the parlor while answering emails on her phone.

“Here,” I said smugly, slapping a sticky note to her forehead.

Zoey finished her email and squats before peeling it off and reading it. “Two hundred and fifty-seven what? Reasons why raccoons are evil? Holy shit! Words? You wrote actual book words?”

“Actual book words. I’m rusty as hell and thirty of them are notes like ‘insert something better or smarter here,’ but the rest aren’t awful.”

She grabbed me by the forearms. “I love not awful words!”

“Me too,” I sang, and we started to jump up and down.

Zoey stopped abruptly. “Now get back in there and do it again.”

“But—”

“No buts. Unless they’re of the grumpy hero in blue jeans variety.”

“I don’t want to overdo it. I mean. If I push too hard, I might burn myself out,” I said cagily.

“Five hundred words won’t burn you out. You’re already halfway there.”

“When did you get so good at math?”

“When I started calculating how much we’re both going to need the money from this book.”

“Don’t tell me you blew your life savings on shoes and dinners out.”

Zoey cupped my cheeks and squished them together. “I only have enough money to barely scrape by on until this book gets an advance. By the time you get this place fixed up and furnished, you’ll practically be destitute. We need this book, Hazel.”

“I can’t tell if you’re motivating me through fear again or telling the truth,” I admitted through smushed cheeks.

“Get back in there and give me more words, or I’m going to have to look into selling my Jimmy Choo collection so we can afford more cups of crappy oatmeal.”

“You suck.”

“You suck more. Go write so you can afford to dress in clothes that don’t have words on the ass.”

“I think I used up all my creativity. I probably can’t write another word without seeing some snarly blue-collar hottie. I should probably take a walk around the block and keep my eyes peeled for inspiration.”

The doorbell chose that exact moment to ring, and I jumped at the interruption.

“Maybe it’s a snarly blue-collar hottie,” Zoey called as I headed for the door.

“Maybe it’s your raccoon friend,” I shot back.

The humidity had made the door extra swollen, and I couldn’t wrench it open, not even with Zoey’s help.

“Just a second,” I panted. “The door’s stuck.”

“For fuck’s sake. Back up,” growled my not-so-gentlemanly caller.

“I think you just manifested,” Zoey whispered as we both stepped away from the door.

One second and one determined boot later, my front door flew open to reveal a scowling Cam.

He was wearing a fresh gray shirt, paint-splattered work pants, and a frown that accentuated the sharp angles of his arresting face. Dealing with a grump in real life was annoying, but looking at him was no hardship at all. The man was gorgeous.

“Hi,” I said.

“Need some more measurements,” he said as he walked past me.

“Come on in,” I grumbled under my breath.

“This was on your door.” He handed over a crumpled piece of paper.

I smoothed it out and read it. “Are you kidding me?”

“What?” Zoey asked.

I held up the flyer. Punish Goose’s Killer. Town meeting tonight at 7 p.m. BYOP.

“What’s BYOP?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Cam said. He gestured toward the door. “Don’t close that. I’ll fix it before I leave.”

“Let me just go get my laptop.”

Jim: Hope the writing is going well.