Chapter 15 #2
“Sure. I’ve had bad days. I’ve had very bad days. Two of my employees were killed a little while ago.”
I sniffed. “That’s terrible.”
“It is. Do you think I should kill the person who killed them?”
I looked up at him, confused. “You know who killed them? Personal vengeance is usually problematic, you know, dealing with proof and individual rights, and…” I trialed off with a sigh. “So many people have tried to kill me lately.”
“Why is that?”
“Are you a coffee therapist? Coffee bartender?”
His smile got crooked. “Something like that.”
“Why have people been trying to kill me? Why indeed? Probably to get to my husband. He’s not who I thought he was.
It would have been useful if he warned me, but then I probably would have left him.
I don’t know.” I sank down the door to sit on the front mat with a cheerful ‘hello’ written on it.
Hazen didn’t like welcome mats that said, ‘welcome’, probably something to do with vampire invitations into homes or something.
I should have suspected something ominous based on that. Or not.
The guy sat down on the cement wall on the side in front of the Japanese maple. It had good color this year. “You would leave him?”
“I don’t know. A marriage based on lies can’t last, can it?”
“Hm. That would probably depend on the type of lies.”
“Everything is a lie. It’s so weird. Why did he marry me in the first place? I’m not his type.”
He handed me a handkerchief. It smelled kind of strongly of dog, but it looked clean, and my face was dripping lots of snot. “He loves you.”
I raised a brow at him. “How would you know that?”
“You have purple hair. How could any man not love a woman with purple hair?” He winked at me in a congenial way, nothing like how the Grand Master had winked at me, who was Hazen.
I scowled suddenly. “He was laughing at me, that I was such an idiot not to realize, but the whole time…”
He patted my head. “You know, marriage is always difficult. But you have children to think of.”
I laughed. “Oh, yes, let’s think of the children. I can’t raise them. I have no idea what to do with them.” I took another deep drink of my pumpkin spice decaf latte, with a lot of nutmeg, but also cinnamon. It was really well made. Most decaf tasted like crap.
He kept patting my head, rubbing my scalp like one of the really good shampoo guys.
“You just love them. That’s not hard for you, I can tell.
Right now, your husband and family need you.
It’s not going to be easy for you to pull everything together, but the Zombie Queen is rallying her forces while the Grand Master’s falling apart.
He needs to get it together, which means that you need to support him.
It’s not fair, but when is life fair? You’re a woman.
Women always have to do the crap that no one wants to do.
” His smile wrinkled the corners of his eyes while his words slowly penetrated my foggy brain.
He knew about the zombie queen, and he had such an impressive beard. “You’re a werewolf.”
He nodded soberly, but kept that cheerful smile. “I am the Alpha werewolf. I’m sorry my guys tried to kill you. They didn’t, they were trying to kidnap you, but you must have thought that they were trying to kill you, so I’ll let it go.”
“Oh. You were literally asking me if I thought you should kill me, because I’m the one who killed the guys…” I took a shaky breath and thumped my head against the door. “You’re intercepting my phone calls.”
“That’s right.”
“Why? Because my husband’s the Grand Master and you hate him and want to take him down.”
“Because your husband is the Grand Master and I want him to be stable and strong so we aren’t subjected to the Zombie Queen. He has his sons, which should give him an edge, but only if they’re united. If they rip him apart, the world falls.”
“Huh. That sounds like a bad idea. I really hate zombies. Two bit me tonight, and maybe dragged my car into the river. My purse was in it.” I’d really liked that purse. I’d gotten it for a great deal.
“The Zombie Queen has been growing in power for the last decade, since the Grand Master got so distracted.”
“You’re calling me a distraction, or are you referring to his workaholic thing?”
“You are definitely not what anyone expected the Grand Master to put above the rest of the world, his kind, himself. You must be quite remarkable.”
I scowled at him. “Right? Maybe I used to know what was remarkable about me, but I don’t have all my memories. He took them.”
He patted my head one last time and then stood up, stretching.
“Give him the handkerchief. Tell him that if he’s not a good husband, you’re going to run away with a pack of wolves.
You’d be welcome, you and your boys, and I promise to brew you whatever your elixir of choice is, for as long as you’d like. ”
“Was that a come-on?”
He studied me for a long moment. “I don’t flirt with married women. It was an offer of safety. We run a homeless shelter and a woman’s shelter. We make a point to rise above the instincts.”
“The monster.”
He shrugged. “The monster. But you know that some humans are more monster than man.”
I sighed heavily. “Hitler wasn’t a vampire?”
“No.”
“Genghis Khan?”
“Maybe. I wasn’t around back then. You could ask your husband.”
I sighed heavily and banged my head against the door. “What kind of old creep hits on eighteen-year-old girls?”
“Were you that young? That is peculiar. Most eighteen-year-olds are remarkably obtuse. I prefer forty-years old and older.”
“How old are you?”
He smiled at me. “Older than I look.”
“I asked him to marry me.”
He raised his brows. “Did you?”
“Yeah. We’d been hanging out for a year, and one night we were lying on the windshield of my crap car looking at stars.
He was telling me about the different myths about the constellations, and I just thought that I wanted to spend the rest of my life like that.
What was he thinking? I vant to suck her blood? ”
“He dated you for a year?”
“Not really. He wouldn’t date me. He’d do things with me, but nothing romantic.
He was always reading big old books and looking puzzled when I crashed him at the pizza place.
He was so cute when I stole his glasses, so vulnerable and helpless.
I loved it. I loved him. He was probably checking out Tom, the slayer.
That makes sense. He wouldn’t have hung around for me, at least not at first. Tom was training me in the ways of the slayer way back then.
I guess there must be something about me.
Maybe my parents are actually important people, not loser crack addicts like my foster parents told me they were. ”
“Maybe so. Morning’s coming. With nightfall, the Queen rises. I’d appreciate it if you did what you could to put the king back together again.”
He climbed on his bike and headed out with a low rumble. Hazen should get a bike like that. It was pretty sexy.
I sat there drinking my decaf pumpkin spice and thinking deep thoughts.
I drank until it was gone. I probably shouldn’t drink things from a werewolf alpha who had sent two of his men to kidnap me, but he seemed like a decent guy.
If the zombie queen was rising tomorrow night, I needed to bring my family together.
My monster family. And I needed to clean up the water in the kitchen.
What kind of mother was I? The kind that cleaned up messes, not the kind that made them.
Right. Time to put on some pants. Tom could probably find me some real protective leather, not the cheap pleather crap that was past the point of no return.
I tightened my belt and went back inside to face reality and wrestle it back into the family I’d given my life for.