He’d never been one for theatrics and big declarations. Get to the point. Life was too short for bullshit.
Her megawatt smile warmed him right down to his gut. “I’m hungry.”
“Yeah. A steak would be nice. Lots of blood and gravy.”
“Who said anything about food?” Bethany chuckled.
Cain could get used to that sound. In fact, he intended to do just that.
Gail Carriger
Marine Biology
The problem, Alec thought, swishing a test-tube full of sea-water about gloomily, is that I’m unexpectedly alive. To be unexpectedly dead would be simplicity itself. After all, he made up the statistic on the spot so that he would sound more learned in his own head, half of all deaths are unexpected. One is, to a certain degree, prepared to die unexpectedly. But when one expects to die at eighteen and instead finds oneself unexpectedly alive at twenty-four, there’s nothing for it but to be confused about everything.
He sighed, put the test-tube into its cradle and dragged his thoughts forcibly back to the sample’s acidic content. Which was unexpectedly high. There’s global warming for you.
His phone rang. After a brief flurry of scrabbling about, he fished it out from underneath a massive book on nudibranchs — how had it migrated there? — and glanced at the caller’s name before flipping it open. His stomach twisted. Great, what’s Dad doing calling me at the lab?
“Yes?”
“Your problem is that you never got used to being alive.”
“I hate it when you do that. Hold on.” Alec pushed his protective goggles up into his spiky hair and rolled his eyes at his boss on the other side of the lab table. “Family emergency,” he mouthed.
Janet, who was the best kind of boss — a relaxed one — merely waved him off to the fire escape.
Alec trotted over and pushed out into the cold grey day. The lab coat was little protection against the biting wind but he didn’t notice. He didn’t really get cold, not since his eighteenth birthday.
“How are you calling me, Jack? You’re non-corporeal.”
The ghost’s tone became petulant. He did not like being reminded of his disability. “Voice dial, of course.”
“Of course. Do you know what kind of heart attack that gave me, seeing Dad’s number?”
“You’ve got to get over this thing with your father.”
“He’s a dick, I’m passive aggressive and you’re the one who’s haunting because of it.”
“We were talking about your problems, remember? You can’t take being alive.”
“So you call me at work to tell me something I already know?”
“No, but I thought if I started out reminding you how well I know you, you might refrain from arguing with me for the next twenty minutes over the thing I actually need to ask you. I always win these arguments, in the end.”
“Jack, you’re making me nervous.” Alec could feel his canines starting to emerge. “You know what happens when I get nervous.”
“Yoga breaths, darling, yoga breaths.”
Alec breathed in deeply through his nose and then out. The telltale teeth retracted slightly. And the rest of the pack wondered how he functioned so smoothly in laboratory-land. He tried to imagine them doing yoga, and that made the teeth entirely vanish. Alec’s fellow pack members were mostly large and hairy and took to being both with enthusiasm. It was as though they were trying to be as stereotypical as possible, working in construction, riding motorcycles, barbequing a lot. Not the yoga types. Unless the yoga somehow involved leather chaps and brisket.
“Fine, yes, so, what’s going on?”
“Party, darling, tonight. My place.”
“Oh, really, must I?” Alec ran a finger under the collar of his polo shirt.
“’Fraid so. Fifi’s calling in and Biff’s bringing the beer. You know what that means.”
“Pack meeting?”
Alec looked nervously up at the gloomy sky, as if it were nighttime already. “Is it full moon? Did I forget it was full moon? I hacked one of those female cycle programs for my computer, it’s supposed to remind me when I’m due.”
Jack interrupted his panic. “No, something else is going on.”
“Crap, what?”
“Can’t tell, darling, can’t tell. But it was made clear that your presence, specifically, is required.”
Alec swore. “Jack? Jack, you’re supposed to be my friend.”
“Dead men tell no tales.”
“Tales or tails?”
Silence met that pun.
Alec’s canines were back. “You know, if you weren’t dead, I’d kill you.”
“But you’ll be there?”
“Clearly, I have to be there. If my brother’s bringing the beer, I’ll bring the salad.”
“No one will eat it.”
“It’s either that or seafood, and I’d rather not remind them how far I’ve strayed away from the family business.”
“Well, that was easier than I thought. I guess you didn’t have a date for tonight?”
“Jack, I never have a date.”
“Pathetic. Even I have a date and I’m dead.”
“You’re telling me.”
“It won’t be me doing the telling.”
“Oh, shit. That’s not what this meeting is about, is it?”
“Just show up, Alec, and bring your damn salad.”
Then the phone went dead. Alec looked at it with an expression of profound disgust, as though the cell were what was wrong with his life. How had Jack managed to hang up without hands?
Alec sighed, flipped the phone shut and slouched back into the lab.
Janet took in his hangdog expression and immediately knew what was required of her as friend and confidante. “Oh no, what happened?”
“Family thing tonight that I didn’t know about.”
“Need me to be your date?”
“Not this time, but thanks.”
“You know, I’ve never met your family. I find it odd to think you came from somewhere.”
“Well, if you met them, you’d find it odder.”
“That bad, huh?”
“The worst. I think they might be staging an intervention.”
“But Alec, you’re perfectly sober. A fine upstanding citizen. I don’t think I’ve seen you drink even a glass of wine. Unless, of course, it’s your addiction to the whole Atkins diet they’re worried about.”
Thank goodness for Dr Atkins — the perfect excuse for a cultured werewolf to eat nothing but meat. Before the good doctor came along, Alec had been forced to hide his shameful rare burger habit.
“With my luck, they’re pulling me out of the closet.”
No one — really, no one — especially not Alec, had expected him to survive the Bite. The only person in existence less qualified to become a werewolf was Richard Simmons. Not that people wandered around calling Alec effeminate, not to his face anyway, but under no circumstances could he be described as either large or hairy.
His Dad was beta to the local pack, with four strapping, football playing, monosyllabic, Playboy-touting sons — and Alec. Alec was the middle child and there’d been some talk about “looking like the neighbour” when he came along. Skinny, even after the whole big feet, eat everything, smelling-like-a-goat, phase. He also read books — not the backs of cereal boxes — and he preferred post-modern literature of all horrible things. He joined the swim team, not the football team, and that only because his father insisted he undertake some kind of sport. High school saw him wallow in typical teenage depression, except that he knew he was going to die. He didn’t have to don eye make-up and write bad poetry. The local werewolf alpha was set to try and change him into a supernatural creature on his eighteenth birthday and there was simply no way he’d survive the transition.