Charlotte looked at me for a second longer, then offered me a hand. I helped her stand, still cautious. She had a hell of a temper once it got started. Admittedly, it took a lot to get her this mad, but once she reached it, it was every man for himself.
She let me help her to her feet without trying to slug me. An improvement. We made our way through the crowd with Daniel and Jason trailing behind us. No one crowded us as we went for the door. They stared, but didn't crowd.
The bouncer at the door said, "She doesn't come back in here."
Charlotte opened her mouth to say something, and I gripped her shoulder. "Don't worry. She won't."
He looked at Charlotte but nodded.
I let her get about three good steps ahead of me as we reached the parking lot. Call it an instinct. She whirled, and I think would have hit me, but I was out of reach. She stared at me with those big honey-brown eyes, made somehow paler by the halogen lamps. "Don't you ever lay hands on me again," she said.
"Behave like Richard's mother and not his outraged girlfriend, and I won't."
"How dare you!" she said. She moved closer. I moved away. I didn't really want to have a fistfight in the parking lot of a bar with Richard's mother.
"If anyone should be trying to beat the shit out of Ms. Peroxide Blond, it should be me."
That stopped her cold. She stood straight and looked at me. I could almost see her sanity returning. "But you aren't dating him anymore. Why should you care?"
"That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it?" I said.
Charlotte smiled suddenly. "I knew you couldn't resist my boy. No one could."
"If he keeps dating everything in sight, I might."
She frowned. "I can't believe he ever dated that thing," she said.
We both turned and watched Richard walk towards us. There were nearly identical looks on our faces. We disapproved of Ms. Schaffer -¨C a lot.
Her first words were, "I cannot believe you dated that woman. She is a whore."
Richard looked embarrassed, more than I'd gotten from him. "I know what she is."
"Did you have sex with her?"
"Mother!"
"Don't you motherme, Richard Alaric Zeeman."
"Alaric," I said.
Richard spared me a frown, then turned back to his mother. "No, I never slept with Betty."
He was saying he'd never had intercourse with her. Charlotte would take it to mean that no sex at all had happened, just like I had. I remembered what Jamil had said about alternatives, but I kept quiet. I didn't want to upset Charlotte, and I didn't want to know.
"Well, at least that shows better sense," Charlotte said. She walked up to him and smoothed the front of his T-shirt, then bowed her head, and I realized she was crying.
I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd bitten him, maybe less.
Richard's entire face crumpled into helpless lines. He looked at me as if for help, and I backed up. I shook my head. I was no better around crying women than he was, maybe less.
He hugged her to him. I heard her murmur, "I was so worried about you in that awful jail."
I backed up out of earshot, and Daniel joined me. He didn't seem eager to join them, either. Of course, Charlotte didn't have to cry to unman Daniel.
"Thanks, Anita," he said.
I looked up at him. He was wearing a red tank top that was almost a twin of one Richard had. For all I knew, it was the same one. He looked tanned and handsome and very grown-up. "You're assertive around everyone but your parents. Why is that?"
He shrugged. "Isn't everyone like that?"
I shook my head. "No."
Jason moved up beside us. He echoed me: "No." Then he laughed. "Of course, my mother would never have gotten into a fight in a bar, no matter what I did. She's much too ... decorous."
"Decorous," I said.
"My last roommate had a word-a-day calendar," Jason said.
"You've been reading again," I said.
He hung his head, looking abashed, then gave me rolled eyes and a grin. It was such a mix of shame and utter cuteness that I laughed. "I can't donate blood and have sex twenty-four hours a day. There's no television at the Circus of the Damned."
"If there was?" I asked.
"I'd still read, but don't tell anyone."
I put an arm around his shoulders. "Your secret is safe with me."
Daniel put his arm around Jason from the other side and said, "Won't breathe a word of it."
We walked towards the four-by-four, arm in arm. "If Anita was in the middle, this would be perfect," Jason said.
Daniel just stopped in his tracks, staring at Jason. I pulled away from both of them. "You just don't know when to stop, do you, Jason?"
He shook his head. "No."
Richard walked over to us. He sent Daniel to their mother, and Daniel didn't argue with the order. He sent Jason on to the car, and Jason didn't argue. I stood looking up at his suddenly serious face, wondered what my orders were going to be, and bet I would argue with them.
"What's up?" I asked.
"I'll have to go with Daniel and my mother to calm her."
"I hear a butcoming," I said.
He smiled. "Butthere's a ceremony to meet my lupa tonight. It's customary before two packs share a full moon that they be formally introduced."
"How formally?" I asked. "I didn't pack for formal."
The smile widened into that wondrous smile that was his mother's. It had that same utter good humor to it. Contagious. "I don't mean that kind of formal, Anita. I mean there are rites to observe."
"Rites, as in what?" I asked. I sounded suspicious, even to me.
He hugged me, spontaneously, not girlfriend-boyfriend, but just a happy-to-see-you hug. "I have missed you, Anita."
I pushed away from him. "I make a suspicious comment and you say you've missed me. I don't get that, Richard."
"I love all of you, Anita, even the suspicious parts."
I shook my head. "Stick to business, Richard. What rites?"
The smile faded, the good humor dying from his eyes. He looked suddenly sad and I wanted to take it back, to have him smile at me again. But I didn't. We weren't an item anymore, and he'd been dating little Miss Schaffer, the cowgirl hooker. I didn't understand that at all. She puzzled me even more than Lucy.
"I have to go with my mother for a while. Jamil and Shang-Da can explain what you have to do as my lupa tonight."
I shook my head. "One of the bodyguards stays with you, Richard. I don't care which one it is, but you don't go out there alone."
"Mom will not understand a chaperone that isn't family," Richard said.
"Don't go all momma's boy on me, Richard. I've had enough of that from Daniel for one night. Explain it any way you like, but you aren't leaving here without backup."
He stared down at me, and his handsome face was serious, arrogant. "I am Ulfric, Anita. Not you."
"Yeah, you're Ulfric, Richard. You're in charge, fine, then do a good job of it."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that if the bad guys find you out alone tonight, they might not wait to find out if you're leaving tomorrow. One of them might get a little eager and try to hurt you."
"If it's not silver bullets, they can't kill me."
"And how are you going to explain to your mother that you survived a shotgun blast to the chest?" I asked.
He glanced back at her and Daniel. "You cut right to the bone, don't you," he said.
"It saves time," I said.
He turned back to me. Anger had darkened his eyes, thinned out his face. "I love you, Anita, but sometimes I don't like you very much."
"It's not me you don't like, Richard, not on this issue. You're terrified that if Mommy Dearest finds out you're a shapeshifter, she'll think you're a monster."
"Don't call her that."
"Sorry," I said. "But it's still the truth. I think you're underrating Charlotte. You're her son, and she loves you."
He shook his head. "I don't want her to know."
"Fine, but choose a bodyguard. Why not tell your mom that he's backup in case the police try to make trouble? It's the truth."
"As far as it goes," Richard said.
"The best lies are always at least partially true, Richard."
"You're much better at lying than I am," he said. I looked for anger in the words, but there was nothing. It was just a statement of fact that left his eyes empty and sad.
I was tired of apologizing, so I didn't. "Do you want to take their car and I can drive the four-by-four back to the cabins?"
He nodded. "I'll take Shang-Da with me. He doesn't like you much."
"I thought he might have warmed up to me since the fight this afternoon," I said.
"He still thinks you betrayed me," Richard said.
I didn't even try to touch that one. "Fine, I'll take Jason and Jamil with me. They can give me lessons in werewolf etiquette."
"Jason won't be much help. He's never been part of a healthy pack."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"It means that because our old lupa was such a sadistic bitch, we were all afraid of each other. A normal pack is much more touchy-feely, more casual with each other."
"How touchy?" I asked.
He smiled, almost sadly. "Talk to Jamil. He'll teach you and Jason, too." He seemed to think about that.
"What about the wereleopards, and the vampires?"
"I already asked Verne. They are our guests tonight."
"One big happy family," I said.
Richard looked at me. It was a long, searching look. It took a lot to meet his eyes and not to flinch. "It could be, Anita, it really could be." With that, he turned and walked to his mother and brother.
I watched him go and wasn't sure what to make of his last comment. I used to wonder why he put up with me, but after meeting his mother, I knew. It had taken me three Sunday dinners to realize why Charlotte and I were either in perfect agreement or on opposite ends of any discussion. We were too much alike. A family, like a pack, can only have so many alphas or it tears itself apart. Only Richard's brother, Glenn, is currently married, and his wife and Charlotte butt heads constantly. Aaron is a widower. I'm told the fights between Charlotte and Aaron's deceased wife were legendary. They'd all gone out and married someone like mom. Glenn's wife, though full-blooded Navajo, was still petite, and tough. The Zeeman men seemed to have a weakness for small and tough.
Beverly, as the only girl and the eldest, was wonderfully dominant. She and Charlotte had almost not survived her teenage years, according to Glenn and Aaron. Bev had settled down, gone to college, married, and was pregnant with her fifth child. She had four boys and was trying one last time for a girl.
I'd paid attention to Richard's family because I'd thought they were going to be my in-laws. That didn't seem likely to happen now. Oh, well. I had enough problems with my own family. Who needed a second one?