“Well, this was completely unhelpful. I’m leaving now,” I told them. “Enjoy the many, many hours left in the evening, none of which you will spend sleeping. And I don’t mean that in the fun way.”
“That was mean,” Cooper told me. I blew him a raspberry and waved good-bye to Mo. As I walked out, I made like I was going to shut the door quietly, then slammed it at the last minute. I counted to three and waited for the baby to wail.
Just before I phased, I heard Mo mutter through the door, “If we’d moved to Australia when I suggested it, this wouldn’t be a problem.”
THE NEXT DAY, Nick still hadn’t called. I’d gone from making excuses for him to sitting at my desk, enjoying imagined scenarios where he might have been digested by a bear.
I ran past Susie Quinn’s place on my way home from Cooper and Mo’s . . . just because it was on my way. Seeing the warm, homey light shining through the windows, I’d paused. I’d sat on my haunches at the edge of the tree line. And I’d felt like a creepy stalker. But through that disquieting interest, I’d felt better, settled, to be sitting there, knowing he was inside, safe and well. When Cooper and I had started talking again the year before, he’d described his compulsive habit of running past Mo’s house while he was wolfed out, feeling at peace for the first time since he’d left the valley. He said it was like the primal part of his brain was leading him there every night, just to be near her. He’d been torn up for years over leaving home, and with Mo, he was given a little glimpse of tranquillity. And when they stopped being idiots and admitted that they were crazy for each other, that contentment had become part of his everyday life.
After watching Nick’s house, I’d woken up and felt calm, warm. I usually woke up thinking of all the things I had to get done, my mind racing and raring to get started. But the moment my eyes had popped open, I felt . . . light, I guess. I stretched under the covers and smiled into my pillow, reveling in the feeling of serenity washing over me.
Crap.
I forced myself to jump out of bed, to go through my normal routines. I kept trying to recapture my normal patterns and feelings. I knew it sounded like one of Mo’s lame pop-psychology rants, but in the absence of that anxiety, I was a little depressed. I’d never realized how much pressure I put on myself. The idea that Nick was somehow a solution to a problem that I didn’t know I had was upsetting.
My mental self-torture was interrupted when my cousin Will stuck his grizzled brown head through my office door. Will was one of my gruffer cousins, quick with the sarcasm and quicker to attack if a packmate was threatened. He’d married Angie, a wry, blond female from a Seattle-area pack, and produced two towheaded little boys, the only wolf boys to be born to our pack in the last five years.
“Hey, Maggie,” Will said, tossing me a Baggie of Angie’s famous oatmeal-raisin cookies. I opened the bag and inhaled the heavenly, spicy fragrance before shoving one into my mouth. Angie was known to shove dozens of cookies into Will’s coat pockets before he left for the day. If he hadn’t married her, he probably would have had to fight Samson and half the valley’s male population for her, just for the potential cookie privileges.
“I was just running along the east border, and there’s a hiker up there. Seems harmless enough, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Blond?” I asked, frowning. I held my hand far over my head. “Yea tall? Looks like a hot, annoying Viking?”
“I don’t know how to respond to that,” Will said, shaking his head, taking a cookie for himself. “Not without you making fun of me later. But yeah, I think that would cover it.”
I snorted. “Did he see you?”
“Nah, I was being all stealthy-like,” he said, grinning. “I’m like a ninja with fur. Quiet, quick, and a mind like a steel trap.” He tapped his temple and winked at me.>Mo threw up her hands. “I don’t see why it’s that funny!”
Mo’s indignant hiss was just what I needed to double over laughing. “Grr!” I gave a exaggerated fake growl. “I’m Mo, fierce predator. I could catch you if my designer thong wasn’t riding up!”
Cooper laughed. “Or how about, ‘I’m Mo, the baking werewolf. I’ll stuff you so full of chess squares you won’t be able to run away!”
“Are you done?” Mo asked in a dead, flat voice.
Cooper sucked in a breath. “Sorry, baby, it’s the sleep deprivation. It’s getting to me.” His face flushed as he spluttered. “Nope, I have one more.” Mo scowled at him. He bit his lip, suppressing a snicker. “I’m done.”
She scowled. “Can we get back to why Nick thinks I’m a wolf, please?”
I wiped at my eyes while she stared daggers at both of us. “Whew. Sorry, I have to catch my breath. He, ahem, he thinks John Teague turned you into a werewolf and then you were on some sort of Wolf-man rampage across the countryside,” I said, rubbing the ache in my side.
“And what stopped my rampage, exactly?” she asked dryly.
“Oh, Cooper,” I said, a giggle escaping my tightly pressed lips. “He saved you from yourself. And we, your loving human in-laws, are helping you suppress your homicidal urges.”
“Well, that’s awfully nice of us,” Cooper said blandly.
“Actually, we can use this,” Mo said, sitting up, getting that “I’ve got a project” expression that always scared the hell out of me. “I’ll just start eating raw meat, standing out in the street, howling at the moon. It will totally throw him off.”
“Yeah, and then we’ll go into Susie’s attic, rattle some chains, and make him think the house is haunted,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Susie Quinn’s place?” Cooper asked.
“Yeah, he’s renting it.”
Mo frowned. “That’s sort of ghoulish. Besides, how would we even get into Susie’s attic?”
“You know, I hadn’t considered that. I got sort of hung up on the fact that this means he’s going to be here for a while. Which is bad.”