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“Let me drive you,” Gabriel offered.
I shook my head. “You go on to the hospital, be with Jane and Zeb. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m calling Dick!” he shouted after me as I walked toward the door.
“I know!” I called back, entering the darkness on full steam, almost wanting something to attack me just so I could strike back at it.
14
When all else fails in polite conversation with any supernatural creature, just smile and nod.
—Miss Manners’ Guide to Undead Etiquette
I came home to find that whoever had broken into the bookstore and attacked Zeb had made a night of it. My living room had been thoroughly trashed. My kitchen windows had been smashed with my own tea kettle. Upstairs, my bed was torn to hell, my soft sheets and quilts ripped to ribbons. My books were burned and torn.
“Right,” I growled, walking out the back door. I threw open the storage shed, the light of the full moon shining over my shoulder and bathing the complement of gardening tools in silver. I grabbed the first shovel I saw. Jed’s windows were dark, but I didn’t care at the moment. I got a cricket grip on the shovel handle and smashed the glass in Jed’s kitchen door. Gingerly, I put a hand through, but without cutting my arm to ribbons, I couldn’t reach low enough to get at the lock. I took a step back and swung the shovel at the doorknob, hoping to disengage the lock by brute force.
The shovel blade struck the metal knob with a deafening clang. I grunted, swinging again, the blade only glancing off the doorknob. “I really need to start going to the gym.”
As I once more raised the shovel over my shoulder like a bat, I heard a shuffling noise behind me and turned to find a hulking, dark shape looming in the darkness. A huge monster towered over me, with the legs of a man, a gray leathery torso, and a long, curved, and tapering snout. In the light of the full moon, I could see small, bright eyes and wide paw-like hands with razor-sharp claws. I screamed and swung the shovel wide, whacking the creature in the face with the broad side of the blade.
“Ow!”
Ow? Did the evil, drooling creature before me just yelp, “Ow?” I didn’t expect that.
Was this the strange shape I’d seen lurking in my back garden all this time? A creature that seemed to be covered in gray leathery skin and . . . was that an armadillo’s head? I’d watched a nature special on armadillos once with Nana. She called them “the sport-utility animal,” because nothing that ugly could go without purpose. The shovel’s handle slipped through my hands, the blunt blade edging my palms. I turned and swung for the fences, bringing the wood down across the creature’s thighs.
The thing dropped to its knees. “Ow!”
I whacked it again like a big monster piñata.
“Stop hitting me!” it yelled. “That hurts!”
Wait, I knew that smooth, honeyed-whiskey voice. “Jed?” I cried.
The creature struggled to its knees, glaring at me with glassy black eyes. I raised the shovel again. It held up its paws. “Truce! Truce!” it yelled.
With the doorknob smashed, the Jed monster simply nudged the back door open and limped into the kitchen. Mouth hanging open, I choked up on the shovel handle and followed. The moment the creature lumbered across the threshold, out of the moonlight, the shape morphed back into human Jed. His face bore a purpling bruise where I’d whacked him, along with a sheepish expression.
“Hi.”
It took several moments of shocked silence for me to process what had just happened before my very eyes. And I once saw my Aunt Lizzie set fire to her own eyebrows with a curling iron. After the sheer spectacle of Jed’s shape-shifting passed, I found my voice. And my voice was pissed off.
“You arsehole!” I shouted.
“Drop the shovel!” he yelped as I advanced.
“You stupid, no-good arsehole!” I yelled, smacking him repeatedly with my shovel-free hand. “What is wrong with you? You lie to me. You lead me on. You trick me into giving you information. And now you’re an armadillo monster?”
“Stop!” Jed grunted as I struck out at him. He smacked the shovel out of my hand, knocking it to the floor with a clatter. He caught one wrist, but I managed to poke him in the eye with the other hand. He cornered me against the counter, pressing his hips against mine and catching both of my wrists. I wriggled an arm loose and popped him on the chin.
“Ow!” He hissed, cradling his injured face. “What is wrong with you? Were you raised by freaking ninjas?”
“I have protective uncles,” I growled. “Lots of them. But I’m sure you knew that already, didn’t you? Didn’t you get that information in your Kerrigan spy orientation packet?”
“I’m sorry about that.” He groaned as I dug a knuckle into the sensitive hollow between his armpit and his ribs.
“What the hell are you?” I demanded as he finally released my arms.
