Karen MacInerney - Howling at the Moon

Howling at the Moon

Tales of an Urban Werewolf, Book 1

Karen Macinerney

Contents

Dedicated to Carol and Dave Swartz,

with gratitudeand love

I have a secret. A big, fat, hairy secret.

And Im not talking minor-league stuff, like I once let Joseph Applebaum feel me upbehind the seventh-grade stairwell or I got a Brazilian wax after work last Friday or Im hidinga neon blue vibrator called the Electric Slide in my night table. Which Im not, by the way. In case you were wondering.

No, this is completely different. And as far as I knew, only twowell, technically one, but well call it twopeople in the entire world knew about it.

Until this morning.

Usually, I waltz into my office at Withers and Young with my skinny latte, extra foam, and find nothing but a neat stack of manila folders waiting for me. Today, however, next to the manila folderslabeled with the new apple green and pink stickers Id bought last weekwas a box.

Now, I should have been suspicious right off. I mean, it was too early for the mail, and the only thing on the front of the package was my name, in swirly letters. Not your normal business correspondence, for sure. And besides, I am an auditor. Who in the world would be sending me care packages?

But none of that percolated through my sluggish brain this morning. I had just picked up the box when my nosy assistant Sally walked in, wearing snug hip-huggers and a jarring floral blouse that barely contained her bosom. Adele wants to talk to you about the Southeast Airlines account. She gave me a tight smile, accentuating the cupids bow shed drawn just outside the perimeter of her lips. Then her beady little eyes fastened on the box. Whats that? Something from that tennis-player boyfriend of yours?

I dont know. I shook the box, which had just the right heft for Godiva. Probably chocolate. My boyfriend Heath had a penchant for surprising me with boxes of truffles. I loved themespecially those hazelnut cream onesbut it was starting to play hell with my waistline.

Yum. Can I have one?

Sure. I tried to pry up the tape with my fingernail, but it wouldnt budge.

Jeez, thats wrapped up tight.

Sally was right; it was the Fort Knox of chocolate boxes. I ran my tongue over my razorsharp eyeteeth, tempted to use them on the tape. But with Sally hanging over my desk, it wouldnt be a good idea.

Ill get scissors, she said, heaving herself off my desk and disappearing through the door. A moment later, she returned with a pair of shears, cutting the paper off with a flourish. The box inside wasnt gold foil. It was plain brown cardboard. And my skinny latte must have finally kicked in, because my instincts were telling me I wasnt going to like what was inside. And since my instincts are on the strong side, I really should have listened to them. But hindsight, as they say, is always twenty-twenty.

Doesnt look like chocolate, said Sally, who was hovering over me like a flowery vulture, reeking of Aviance Night Musk.

Not Godiva, anyway. A phone rang in the distance. Isnt that your phone?

Sally gave me a smile that told me I wasnt going to pry her out of my office with a crowbar. No, its Mindys.

Are you sure?

Positive.

She wasnt budging, so I went ahead and opened it.

Bad idea.

Instead of neat rows of chocolate nestled in gold foil, inside the box was a Ziploc bag of dried green leaves.

I slammed the lid down, hoping Sally wasnt an amateur botanist.

Sallys black-rimmed eyes grew huge. Is that pot?

What? I croaked. On second thought, maybe it would be better if she was an amateur botanist. Wolfsbane might be poisonous, but at least you couldnt be arrested for having it.

The bag in there, she said, pointing at the box. It looks like weed.

Oh, its just peppermint, I said, tossing off a light laugh that sounded like I was choking on a chicken bone. Probably from my mother.

Sally narrowed her little eyes at me. Why would your mother send you peppermint?

Peppermint tea, I said. She knows I like it. Actually, it wasnt a total lie. My mother did send me tea regularly, only it wasnt peppermint.

I moved the box to my lap, resisting the urge to panic and trying to ignore the fact that Sally was still staring at me. A phone rang somewhere in the building. Shouldnt you get the phone? I suggested.

No, its Mindys again. Sally wrinkled her nose. That stuff doesnt smell like mint.

She jabbed a finger at the corner of yellow legal paper that was sticking out from under the lid.

Is that a note?

You know, Im kind of busy this morning.

Arent you going to read it?

Just then, a ring that was unmistakably Sallys phone burbled from outside the door.

Better go get that, I said brightly.

Sally pursed her lips. It can wait.

I raised an eyebrow and tried to look official. I dont think Adele would be happy to hear that. Adele was the head of the department and had an extremely low tolerance for anything short of professional. Which had always puzzled me, because it was Adele who had hired Sally.

Sally flashed me a nasty look and flounced from the office. When a few moments passed and she didnt reappear, I tugged the note out of the box and opened it. Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I know what you are

And your boss soon will too.

Well, crap.

I stared at the note. Despite what Sally thought, the stuff in the box wasnt pot. And it had a lot more punch than peppermint. Most people, in fact, would consider it poison. But I wasnt most people.

I was a werewolf.

And somebody else knew it.

I took another sniff, inhaling the familiar bitter scent. Since Im the daughter of a fullblooded werewolf and a psychic witch (lucky me), Ive had to drink the stuff several times a day for years. Otherwise, I have a nasty tendency to transform every time something scares me. Unfortunately, my mother didnt hit on the right recipe until I was almost ten, which meant a lot of my childhood was spent packing up my Barbie dolls (I learned pretty early on that there wasnt a Werewolf Barbie) and sitting beside my mother in a U-Haul truck. My werewolf dad scarpered before my first birthday, so my mother raised me by herself, which meant I spent a lot of time in child care.

Which is hard enough if youre a regular kid, but an absolute nightmare when you happen to be a bouncing baby werewolf. Full moons were a problem, of coursealthough these days, with the help of my mothers brew, my involuntary changes were limited to four times a year

but what was worse was my propensity for sprouting teeth and fur every time something startled me or pissed me off. You can imagine what happened when I didnt get my bottle on time. One of the more memorable episodes occurred in second grade, when a snotty little girl named Megan Soggs thought it would be fun to put a frog down my shirt at recess. I dont know who was scared more, me by the frog or Megan by the wolf cub in penny loafers. But a week later, we were back in the U-Haul again, off to another city.

Fortunately, by the end of third grade, my mother had figured out how to use wolfsbane tea to keep my issues under control without doing me mortal harm. So once we found a town that was werewolf freewhich turned out to be Austinmy mother unpacked the U-Haul and bought a small house. Neither of us had moved since. I still drank gallons of wolfsbane tea, and it still didnt taste any better. As a kid, Id taken it with chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup, and large quantities of honey, but these days I just used Splenda.

I gave myself a quick shake and reminded myself that all of that was behind me now. Since Sally was still on the phone, I gave the box a quick sniff. Coffee, cigarettes, the faint aroma of a woman, overlaid with the deeper notes of male sweat. An animal smell toocat, maybe? I opened the Ziploc bag a crack. The wolfsbane was pure, probably grown in the Alps, if the woodsiness of the scent was any indication.