Undead and Unwelcome

Chapter 16

:I’ll trust you with my daughter,” Jeannie began the moment she’d started up four washing machines at once. The mysterious door had led to the mysterious Laundromat. The Wyndhams had their own Laundromat! Unreal.

Anyway, she got a bunch of the machines going and I was puzzling over that when I suddenly realized: she didn’t want Lara to overhear. Or anybody close by to overhear.

“I’m doing this,” she continued, “because I know you liked Antonia and wouldn’t have seen her dead. I’m also doing this because Lara can take care of herself. So if you turn evil and try to bite her or hurt her in any way, don’t be surprised if it’s your head bouncing across the playground.”

“That’s, um, sweet. You must be very proud.”

“But I need you to remember this: a werewolf cub is not a human child. They’re different.”

“Okay.”

“They’re faster. Stronger. Even crueler. She looks like a little girl to you, but you must never forget—she is her father’s daughter, the man who had to kill over twenty-​five werewolves to take the Pack. Do you understand?”

I just stared at her while all around us washing machines went shhh-​thump, shhh-​thump, shhh-​thmmp.

I’d expected the standard warning: if you bite my kid, I’ll hunt you down and shoot you dead.

But it wasn’t like that. Jeannie wasn’t scared for Lara.

She was scared for me.

“I told you something like this before, but you had a lot going on at the time. This time I’ve got your full attention. Right?”

“Right, absolutely, you bet.”

“As long as we understand each other.”

“Oh, we totally do,” I assured her.

“All right, then.”

“All right.”