Dead Over Heels (12 page)

The events of this novella take place four days after the events in
Undead and Uneasy.

M
ost people wouldn’t know a werewolf if said werewolf (literally) bit them in the face.

Werewolves look like you or me; perhaps a bit more muscular, yes, and their reflexes are much quicker, but it is the nature of man to not notice such things, and so . . . most people wouldn’t know a werewolf if they saw one.

Not so with Cain.

Cain just looked
wrong
. Your brain registered it, even if the eye did not. She was short, almost petite—barely five feet tall. She wore her coffee-colored hair brutally short, in a buzz cut that emphasized her sharp cheekbones. She tended to run around in jeans and tank-tops, which showed off her smoothly muscled legs and arms.

Most arresting of all, she had a sharp, fox-like face, with a pointed chin and glaring green eyes. Cat green. And some people described them as poison green.

A striking woman who moved just a little too quickly, who seemed a little too strong for her size. A small woman who ate two steaks a night, just about every night. And multiple raw eggs for breakfast.

Yes. Something wrong. Even if you couldn’t quite put your finger on it.

Cain was pondering this phenomenon as the mugger, who was over a foot taller and several pounds heavier, got a good look at her eyes, dropped the knife, and fled. She hadn’t even had to say anything. She had just looked at him.

She bent and picked the knife up off the street, wary of some tourists stepping on it and hurting themselves, snapped off the blade, and dropped both pieces into a nearby trash can.

She’d been back on-Cape for just a couple of days and already some idiot tried to
mug
her? On the
Cape
?

She had decided long ago that she would never fit in—except, of course, with the Pack, and what else mattered?—so why bother trying? It’s not like the monkeys ever paid attention. They stayed away from her or they ignored her. Or they tried to mug her—apparently that was the new thing.

For this reason she had never once left Cape Cod, not in twenty-nine years.

Except once.

Which was why she was in her current predicament.

Antonia, the unbelievably bitchy werewolf (except she was a freak; she never changed . . . she saw the future instead) who had taken off for Minnesota ages ago, had gone missing.

And Michael, their Pack leader, had instantly formed a small group to hunt her up. He had politely invited Cain to join them—except with Michael, a polite request wasn’t really a request at all. And so she had gone.

And seeing all her old friends again, catching up on their lives, she had been amazed to find them all . . .
settled
. Domesticated, even.

Jon had been bad enough, but then Michael . . . and Derik . . . and Brendan . . . they were all happily mated and having cubs, for God’s sake.

And they had grown up together, had been cubs together, and had sworn not to settle down before age thirty. Now they were
all
settled, and she was the only single one, and damned if her competitive streak wasn’t kicking in. Now she had until her thirtieth birthday to find a mate.

In other words, she had twenty-two days.

Cain irrationally blamed the entire thing on the vampire queen, because if
she
had been able to keep her house in order, Cain would never have been forced to face certain facts she’d been successfully ignoring by living in Provincetown . . . as far from Wyndham Manor as she could get without actually leaving the Cape.

So the hunt was on. Time to find a Pack member who needed a mate and didn’t mind a quickie wedding.

How she was going to do this, she had no idea. Thus, the late-night stroll to clear her head. The only man in her life so far had been the mugger.

Stupid vampire queen.

I
need to find a mate,” she announced to her oldest friend, Saul, who froze with a forkful of clam linguine halfway to his mouth. “Right now.”

“And you’re, uh, telling me why?”

“Because you know a lot of guys, and I don’t. You’ve got to help me hook up.”

Her only single friend blinked at her as he chewed his pasta. She had known him forever—they had been babies in the crib together, their mothers had been best friends—and they always told each other everything.

When he’d left the Cape after they graduated high school she had been afraid he would never return, but they’d stayed in touch with weekly phone calls and after he got his degree in engineering from (of all places!) the University of Wisconsin, he had come back and settled into a job at Excel Engineering. Within five years he was the number two man there.

It didn’t surprise her. Saul had always been brilliant around machines and gears and things. It was people who gave him trouble. He had a tendency to stammer when nervous or angry, didn’t seem to know what to do with his long arms and legs at parties, and, in short, was a classic beta male.

That wasn’t to say he wasn’t pretty cute, because he was. Tall and lean, with a shock of black hair that tended to fall into his eyes at inopportune moments, and chocolate brown eyes. At least
he
had stuck to their deal, because otherwise some bim would have snatched him up ages ago. He’d be a
great
husband for some lucky woman. Hmm. Maybe after she was settled, she’d think about fixing him up with somebody. Problem was, he was her only real friend, she didn’t really know a lot of—

“Why the big rush to find a mate?” he asked after swallowing.

“Haven’t you noticed?
All
our old friends are mated and most of them have cubs, even! So much,” she added bitterly, “for swearing to stay single until at least thirty.”

“Yeah,” he said, idly spinning his fork in the pasta. “I had noticed.”

“Right!” She plopped down in the kitchen chair opposite him. Saul had inherited a beautiful house on 6A from his parents; it was big enough to be a bed and breakfast, but Saul made plenty of dough at Excel. It was a bitch to get to in the summer (awful,
awful
tourists), but worth the trip every time. She felt more at home here than at her apartment in P-town. “So now
I’ve
gotta get married by the time I’m thirty.”

“But that’s three weeks away.”

“I knowwwwwww. Thus, the ‘right away’ comment. Remember, when I came in?”

“Yeah, I remember. It was forty seconds ago.”

“Okay, then!” She slapped the flat of her hand on his table. “So hook me up. Maybe we can set up one of those speed-dating things, except with werewolves.”

“Or maybe,” he said, after chewing another forkful, “you could set aside your ruthless competitive streak for once.”

“Fat chance of
that
happening. It’s me, Saul, Cain. Remember?”

He sighed. She picked up a napkin and wiped a dab of garlic sauce off his chin. “Yeah. I remember. Stop that, you’re not my mother.”

“Aw, Saul.” She tweaked his chin. “I’m practically your sister, and you know it.”

He snorted. “I’ve got enough problems without having you as a sibling. That would complicate my life enormously. And you’ve already done that, and you haven’t been here a minute.” He snorted again. “Speed dating.”

“Aw, come on. I know you can do it. We’ll set it up at Finnegan’s.”

“Forever to be known in the future as Hell on Earth.”

“Will you stop being such a crybaby and help me?”

He sighed. “Yes. And yes.”

She beamed. “Good boy. And you’ve got sauce on your cheek.”

C
andidate number one sat across from her at her table in the back corner of Finnegan’s, her and Saul’s favorite bar in Orleans. And immediately sneezed into his drink.

“Sorry,” he said, whipping out a
cloth
handkerchief and (ecch!) blowing his nose in it, then stuffing it back into his jacket pocket. “Allergies.”

“But you’re a werewolf!”

“Half. On my mom’s side. And the pollen’s murder this time of—” He sneezed again and a glob of snot actually landed on her arm. Before she could break a chair over his head, he had mopped it up with his damp handkerchief.

“Next!” she called. She wasn’t even going to give this guy the full minute, so she reset the timer.

Candidate number two sat down, clutching two orange drinks—she assumed they were screwdrivers—and frantically waving the waitress down for a third. In thirty seconds he had gulped both drinks, and had the flushed cheeks and bloodshot eyes of a closet drunk. It took a
lot
of booze to get a werewolf drunk, but he was managing nicely.

“Next!”

Candidate number three sat down, eyed her, then said disapprovingly, “What have you done to your hair? It’s much too short. You’ve got to grow it longer.”

“Next!”

“You’re not even giving them the full minute,” Saul murmured in her ear, making her jump. For a gawky, gangly engineer, he moved like a matador.

“Oh, boy, are you gonna get it when we get back to your place. I can’t believe you picked these guys!”

“Your gratitude is overwhelming.”

“Get lost, here comes number four.”

Saul glided away as number four sat down across from her . . . and instantly pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Mind?”

“Yeah, actually.” She couldn’t abide the smell of cigarette smoke; most werewolves couldn’t. She was amazed he’d picked up the habit.

“Well, this is me, baby.”

“Don’t call me baby. Next!”

Candidate number five sat down and instantly started nibbling on his nails, a filthy monkey habit almost as bad as smoking.

“How do you hunt,” she asked, fascinated, “if you keep eating your claws?”

“Nervous tic.”

“Yeah, well, it’s kind of skeeving me out.”

He nibbled harder. “It gets worse when I’m under stress. Which you’re definitely putting me under.”

“Pal, you haven’t
seen
stress. Next!”

“That’s it,” Saul said.

“What?” she cried. “Only five? Five losers?”

“You gave me,” he reminded her, “twenty hours notice.”

“Oh, sure, it’s
my
fault. Man, if I didn’t know you so well I’d swear you set me up with those idiots on purpose.”

“Now why would I do that?” he asked mildly, sitting down across from her. “You can just call me candidate number six.”

“Very fucking funny, Saul. So now what do we do?”

“Have a drink?”

“After that. My birthday loometh.”

“Well, I did fix you up for a blind date tomorrow night.”

“Excellent!”

“Yeah,” he said, draining his beer. “Excellent.”

I
s that what you’re wearing?” Saul asked as soon as she walked into his living room. He had all kinds of incomprehensible paperwork spread around him, and looked harassed.

She looked down at herself. Clean denim shorts, a navy blue T-shirt. Black suede flats. It was July on Cape Cod; what
else
would she wear? “What? What’s wrong with it?”

“What if he’s planning to take you somewhere nice?”

She scowled at him. “I’m not wearing a dress or a skirt and that is
that
.”

He sighed. “You’re not making this very easy.”

“Hey, I
never
said it would be easy.”

“Yes, you’ve been threatening me with that since kindergarten.”

“What’s all the stuff?” she asked, kneeling beside him. “Work junk?”

“Work junk,” he agreed. “New client. Place is a disaster. I foresee a month of twenty-hour days. Especially now that you’ve dumped your little project on me.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” she said good-naturedly. “Hey, maybe you can fix me up with some of your clients.”

“We only have three werewolves, and they’re all mated.”

“Rats.”

“‘Rats’ as in ‘Oh, rats’ or rats as in ‘They’re rats to be married’?”

She pondered that one for a moment, then finally said, “Both.” She looked around at all the paperwork with distaste. “Saul, when was the last time you had a vacation?”

“What year is it?”

“If you have to ask, it’s been too damn long.”

He shrugged. “I like my work.”

“Yeah, that’s fine, but you should think about settling down, too. You don’t want to be the only one in the old gang not mated.”

“God forbid,” he said dryly. “Plague and famine would be more welcome.” There was a polite rap on his door. “Ah. Prince Charming has arrived.”

“Please God,” Cain said fervently, and went to answer the door.

M
y patients are really my life, and they’re all so different, that’s what I love about my work, the constant variety, I mean, every single day is different—”

“—Dr. Williams is
so
arrogant, he just won’t tolerate any nurses, thinks we’re all trained monkeys—badly trained monkeys—and—”

“—and then there was Mrs. Jenkins, boy, she was a firecracker! D’you know she was friends with Michael’s mother? Man, the stories she told! They were—”

“—of course, what I’d really like is to go back to school and become a nurse practitioner. With the national nursing shortage, I can pretty much—”