“They are not! You’re not even just like us, you and your father and that mother of yours.”

Sean shot an apologetic look at her. “That’s fair, Lara.”

She shrugged. “Okay. But I think what I said was fair, too. If Len had bothered to—”

“Yeah, well, people who grow up with cobras spend a lot of time thinking venomous reptiles aren’t dangerous. That doesn’t make them right. It makes them stupid. You’re stupid. You grew up with them, you visited them, they came crawling out here . . . You’re used to it, but that doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous, that we should tolerate them.”

“It doesn’t matter because—”

“Why were you late?” Sean asked suddenly, noticing Len was getting into froth mode again. He had no idea why Lara was stalling, just that she was, and wanted to help. “Geoff’s dad was supposed to be dead by now. You said you didn’t get here in time.”

“Because I had to help clean up the disaster your sister made in the breakfast room with the other freak,” Lenny cried, waving his hands in impotent rage. “It threw the whole schedule off! Bombed the whole day! Broken glass and juice and bacon fucking everywhere!”

“Don’t talk about the bacon,” Sean hissed.

“I feel better now,” Jack said to Lara. “I was wondering when he was going to get to me. I know you’ll get most of the attention in our lives, and that’s fine, but I wouldn’t want to be completely ignored all the time. Don’t forget my freak sorceress mother,” he added helpfully to Lenny, “and my would-be alpha dad.”

“Have you left time for another villain rant?” Sean asked anxiously. “We want you to have your say.”

“You’re all . . . just . . . awful.” Lenny was running out of steam. His plan, never very intelligent or thought out to begin with, wasn’t going to work. Probably wouldn’t have worked if everything had gone perfectly. “Just . . . I hate you. I really do.”

“Bad enough to pretend to be my friend, to sympathize,” Geoff’s dad remonstrated, “but then to kill me and use my body to decorate their steps? I didn’t sign on for that, dude. You’re just as bad as any of these guys.”

“Quit it, Geoff’s dad!” Sean roared, startling them all. “Lara saved your smelly ass by boning a guy she barely knew like some loose skank. You owe the new Pack Skank your life!”

“No more classic movies. No more classic TV. No books published before 2015. All of it ends. Right now.” Lara pinched the bridge of her nose, where a truly awful headache had sprouted. She’d heard the phrase didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and never knew how it felt until now. “Right now, Sean. Though he’s right. Jack and I saved your life, Geoff’s dad.”

“What life?” he complained.

Some people, there’s just no pleasing them.

“Okay, fuck this.” Lenny took a step back, his hands over his head as if Lara was arresting him. “I didn’t try to kill you. I didn’t try to kill him. I’m not Challenging. You can’t kill me.”

Lara looked at him thoughtfully. “That’s true.” She knew other members of the household had been assembling; she could see several through the windows all along that side of the house. Kara had come when called, of course, but realized what was happening and the word had spread, as Lara had known it would. She needed only a few witnesses; the word would get out, as it always did. “I can’t kill you. But that’s all right. I’ll just give you to my good friend the vampire queen.”

Lenny said nothing, just looked at her with dawning surprise.

“Y’know, Betsy and I have been wondering if a Pack/vamp hybrid would be possible. It’s a pretty exciting idea. But it’s not like any Packer would volunteer for that, right? But it occurs to me I don’t need a volunteer.” Lara smiled at him. “I’ve got you. For what it’s worth, what you’ll do for us will provide valuable research for both our peoples.” She turned to Sean. “Peoples? Is that right? Because we’re different species? Actually, they’re all dead, technically. Are the dead a species?”

“No, you—you can’t.” Lara barely heard his croaked denial. Lenny had to cough, and then spit, and then try again: “You can’t. Do that. You can’t.”

“You’ll find I can. You’ll find there’s not anyone here who will stop me.”

Lenny seemed to realize for the first time that they had an audience, and looked around, his lips moving as he made note of the numbers . . . a dozen, two dozen . . . all watching. All listening.

“You didn’t Challenge and you didn’t get a chance to kill Geoff’s dad. That hardly puts you up with the Knights of the Round Table, but all right. But you planned harm, Len. To me, to my family. You insulted my mate’s family, you threatened my brother and insulted my mother and her mate. You didn’t think you’d walk away from that, did you?” She laughed, delighted. “Did you? Oh my God. You did! Oh, that’s hilarious.”

He was whitening, stammering, backing away. He shook his head so hard more spittle flew. He tried harder to speak, and stuttered and stumbled and nearly fell. Geoff’s dad was saying something, but Lara had no idea what; her full attention was on Len.

“Come on, then,” she said. “You don’t want to keep my friend the vampire queen waiting. You’ll like Minnesota. While you’re able to like anything, I guess. After that . . . well, it’s likely the winters won’t bother you so much. Nothing will bother you so much.”

Len turned. He ran. Not blindly; Lara saw at once he had a plan, a path. The new plan went much better than the old: he ran straight to the edge of the cliff, and straight over. Unlike the classic cartoons, he didn’t run a few steps on air. He dropped from sight, and even over the sound of the ocean, they could hear him screaming all the way down. Until they couldn’t.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In all the years Lara’s mother had lived with the Pack, she had never gotten used to post-confrontation anticlimaxes. “The fight or whatever is over, and they just look for a minute, and then everybody goes back to whatever they were doing. Never ceases to amaze.”

The witnesses—the kitchen staff, a few groundskeepers, some of the interns from the business office—looked for a minute, then went back to work. If she had called any of them to her, they would have come at once, but she didn’t, so they left. All but Kara, who knew Lara would want her. A quick whispered discussion, and the older Packer was easily lifting Geoff’s dad into her arms. “Get me outta here,” he was saying, “I wanna go back; chemo’s better than this place, anything’s better. Jesus!”

Sean walked up to the edge of the cliff, looked down, then came back, shaking his head. “I don’t know which memory to repress first. Also he’s deader than shit down there. Are you gonna have some Packers go get him, or let him wash out to sea, or what?”

Hmm. Yes, that was her decision, too. She raised her voice, called over two of the groundskeepers, and had a quick word. Their baseball caps were in their hands the moment she spoke their names, and didn’t go back on their heads until they’d heard their instructions and stepped out of her presence.

“I’ll go with them,” Jack said, and she nodded. Then she looked at her little brother. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Lies, all lies.” She smiled. “What is it?”

“Okay. I wasn’t gonna say anything—”

Sure.

“—and don’t get the wrong idea, I’m glad you didn’t have to get ready to rummmmmbbbllllle! Expecting you to kill a stranger after you killed all that bacon was too much.” He looked back at all the now-empty windows. “But with everybody watching—I don’t know. Maybe they think you should have been more, uh, Pack-ey. About handling Lenny. I don’t want you to get jammed up from that. I don’t want you to have to look over your shoulder forever.”

Oh, Sean, you sweetie. I’ll have to no matter what happened today. Just like Dad did. “Nope. Never happen.”

“Well. I’m not arguing about it or anything. It’s just something I was wondering about.”

“What’s the saying—there’s a new sheriff in town? New rules, honey. What do you think would further my rep more? That I killed someone smaller, weaker, and dumber than me in a fight I had every chance of winning? Or that not only did I expose and remove a threat to my Pack, he was so horrified at what I was going to do to him, he killed himself on the spot rather than face it?”

Sean stood there with his mouth open for a few seconds, then snapped it closed so hard she heard the click of his teeth coming together. “Okay. Good point. I withdraw my earlier comment. I’m going to my room now to be terrified for the next few hours.”

“Okay.” She tried not to laugh and, as usual with her bubbly odd beta bro, failed. “Thanks for sticking up for me by telling the world I’m the new Pack Skank.”

“Thanks for scaring me shitless pretty much all day.” He pulled her close for a quick hug, and she felt her eyes sting with tears that wanted to run down her face and show the world she was a coward. She ruthlessly quashed the urge to cry and stepped back. “Okay, so, I’m looking at waking up screaming up every night for the next few weeks, but by the time the new fall movies come out, I should be back to a less horrible sleep schedule . . .” She could hear him muttering his fall sleep plans as he walked away. “. . . by then only waking up screaming once or twice a week, so I could go to the late shows on Fridays . . .”

Lara looked around; she was alone for the moment. Sean off to his room, Jack to help with the body, Geoff’s dad bundled unceremoniously into Kara’s car for a trip to the hospital, and Len . . . well.

She sat down quickly, sure her shaking knees weren’t going to hold her up another minute.