Page 58 of Slayer Mom
The guy sat down on the cement wall on the side in front of the Japanese maple. It had good color this year. “You would leave him?”
“I don’t know. A marriage based on lies can’t last, can it?”
“Hm. That would probably depend on the type of lies.”
“Everything is a lie. It’s so weird. Why did he marry me in the first place? I’m not his type.”
He handed me a handkerchief. It smelled kind of strongly of dog, but it looked clean, and my face was dripping lots of snot. “He loves you.”
I raised a brow at him. “How would you know that?”
“You have purple hair. How could any man not love a woman with purple hair?” He winked at me in a congenial way, nothing like how the Grand Master had winked at me, who was Hazen.
I scowled suddenly. “He was laughing at me, that I was such an idiot not to realize, but the whole time…”
He patted my head. “You know, marriage is always difficult. But you have children to think of.”
I laughed. “Oh, yes, let’s think of the children. I can’t raise them. I have no idea what to do with them.” I took another deep drink of my pumpkin spice decaf latte, with a lot of nutmeg, but also cinnamon. It was really well made. Most decaf tasted like crap.
He kept patting my head, rubbing my scalp like one of the really good shampoo guys. “You just love them. That’s not hard for you, I can tell. Right now, your husband and family need you. It’s not going to be easy for you to pull everything together, but the Zombie Queen is rallying her forces while the Grand Master’s falling apart. He needs to get it together, which means that you need to support him. It’s not fair, but when is life fair? You’re a woman. Women always have to do the crap that no one wants to do.”His smile wrinkled the corners of his eyes while his words slowly penetrated my foggy brain.
He knew about the zombie queen, and he had such an impressive beard. “You’re a werewolf.”
He nodded soberly, but kept that cheerful smile. “I am the Alpha werewolf. I’m sorry my guys tried to kill you. They didn’t, they were trying to kidnap you, but you must have thought that they were trying to kill you, so I’ll let it go.”
“Oh. You were literally asking me if I thought you should kill me, because I’m the one who killed the guys…” I took a shaky breath and thumped my head against the door. “You’re intercepting my phone calls.”
“That’s right.”
“Why? Because my husband’s the Grand Master and you hate him and want to take him down.”
“Because your husband is the Grand Master and I want him to be stable and strong so we aren’t subjected to the Zombie Queen. He has his sons, which should give him an edge, but only if they’re united. If they rip him apart, the world falls.”
“Huh. That sounds like a bad idea. I really hate zombies. Two bit me tonight, and maybe dragged my car into the river. My purse was in it.” I’d really liked that purse. I’d gotten it for a great deal.
“The Zombie Queen has been growing in power for the last decade, since the Grand Master got so distracted.”
“You’re calling me a distraction, or are you referring to his workaholic thing?”
“You are definitely not what anyone expected the Grand Master to put above the rest of the world, his kind, himself. You must be quite remarkable.”
I scowled at him. “Right? Maybe I used to know what was remarkable about me, but I don’t have all my memories. He took them.”
He patted my head one last time and then stood up, stretching. “Give him the handkerchief. Tell him that if he’s not a good husband, you’re going to run away with a pack of wolves. You’d be welcome, you and your boys, and I promise to brew you whatever your elixir of choice is, for as long as you’d like.”
“Was that a come-on?”
He studied me for a long moment. “I don’t flirt with married women. It was an offer of safety. We run a homeless shelter and a woman’s shelter. We make a point to rise above the instincts.”
“The monster.”
He shrugged. “The monster. But you know that some humans are more monster than man.”
I sighed heavily. “Hitler wasn’t a vampire?”
“No.”
“Genghis Khan?”
