Page 5 of Bears Behaving Badly
“Not a peep or a pip. Witnesses include David Auberon—”
“Well,great.” Annette was well aware of the witness. It had been one of the reasons she’d been more interested than usual to get to work. “This will only feed your imagination.”
“Indeed it will. And the other witness is your favorite troublemaker, Dev.”
She knew that, too, and turned her attention to Dev’s latest mug shot: pointed chin, wide-set green eyes, hedgehog scruffy hair, improbable “gotcha!” grin. She wanted to march into holding and smack the kit as badly as she wanted to keep him safe.
Nadia, meanwhile, was smoothing her sleek, dark hair and flicking nonexistent lint from her red suit. “Shall we? Or did you want to refill your cup o’ sludge?”
“It’s hot chocolate!” Annette protested.
“It’s tepid water and powder. It’s mock chocolate. I retract nothing.”
“I’ve got something for you to retract,” Annette muttered into her cocoa. She liked Nadia a lot—they smoothed each other’s edges—but the woman was a fearful snob. She’d climbed out of her nest at 2:00 a.m. to help Annette remove a traumatized cub, but froze her out for days when Annette’s Secret Santa gift was a pair of (not designer) gloves. Protests (“We’re supposed to keep it under $25!”) went unheeded.
Annette followed Nadia past the cheerful (mostly) disorder of desks, cubicles, and offices, while avoiding the contaminated cesspool that was the break room. So many keen noses on the floor, but no one could find the source of the smell.O, break room, what mysteries you hold ’tween your fetid walls…
“Hi, Annette!” One of the clerks, Taryn Wapiti, hailed her from where she’d been chatting up an attorney. (The sharp suits were always a giveaway, even if Annette could only see this one from the back.) Taryn wasn’t much taller than Nadia, with sturdy legs and the characteristic broad shoulders of a were-elk. Her hair was a reddish-orange, and her dark eyes were nearly always gleaming with fun. “When are we gonna go back to the Patty Wagon?”
“Taryn, hamburgers, no matter how glorious, make you sick as a—” Hmm.Sick as a dogwasn’t very sensitive. “As a person who shouldn’t eat meat.”
“Worth it,” she insisted. “Plus they put a ton of vegetables on their burgers, so it evens out.”
“A tomato slice, a piece of lettuce, and a small sprinkling of onions is not, by any stretch, a ton.”
“Worth it,” Taryn said again.
“And you understand veggie burgers exist, yes?”
“It’s not the same. C’mon, Annette! I wanna gooooooooo!”
Argh, the whining.Annette sighed. “I can’t go out to eat until I do some shopping. My fridge is an embarrassment. So perhaps the end of the week?”
“Done! I’m gonna destroy their V8 special.”
“Something will be destroyed, but I don’t think it’ll be their special.”
“A problem for another day. Hey, Nadia.”
“Taryn, darling, surely there are less painful ways to commit gastrointestinal suicide?”
“None that I know of,” Taryn replied, and with a cheerful wave went back to the lawyer.
The guard had already put Dev twelve-year-old werefox, mother incarcerated, father unknown, pack affiliation unknown—in Interview One. Caro Daniels—sixteen-year-old female werewolf, parents unknown, pack affiliation unknown—went into Interview Three.
The girl looked up when Annette came in and shut the door. “Good morning, Ms. Daniels. My name is Annette Garsea, I’m your caseworker pro tem.”
Silence.
“Would you like something to drink? Pop? Tea? Hot chocolate?”
Nothing.
“I can also offer you mock chocolate. No? All right. My understanding is that you weren’t injured last night, but now that it’s been a few hours, have you found you do, in fact, need medical attention?”
Nothing. So. Hopefully not.
Annette sat across from the girl and studied her as she sipped her mock chocolate. Caro Daniels had the well-scrubbed look of the werewolf next door: short black hair slicked back from a high forehead, dark skin with golden undertones, and big brown eyes an anime character would envy. She was petite and delicately made—and in dire need of several protein drinks. She was sockless in sneakers, and a navy-blue sweatshirt and sweatpants with the IPA logo on the back and sides, both size small, which dwarfed her. The clothing made sense because even if Caro didn’t have a mark on her, her clothes from last night would have been ruined with copious amounts of Lund’s blood. Exhibit A, as it were. Or would Lund himself be Exhibit A?
