Page 27 of Eye on the Ball
“So, no?”
He shrugged. “Maybe wolves can scent other shapeshifters. For me, it’s more of a vibration. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“And Brenda knows more than she’s saying?”
“That’s my take on it.”
I threw my hands in the air. “I’m tired of talking about it. We can’t do anything from here, anyway. I’m going to go home and get ready for practice. See you there?”
Susan nodded. “Six?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll follow you home, Tess,” Jack said. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Yay,” I said faintly, not being a huge fan of surprises.
“Trust me, you’ll like this one.”
On the drive to my house, I turned the radio up high and sang along with Rihanna and Taylor Swift, since I was alone in my car. I only sang in front of people at church. God loves everybody, even those of us who can’t carry a tune in a bucket.
I beeped my horn when I passed my neighbor Carlos’s house, though I thought he was still doing something important with the vampire council in Europe. He’d have interesting stories when he got back.
Just as I pulled in and parked in front of my house, my phone rang. I was delighted to see it was my best friend, Molly.
“Molly!”
“Hey, Tess! I can’t wait to see you next weekend!”
“Oh. You can’t make it this weekend, after all?” I was disappointed. Molly had been my best friend since kindergarten, and I’d seen far too little of her recently. Her indie rock band, Scarlett’s Letters, was blowing up. They’d had multiple videos go viral, and now she was weighing offers from several record labels. Meanwhile, she was touring constantly.
“No, we got our gig extended here in Atlanta, and I’m talking to the big muckety-mucks at the labels, so I’m going to hang out a few more days. But I’ll be home by Friday, for sure. We can have a Bad Movie Night!”
One of our most cherished traditions. It involved awful movies, ice cream and pizza, and gales of laughter. I’d really missed those Fridays—and my best friend.
She caught me up on her wild life and experiences, and I told her about everything going on, while I fed Lou and poured myself a glass of lemonade.
“How can so many bizarre things keep happening in Dead End? We waited our entire childhood for life to get exciting!”
I laughed. “Yeah, but there’s such a thing as too much excitement. How are you and Lucky, by the way?”
She sighed. “I don’t think it’s going to work out. My life is going global, and Lucky just wants to stay in Dead End and run his business.”
Her boyfriend, Lucky, was one of the owners of Swamp Commando Airboat Rides, a newish business that took tourists out to see alligators. He and his co-owners were all former special forces guys who’d come to Dead End for some peace and relaxation and wound up staying. Most of them lived out by the swamp, and I considered them to be friends. Jack got along great with all of them, naturally, and they’d helped us out in more than one dangerous spot during the past year.
Lucky and Molly, though. He was crazy about her, but she’d been more hesitant about it. I’d thought it was her natural caution with relationships, but this ran deeper than that.
“I need to run, we have soundcheck. Love you, Tess. Stay out of trouble.”
“Love you, too.”
I threw a load of laundry in the washer, shaking my head at the memory of the live turkey that my sister Shelley had hidden in that very washing machine on Thanksgiving. Leroy—the turkey—was alive and well, living with the Fae now.
Jack opened the front door and called my name.
“Back here!”
I turned on the washer and walked out to the front to meet him. “I thought you were following me? Took you a while.”