Page 115 of A Wolf After My Own Heart
“Well, yeah.”
“That’s just from the fireplace. Wait ’til I get some wood in there.”
Lila laughed at him, relief making her giddy. “That’s what you did? You tried to burn my house—”
“Ourhouse, the Harriss house, you fucking ape.”
“—by starting a fire in the fireplace?” That explained why there was smoke, but she couldn’t hear or feel any flames. “What kind of arsonist doesn’t know about fireplace flues?”
“Who rents a house with fireplaces but doesn’t keep anything on hand to make a fire?”
“So it’s been a frustrating week for both of us.”
“Week’s not over yet,” he snarled.
“True.”Wow, he’s really going to stand there and confess to felonies in broad daylight. Awesome.“But why torch Macropi’s place?”
“It was supposed to teach her a lesson! Whenever anyone moves in, ShifterorStable, she’s always on the front stoop with fairy bread or some other bullshit. And she’s always bummed when they move out! Even the Stables!” He threw his hands in the air, exasperated by the fact that Macropi wasn’t a drooling sociopath. “She’s just like my dad.” Harriss was a stockier version of his father, with tufts of black hair valiantly battling male pattern baldness, and beard stubble that looked so coarse it could be mistaken for steel wool. And what the hell was he, anyway? What was his other self?
He was also chock full of grievances this afternoon. But on the upside, it sounded like Harriss Sr. had no idea what his idiot son had been up to these last few years. “They both need to be way more discerning,” he finished contemptuously.
“Is that why you’ve never moved out? Is that why your dad has to bribe you to get you to leave? So you can hang out here and purify the neighborhood with your assholery?”
“Theytoldyou that?”
Wow, he looks more upset about that than he did about getting caught.“What can I say? People love to gossip about the pitiful.”
“I shoulda taught her a lesson about sticking with her own kind years ago.”
“You would have loved all those separate-but-equal lunch counters in the 1950s, I bet.”
Harriss ignored her history burn. “But what does she do? Huh? After the fire? She moves in…with the Stable! And takes her cubs, too!”
“Yeah, it’s a real bummer when you go to the trouble of committing arson and it doesn’t work out exactly the way you planned. Plus, that just made it harder to make mischief, didn’t it? Whenever you tried to arrange another accident or vole invasion, even if Macropi wasn’t there, Oz and Garsea were always around.”Huh. Never thought I’d be happy about all the squatting.“You disabled my smoke detectors a couple of days ago, but only came back today…why?” Even as she asked, Lila knew the answer and snapped her fingers. “To fix the bathroom lock that Oz demolished. And when you got here, you saw—”
“It’s justyouhere right now. You and some cubs. And it was the perfect day.”
“The tenth anniversary of what happened at Shakopee.”
Harriss went pale under his stubble. His eyes were so wide they were showing the whites all around, like a horse about to kick down a barn door. “You know about that? Those fucking species traitors, theytoldyou about that?”
“Yeah, it’s weirdly relevant this week. Now get the hell off my lawn.”I’ve always wanted to say that.“Or I’llmakeyou get off. Yuck, I’ll rephrase…”
“Get out of my way,” he snarled, and she saw him pull a jug out of the back of his truck and realized what he’d gone back for.Avgas belongs in planes, dammit. Planes! Not in my house! Or Macropi’s!“Move!”
“You first,” she replied, then reached back and pulled her handgun out of the waistband of her jeans, a ginormous no-no where gun safety was concerned, but necessity was a mother. Or something.
“Typical ape,” he sneered, and the guy was, what? Twenty-two, twenty-three? Yet looking at a near-stranger with nothing but contempt. And by-the-by, what kind of a Shifter was he? Was she going to have a tiger on her hands? A rare bear? A wolf, like Oz?
No. There weren’t any wolves like Oz.
“Harriss, you dumbass, what are you doing? You’re not getting away with any of it, and you’re making it worse for yourself right now. I know they say that a lot in cop shows, but you really are.”
Harriss kept coming. “Your little toy doesn’t scare—oh fuckthat hurts!”
“Nine left in the clip,” she said helpfully, as Harriss staggered back, clutching his bloody knee. “And by my count you’ve got one knee, two elbows, and two ankles left. And a forehead. Or you could lie facedown on the ground like a good boy and wait for the cops.”
“Fuck you!”
