Werecats and Werelocks (Collection) Read Free Page A

then once more reassured herself—this would all go away soon...
    Her newly acquired pride relatives had told her so. They really could make this little allergy problem better.
    When one of the pride people had returned three days later, she came bearing more information.
    Okay, so it was some jacked up information, but it was all Charlie had.
    "It's going to seem absolutely sinful to someone who isn't of our kind,” Juanita Piljor, er, grandma tiger told her over tea and a bottle of still more Benedryl.
    Charlie sneezed and smiled gratefully when Juanita handed her a tissue across her small dinette. “What? How bad could it be? Like is it some kind of ritualistic virgin sacrifice? Because if that's the case, you're scratching up the wrong post. I hate to be blunt, but I'm no virgin. I'm no slut, but lily white I'm soooo not.” Then she cringed. The poor woman had to be seventy if she was a day, cracking wise about sex probably wasn't appropriate.
    But Juanita laughed, her wrinkled face broke out in a grin and her red lips coated with lipstick curved upward. “Oh, you don't have to be a virgin."
    Suh-weet! Charlie cocked her head and raised an eyebrow in question. “Care to explain?"
    Her hand reached across the table, gnarled and covered in age spots, to grip Charlie's. “You don't have to be a virgin to do this, dear."
    She squirmed in her seat. “To do what?"
    "To fix this."
    "Hold up. Are you saying there really is some kind of sacrifice?"
    "Well, I guess it depends on how you define the word sacrifice. If I were your age, I'd call it an adventure. At my age, it's just called lucky. Anyway, the ritual goes back many, many hundreds of years and has to do with the full moon and pheromones and something else that escapes me, but I know it works because I've seen it with these old eyes. Well, I mean, I didn't watch ... I just know it did the trick."
    "Pheromones and watching what?” She blew her nose hard. “Okay, here's the deal. I say you just tell me and get it over with. I have a crazy feeling I'm going to freak and right now, I feel miserable. It can't be much worse than it already is. So if I have to dance naked while I hop around on one foot and sing ‘Kumbuya,’ I'm in. I just don't want to live the rest of my life needing oxygen and a Benadryl chaser."
    Juanita poured her more tea. “I like a girl who attacks things head on. All right then, this is what's required. You have to have sex."
    They really were a lovely group of folk, her pride people via pet store brawl were.
    Yippee-ki-yi-ay. Now if only there were someone who'd be willing to travel the road, as of late anyway, less traveled. While Charlie knew she should be really freaked out, the sex part wasn't such a big deal. It wasn't like losing a limb or something. She wasn't a prude and if that's what it took, then, okay. It was finding the person to have sex with her she was struggling with. “I don't have a boyfriend. In fact, I haven't had one in two years. I own a small bookstore in town and I work a lot . I haven't had time to date. So I think we have to find another way."
    Juanita shook her head, the white-grey of her hair, wispy and thinning swaying under her ceiling fan. “Not just sex with anyone, Charlie. You have to have sex with the person who bit you at the rise of the full moon."
    Word .
    "Um, you mean your grandson?"
    "Yes, Quinn."
    Quinn. That was a nice name. Charlie wondered what it'd be like when it rolled off her tongue as she screamed it in passion while she had ritualistic sex. “Forgive me if I'm out of line here, but I can't have sex with someone I don't even know."
    Grandma's face grew somber. “You will if you want to reverse the effects of the bite..."
    Okay, so from what Charlie gathered from Grandma Juanita, all she had to do was have sex with the dumb ass that had bitten her just as the full moon rose and they could reverse the effects of the bite. She went to bed that night with Grandma Juanita's words swimming