Zuri: Ask a manager to watch the bar for a few hours.
Jacky: I don’t have a manager.
Mischa: Of course you don’t…
I groaned. Stupid, stupid question. There was no taking it back now, either.
Jacky: I’ll be fine. With the full moon soon, no one will notice.
Davor: Such faith in your customers. Do you even get business in that shithole area of Texas?
That one hit me in the chest. I looked up at my two customers, debating if I should snap a picture to tell him to fuck off. I took the picture, neither of them looking up from their drinks. I sent it into the chat, knowing it wouldn’t make too much of a difference.
Jacky: Look at that, jackass, I do!
Davor: You do us proud.
It didn’t take a genius to read the sarcasm there.
Zuri: Ask one of your dumb wolves to take over. I’m sure they know how to pour a beer. They’re male and canine.
Hisao: Yeah. If they’re going to live in your space, you might as well put them to work.
Niko: Leave her be.
Niko’s comment killed the entire conversation. My face was red with embarrassment as I put the phone down to find my ‘Full Moon - CLOSED’ sign. Part of the embarrassment was I felt like an idiot. The other part was Niko only spoke to defend me.
Niko was an anomaly. From what I could remember about my first four years as a werecat living with Hasan, he was even more standoffish than the rest of them and avoided everyone. He would come in, talk to Hasan, then leave, and I was never told where he would go or what he would do. He just disappeared. He was the youngest son, but for some reason, he garnered a lot of respect from the others, even if they weren’t always sure what to do with him. The longest conversation I ever had with him was a simple greeting and exchange of names. After that, nothing.
I’m an adult with a respectable business and once had an amazing, balanced life. How is it they make me feel like a child with all of ten words?
It was a frustration I’d dealt with since the morning I woke up to my new world of supernaturals. After nearly seven years not speaking to them, that hadn’t changed at all.
As my customers left, my phone buzzed again, and I checked it, frowning.
Niko: Are you okay?
Jacky: Fine.
Niko: Good. Remember, family meetings are video conference calls.
I didn’t remember that because I had never been in one. Well, that was about to change.
I was at my computer five minutes before the family meeting, setting up my headset and web camera. Since I never used a webcam for anything, I had to kick out my patrons due to a ‘family emergency,’ run to the store, buy it, and now I was fighting to set it up. I had no idea what the older werecats would be doing. From memory, they were pretty comfortable around technology, but I didn’t know what kind of setups they had or how this normally played out.
Or they just pay one of their staff to set it up. That’s a possibility.
I was told to download a program and install it, something I had also done earlier in the day. I opened it up to find I was instantly logged into a private server. I’d never seen or heard of the program before, and the file had been emailed to me. It wasn’t something I could find online.
Did one of them hire a programmer to make this? Probably Davor.
It logged me in as Jacqueline, of course. I couldn’t find a place to change it to Jacky, glaring at the name as I admitted defeat. Soon, other names were popping online. Zuri, Hasan, Davor, Mischa, Hisao, and Nikolaus. Once everyone was on, I winced as a ring came from my headphones and quickly turned the volume down before hitting Answer.
My thirty-two-inch monitor was suddenly covered with different video feeds. I could see a preview of mine on my second monitor and adjusted the webcam just a little.
“Don’t fiddle with it,” Davor grumbled. “There’s no fixing it now. Did you buy it from the discount section?”
“No, asshole,” I snapped, growling into my mic. “I just set it up and haven’t been able to test it.”
“Davor, she doesn’t have staff, and this was short notice,” Zuri reminded him with a touch of boredom. “Leave her alone. I’m sure by the next time we have a meeting, she’ll have a nicer set up.”
That was the line being drawn. Zuri would only let me be a technological pauper in their eyes once. Hopefully, it also got Davor off my back for the night.
“Let’s get to business,” Hasan said softly, a command no one fought back about. Davor’s mouth shut before he could make another comment, and I watched as my siblings straightened up. Hasan tapped a pen on his desk, sighing. “Normally, these meetings are called when someone is out on assignment and hasn’t called in for a week. Tomorrow is a full moon, so we know Jabari won’t be reporting in, and none of us will be able to answer the call. I would like to discuss what we should do come Thursday when his week is up. If we can start the plans tonight, we can have a plan ready to go into action by then.”
“I can’t go this time,” Zuri said, sighing heavily. “He and I live so far away, it was already a pain to get him to America.”
“Where are you right now?” I asked, frowning.
“South Africa.”
That took me by surprise. Their numbers weren’t international. I didn’t comment, though, keeping my mouth shut after that.
“They also have homes in Morocco, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. There’s not a single werecat on the continent who doesn’t know them.” Hasan seemed focused on business by his tone. There wasn’t a lot of the honey or fatherly nature coming from him tonight. “And you’re right, Zuri. I would have to fly you out too soon after a full moon, and it would be a long trip. Did he take the private jet?”
“Of course, he did, which means I’m grounded unless I use commercial.” By the curl of her lip and scrunched face, commercial flying was downright unacceptable. So soon after a full moon and for so long? It was.
“I would have the same problem. I’m in Moscow right now,” Mischa said, shaking her head. “I do have a jet, but do you know how hard it is right now to fly into the United States from Russia?”
“I’m closer in Sweden,” Davor said quickly. “Less human issues to get around to get into the country.”
“I’m in Germany,” Niko threw out his positioning. I had already known they generally lived around the world. Niko’s territory included the Black Forest.
“I’m in Japan,” Hisao snorted, cutting off Niko. “It would be much easier for me.”
“I could fly to Washington state in an afternoon,” I said softly. “Two-hour drive to Dallas and a four-hour one way commercial. I can go and be there without any problems. I’m also American. I won’t seem like a foreigner.”
Davor was the first to start laughing, followed by Mischa, and Hisao. Hasan didn’t say anything as even Zuri snorted, covering her face.
“You? Oh, Jacky.” Davor slapped his hand on his desk as he bent over to laugh harder.
“Yeah, that’s what we need. The fucking American,” Mischa tried to say clearly, her fits of mad giggles making it nearly impossible to understand what she was going for.
“I can! I’m really close and…” I looked desperately at my camera. “I’m part of this family, aren’t I? I didn’t get invited to this meeting as the kid sitting with the adults, right?”
“That’s exactly what you are,” Hisao said, his laughter dying but the smile not leaving. “Sorry, Jacky, but there’s too much swirling around you to make this any better. If you show up outside your territory, you could very well start a damn war with your luck. Hopefully, you’ve heard everything that’s been going on since you decided to throw caution to the wind and risk it all to save some werewolf’s kid.”
“Carey is human,” I snarled with a viciousness no one was expecting. Some werewolf’s kid. She deserved better than that. “The consequence of her parentage doesn’t make her less human or less innocent, god damn it. And if you had a fucking feeling bone in your body, you would care too.”
There was silence on the call. I dared to glance at the video feeds. Hisao’s eyes were wide. Davor had leaned back from the camera, wary of something.
“Yes, she is,” Hasan agreed, the only one not shocked into silence. “But I’m not sure I’m comfortable sending you to Washington after Jabari. We don’t know what’s going on up there. If something is a risk to him, it’s very much a risk to you.”
I bit my lip hard, thinking of anything I could say. Then I remembered what Zuri had said on Sunday. “There was a cold shoulder from the werewolves up there when Jabari had tried to talk to them. I could—”
“The last place you need to be is in werewolf territory,” Zuri snapped. “You weren’t supposed to let everyone know what I’d told you.”
“When did you two talk?” Mischa asked, frowning. “Why didn’t you come to me, Jacky?”
“We’re not getting into this,” I said quickly. “I don’t have to go alone. I could ask Heath for a favor. He just needs to introduce me to—”
“You are not getting that wolf into our business,” Hasan snapped.
“She has a point,” Niko said softly. “Hasan, listen to her. Heath owes her for a lot. If that means we can use him to find out what happened to our werecats, we can use it.”
“You trust wolves too much sometimes,” Davor growled.
“You trust them too little,” Niko retorted. “Things have been changing. There’s no avoiding it. Werewolves aren’t ignoring us anymore, and we need to have one we know is our ally.”
“I can’t…promise that with Heath, but I’m pretty sure I can ask him to introduce me to the pack up there.”
“That’s all we would need him for this.”
“That’s it, then. You will go up, do some minor investigation to make sure the wolves aren’t involved. Stay in the area until Jabari contacts you and wait for him to leave.”