Bearly Hanging On (The Jamesburg Shifters #6)(52)



"Uh, Glenn?" Jamie walked over, and put her hand on the strange werewolf's shoulder. "Do you think maybe antagonizing the giant monster isn't the smartest thing in the world?"

"How can you see me?" he asked, very suspiciously. "I'm invisible."

Jamie rolled her eyes. "No you're not. And you weren't invisible when you got arrested for taking a whiz out back of The Tavern."

"Shhh!" the green-clad wolf hissed. "Quiet! They can hear you. They'll know I'm here."

"Who can? Atlas? He already knows. You yelled at him and he started growling. Do I need to call the hyenas again?" She sighed, and lifted her eyebrows into arches. "Seriously, cut this shit out."

He twirled again. "You can't see me," he said. "I'm not here."

"Okay, fine," she said. "Then disappear, and no one will call any hyenas. Deal?"

Before she could react, Glenn did what he always did, and pulled a huge handful of glitter out of his tights, threw it directly at Atlas and Jamie, and pedaled off as quickly as possible on a unicycle, which is not very fast. Atlas immediately began watching his hand sparkle as he turned it back and forth. Jamie pulled her wings back, tucking them away, glad for the shield, but slightly worried she might distract some drivers with reflections off her wings next time she flew.

Sara was just shaking her head, eating another egg. "Stupid," she said, plainly unimpressed. But then she snorted a laugh that came with more than a small helping of drool. "Look!" she yelled. "Look at Atlas! Jamie! Look!"

"At what?" she asked, as her eyes ran down the giant. "What am I... oh, God."

First Jamie sighed, then she laughed. "That, right there, gives a whole new meaning to 'disco stick' doesn't it?"

Belly laughing, even though he had no idea why, Atlas's disco-dork swung around in wild, sparkly, shimmery circles. Around and around it whirled. The whole time, the giant bear howled with laughter.

"And that," Jamie said as she waved to Atlas and Sara, who were both thoroughly impressed with the helicopter show, "is absolutely the last thing I expected to see... ever."





-14-


“Really, really not a morning person.”


-Jamie


Jamie sat up, stiff and straight, like she'd just been roused from the dead.

Come to think of it, this was worse. She remembered being literally roused from the dead, and it was a much gentler, winding process than what just happened. A siren outside was blaring, and since she lived in the middle of town, that meant something was going on.

She dashed to the window, threw it open, and squinted. Cold, midnight air brushed against her body, making her skin prickle with goose bumps wherever it kissed. She leaned out as far as she could without showing off her nudie sleeping habits to anyone within a block or so, and then remembered the reason she couldn't see anything is because she didn't have her contacts.

Grumbling, she shuffled back to her nightstand, got the old wire-rimmed glasses she'd kept for way too long, and returned to the window. There was a fire truck, and a pair of police cars, both with their lights and sirens going.

This is not normal.

Even with her glasses, she couldn't make out much more than a general bustle of activity across the street from her house, which happened to be one of the several places in town that free water was given away to people without any - maybe they lived outside city water, maybe theirs was dirty, or they couldn't afford it - it was one of the very few things given freely in Jamesburg, but hey, at least it was something.

It was a blue, tiki-style building modeled after the most horrific tackiness that Dean Martin could ever manage in one of his Christmas specials. But oddly, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it, even though that's where all the cars had gathered. Instead, there was a small group of people beside the building, all in handcuffs, all sitting on the ground and refusing to go anywhere.

"Oh, shit," Jamie muttered. Cora, Marmite, Ryan, and his uncle and who she assumed was his aunt, were all sitting there, blank looks on their faces. "Why did I have to fall in love with this guy?"

In a flash, she threw on one of her pencil skirts that wasn't too dirty, and slipped out the window. Cold rain pattered against the thin skin between her wings as she sailed down to the street below.

"What the hell did you do?" she demanded, as soon as Ryan caught her striding up to him with a very sour look on her face. He gave her one of his smiles, but this time, it didn't work. "What did you do, Ryan?" she asked again.

"You know him?" Ash Morgan - the most senior of the Jamesburg PD's bear detectives, was on the scene and trying very hard to use a normal-sized notepad. He was the sergeant in charge of anything that could be too big or dangerous for a regular hyena beat to handle. The hyenas were tenacious and brave, if a little itchy, but controlling a bunch of bears and a couple pissed off koalas was probably a little much to ask of them.

Jamie nodded. "Yeah, Ash," she said. "He's... well, he's a friend of mine. What happened?" She chose to ignore the knowing look on the big bear’s face.

Ash shrugged. "Nothing, really. We got a call from the owner of this video store," he tilted his head backwards and to the left, indicating the single video rental store left in Jamesburg, and possibly the entire world. "Said they were sitting around the drink stand, making a scene."

Lynn Red's Books