Undead and Uneasy by MaryJanice Davidson

checked on Babyjon (still snoring away), then ran back down and led the
    werewolves and Jeannie into the kitchen just in time to grab the phone as it rang.

    "S'up?"

    "Betsy? It's Laura. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about—"

    "Not now," I said, and hung up. I felt bad, but not too bad. She'd been one of the bums to
    disappear on me in a time of need, after all. And that was weirdly convenient, wasn't it?
    That Antonia and Garrett and Marc and Sinclair should all disappear right around the time
    my dad died and my half sister made herself scarce?

    Naw. Crazy. But . . . weird,

    Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer ( http://www.novapdf.com ) Naw.

    Weird.

    Naw! Dammit, naw!

    Great. Lonely, and now paranoid. Oh, and surrounded by werewolves. Let's not forget
    that!

    "Let's see," I said, peering into the fridge. "We’ve got strawberries, bananas, and peaches.
    Also ice, for smoothies. Oh, and Antonia's left half a raw T-bone." I sniffed. "Smells fine.
    Prob'ly good for another day or two."

    "We'll pass on the fruit."

    "I could also," I added doubtfully, "defrost some hamburger for you guys."

    "We're fine. Let's get down to business."

    "I'm not fine. I'm thirsty as hell." I gave them all a big, toothy grin, enjoying the mutual flinch. "So it's smoothie time."

    "I'd like a smoothie," Lara piped up. "Banana, please."

    "Coming right up." Now it was my turn to flinch; how many times had I heard that phrase

    Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer ( http://www.novapdf.com ) from Marc in this very kitchen as he played bartender? How many strawberry smoothies
    had I fixed for Sinclair? How many times had he brought me upstairs and poured said
    smoothie all over my—

    "Banana, please!" she repeated.

    I shook myself. "Sorry. Drifted off for a moment. Peel these, will you?" I said, handing
    Lara some bananas.

    Michael cleared his throat, while his kid (cub? puppy? whelp?) stripped three bananas and
    tossed the skins into the sink. "So, ah. Antonia didn't check in. And she checks in at 10:00
    a.m. EST on the twentieth of the month. So when she didn't, you can imagine our—

    The rest was drowned out as I hit "puree." I left it on for a nice long time, ignoring the
    way it felt like a thunderstorm in my head (stupid advanced vampire hearing). It was
    worth it just to drown out the arrogant, gorgeous asshat.

    Wait. Did I say gorgeous? Sinclair, where the hell did you go?

    Via gestures, I directed Lara to the glasses, and she brought me two. She really was the
    cutest thing, and I smiled at her, then dropped the grin when she didn’t smile back. This
    was a kid older than her years, that was for damned sure. What had she said? That she was
    the future Pack leader? That was a lot to pile onto a—what? Seven-year-old? Eight?

    A perfect miniature amalgam of her mom and her dad: his eyes, her face, their attitudes.
    She'd be scary as shit when she hit adolescence. Or possibly the fourth grade.

    I shut off the blender, filled Lara's glass to the brim, then heard Michael droning, "—
    natural for us to jump to the conclusion that nefarious creatures of the night had—"

    Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer ( http://www.novapdf.com ) And on goes the blender again. I took my time win my own smoothie, but eventually I
    couldn't liquefy the fruit and ice any more and had to shut it off.

    "—the fight," he finished.

    Jesus! Couldn't this guy take a hint? How did Jeannie stand it? How did any of them?
    Luckily, J was not that kind of leader.

    I was no kind of leader.

    "Yeah, well, you were wrong, wrong, wrong." I took a large gulp of my smoothie. "Which
    I'm betting is a common thing with you people."

    “ 'You people'?" the strawberry blond—the guy called Brendan—demanded. He was
    about a head shorter than Michael, with the aforementioned shoulder-length strawberry
    blond hair, the usual-to-werewolves sculpted muscles (at