“Turdswallop Donkey Kong!” Energy spiked around me. I plucked out elements from the room by feel and directed them at the thing dodging into a crack in the wall, wanting it fried.
A stream of red blasted from my hand. It hit the box and blew it to the side. The boxes on top fell, tumbling toward me.
“Buttercrack.” I threw up my hands to protect myself as something else darted out. “No, no. Holy Hades on a pogo stick.” I zapped it. Then zapped it again, pulling harder from the world around me, wanting it dead.
A tower of boxes fell. I jumped out of the way, narrowly missed. Glass shattered.
Oops.
Maybe I should’ve tried to catch those.
“What’s going—”
I blasted the shape in the doorway, surprised. Joe dove to the side, barely missed by my magical zapper, and a shimmer of green surrounded him.
Magic pulled at me. Throbbed in my middle.
The intent of his wolf magic could change, all right.
Attack. Harm. Kill.
“We seem to have come to a slight misunderstanding,” I screeched, straightening my arms and feeling electricity crackle all around me.
Huh. When Emery wasn’t around, it was necessary to call the magic—it didn’t just come to me willy-nilly. I would have to remember that.
“I am simply ridding your establishment of vermin.” I pulled out various elements, as Emery called them, naturally categorizing each by what it felt like and whether I had felt it go into a spell before. I knew next to nothing, but I’d managed to create a zapper, so I strongly suspected I’d arrive at something.
A giant gray wolf filled the doorway, and while I’d never seen a wolf in person before, this one had to be larger than the creatures that existed in the wild. Its lip curled, exposing white fangs. A growl rumbled deep in its throat.
“Oh holy shit bombs.” My mother would’ve had to agree that this situation warranted a genuine swear word. “I can pay for those glasses. Well, my mother can pay. She’s good for it, I swear. Oh, I know! How about a stolen car? Can I interest you in selling that to a chop shop? The owner has insurance. It’ll be fine.” Of course, Emery was currently in the process of getting rid of it, but I would have said pretty much anything to pacify Joe.
The wolf sniffed the air and the growling increased. Hair rose along its spine.
Something zipped by my foot.
“Snicker-frack charms a lot!” I jumped, trying to get off the ground to get away from the thing, but gravity pulled me right back down. “No, no. Dang you to Hades, you horrible little varmint.” I zapped without thinking. Then zapped again as more movement brought another box down. “What kind of place are you running here?”
The growling stopped, which was good, but there were boxes all around my feet, and while mice themselves didn’t scare me, their unpredictability did. With an imagination like mine, even a tiny thing could turn into a flesh-eating beast.
“Do not scurry around me, you diseased little creatures,” I warned, picking up one of the boxes and setting it onto a pile that hadn’t been toppled. “Do not jump out at me.”
Energy pulsed and electricity sizzled. Emery was back.
I straightened up slowly and pushed hair behind my ears.
Emery stood next to Joe in the doorway, and a crazy grin spread across his face as he looked at me. Joe was back to being Joe, except he was also buck-naked.
“That’s”—I averted my gaze—“awkward.” I cleared my throat. “Sorry about the mess. I encountered a couple of mice, and things… Things kind of got away from me.”
“You should not be left alone,” Joe said in a dry voice. I didn’t want to chance looking up at his face because I had a feeling my gaze would catch elsewhere, and no one needed that.
“Yes.” I nodded. “That has been the general consensus throughout my life. I apologize.”
“Sorry, Joe. I didn’t realize…the full extent of what she meant when she said she caused havoc.” I didn’t have to see Emery’s face to know he was smiling. “Her mother had a bigger job than I thought.”
“Sure, yes. Rub it in.” I gingerly righted another box, looking at the ground. Any second, a rabid creature with giant fangs, red eyes, and projectile acidic spit might zip out.
“She doesn’t even swear,” Joe said, and I heard movement.
I glanced up, then tore my gaze away from a less-than-fuzz-free backside. Joe needed a wax.
“I was in the back counting the drawer, and the first thing I heard was ‘turdswallop Donkey Kong.’ What is that? Teach her to swear first, then work on her magic. Otherwise she’ll be a laughingstock.” He stalked down the hallway. “I’ll tell the staff there’s a cat up here in case she goes hopping around,” he called back, “but it might be best to muzzle her.”
“Well, that is not very nice,” I said, piling another box.
“It takes a lot of energy to change to the animal form and back,” Emery said, staring instead of helping with the mess. “Doing two changes in such a short time is enough to make a guy like Joe a little cranky.”
“Then maybe Joe should’ve thought about finding a real cat. And a mousetrap or two.” I piled another box. Silence dripped between us.
“Turdswallop…Donkey Kong?” Emery still wore that stupid grin. His eyes glittered in the light, and in this moment, I hated how pretty they were.
“You know my mother. I shouldn’t have to explain my aversion to swearing. It’s been beaten into me.”
“I know that your mother hates swearing, yes. I do not know where words like ‘turdswallop’ come from—”
“England, I think.”
“—or what Donkey Kong has to do with it—”
“You’d be surprised what those two get up to together.”
“—or why someone would put them together into one swear when freak, or gosh darn, or crap would do.”
I straightened up and put my hands on my hips. “You swear how you want to swear, and I’ll swear how I want.”
Emery took a step forward and shoved a box away with his foot.
“No, no.” I pointed at it. “Stack that out of the way. This place is a mess.”
His smile burned brighter. “Yes, ma’am.” He bent slowly, his sparkling eyes still connected with mine. The first box he picked up jingled with broken glass.
My face burned, the crimson hue probably so deep that I looked like I needed to go to a burn ward. “It’d be best with an aisle so we can easily walk between the bed and the bathroom.”
“Yes, it would. You are absolutely right.” He picked up another box of broken glass, smiling at me all the while.
I ground my teeth and turned my back on him before gingerly picking up another box. I kept my version of cursing and threatening vermin to myself.
“When I told Joe how I found you earlier…” he said, and another box jingled. He was really concerned about all the ones carrying broken glass. “I was kidding.”
I hesitated, the box in my hands hovering over its intended destination. “I know.” I shrugged to try and pull it off before gingerly setting the box down.
“Do you? Because your response implies you were actually trying to run me over.”
I searched my brain for some way out of this as I resumed my cleanup, but nothing came to mind. I sighed. “I was coming toward you at high speed. Of course I was trying to run you over.”
“Then why were you surprised I figured it out?”
“Flinging monkey turds, you are annoying,” I yelled. “Fine. Since you never mentioned it, I thought you might not have figured it out. But if you just want to put it all out there—”
“Yes, please.”
“When you stalked into the center of the street with that black ball between your hands, I thought you intended to kill the witness to your crimes. Me. So I figured I’d run you over. Only, you didn’t move. I was about to run you down, and you just stood there and stared at me with that blasted black ball in your hands. So I lost my nerve, cranked the wheel, and the next thing I knew, I was running over the dead guys and things had gotten out of control. There, happy? You’re welcome for not killing you.”