Page 1 of Batty About You (Pine Ridge Universe #23)

Hey Boggie,

Okay, look. No excuses this time. I got two free tickets to the Halloween Ball through the honor society, and I’m dateless. Plus Zero. No acompanado. If I knew Romanian for “pathetic dateless girl,” I would use it on you.

Please come. We can wear costumes or formals, or formal costumes, I don’t give a shit. (My mother would say an entire rosary over me right now for that. She is so concerned about me going to college in New York, even though this is the complete opposite of the “big city”.)

How are things going with your internship at the conservatory? Is it nice to be off-campus for your senior year, or do you hate that you have to commute back for your pre-med classes? Mr. Overachiever.

Things are going great. Tina, Maria, and Lourdes all raided my apartment for homecoming weekend.

I think Dad was glad to have just the boys at home for once.

Mom was beside herself and texted every hour on the hour.

But, at least my sisters were able to verify that I’m living like a good little studious nun—i.e.

, pathetic to the third power, boring, and now that my roommate has moved out, I don’t even have her or her trash-talking parrot to liven things up—God rest Pedro the Parrot’s soul. Did I tell you what happened to him?

First off, he was like seventy, which is old even for people, but I think it’s really old for parrots.

He was living the high life in an antique cage with fancy silver curlicues and watching TV Land all day.

He loved all the old comedies. He died laughing.

No, I’m not kidding. He went out in a blaze of glory, imitating Sofia from The Golden Girls during a Thank You For Being A Friend marathon.

How is the Lupescu crew? All the little sibs glad that you’re at home for one semester? Give them my love.

And pleeeeeeease come to the ball with me. You already have a costume with your lab coat! If you’re afraid I won’t like your face, you can wear some crazy monster mask with it if you want.

But you know I will. I already like your voice. And your words. And the way you play the oboe.

Please come, Boggie.

Love, Kelly

This is it! This is my chance. Dreams are coming true, and it’s happening on a night my mother told me would be my undoing one day.

That's right, I, Bogdan Lupescu, a seventh son of a seventh son, child of immigrants, beleaguered by superstitious parents and grandparents, and driven nuts by eight siblings, am going to prove to them that a nice, Transylvanian boy can have a happily ever after with a beautiful American girl.

If I can convince her that someone so hideous is worth loving.

Confused?

Let me back up. Kelly is a violinist. I play the oboe.

When we were both in high school, our school orchestras participated in a pen pal program.

We had to write to someone who played a different instrument; it was supposed to broaden our horizons, or something like that.

Anyway, someone matched us up, and there I was, this nerdy guy who played the oboe who couldn't go out at night, who everybody teased for his thick accent and even thicker eyebrows, suddenly pen pals with the cutest, sweetest girl from Thistleport, Maine. The pen pal project was only supposed to last for one year, but Kelly and I didn’t just write the required monthly letter about instruments and orchestras.

Soon, we were writing every week or two.

We had so much in common, way more than just being in an orchestra.

We wrote about what it was like to be the “big family” in our schools, to have overbearing, overprotective parents, and how it felt being the weird "foreigners" who didn’t fit in with the rest of the kids.

Seriously. It was the perfect match. Neither of us could believe how it just...clicked.

I tell you, I was just a sophomore and she was just a freshman, but by that summer, I was sure she was my soulmate.

Like a happy idiot who suddenly envisions life with the woman of his dreams and only two people sharing a bathroom (instead of twelve people sharing two), I told my parents and grandmother.

Who said... Listen, kid. You are a cursed hybrid, the seventh son of a seventh son, with werewolf blood and vampire blood—from the Carpathian region, yet.

You are never going to find a human soulmate.

You are going to live a lonely life until you return home to the land of your forefathers to get yourself a nice Romany girl who will be cool with your cursed bloodlines.

.. Or you can marry a nice lycan girl if you can find one who is willing to overlook your impure blood.

Don’t even think about dating a vampire with your “particular problem,” because you’re a disgrace to their ethereal beauty.

And don’t waste your time dating anyone in America, because everyone knows the only monsters that live in America are demons and vampires who live in big cities, and they’re all evil.

No decent, God-fearing monsters like the ones back home.

Then why did you move here? I wanted to yell, but yelling at my parents would mean my mother bursting into hysterical tears and my father bursting into hysterical screaming, so... nope.

But that was a brilliant thing to tell a fifteen-year-old guy who plays the oboe, right? Not only are you a nerd, you are a cursed nerd, and you’ll never have a normal life. Or a date on this continent.

One time, I asked my grandma why my parents didn’t just stop at six kids if the seventh one would be a cursed disgrace.

Guess what? Not only am I the “cursed one,” I’m also the “accidental one.” Yep. Two bottles of red wine, a fifty percent off anything in the lingerie department coupon, and here I am.

And since I took all the cursing out of the bloodline, my parents decided to keep going, so I didn’t even get to be the baby. I got to be seven out of nine.

Nine.

Phew. That was... a lot. My older brother says I should go to therapy.

I never told him that I have a therapist, a friend who always listens, always gets me, and never minds when I pour out all my stupid angst.

Kelly.

One year’s worth of weekly letters turned into seven—and we’ve still never met, but I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m head over heels for her—and the number of times she’s asked me to meet since we got out of high school is in the double digits.

But this time... It can work. I can say yes.

My hands are shaking as the sun sets and I dial her number—one of the three in my life I have memorized.

“Boggie!”

She always sounds so happy to hear from me.

God, please. I can’t help being cursed, or born seventh, or being born from mixed-up, crazy family bloodlines. You gotta help me with this, okay?

“Kell!” I finish my prayer with a misty-eyed smile, wishing the mail had come through earlier, or that I’d decided to wait another few minutes to call. The October sun is sinking fast...

“You got my letter?”

“I did.”

“And you’re calling to tell me that, between your internship at the music school, all the pre-med stuff, commuting, mid-terms, and babysitting for the twins, you can’t come?”

“No.” I swallow a grunt and put the phone on speaker as my hands begin to cramp and my mouth twists and contorts. I hurriedly pull off my Hoboken Performing Arts sweatshirt before I can destroy it.

My grandmother also used to tell me I ruined the family budget with how many pieces of clothing I shredded.

“Are you okay? Oh, novio, you sound like you ate dairy again. Your stomach?”

I grunt as my chest hair starts to spread into a soft brown carpet that spreads down my body, and my shoulder blades buckle, then burst with long, leathery wings racing to be free of my skin. In spite of the pain, I smile.

Kelly called me boyfriend.

It’s sweet and teasing—and sometimes, I don’t think it’s actually teasing at all.

“I want to come—but I can’t afford a new costume.

I’m going to come as something I have, okay?

” I say in a tight voice as my human face disappears.

My snub nose flattens further. My ears narrow to long points, and my thick eyebrows are soon lost in fur.

Mercifully, my baggy pants stay in one piece, but if I’d been wearing my normal sneakers, they’d be scraps of leather and nylon.

My feet are now a size twenty with three long toes that end in talons that would easily pierce concrete.

“What? What?!” Kelly’s voice climbs the octave in a happy screech. I can hear things tumbling and crashing, and I know she’s jumping on her bed in excitement. “Don’t you toy with me, Bogdan Michael Lupescu!”

“I’m not playing, Kelly Maria Theresa Carlotta Venga-Comanda.

” I hope she doesn’t notice that my voice sounds.

..different. Anything with an S in it now has a hiss, and some sounds are pinched.

(If you never realized how your nose shape affects your voice, trust me, it does.) “I can come, but all I have is—is this weird vampire suit. Um. Like... Well, did you ever see those old comics where Dracula turns into a bat, but he’s still a man? ”

“No. I’m not big on monsters.”

Well, just shoot me with silver bullets, why don’t you?

“It’s not a scary costume, I swear. It’s really nice.

Soft fur. Wings. Um. Anyway, think of it like a play on Batman.

Manbat. It’s got a human face with bat-like features.

” I look in the mirror and wince. “Or a bat face with man-like features.” I straighten up and pick up the phone again, walking closer to the mirror.

In this form, there are way more muscles.

They bulge. This is a gym rat body. Hah. Gym bat.

“I don’t care what you wear, I’m just... I’ll just be so happy to see you in person,” Kelly says, but now her voice is breathy and soft.

Sensual.

Shit, my pants no longer fit, and it has nothing to do with my transformation.