Page 50 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

“W hat about Chinese food for dinner?” Charlie asked her mate.

He hadn’t told her he was hungry yet. Instead, he’d just walked into the kitchen and stood there. Staring at her. Then his two siblings joined him. The triplets standing there and staring.

That’s when she’d asked about Chinese food.

She didn’t know why they didn’t just come out and say they were hungry like everyone else in the world.

That’s how she did it. Even Max just walked in and said, “I’m hungry.

What you up for?” But not Berg and his brother and sister.

It was some weird bear thing, Charlie guessed, and she didn’t think she’d ever understand it.

“Okay,” Berg replied to her suggestion.

Yet he and his siblings continued to stand there until Charlie said, “Yes, make sure to ask everyone else what they want and then order. They’re probably hungry by now, too. And let’s have it delivered.”

“Okay.”

The three turned and lumbered out of her kitchen in a single line.

It had to be a single line, because the three of them were too big to get through the open space in any other way.

Their sister was smaller than her two brothers, but she was still a grizzly.

Her shifted form was only a few inches shorter than her brothers.

All three of them nothing but massive amounts of muscle, adorable charm, and easily activated rage.

Once they were gone, Charlie focused back on the tablet she’d been studying, reading local news about attacks that had happened in the tri-state area that even remotely suggested something involving the de Medicis.

Like what had happened at her aunt’s house in the late morning.

One of her cousins had called to tell her.

They were all assuming it was a move by the de Medicis, although Charlie didn’t understand what Paolo thought he’d get out of it.

It’s not like she or her sisters were close to her father’s family.

They didn’t hate them, of course. Not like they all hated Freddy, but his three daughters were tainted by association.

So making a strike against the other MacKilligans would do nothing but irritate the family. Seemed a poorly planned move. The MacKilligans that called Scotland their home were crazier than most badgers, and harder to kill.

“Pssst!”

Charlie swiped her hand across her face to deal with the bug that she assumed was flying around her. She could hear it.

“Pssssssssssst!”

Realizing that noise wasn’t coming from a bug, Charlie glanced over her shoulder and saw her baby sister peeking around the corner of the stairway that led to the back door and basement.

“What are you doing?” Charlie asked her.

“Shhhh!” Stevie motioned to her again.

“Can’t you just tell me?”

Her sister flashed fangs, which she rarely did. Instantly realizing she’d briefly lost control, Stevie immediately gasped, her fangs disappearing into her gums, and her hand slapping over her mouth. She gazed at Charlie with panicked, wide eyes.

Seeing that panic, Charlie quickly stood and followed her sister into the basement.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Stevie kept chanting in a whisper as she went down the stairs. “I’m just . . .”

“It’s okay, Stevie. Just breathe and tell me what’s going on.”

Stevie led Charlie to the table covered in science-looking stuff.

Charlie recognized a few things from her high school days, but the rest of it .

. . other than the massive desktop and three large screens, on a desk pushed up against the far wall, Charlie didn’t know what she was looking at.

But she knew her little sister did, and that’s all that really mattered.

Stevie took a few seconds to practice the breathing exercise they’d both learned over the years to calm their panic or anxiety.

“There’s a slight issue . . .” Stevie finally said.

“Why are you whispering?”

“I don’t want anyone else to hear.”

“We’re in a house with shifters who all have enhanced hearing. They’re more likely to ignore you if you’re speaking naturally. But they will definitely notice you’re talking about something you don’t want them to know if you whisper, because you’ll sound like prey trying to sneak away.”

“Fine,” she said in her normal voice. “I may have made a mistake.”

“You need more samples?”

“No.”

“Did you accidentally kill Max?”

“No.”

“Did you shoot yourself up with something again, and now you have only a few hours to live?”

“No.” Stevie glared. “And I only did that once, and I was twelve. I am wise enough now not to do that again. So can you stop bringing that up?”

“So then what’s the problem?”

“Well . . . I am pretty sure I found a counter-agent to the current poison they are using against us.”

“Oh! Stevie!” Truly surprised and happy, Charlie gave her sister a quick hug. “That’s awesome!”

“Yeah.” She clasped her hands together and pressed them under her chin, her knuckles pressing hard into the skin.

It would appear to someone who didn’t know any better that she might be praying.

But for Charlie, she knew that was not a good pose for her sister to take.

And not simply because Stevie was a staunch atheist.

“Stevie?” Charlie pushed.

“I have designed it so this formula can evolve along with whatever they come up with—as long as the base of what they use is the same, which it has been so far—and we won’t need to keep reinventing a new antidote.”

“That’s excellent.”

“Yes. But there is a chance that at some point, we may need to fight it to the death if and when it changes into a sentient being determined to rule the universe.”

“Huh.” Stunned, Charlie blinked. “That . . . that could be a problem.”

“Yeah. Not a definite one, though. But something to seriously . . . you know . . . consider. And work to not let happen.”

“Okay. So that’s why you were whispering before?”

“No.”

“Oh. That’s unfortunate.”

“Yeah, uh . . . you see, there’s another issue.”

“Another issue besides your antidote becoming sentient?”

“There is.”

“Okay.”

“Um . . .”

“You still don’t want to say it out loud?”

“No. But here . . .”

Stevie went over to a bookshelf filled with black-and-white composition notebooks. Hundreds of them. She grabbed one from the middle of the fourth shelf down. It appeared her choice was random, but it wasn’t.

She handed the notebook to Charlie and mouthed, Page forty-nine.

Charlie turned to page forty-nine, but it was all in Latin. A language she did not and would never know.

She looked at her baby sister, and Stevie said, “Oh! Right.” She grabbed a black light from off a table and then ran to the stairs and turned off the lights from a main switch.

She made her way across the room, ramming into several tables and barking “ow” each time before again reaching Charlie.

Did she forget that both the animals she was made of had great night vision?

Or was that particular ability cancelled out due to her unfortunate birth defect of being Freddy MacKilligan’s daughter? Charlie really didn’t know.

Turning on the black light, Stevie held it over the open notebook, and Charlie saw that underneath all that tiny Latin were other words. Words that could only be seen with a black light in total darkness.

Her sister had created an ad hoc palimpsest as only Stevie could.

Leaning in, Charlie attempted to read what was written until her sister shoved an extra pair of Charlie’s glasses at her. Stevie always kept an extra pair around her lab so that Charlie could actually read things she handed her without squinting.

“Thank you,” Charlie muttered, slipping the glasses on and reading her sister’s words. Her eyes becoming wider with each new sentence. “Oh, shit.”

“Exactly. I’m sorry, Charlie.”

Frowning, Charlie asked, “For what?”

“For creating . . . this .”

“You didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know, but—”

“No buts. It’s not your fault.”

“Okay. It’s not my fault. But we’ve got to do something. Right?”

Charlie looked off, thinking through their options, when Berg’s sister called down the stairs with, “Charlie, you better get up here.”

Stevie immediately panicked. “They all kno—”

Slapping her hand over her sister’s mouth, Charlie yelled back to Britta, “What’s going on?”

“Lions.”

* * *

“Keane,” Nelle said, “this is Jules Kopanski-Müller.”

Still in his shifted form, the big cat turned his head, studying Jules.

“I know,” the She-badger guessed Keane’s unasked question, “you wonder how the Von Sch?fer-Müllers and the Kopanski-Müllers mix, yes? Well, it is too hard to explain, and it no longer matters. My brother represents us among the royals, but it is I who runs this family. Which is what he should have told you right away. I apologize, Gong Zhao.”

“That’s fine.” She looked around the massive kitchen Jules had led them to in the back of the house. “I thought this room would be bustling with staff for the party,” Nelle noted.

“This is the family kitchen. There is another kitchen that we use for events. Sit, sit,” she said, gesturing to the stools at the island in the middle of the room.

“Here. Bread and cheese.”

She sent a freshly made baguette down the length of the marble top, and Nelle caught it. She ripped off a large chunk and gave it to the tiger standing beside her high stool. Keane had not shifted back, and she got the feeling he wouldn’t until he felt safer.

“Wine?”

“Red, please.”

Jules studied several bottles sitting on the counter before choosing one. She took down wineglasses, used a wine opener to take out the cork, and filled two glasses halfway.

“I am assuming the cat—”

“The bread will do.”

They took a moment to sip their wine, and Nelle ate some cheese and bread. Then, Jules began.

“Why are you here, Gong Zhao?”

“I need you to use your family’s influence.”

“For what?”

“For the badger families of Europe to join forces against the de Medicis.”

“You want badgers to join forces?”

“I know. It’s an unusual request.”