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Praise for Liable To Bite 🎉

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Monday, October 13thFor the fourth night in a row, Lisa was prowling the house before dawn, searching for the source of an elusive scent that was getting on her last nerve.This time, though, she got caught.“Mom.” Grace’s bleary-eyed gaze swept over her—bare feet, ratty purple unicorn sleep shirt, a huge snarl in her hair—then pinned on the sleeve of peanut butter Grrrl Scout cookies she’d been demolishing under the stark glare of their pantry’s single light bulb. “We have to leave for school in, like, three hours. And you said you’d save me some of those cookies!”Swallowing an overlarge glob of peanut butter, Lisa said, “Sorry. It was an emergency.”Grace tucked a strand of her white-blonde hair behind her ear. “What kind of emergency?”“I was hungry. And I couldn’t sleep.”Cue the teenage eye roll. “That’s not an emergency—that’s normal for you, ever since you got bitten.”Lisa leaned back against the shelf of canned goods with a sigh. “Sad, but true, kiddo.”Her daughter pulled a box of cereal off another shelf and dug out a handful.I need to set a better example one of these days.“So, that’s it?” Grace asked around a mouthful of sugar-laden, brightly colored O’s. “Just another late-night tryst with the junk food?”Ouch. Lisa shook another cookie out of the sleeve. “Where did you even learn the word ‘tryst’? You’re fourteen. Who raised you?” She nibbled a couple peanut butter extrusions off the cookie’s edges. “And no, not entirely. Something smells wrong.”Her daughter snorted. “Probably your shirt.”She started to object, then sniffed the collar. “It’s a little ripe, but… nope. That’s not it. Why are you up, anyway?”Grace bit her lip. “I heard a noise.”Her blood ran cold. The peanut butter stuck in her throat. She coughed. “What sort of noise?” Maybe she wasn’t paranoid.“It sounded like somebody stepped on that broken paver outside my room. The one that cracked when you dropped it.”Something deep inside Lisa’s belly churned—rage. Or maybe the cookies.No, definitely rage.“When did you hear it? Just now?”Her daughter wrapped her arms around her body, shrinking into the oversized red hoodie she’d pulled over her pajamas. “Like, five minutes ago? Then I heard you out here and thought maybe it was you…”“I moved the basket of laundry you folded to check for stinky socks between the washer and dryer. Is that what you heard?”Grace winced. “Um, I actually forgot to fold the laundry. I’m sorry. But the noise didn’t come from the laundry room.”Who the hell folded the laundry? Maybe she’d done it herself and forgotten—she was under a lot of pressure these days.“Hold these.” She handed her daughter the last three cookies. “I’d better check the side yard.”“Mom, wait!” Grace grabbed at her nightshirt. “Don’t go outside. What if it’s a lab victim?”Faking calm, Lisa pulled her into a one-armed hug. Grace smelled like her new mango conditioner and cookies. “I doubt it’s a lab victim. Would you walk all the way here from Culver City?”It was only three miles from their Palms neighborhood to the warehouse from which a bunch of medical experimentation victims had escaped a week earlier, and Los Angeles was highly walkable nowadays, but three miles across town would be a lot for someone who’d been in captivity for months.Plus, there were much better places for those poor people to hide: urban greenspaces, intentional shelter-free communities, the Fox Hills mall.“Probably not.” Grace tucked the cookies into her hoodie pocket.“Anyway, I’m not going outside. It’s freezing. I’ll look out your window.”They knelt on Grace’s bed and Lisa pulled aside one of the purple velour curtains. Her internal voices were screaming at each other. It’s nothing! It’s something!A voice she refused to acknowledge chimed in. :let’s hunt it down and kill it:She mentally locked that voice in a box. Shut up. I don’t have time for you right now.The neighbor’s bougainvillea overhung their flagstone path, casting gently undulating shadows on the ground. Otherwise, nothing moved. “I don’t see anything.”Grace heaved a sigh and sat back in the middle of her bed, shaking a cookie out of the bio-plastic sleeve. “It must have been you I heard.”She let the curtain fall shut again. “Sorry, kiddo. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”Grace shrugged and nibbled at her cookie.Anxiety fading, Lisa flopped down next to her daughter. They hardly spent any quality time together anymore. Not with three extra commute hours added to their daily schedule since Grace enrolled in a public health ecology high school across town.Public transit had improved a lot in Los Angeles, but there still wasn’t a fast way to get a high school freshman from Palms to Westchester in time for her first class.Instead of shooing Grace back to bed, she said, “Let’s have some chocolate milk.”“How about hot chocolate?”“Sure, why not?” The night was pretty well shot. It wasn’t like taking a few extra minutes to heat the milk would make a difference.Grace selected mugs while Lisa got a new half-gallon of milk from the fridge. She was unwinding the plastic ring from around the lid when an enormous crash came from the side yard.Grace screamed. Lisa dropped the milk on the floor. Reflexively, she rescued the jug, plunking it upright in the sink as she listened, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise.There was a thump, some scrambling, then the clatter of wood falling to the ground.Was someone demolishing their side gate?“Stay here.” She grabbed Grace’s field hockey stick from near the front door and dashed outside.On her front path, she paused, listening. The cold concrete stung her bare feet. A humid offshore breeze lifted her nightshirt away from her legs. From the corner of her eye, she saw Grace’s pale face at the living room window. She had her phone cradled in her hands and was talking rapidly. Had she called 911?That could be a problem. The statistics on encounters between wers and law enforcement weren’t reassuring.Shouldn’t have tossed that United Wer Alliance fridge magnet with the tips for dealing with cops.Stepping onto their tiny lawn, Lisa studied the shadows near her side-yard gate. Was somebody there? The neighborhood was quiet, traffic on Venice Boulevard a distant hum. She took a deep breath and wiped her sweaty palms on her nightshirt.It’s probably a cat.
A really huge cat. Or maybe a raccoon?People sometimes saw mountain lions in the city now, but usually closer to the mountains…A siren broke the relative quiet of the night and she flinched, heart pounding. Even if there was no intruder, this could end badly. Please don’t let me get tased in front of Grace.Or, like, at all.A board clattered to the ground in the side yard and she inched forward, brandishing the hockey stick in front of her. Raccoon. It’s a raccoon.Suddenly, a male figure dressed in black barreled out of the shadows.She screamed, raising the stick as he plowed into her. Somehow, she kept her footing, though her left knee twinged.Both hands on the stick, she shoved him backwards, more pain zipping through her knee.He fell back into her camellia bush, gangly limbs flailing as he tried to extract himself. He’s just a kid.The unwelcome voice in her head snarled, :doesn’t matter, he invaded our territory:Beat it, she thought. You’ll get us arrested with that attitude.Stepping back, she eased her grip on the stick, ready to let her intruder go.The kid regained his footing and launched himself at her again, lips curled in an ugly sneer.Lisa swung the stick at his head in blatant violation of all those field hockey behavior agreements she’d signed over the years. “Get the hell out of my yard!”He half-deflected the blow with his forearm, nevertheless grunting in pain.“I mean it! Scram!”“Bitch.” The kid turned and ran, hauling ass up the block. A moment later, a vehicle with an old-school combustion engine roared away.
He had a partner? A chill ran down her spine.“It’s fine. It’s over,” she told herself.Limping, she paced the width of her front yard, trying to catch her breath, until two Los Angeles Metro PD eCruisers pulled up a minute later.Crap.The officers scanned her landscaping, then consulted their onboard laptops before exiting their vehicles.Her neighborhood was modest enough that not everybody could afford to maintain a yard, now that greening legislation had jacked up the cost of water. Thriving plants often meant the resident was a werewolf, eligible for special rates.She appreciated having greenery around her home—it mitigated some of the anxiety that had plagued her since she was bitten. But she didn’t love that the cops were currently getting deep background on her instead of pursuing her trespasser.Finally, the officers—two big, bulky guys who made her feel incredibly vulnerable in her thin unicorn nightshirt—approached, hands hovering over their Tasers. “Are you the homeowner?”“Yes.”“Please drop the weapon, ma’am.”She let Grace’s hockey stick fall to the grass. She’d been using it as a crutch, but if the cops considered it a weapon… Not worth it.“Are you fully in control of yourself?”Her gut was cramping. Her skin felt red hot. She was shaky and perspiring freely. “I’m fine.”Really need to retrain my daughter regarding calling 911.The officers studied her for a long moment, then the one on the left asked, “Is anyone still in your yard?”“I don’t think so. The one guy ran away.”He nodded. “Why don’t you get dressed, ma’am, and we’ll check the property.”Holding down the hem of her nightshirt, she limp-jogged into the house. After hugging Grace for a long moment, she added yoga pants, a thick sweatshirt, and shoes to her ensemble, and went back outside to get an update.Now that the intruder was gone and the cops had apparently decided she wasn’t a threat, her stress level was down and she felt almost normal.One cop was standing near his vehicle, ready to leave. The other showed her the wreckage of her side gate. “Looks like somebody climbed over and it broke.”She stared at the mess. The gate was half open, two-thirds of the boards splintered and falling out like bad teeth. “This gate wasn’t even that old.”Not for the first time recently, she wondered if they shouldn’t sell the house instead of dealing with yet another repair issue. Maybe relocate closer to Grace’s school.Westchester isn’t so bad. Not a lot of character, but who needs character?Of course, she would need a raise to make that happen.The cop shrugged. “There’s no sign he tried to force your doors or windows, but you should check everything again in the morning.” He took a description of the kid, then warned her against confronting intruders. “You need to let us handle these kinds of things. Especially being a wer. Confrontations can get out of control.”Heat burned her cheeks. “Sorry. It was my first intruder—I panicked. Do you think it was a lab victim?”“Nah. Probably not. They’re concentrating the search for them in Culver City and Inglewood.”That’s what they’d said on the news. And this kid had looked healthy—not like he’d recently escaped an experimentation situation. “You’re right. Probably not.”The cop said goodnight, waiting out front in his eCruiser until she was back inside with the front door locked.Grace was huddled on the couch under one of their fuzzy, TV-watching blankets. Lisa made sure the rest of the house was locked tight, cleaned up the spilled milk in the kitchen, got a cold pack for her knee, and joined her. “You okay?”Grace snuggled in close. “Yeah. Can I sleep with you, though?”“Sure, baby.” Not that Lisa herself was going to be doing any sleeping.What the hell had that guy wanted? Was it a random break-in attempt?Normally she would assume so, but she’d been uneasy for days. It felt like someone had been in their house, although nothing was missing or out of place.Just that strange scent, faint enough to be a figment of her imagination. A little like Grace, but stronger. Like Grace after a lost weekend of binging Netflix shows and eating nothing but junk food.Their orange tabby, Mr. Fuzz, crept out from beneath the couch and jumped onto her lap, kneading her thighs before curling up next to her.Grace had dozed off against her shoulder.Still jittery, Lisa pulled out her phone, looking for a distraction. She scrolled through Instagrowl for a while, then found herself automatically loading the staff page from work so she could gaze at Phil from Investigations, object of the most potent and enduring crush she had ever experienced.Stop it. Have some self-respect.