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September 21 - October 9, 2025
The rest of Max’s teammates now stood around her: Streep, Tock, Mads, and Nelle. The most loyal bunch of outstanding ladies Max had ever known. They’d played basketball together since junior high.
“I’d hate me, too . . . because I’m always right. I understand how painful that must be for others who aren’t always right.”
He shrugged. “I’m a panda.” “It’s a little on the nose, though, isn’t it?” Zé asked. “A Chinese guy who’s a panda?” “Says the South American jaguar.”
“Where do we start?” “Our ancient blood rituals!” Max announced. “No,” Charlie said immediately. “Then let’s learn all the different poop smells!” “No,” Stevie said, her lip curled in disgust. “Answering the ancient question, does rat really taste like chicken?” “Max!” both sisters barked. The evil woman laughed. “I’m kidding! Everyone knows that the first lesson for any new shifter is how to lick their own ass.”
Tock had informed them at their first team meeting as a junior high basketball team—when she only had a Timex watch with Minnie Mouse’s arms telling her the hours and minutes—that she managed her life in thirty-minute increments. If she got something done in ten minutes that meant she had another twenty to do whatever she wanted to do, but whatever she had booked had to be dealt with first. Whether it was homework, team practice, or wild boar hunting. When she booked practice, she expected all of them to honor the time commitment. And that expectation hadn’t changed in the last sixteen years.
Streep stopped sobbing and glared at Tock. “Does my pain mean nothing to you?” “I didn’t book time for your pain.”
According to her husband, Mace, fifteen minutes of “miscellaneous conversation” was about all she could handle. “Then you get real bitchy,”
She was black. Older. Beautiful. Her dreads were brown, blond, gold, white, and gray. Her eyes dark brown. She wore an African-style necklace made of wood and ivory that looked, at least to his eye, expensive. Her bracelet was white gold and diamonds. But despite the money around her neck and wrist, she wore only casual shorts and a worn Bob Marley T-shirt. The flip-flops on her feet probably only cost her three bucks at an Old Navy summer sale.
“Talk about my sister—while sneering—again and I’ll tear your handsome little face off and wear it as a Halloween mask.”
He tossed one of the folders across the table so it landed in front of Tock. “Three months ago, uranium stolen from a Russian lab, the entire event somehow managing to take thirty minutes—precisely.” Another folder landed in front of Nelle. “A year ago, a truckload of gold bars taken from outside the Vatican.” A folder in front of Streep. “Six months ago, a billionaire—who escaped justice even though he liked his conquests . . . rather young—found with a bullet to the back of his head and his two-hundred-million-dollar impressionist art collection gone.” He stopped and stared at Mads.
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“Do we make a run for it?” “My sister has a high prey drive. Making sudden moves will just catch her attention. I suggest we all get comfortable and—” “Wait for death?” Tock asked. “I was going to say watch TV, but whatever works for you, sweetie.”
“Zé won’t pose nude for me. I think he’s worried it will put his sexuality into question. Would you please convince him that he is a very virile heterosexual male and that as a woman, you would love to have sex with him, so he can feel confident in his straightness and see this as the artistic request that it is?”
“You really care about Max, don’t you?” “She’s insane and dangerous and has managed to convince my old team leader that I am taking advantage of a mentally unstable woman. How could I not care about her?”
Her expression was sweet and kind and all Max wanted to do was rip that smile off her sister’s face and wear it around the neighborhood like a Halloween mask.
“Once cats make up their mind . . . they’re done. You could marry someone else and have twenty kids and Zé will still be living under your porch. Because he’s a cat! So you are stuck with him. For life.”
