"What in the everloving fudge did you do?"
"Nothing," I said, wishing I didn't sound so guilty suddenly.
"You got fired from the cushiest dog-walker job in the whole state. You clearly did something."
"I did not," I said, switching quickly from guilty to defiant.
And yeah, that was pretty much a lie but seriously? The dog had totally started it.
"Is Pookie still alive?" Elsa asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
Elsa. The sweetest girl with the biggest heart in the whole world. My best friend.
And a unicorn.
At least when she wants to be one, which isn't very often. Elsa works in a library and having a huge, white unicorn stomping around would make her boss give her a death-glare over her glasses. Or shush. Since no one glares and shushes like a librarian, most of the time she's just a regular homo sapiens like me.
Except, of course - I'm a witch.
Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way the gnarly, grey-haired and wart filled kind of witch. They live over in Hanksville. I am a white witch from the covenant of Nim, which means that I have no warts at all.
I have black hair, a tall, willowy body, translucently white skin and dark brown eyes.
Or, yeah. No. But I should have.
The thing is; my witchiness comes from my mom but my dad is a huge, white-haired werewolf of Scandinavian descent, and his genes were pretty dominant in the whole creation of me, probably because he's a pretty dominant kind of guy. And since I'm partly a wolf, I got brownish, wavy hair, green eyes, and skin that tan quickly in the summer. There's a faint band of freckles across my nose, and no one in their right mind would call someone with my booty willowy, although that could have less to do with my wolf part and more with the fact that I deal with all the shit life keeps throwing at me by gobbling down unfortunate quantities of anything Reeces. And cookie dough.
"Of course the stupid thing is alive," I snapped.
"How in the hell could you get sacked, Kitty? You're a dog yourself."
That last bit came from Joel, my other best friend.
Joel is a widget, which is the coolest thing because they are super rare but also super useful. And popular, which isn't much of a surprise since widgets communicate with anything controlled by computer code, and changes that code as they wish unless it's protected by another, stronger, widget.
"Am not," I snapped
"Half dog."
I opened my mouth to protest, but we'd had that particular argument since the three of us met en route to detention, outside the principal's office in Saint Honoria of the Immaculate Transformation High School, so I shut it again and glared at him.
He glared back.
When this had gone on for a while, I gave in.
"I just growled, okay?"
I'm not a shifter like daddy, and the three spawns of Satan also known as my brothers, but I have enough wolf in my blood to heal quickly, run fast - and growl in a way that scares the bejeesus out of virtually anyone.
The only animals in our part of the world that don't leave an embarrassing puddle behind when the wolves growl are bears, so of course my darling daddy had to go and get re-married to one. I love my stepmom Janie to pieces, but it would have been a lot easier to get away with shit if he'd picked, say, a fox-shifter or even one of the cats.
"So," Elsa murmured. "You now have no job, no money, no way to pay rent, and as a consequence absolutely no other choice but to move back home."
Crap. That was an uncomfortably clear, and accurate, summary of my situation.
Double-crap. I'd have to move back home.
I grew up with my dad, stepmom, and brothers in an enormous house on the outskirts of a small town called Nowhere, and yes, I've heard every stupid joke there is about that name.
Yes, even <insert lame joke here>.
And <insert another annoyingly lame joke here>.
My parents split up two hours and fourteen minutes after I was born, and I rarely see my mom, so no one in town hesitates to call her, "the witch that starts with a b," in my presence. I actually find that hilarious, considering my dad's furry persona, but it's also not wrong.
Two days after leaving dad, and me, Mom got married to a wizard with the fantastically unspellable name Aïdan Azdjakzian. Aïdan is a snooty, highbrow, wave your wand in the face of anyone kind of man that I do not like. My friends and I refer to him as "the Az," and needless to say, he does not like me right back.
Mom and the Az decided to procreate with an embarrassing speed and provided me with four half-sisters. They're also witches, which quite possibly indicates that the genetic make up of his Aziness isn't as superior as he likes to think.
As all witches of Nim, my sisters have names from mother nature, and they're called Rose, Poppy, Lily, and Iris.
I, on the other hand, am called Hibiscus.
Giving me that ridiculous name was probably the bitchiest thing mom has ever done when she so easily could have called me something like Hazel, which is a really whitchy name. It's also my grandmother's name, so it would have been completely fitting, but Grandma Hazel has a well-developed and highly sophisticated sense of humor, which means I love her, but Mom don't.
So yeah, my mother is Fuchsia de Chamontelette-Azdjakzian, and I am Hibiscus Brown.
My dad is called Biff. Biff Brown. No joke. And he populated the world even quicker than Mom because my brothers are triplets. This is uncommon among the wolves, and unheard of with the bear shifters, which makes it a source of great pride with Dad, who talks way too often about the speed and agility of his swimmers. Since I really don't want to think about semen and my father at the same time, or even in the same millennium, I have learned to zone out when he starts bragging.
My brothers are young enough to still get away with acting stupid, and they call me Biscuit. This was cute when I was five, but since everyone else abbreviates it to Kitty, I guess I should be grateful to them.
"You can crash at my place for a while," Joel offered, knowing that moving back in with my dad sat right at the top of a long list of things I did not want to do.
Since he sublet a shoe-box condo and dated a long string of ridiculously dimwitted girls, it was nice of him, but there was no way I'd take him up on that offer.
"Nah," I said casually. "I'll be fine. Dad and Janie will be happy to have us all under one roof again."
They absolutely would be. Super. Fucking. Happy.
Dad because then he could pretend that I was five again, and hence could pretend that I spent absolutely no time at all being more or less naked with anyone.
Janie because she's a bear, and her sole focus are on her cubs and her mate. Lucky for me, she claimed me right away as her cub. Or pup. Or cup... or whatever. And yes, she calls Dad her mate, which is sweet and ridiculous in equal measures. It also means we have to tell the few visitors finding their way to Nowhere that she's from Australia.
"You could stay with Fuchsia and the Az," Joel said, grinning widely and wiggling his brows to indicate that it was a joke.
As if that was needed.
From the first time they met, which unfortunately was whilst I was exiting detention, my mother and Joel disliked each other. Mom because she never seems to like anyone. Joel because she told him he looked like a carrot.
To her defense, she probably meant it as a sort of weird compliment because anything coming from nature is worshiped by the witches of Nim. Also, Joel did look a little like a carrot back then. He grew into his height though, and the longish red Mohawk he keeps tied to the back of his head looks über-cool. Hence the string of silly girls chasing him around.
"Mom would alternate between moaning about my lack of ambitions and making me chant weird shit. The Az would offer me money to move out which is something I won't be able to say no to," I said. "And then I'll owe him."
"Not good," Elsa said. "Never good to owe a wizard in general. The Az..."
She trailed off because there really wasn't any need at all to share how not good it would be for me to owe that particular wizard anything at all. Ever.
"Right," I sighed. "Gotta go."
"They know you're coming?" Joel asked.
I shook my head and sighed again. "I'll surprise them."
My car started coughing out a clunky rattle as I drove out of the suburbs and when I was going up the mountain, it escalated to the sound of severe car-bronchitis. By the time I turned to my dad's driveway, it felt as if the car was skipping its way forward like a seven-year-old with a rope.
It died a quick death right outside the big brown double doors where a group of people was waiting.
Biff Brown. Janie Cameron-Brown. Bill, Joe and Tom Brown.
And Hunter Brown. My darling and totally outrageous Grandpa.
What the hell was he doing there? And what was that on his head?
"Welcome home!" Dad shouted happily before my feet had even hit the ground. "Your room is ready and waiting."
Shit.
Pookie's owner would have called the police to help find her missing dog.
Dad was the sheriff. And not stupid.
My life truly sucked. Hugely.