The Cynic and the Wolf by Julie Steimle (ebook voice reader TXT) 📕

As Audry took a walk around the block, her mind wandered over what she had read and how she could absorb it. After all, she had just learned that there were people who honestly believed that the Deacon family were werewolves, and despite his wealth and worldly influence, Rick was being hunted on a monthly basis. What a hellish way to live. No wonder his presence stirred things up. For the first time, Audry was grateful for her quiet, safe, homeschooled life.

That afternoon, Audry spent it with her niece and nephew, continuing to appreciate that she had a normal, healthy, unbroken family. Maris and Skyler showed off what they did in preschool, then they went into Skyler's room to look at his rock collection. Audry gave him the green stone she had picked up along with the other one, which he quickly looked up in his big book to see what kinds they were. Then they went into Maris's room to play with her huge toy animal collection.

Audry thought it funny that Maris wasn't allowed to have a Barbie or any of the other girl dolls like Bratz or Monster High. Their reason was that her parents thought they would fill her with unhealthy expectations. However, Maris played with her tigers and elephants was the same way she would have played with a Barbie—because her tigers didn't so much roar as they talked about who was going to be their friend and about going to school and things.

Skyler's tigers roared. But then, he was a boy.

When Doug finally got home—Jean was still at the hospital—he joined in the play. His kids had their animals romp all over their dad's stomach and face as he lay on his back in the middle the floor and stared at the ceiling while talking to them. After a while he got up and asked Audry to help him make dinner. For a few minutes, the kids stuck around to 'help', but they soon got bored and went off to watch videos on the computer, as iPads were banned from the house.

"I don't want them to be socially crippled tech junkies," Doug explained to Audry when he was boiling up quinoa for their salad.

 Audry nodded, sighing.

As they fixed together the large salad and stewed up some leek pot stickers (these Chinese boiled dumplings they loved), Doug gazed at her and finally said, "You seem to have a lot on your mind."

Audry nodded.

"Was it a good trip?" he asked. "Are you sad your project is finished?"

She nodded more then stopped. "I'm not exactly sad, but I feel melancholy. I mean, I won't be out in the field again for a while, and I know I will miss it."

He chuckled softly. "Yeah… I don’t think you will ever be happy indoors working in a lab. When you finish with all of your schooling, you will need to get a job in the field, pronto, or you are going to go insane."

Audry sighed. That was true.

"But I can tell something else is on your mind," he said.

Lifting her eyes to him, Audry replied with a heavy breath, which wasn’t quite a sigh, "I broke up with Harlin—permanently this time."

Doug stopped cutting vegetables. Setting down his knife, clenching his fists and raising them to the sky, he shouted out, "Finally!"

Audry stared.

"Come on," he said, meeting her gaze hard as he lowered his hands. "You always choose idiots and troublemakers. And that guy Harlin was a player."

Her eyes widened more, blinking at him. "You knew it too?"

Nodding heavily, Doug said, "Of course. But you were so head-over-heels for him, you would not listen to any objections. In fact, I need to call Mom and tell her." He reached for his cell phone from his pocket.

Audry grabbed at it. "No! Don't you dare!"

Snickering, Doug lifted his phone out of reach. "Why not? Mom would want to know. And so would Dad. They were worried about you."

Swatting him in the arm, Audry snapped, "If you have to call them, call them when I am not here."

He lowered his phone and tucked it into his pocket again. Yet he said with a smirk at her, "When did you finally see what a loser he was and decide to dump the jerk?"

Shrugging, Audry sighed. "Oh… yesterday. He kept calling me the entire last few days, and he said stuff in that last call which made me realize he had no intention of getting married EVER."

Doug nodded, as he clearly already knew it. "So that's when you finally realized he was a player?"

Groaning, Audry shook her head. "No… actually, lots of people have been saying it. I just didn't believe it until…"

Doug smirked at her, leaning nearer. "Something happened. Is it another guy?"

Blushing, Audry shook her head.

"It is another guy!" Doug laughed. "Tell me about him."

"It's not what you think," Audry muttered, trying to clear off her embarrassment. "There is no other guy, but another guy pointed it out to me in a way that I finally saw it was the truth."

"Well… tell me about him anyway," Doug said, grinning. She could tell he already liked this 'mystery guy'. She had to knock that notion out of his head immediately.

"Ok, fine. But first off, the guy is a committed meat-eater," she said.

Doug pulled back.

Smiling, Audry added, "I bumped into Howard Richard Deacon the Third at the lodge, and he is the one who said that was Harlin was a player."

Her brother pulled back more, going white. "That multi-billionaire? The one you bumped into in Paris?"

Audry nodded, shrugging. "I was on his land, you know. I was bound to bump into him sometime."

Doug nodded, though he looked disappointed. No new boyfriend after all. Yet he said, "But how did your boyfriend come up? Was that rich punk hitting on you?"

Shaking her head, Audry replied, "Nope. He and Harlin have the same ringtone—or in this case had. Harlin had changed his ringtone to Animals by Maroon 5. I heard Rick’s ringtone when he got a call and I asked him about it."

Doug groaned. Yet he eyed Audry as he said, "Rick?"

Audry nodded. "Howard the Third goes by Rick. He tells everyone to call him that, though the cook called him Howie."

Her brother laughed. But then he said, "What was Harlin's original ringtone?"

"Hungry Like a Wolf," Audry said. "Rick said it was a player's ringtone. And he's right. It is. And so is Animals."

Staring, Doug looked at Audry sideways. "Why does that Deacon guy have—?"

Audry laughed. "Long story. Part of a prank someone played on him. His family likes wolves. His phone also plays Werewolves of London."

Choking on a snicker, Doug nodded. "I see."

They were silent for a while, working on dinner. Audry chopped the last of the onions and tomatoes and pushed them into the salad bowl with the knife. Doug stirred up the pot stickers so they would not stick to the bottom of the pot. He then went to work on the garlic.

He said after a while, "You know, I want you to be happy. So, can you do me a favor?  Be more careful when choosing boyfriends."

Audry chuckled, nodding. "I'll try."

Once Jane got home they gathered for dinner. The issue of Harlin and Rick Deacon were once more forgotten.

Chapter Eleven

Audry spent New Year's at her brother's place then drove back to NYU after the holiday. When she arrived at her apartment, after looking around a bit she took the dusty note she had pinned to her bed that told her roommates she was still living there, was paid up for the year, and not to touch her stuff. Then she peeled off the dusty sheet that covered the bed and hefted her suitcase up onto her mattress. She sorted out her laundry first.

The roommates who had been there during the last semester peeked in on her. She didn't know them and they didn't know her, which was fine. Audry could tell they felt their ample space had been violated. They were mourning the loss of extra room. But honestly she didn't care. Unlike most people, her home was outdoors more than indoors. And she had no intention of hanging out in the apartment much with a bunch of catty girls upset over the loss of a little refrigerator room.

After sorting her laundry with the dusty sheet, Audry hiked down with the heaping basket to the complex laundromat and started three loads. Once she pushed the last button, she sat on the lid of the washer and read from her Kindle while the load was cycling. She was almost done with the novel and was eager to finish.

Admittedly, the romance in Beautiful Creatures was believable and entertaining, but she wasn't all that thrilled with the terminology for those who did magic. Caster. Incubus. It seemed to make out a sort of genetic, almost racist argument about human quality, and Audry didn't like that. These people didn't associate with those people. That kind of thing. It was her main objection to most fantasy novels set in modern places. And even in those groups there was the good guys versus the bad guys paradigm, which was overly simplistic. Most people were a combination of good and evil.

Then there as that other thing—genetically magical people forbidden to mix with genetically non-magical people. In nature, there didn't need to be a law about mixing things that would be catastrophic to mix. Nature took care of itself. In the animal kingdom coupling was simple. If a lion and tiger got frisky, they did make a liger, but that liger was a genetic dead end. There was not a species of ligers running about. Same with a horse and a donkey making a mule. She had yet to see that kind of thing happen in a fantasy novel. To her, she wanted accuracy. And fan fiction romances were even more nonsensical. They mixed things that were not even related by scientific Genus let alone Family, and would never have produced offspring in real life.

The laundry loads started to finish. Audry opened the lid of the first machine and began to transfer the wet clothes to the drier across the way. As she took out her wash, she noticed a bullet in the bottom of the washer along with a few coins.

Her bullet.

She had forgotten to take it out of her pocket. It was lucky it hadn't gotten lost in the holes of the washer.

Audry plucked it up.

Lifting the dark tarnished thing toward the light, she closed one eye, peering at it. The name Deacon was still visible, blackened in dark crevices carved into the metal. As she weighed it in her hands, Audry realized that the bullet wasn't lead. It was too light. Perhaps it was steel.

But as she thought this, Audry paused and peered at the bullet again more closely, rubbing it. The color didn't look like steel. Not really. The color made her think of her grandmother's dining ware. Considering all the rumors surrounding the Deacon family, Audry suspected that it just might be made out of silver. A silver bullet for a werewolf.

Shuddering, Audry, tucked the bullet into her jacket pocket. She had clean it to make sure. Silver shined up in a different way than steel.

After loading