Going Nowhere

Chapter 15 - Happy B

I could not work in a biker bar, juggle two men and find an amulet at the same time. Not when I also had grandparents like mine.

Grandpa Hunter was the assigned chaperone to my porch and grill date with Jackson, which would have been fun since he usually was hilarious, albeit in a way that mostly made you feel you'd entered a somewhat dirty twilight zone.

Instead of being his usual self, Gramps sat down on the edge of the porch and spent the next hour staring into the forest. He mumbled things every now and then and alternated between counting something on his fingers, and sighing. Then Jackson asked him if he wanted grilled rib-eye and Grandpa Hunter said no.

He. Said. No.

A wolf saying no to rib-eye was a dying wolf, everyone knew that. They even used it instead of expensive blood tests over at the healthcare clinic.

We rushed over to him, and he explained calmly that he needed to cut back on the calories, and that he had eaten spinach accompanied by a bowl of grated carrots mixed with pieces of orange to ensure his iron levels were adequate. I had no clue why anyone would make the absolutely horrific decision to mix oranges into grated carrots, so I worried more than usual about Grandpa Hunter's sanity, which was saying something about my level of unease.

It took a while, but Jackson managed to convince Grandpa that he wasn't overweight, mostly because he wasn't, and once we'd gotten three hearty steaks into his system, he seemed to feel better. He was still mostly quiet through the rest of the evening, although that could be because he slept most of it, curled up on a blanket in a corner.

Jack and I were back on my parents' front porch, and I had explained to him that I didn't want to be kissed, something he ignored completely when Grandma Hazel walked out in a tight leather dress and fishnet stockings. She wobbled on her black platform shoes, and I closed my eyes, hoping that she'd be back in her usual flouncy, wide, hippie-dresses when I opened them again.

She wasn't, but she should have been because her skinny knees were not what they had been in her youth.

"I'm going to class!" she chirped happily. "Made friends with the girls at the triple-P and they'll teach me. Silenus says I'll make millions if I just learn a few basic moves."

Oh, God.

I deciphered that immediately. Grandma had somehow befriended the hookers at Pussy-Pussy-Pussy, they'd teach her to pole dance, and my goddamned boss had offered her a job.

"The troll-woman might not want you there," I tried, hoping to avoid the disaster I saw approaching like a freight train in the night.

"She's the one who will teach me," Grandma said.

Yish. Grandma Hazel with her skinny-wrinkly knees and elongated cleavage, getting undressed while humping a pole was not a sight I wanted to see. Since the troll was about as broad as she was tall and had a behind the size of Montana, I could easily picture the pole disappearing in her butt crack, never to be found again. It was not a sight I wanted to see either.

"But the stun gun?" I asked, desperately.

"She says it tickles. Bought one for herself."

Jackson's arm around me tightened, which plastered me even closer to his muscles, and I had been pretty darn close already before.

I felt his belly quiver, but his voice was completely calm when he asked, "Do you need a ride, Hazel?"

Had he just offered to drive my grandmother to a bordello, in a get-up that made her look like she worked there? Or, as if she'd worked there four hundred years ago, at least.