Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Rivalry

“Look, Ban Ki-moon isn’t even the Secretary-General anymore,” Odelia pointed out, holding up her phone and displaying a Wikipedia page. “It’s a guy called António Guterres.”

“Don’t you believe that stuff,” said Gran stubbornly. “Everybody knows Wikipedia is fake news. I talked to Ban Ki-moon, and Angela Merkel, and Putin, and the President, and they all had nice things to say about me. Said I might get the Nobel Peace Prize for the work I do. And now that I finally get some recognition from some very important people, my own family turns against me!” She got up. “You know what? I don’t need this crap. I’m leaving!”

They watched, jaws dropped, as she stalked off.

“Ma! Where are you going?” asked Uncle Alec.

“To Washington! Where I’m appreciated! I’m gonna talk to the President in person. Last time we spoke he said he’d make me Secretary of State. I’m gonna remind him.”

“Ma! Come back here!” Alec said, throwing down his napkin and chasing after her.

“Never! I’m destined for greatness! You can’t hold me back!”

She disappeared around the corner of the house, still going strong, with Uncle Alec in hot pursuit. Their voices died away, and Dooley muttered, “Who’s going to feed me now?”

“She’ll be back,” I told him. “She might be nuts, but she’s not that nuts.”

“How long before she’ll come crawling back?” asked Odelia.

“I give her two hours,” said Tex.

“One hour,” said Marge. “She hasn’t eaten, remember?”

“You’ve got one crazy family, Poole,” said Chase with a grin. “And I like it!” he hastened to add when she quirked an eyebrow in his direction.

Yep. That’s us. One crazy family. And as I watched Brutus and Harriet canoodling nearby, and Uncle Alec chase his mother around and around the house, and Chase press a kiss on Odelia’s lips—and Tex doing the same with Marge—I thought about Dooley’s words. When was I finally going to find love? I thought about Clarice, roaming her beloved woods again, and Charlie’s Dieber Babes, one collection of fine but ultimately vapid cats, and then glanced at my buddy Dooley—my best friend and wingman—and sighed happily.

I had friends and family, I had food and my health. Why spoil it with romance?

A chicken wing rolled into my bowl, accompanied by a peck on the top of my head from Odelia, and I watched as she and Chase disappeared through the hedge, holding hands.

“What are they up to, you think?” asked Dooley.

“Nookie,” I told him.

“What’s a nookie, Max?” he asked.

“Um…”

“Is it like a cookie?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

He smiled. “I love cookies.”

In short order, Tex and Marge disappeared into the house, Brutus and Harriet disappeared into the bushes, and the backyard was suddenly empty.

“Are they all going for cookies?” asked Dooley.

“Yup. Everybody loves a cookie.”

We sat in silence for a moment, watching as Uncle Alec and Grandma Muffin came around the corner of the house once more. Grandma appeared out of breath, for she plunked down in her chair, glanced around and, noticing the rest of the family had split, sliced off a piece of roast, dug her spoon into the bowl of potatoes, and started tucking in.

Uncle Alec, also dropping into a chair, watched her with a contented smile.

Silence reigned, only interrupted by Grandma’s smacking noises.

“You know what, Max?” asked Dooley finally.

“What?”

“Chase is probably right. The Pooles are a little crazy, aren’t they?”

“That, they definitely are.”

“But I still love them.”

“So do I, Dooley. So do I.”

And then we followed Grandma’s example and tucked in, too.

Life with the Pooles might not be perfect, but it was never boring.

THE END

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Excerpt from Witchy Wishes (Neighborhood Witch Committee 3)

Prologue

Skip Brown was whipping through the Haymill neighborhood in South Brooklyn on his messenger bike, delivering fine bread and pastry to some of the less mobile regulars of the family bakery where he earned his keep. Brown’s Better Bread Bakery had been in business for as long as Browns had lived in Brooklyn, which, as far as Skip knew, was pretty much forever.

As a junior member of the Brown baking empire, Skip’s job was to hawk the family wares and, as in this case, make sure bread aficionados up and down Haymill and greater Brooklyn got their bread fix at their earliest possible convenience, preferably in the early morning.

Skip, a liberally pimpled young man, obviously didn’t follow the old marketing shtick that to sell a product, you have to be a product of your product: he looked more like a stick insect than the nicely globular shapes his father and uncles and all the other Browns aspired to. If the Browns were bowling balls, Skip was the only bowling pin, a fact which often irked him.

What also set him apart from the other Browns was the fact that he possessed no baking talent whatsoever, which was one of the reasons his family kept him as far away from the actual baking operation as possible. A non-baking Brown could only jinx things and screw it up for the rest of the dynasty.

And Skip was steering his trusty steel steed along the busy streets of Brooklyn, not far from where the Browns plied their trade, when he happened upon a disturbing scene.

He’d just delivered a small white to Beatrix Yeast, and was on his way to Safflower House to provide Cassandra Beadsmore with her usual order of a dozen assorted buns, muffins, cinnamon rolls and croissants, when he passed a dead-end alley, where some form of altercation was in progress.

Usually Skip liked to keep himself to himself, something he’d learned on these mean streets of Brooklyn. But ever since his good friends the Flummox triplets had started a neighborhood watch, he’d been itching to get in on the action and help make Haymill a safer, more pleasant environment. And part of that was not to pass by a confrontation in a creepy back alley between a black-clad stranger and a large man who was crying out for help.

Skip placed his bike against the graffitied wall and hurried over to lend aid and support.

If the fat man was being mugged by the black-clad figure, he was here to make sure justice was done and the miscreant faced the Brown wrath.

Just to make sure he was up to the task, he’d taken a firm grip on his bicycle pump in his left, and a baguette in his right hand. They were the only weapons at his immediate disposal, and he swung them both in a menacing fashion, calling out, “Hey! Leave that man alone!”

The black-clad figure slowly turned to face him. Well, perhaps not exactly face him, as the assailant’s visage was obscured by some form of black mask.

“What’s going on here?” Skip asked, his heart now beating a mile a minute.

He suddenly found himself wishing he’d taken that self-defense course at the community center his mom had told him about. He could have taken out this person with a leg sweep or a cool move and that would have been that.

Now, seeing that the stranger was holding a very large, very shiny, very scary-looking knife, he lost some of the exuberance that had led him into battle.

“Um, you better drop that thing, buddy,” he called out, starting to feel particularly ill-equipped to take on this hoodlum. Wasn’t there some sort of saying or folk wisdom about bringing a bicycle pump and a French baguette to a knife fight? The general consensus seemed to be that it was probably not a good idea. Unless you were Jackie Chan, of course.