The Accidental Werewolf 2: Something About Harry

231 Pages·2016·1.29 MB·English

by  Cassidy Dakota

Annotation
He’s in a furry situation.
Accountant Harry Ralph Emerson has always been a by-the-numbers kind
of guy. But when he finds himself trapped at work sprouting an obscene amount
of hair, he knows his odds for maintaining normalcy are zero to none. After a
frantic internet search, Harry goes through the OOPS—Out in the Open
Paranormal Support—checklist and comes to a disheartening conclusion: He’s
turning into a werewolf and he needs help ASAP.
She might be the only solution.
Werewolf Mara Flaherty has long carried a torch for Pack Cosmetics’s sexy
single accountant, even after her attempt to seduce him went down in flames.
When her sister-in-law, Marty, shows up to handle Harry’s OOPS emergency,
she tasks Mara with showing the hirsute hottie the ropes. But Mara knows
Harry’s condition is a result of her lab experiment gone wrong—and the
previously mild-mannered object of her affection is about to give her a piece of
his mind
The Accidental Werewolf 2: Something About Harry
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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Epilogue
The Accidental Werewolf 2: Something
About Harry
Accidentally Friends - 8
by
Dakota Cassidy
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Cindy McCune for the absolutely amazing title Something About Harry.
You’re a joy to hang out with on my Facebook page, and I adore you!
Also, Pam Elliot (my Spaz), for the awesome phrase “stranger junk.” Every
time I think about that muggy night when we all sat around a table in the hotel’s
courtyard after a long day of seeing things we couldn’t unsee in NO, laughing
about our amazing experiences on Bourbon Street, I think of you and giggle to
myself. You’re an angel, and the cutest thing evah!
More New Orleans hijinks love to my “balcony” girls. The word moresome
is forever ours—as is the laughter! So much laughter. I’m pretty sure you ladies
are how I discovered the meaning of incontinence!
Dawn Montgomery, who gave me amazing insight to this book, and also
writes amazing books!
Kaz, because seriously, it’s all in the details.
Most of all, to my BFF Renee George, who talks me down when I’m
freaked out, and is always around to help me hash out a plot when my idea
tank’s on empty. I love you, lady!
And for my son, Cameron, who we lovingly, jokingly call The Antichrist
(we’re sure, due to his genius level smarts, all the time he spends studying—
quote unquote—is really a ploy to keep us distracted while he plots world
domination ). By the time this book is published, you’ll have left home for
college to begin your own life. To say I’m incredibly proud of you is too little,
too small a sentiment to express the amazingly funny, smart, wise, well-adjusted
young man you’ve become.
And always, always know, wherever you are, wherever I am—there’s this
thing called Skype. You’d better show your pretty face on it at least once a week
—or I’m coming for a collegiate visit all your smartsy-fartsy friends won’t soon
forget. LOL!
I’ll miss your footsteps on the stairs. Your moody grunt “hello” when you
come in from school. Your haughty disdain for everyone and everything because
you’re a teenager and nothing is supposed to outwardly impress you. Your grin,
your laughter . . . your everything.
I love you, son. So, so much.
Dakota Cassidy
CHAPTER
1
“This is OOPS, correct? The Out in the Open Paranormal Support crisis
hotline?” Harry Emmerson hissed into his cell phone, casting a suspicious glance
around the room he was trapped in.
There was a sharp creak, one he suspected was an office chair, and then a
husky voice rasped, “Dude, you deaf? That’s what I fucking said when I
answered. Now what’s your crisis, and it damn well better be a real one or I’m
gonna use my vampy senses to sniff your location out. It takes a little time, but
when I hone in on you, and I will, I’ll beat you to death with your very own leg.
The one I amputate clean off your torso courtesy of my sharp teeth.”
Harry bristled, a spike of anger shooting up his spine, making his hair—a
lot of frickin’ hair—stand on end. What kind of customer service was this?
“How is a threat in response to my call for help in any way supportive?” he
whisper-yelled into the phone, running his very hairy fingers over his equally
hairy temple in exasperation.
Hairy Harry.
Hah!
“Look, pal. If you knew the kind of crank shit I deal with on a daily basis
because of this damn hotline, you’d get the reason for the threat. So get to the
point. Get there fast.”
The woman on the other end of the line sent a vibe that was anything but
soothing. It was almost antagonistic. No, there was no almost about this. It was
definitely antagonistic, and it riled him from the tips of his toes to the frames of
his, as his sister had once called them, nerd-dweeb glasses.
Under normal circumstances, he wasn’t easily riled. Harry Ralph
Emmerson was a problem solver, and he always remained calm whenever a
quandary arose. But this problem? This wasn’t a problem that could be solved
with a calculator, and it didn’t have a definitive answer. This problem would rile
even the most patient and sage of wise men.
Harry crouched lower under the table, thankful for his flexibility, while
fighting the strange onslaught of heat rushing through his veins. “Again, how is
this supportive?”
“Awww,” the angry woman cooed with a mocking tone. “You just missed
the sensitive, squishy paranormal-counselor-with-a-heart by like twenty minutes.
She skipped off to have date night with her man. Instead, you’re stuck with the
cranky, impatient, bitchy counselor-who-doesn’t-have-a-heart. Like literally. So
get on with this shit. I got a kid to go home and feed.”
Harry cleared his throat and ignored the scream of his rumbling stomach.
He’d just had trail mix a half hour ago. That should have held him over until
dinner, but this ache in his gut was bigger than just a warning sign. It was time
for dinner.
Images of heaping piles of red meat dripping in blood, with a side of more
red meat dripping in blood, flickered through his mind’s eye in startling detail.
Swallowing hard, he remained as focused as he could with the caged lion in
his belly. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. So let me start by apologizing
for any and all faux pas I mistakenly made due to the stress of my predicament. I
can’t promise there won’t be more. I’m walking a tightrope where my sanity’s
concerned here, and that could make for bad judgment on my part. Please, can
we begin again? First, I’m Harry, not Harold, Emmerson. Sort of like the writer,
but not. My father’s name was Harry, and my mother loved—”
There was an abrasive peal of a horn in his ear. Like a bike horn. “Hear
that, Harry?”
He gritted his teeth. “I did.” Jesus—it was still vibrating in his head.
“Good. That’s my ‘I don’t give a shit about your life story’ horn. It’s from
my kid’s Barbie tricycle she won’t even be able to ride for at least another five
years. But her Grandpa Arch insisted she have it because he’s addicted to
woot.com and online shopping. Anyway, if I sound the horn—that means I don’t
give a shit and you move on.”
Abrasive horn equaled moving on. Understood. “Got it. And you are?”
There was a grating snort, and then the woman with the steeped-in-whiskey
voice said, “Well, Harry, not Harold, Emmerson, I’m Nina Blackman-Statleon—
unwilling fucking paranormal crisis counselor and full-time vampire. Now, go!”
She barked the order, making him cringe at how sharp and clear her voice rang
in his ear.
He cleared his throat, loosening his tightening tie with his forefinger and
stretched his neck, ignoring Nina’s use of the word “vampire” in order to
maintain the vestiges of his sanity. “I read on the Internet that you can help me
with my paranormal crisis needs. Is that true?” Jesus and hell. He hoped it was
true. Because if it wasn’t—really, where else was there to turn? Who could you
call when something like this happened?
Dean and Sam?
The lucid, almost always able to find a reasonable explanation, half of his
brain said this number he’d found on the Internet and the crackpot who’d
answered was all just a bunch of hooey.
Yet, despite his misgivings about vampires and demons, he’d dialed it
anyway. Out of sheer desperation, and with more hair than a pack of Siberian
huskies sprouting from his face, his fingers had punched in the OOPS number
without ever looking back.
Because his sensible, thinking mind told him what had just occurred after
he’d sipped his vitaminwater wasn’t a case of hypertrichosis. Not with the speed
in which he’d been affected. It couldn’t be . . .
Not to mention, he was well and truly stuck in this room—under a table.
There was no getting out of here—not like this—not at the end of a workday
when every one of his colleagues could see him leaving the offices in
tumbleweeds of unsightly hair. He needed help to escape quickly and quietly
before he was discovered—all hairy and sharp-of-tooth. This OOPS website
claimed it could help. It listed all sorts of examples of how they could help.
The tapping of a finger, like the sound of a hydraulic jack in his head,
recaptured his attention. “Harrry?”
He grimaced at the throb of pressure Nina’s incessant thrumming created in
his head. “Ms. Statleon?”
“Get . . . to . . . the . . . fucking . . . point!”
Harry squeezed his temple with his thumb and forefinger. “I need help. I’m
trapped. Can you help?”
There was a sharp cluck of Nina’s tongue and then she said, “Depends on
the crisis.”
“Could you be any more vague?” he snarled, baring his teeth. Oh, shit.
He’d snarled. And bared his teeth.
“Could you be in a shittier position?”
Drool formed at the corner of his mouth. He swiped at it with an impatient
thumb and fought the irrational, uncommon urge to hunt this woman down and
rip her head off. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, I’m the paranormal crypt keeper, and if you piss me off, I’ll
throw the key to the crypt in the goddamn Hudson.”
Four deep, willing-his-patience-back-into-existence breaths later, Harry
realized she was right. “Again, as I said before, Keeper of the Crypt, I’m feeling
a little out of control. Thusly, my emotions are erratic.”
“Thusly?”
Harry’s eyes narrowed, awed by the magnification of his eyesight. He was
nearsighted, hence the nerd-dweeb glasses. “It means—”
“I know what the fuck it means, Vocab Man. I was just pointing out how
dorky it is to use, you know, in this century.”
“Thank you. Your observation is both helpful and, above all, original.” Like
he hadn’t been accused of throwing his broad vocabulary around a time or ten
million. His sister Donna called it pretentious.
“Yeah. I’m all about enriching lives. So could we get to the reason you
called? I’m bored now, and when I’m bored, I get cranky. You don’t want that,
Harry.”
Intuitively, he somehow knew he didn’t want this woman named Nina
cranky. “Do you have a list of credentials?”
“You mean like a certification from Ghostbusters that says we’re all official
paranormal helpers?”
Was this Nina of the unladylike mouth and easily stirred pot mocking him?
It made him incredibly uncomfortable when he missed a joke everyone else
around him seemed to get. This happened far more often than he’d like to admit.
“Well, yes.”
“Yeah. Sure. You wanna call the Paranormal Center for Paranormalness? I
can give you my vampire ID number. Once you’ve got that, you’re golden, dude.
Then, when you give it to the team of paranormal experts on paranormalness
they’ll give you my shiny references from Anne Rice and Team Edward.”
Okay. She was mocking him. His sigh grated on the way out of his throat.
“There’s no reason to be so flippant. I just want to be sure I’ve done my
homework and I choose the appropriate organization to advise me . . . you know,
for this problem . . .”
Nina’s hand cracked against a hard surface, making him cringe. “Christ.
This ain’t Carfax, Harry. There’s no one else to compare us to. It’s not like you
can call the Better Business Bureau and check on us or some shit. There’s no
other group like us around. We’re it—the total shiz.”
According to the Internet, Nina’s shiz really was it. He began to estimate
and calculate in his head the kind of money this sort of dilemma would cost. It
wouldn’t be cheap, he suspected.
Was he really considering utilizing the services of a group of people who
claimed, not only that they were paranormal themselves, but that they could
guide him to the other side of the supernatural?
Really, Harry?
Oh, hell yes, he was. There was no other alternative. He was trapped with
no chance of escape, and the option of calling 911 went out the window when
his hairline had drastically changed.
“Harrrry,” Nina singsonged into his ear. “I’m getting bored. I explained
bored, dude, right?”
Right. Bored made Nina cranky. Do not make the Nina cranky. Forewarned