Home Improvement: Undead Edition Read Online Free PDF Page A

Sam liked to turn into dogs, because humans weren’t as likely to shoot him by mistake. As a true shapeshifter, he had an advantage over wereanimals, who had to transform to one thing—werewolf, of course, or weretiger, werewombat—whatever their genetic makeup was. Sam enjoyed the variety. Sam, who normally had a smooth and swift transition, was panting on the ground when I got a scare.
    “Smooth move,” Quiana said from right behind me. I jumped about a mile. “I wish I could do that,” she added.
    “Hell in a handbasket, Quiana! Why didn’t you say something?”
    “I was making plenty of noise,” she said casually. “You were just too interested in watching.”
    I opened the back door and threw Sam’s clothes on one of the dinette chairs. “Aren’t you supposed to be with the twins?”
    She unclipped a device from the waistband of her shorts. “I got the monitor right here. They’re both asleep in their cribs. Finally.”
    Sam rolled to his feet and ambled over to me. I never knew exactly how much he understood human speech while he was in animal form, but he was looking at the house and his chest was rumbling. “I’m going to check on them,” I said. If that sounded distrustful, I didn’t care.
    The atmosphere in the house seemed somewhat easier, more peaceful. I wondered if the bad influence was wearing away—or was it because we three were out in the yard? That was a disturbing idea. I made myself put it aside, and I looked at the sleeping Robbie, hardly daring to breathe loud. The baby seemed perfectly all right. So did Sara, in her own crib. I put my hand gently on Sara’s back. The inchoate dreams of an infant flowed into my head. I thought of putting both of them in the stroller and taking them with me into the backyard, but the house was so pleasant and cool, and it was so hot outside. We had the monitor.
    I went back to the yard. Sam was scouting around, examining the space with his nose. His floppy ears were hanging forward. I’d read that this pushed the scent up to a bloodhound’s nose. Amazing. I personally thought he was very cute as a bloodhound, but that got into kind of queasy territory, so it was a thought I had to banish.
    “He’s working hard,” Quiana remarked. She’d perched on the edge of one of the yard chairs, her hands tucked between her bare knees. Her thick dark hair was twisted and secured on top of her head with a clip or two, because it was too hot for long hair. My own was piled up in much the same way.
    “You two have been friends a long time,” she said, when I didn’t respond to her last comment.
    “Yes,” I said. “A few years, now.”
    “You have a lot of friends.”
    “I have a lot of friendly acquaintances. It’s hard to have close friends, when you have a mental thing like mine.”
    “Tell me about it.” Quiana shuddered delicately.
    Frankly, I didn’t know if I wanted to be Quiana’s friend or not. There was something in her that put me off. I realized this was pretty damn ironic, since that was the way people often felt about me, but I didn’t think Quiana made me uneasy simply because she had an unusual ability. She made me anxious because for a few minutes the day before she hadn’t been alone in her skin. Someone else had been there with her.
    I turned my eyes away from the girl. I didn’t want her wondering what I was thinking about. I watched Sam instead. He was sniffing the ground with the efficiency of a vacuum cleaner.
    The lot was long and narrow, with the house leaving very little room on either side. On the north side of the house, there were maybe five feet between the air conditioner sticking out of the kitchen window and the fence that surrounded the yard from the front wall of the house to the rear property line. Naturally, it was in that narrow strip that Sam found a promising scent. He went over it anxiously, and then he raised his head and bayed.
    I hoped all the neighbors really were at work. At least the fence blocked