Deaths Excellent Vacation

what do I know? I’m an old lady.”
    “Grand!”
    “I’m not telling tales out of school, she really has taken a shine to you.” Grand raised her eyebrows and continued working on her peach cobbler. “Some things are jus’ natchel at y’all’s age.”
    “She’s bringing her brother . . . and I wanna pass his inspection,” Justin said, changing the subject. “I don’t want him to think I’m dogging his sister.”
    “So now you’re making jokes at your own expense,” Grand said, chuckling and shaking her head.
    “You know what I mean, Grand . . . C’mon.”
    “All right, all right,” she said, waving him away. “You’ll do fine—you don’t judge him, he won’t judge you . . . and he knows what you are. She told him.”
    Justin closed his eyes with a groan.
    “Everything is fine . . . Ain’t been no killings lately here this last month.”
    He stopped and stared at his grandmother. “Why not, Grand?”
    “Oh, I forgot to mention that I locked them other wolves up in their swamp shack, the whole den . . . By now, they probably turned on each other. Serves ’em right. Sorry I didn’t get that she- devil, too . . . Woulda saved you kids the trouble.”

The Perils of Effrijim
    KATIE MACALISTER
     
     
    For as long as she can remember, Katie MacAlister has loved reading. Growing up in a family where a weekly visit to the library was a given, Katie spent much of her time with her nose buried in a book. Two years after she started writing novels, Katie sold her first romance. More than thirty books later, her novels have been translated into numerous languages, received several awards, and been placed on the New York Times , USA Today , and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. Katie lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and dogs, and can often be found lurking around online.

One
    “Now remember, this is a vacation, not carte blanche for you to run amok and be obnoxious.”
    I made a little pout, which let me tell you, ain’t easy when your face is shaped like a Newfoundland dog’s muzzle. Which mine was by dint of the fact that my most magnificent form to date was that of an extremely handsome, debonair, and utterly fabulous Newfie. “Have I ever run amok and been obnoxious?” I asked my demon lord, a kinda clueless Guardian by the name of Aisling Grey.
    She lifted her hand and prepared to tick items off her fingers.
    “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I interrupted before she could get going on what may or may not have been a few unfortunate incidents in my past. “Kiss kiss. Have a nice time on Drake’s yacht. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.”
    “It’s not too late to send it to the Akasha,” Drake said as he walked past me, a baby carrier in each hand. “You would be able to enjoy our vacation without worrying about whether the demon was causing trouble.”
    “Hello! ‘The demon,’ as you so rudely referred to me, is standin’ right here!” I gave Drake a look, but he missed it entirely. You’d think that a guy who just happened to be a wyvern, leader of a group of dragons who marched around the earth in human form, would be a little more aware of things, but Drake was like that, always missing my pithy comments and witty repartee. “And Aisling wouldn’t send me to the Akasha. That’s the cruelest thing a demon lord can do to her charming, adorable, and entirely innocent demon, one who, it might be pointed out, was recently praised for actions above and beyond the call of duty with regards to the birthing of the spawn.”
    Drake muttered something extremely rude in Hungarian under his breath as he took the spawns out to the car.
    “One,” Aisling said, doing that finger-ticking-off thing again. She made mean eyes at me as she did it. “You will cease referring to the twins as ‘the spawn.’ They have names; use them. Two, yes, you were of great assistance when it came to their birth, especially since you had to don human form to do so.”
    I made a face. “Man, that was totally sucky. You should have seen the size of my package in human form. It lacked, babe. It just lacked.”
    “Two and a half—you will not tell me, in any terms whatsoever, about your genitalia, be it in doggy or human form.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Sheesh, Ash, loosen up a bit. I didn’t go into actual measurements or set up a website devoted to it.”
    “For which the world is truly grateful.”
    “Yeah, well, I’m still peeved at May for making me take that