From Dead to Worse

I got up, too. We went out and began the usual motions. My mind was hardly on it, though.
    To revive my flagging spirits, I tried to think of some bright point in the future, something to look forward to. I couldn’t come up with anything. For a long, bleak moment I stood by the bar, my hand on my order pad, trying not to step over the edge into the chasm of depression. Then I slapped myself on the cheek. Idiot! I have a house, and friends, and a job. I’m luckier than millions of people on the planet. Things will look up.
    For a while, that worked. I smiled at everyone, and if that smile was brittle, by God, it was still a smile.
    After an hour or two, Jason came into the bar with his wife, Crystal. Crystal was looking sullen and slightly pregnant, and Jason was looking . . . Well, he had that hard look about him, the mean look he got sometimes when he’d been disappointed.
    “What’s up?” I asked.
    “Oh, not much,” Jason said expansively. “You bring us a couple beers?”
    “Sure,” I said, thinking he’d never ordered for Crystal before. Crystal was a pretty woman several years younger than Jason. She was a werepanther, but she wasn’t a very good one, mostly because of all the inbreeding in the Hotshot community. Crystal had a hard time changing if it wasn’t the full moon, and she had miscarried at least twice that I knew of. I pitied her losses, the more so because I knew the panther community considered her weak. Now Crystal was pregnant a third time. That pregnancy had maybe been the only reason Calvin had let her marry Jason, who was bitten, not born. That is, he’d become a panther by being repeatedly bitten—by a jealous male who wanted Crystal for himself. Jason couldn’t change into a real panther but into a sort of half-beast, half-man version. He enjoyed it.
    I brought them their beers along with two frosted mugs and waited to see if they were going to place a food order. I wondered about Crystal drinking, but decided it wasn’t my business.
    “I’d like me a cheeseburger with fries,” Jason said. No surprise there.
    “What about you, Crystal?” I asked, trying to sound friendly. After all, this was my sister-in-law.
    “Oh, I don’t have enough money to eat,” she said.
    I had no idea what to say. I looked at Jason inquiringly, and he gave me a shrug. This shrug said (to his sister), “I’ve done something stupid and wrong but I’m not going to back down, because I’m a stubborn shit.”
    “Crystal, I’ll be glad to stand you lunch,” I said very quietly. “What would you like?”
    She glared at her husband. “I’d like the same, Sookie.”
    I wrote her order down on a separate slip and strode to the hatch to turn them in. I had been ready to get angry, and Jason had lit a match and thrown it on my temper. The whole story was clear in their heads, and as I came to understand what was going on, I was sick of both of them.
    Crystal and Jason had settled into Jason’s house, but almost every day Crystal rode out to Hotshot, her comfort zone, where she didn’t have to pretend anything. She was used to being surrounded by her kin, and she especially missed her sister and her sister’s babies. Tanya Grissom was renting a room from Crystal’s sister, the room Crystal had lived in until she married Jason. Crystal and Tanya had become instant buddies. Since Tanya’s favorite occupation was shopping, Crystal had gone along for the ride several times. In fact, she’d spent all the money Jason had given her for household expenses. She’d done this two pay-checks in a row, despite multiple scenes and promises.
    Now Jason refused to give her any more money. He was doing all the grocery shopping and picking up any dry cleaning, paying every bill himself. He’d told Crystal if she wanted any money of her own, she had to get a job. The unskilled and pregnant Crystal had not succeeded in finding one, so she didn’t have a dime.
    Jason was trying to make a point, but by humiliating his wife in public he was making the wrong point entirely. What an idiot my brother could be.
    What I could do about this situation? Well ... nothing. They had to work it out themselves. I was looking at two stunted people who’d never grown up, and I wasn’t optimistic about their chances.
    With a deep twinge of unease, I remembered their unusual wedding vows; at least, they’d seemed odd to me, though I supposed they were the Hotshot norm. As Jason’s closest living relative, I’d had to