Moonburn Read online

  Praise for the novels of Alisa Sheckley

  MOONBURN

  “Alisa Sheckley has an understanding of human foibles and lust, and a light, intelligent touch with inhuman foibles and, er, lust, that marks her as an author to watch and enjoy.”

  —NEIL GAIMAN

  “Full of fascinating characters and loads of surprises, Alisa Sheckley’s Moonburn brings an engaging new twist to shape-shifter romance.”

  —JULIE KENNER, USA Today bestselling author

  THE BETTER TO HOLD YOU

  “An intense werewolf story with some interesting new twists.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “A story filled with passion and mystery.”

  —Romantic Times

  Praise for Alisa Sheckley writing as Alisa Kwitney

  TILL THE FAT LADY SINGS

  “If Milan Kundera, Tama Janowitz and Dr. Joyce Brothers had collaborated on a book, they might have come up with this imaginative and quirky first novel.”

  —MAXINE CHERNOFF,

  The New York Times Book Review

  “A lively novel and a compulsive read, which is saying a lot—and it taught me a thing or two, which is saying even more.”

  —FAY WELDON

  “Subversive, revolutionary … It’s great!”

  —CAROLYN SEE, Los Angeles Times

  “A delicious confection, as tart and spikey as a lemon meringue pie.”

  —LAURIE MUCHNIK, Newsday

  “Bright and funny and remarkably poised.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “A cool, funny, stylish, and very original look at life and love in Manhattan, by a remarkable new writer.”

  —ALISON LURIE

  “Till the Fat Lady Sings is an engrossing satire of the New York female intelligentsia.”

  —NAOMI WOLF

  “An immensely poised and well-crafted performance, which kept me smiling to myself throughout.”

  —PHILLIP LOPATE

  FLIRTING IN CARS

  “This exciting tease of a novel will set your heart pounding like the best love affair. Smart, funny, sexy—I loved it!”

  —PAMELA REDMOND SATRAN,

  author of The Man I Should Have Married

  and Suburbanistas

  “Flirting in Cars is a modern-day fairy tale about finding happily-ever-after where you least expect it. I couldn’t put it down.”

  —KAREN QUINN,

  author of The Ivy Chronicles and Wife in the Fast Lane

  “Alisa Kwitney’s cross-cultural love story is intelligent, funny, and sexy.”

  —THELMA ADAMS, US Weekly

  SEX AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

  “The romance between Kat and Magnus is … true-to-life and achingly bittersweet … with one of the sexiest scenes involving two forty-somethings since The Thomas Crown Affair.”

  —DEBRA PICKETT of the Chicago Sun-Times

  “An engaging and intelligently written comedy—with a few genuinely titillating sex scenes.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Sex as a Second Language, Alisa Kwitney’s smart, sassy, sexy tale of the single mom who brings in a spy from the cold and warms him up, is funny and emotionally true, a great read!”

  —JENNIFER CRUSIE, bestselling author of Bet Me

  ON THE COUCH

  “A teasingly good read. Sexy, sassy and a little kinky. A different take on Manhattan life—more handcuffs than cocktails.”

  —CAROLE MATTHEWS, USA Today bestselling author

  DOES SHE OR DOESN’T SHE?

  “Alisa Kwitney is my guilty pleasure.”

  —NEIL GAIMAN,

  Hugo Award-winning author of American Gods and

  New York Times bestselling author of Coraline

  “Witty, charming, funny and real, Alisa Kwitney brings a fresh voice to chick-lit and romance!”

  —CARLY PHILLIPS, New York Times bestselling author

  “Sharp, sassy, and sexy.”

  —JENNIFER CRUISIE, New York Times bestselling author

  THE DOMINANT BLONDE

  “Her search for the perfect boyfriend and the perfect hair color is delightful. It belongs right up there with all the legally and naturally blonde bombshells of our time.”

  —LIZ SMITH, nationally syndicated columnist

  ALSO BY ALISA SHECKLEY

  The Better to Hold You

  BY ALISA SHECKLEY WRITING AS ALISA KWITNEY

  Flirting in Cars

  Sex as a Second Language

  On the Couch

  Does She or Doesn’t She?

  The Dominant Blonde

  Till the Fat Lady Sings

  Sandman: King of Dreams

  Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold

  Vertigo Visions: Art from the Cutting Edge of Comics

  Token

  Books published by The Random House Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.

  To Ted Wolner, a.k.a. Dr. Grinch,

  who taught me everything I know about

  Bach, algebra, jump shots, and loyalty

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I raise my martini to my editor, Liz Scheier, who is a rare combination of book smart, market smart, and people smart, and knew just what to say to guide and encourage me and keep me on the right side of the bestiality laws; and I owe a martini to assistant editor Kaitlin Heller, who has been amazingly efficient and incredibly kind during this unusually unsettled time. Shauna Summers and Jessica Sebor, thanks for taking such good care of me. My husband, Mark, son, Matthew, and daughter, Elinor, were wonderfully tolerant as I spent two or three months (the days blurred) in a caffeine-fueled writing frenzy, and my mother, Ziva, spent a week going over the manuscript and spotting the awkward, the inadvisable, and the downright inexplicable. Last but never least, thanks to Meg Ruley, my agent, for being both wise and clever, and helping me take this walk on the wild side.

  “You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.”

  —ISADORA DUNCAN

  ONE

  Manhattan is not the center of the universe. It only feels that way. But outside of the immense gravitational pull of that small island, there are whole other realms of existence.

  For the past year, I’ve been living in the town of Northside, which is two hours from the city but subscribes to an alternate reality. Winter arrives earlier and tests your resourcefulness. The moon is more of a presence. Your regular waitress not only knows exactly what you’re going to order, she also knows how much money you have in the local bank, the status of your divorce negotiations, and your entire medical history, down to the name of the prescription cream you just called in to the pharmacy.

  Yet there are also secrets that are easier to conceal here, buffered by trees and mountains and distance. The city may offer a kind of intimate anonymity, but the country permits other freedoms.

  The freedom to run around naked in the woods, for example. Which I do about three days a month, when the moon is at its fullest. Having lycanthropy, like having children, forces you to reevaluate the advantages and disadvantages of apartment living. Of course, I’m not talking from personal experience here—I don’t have children.

  But even though I accept that I’m better off in the country, it’s been a bit of an adjustment. Before I moved out here, trying to save my doomed marriage, I’d had a coveted slot as a veterinary intern at the Animal Medical Institute on the Upper East Side. And while the education I got there was top of the line, I’ve had to unlearn a fair chunk of it.

  In the city, people don’t purchase pets, they adopt substitute children to carry around in big handbags, or rescue surrogate soul mates who will wait uncomplainingly at home all day, then
greet each homecoming with frenzied affection. If Basil the basset hound gets cancer, nobody blinks an eyelash at spending thousands of dollars on medical care, physical therapy, a specially designed prosthesis.

  Around here, it’s a different story.

  Northside dogs are considered animals, and they spend much of their day outside and unattended, having adventures that their humans know nothing about. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, country people love their dogs, though they don’t regard them as quasi-humans covered in fur. Northsiders acknowledge the wolf that resides within the breast of every canine, no matter how outwardly domesticated. “It’s no kind of life for a dog” is the verdict for most serious illness.

  Looking at the massive, gore-spattered rottweiler stinking up my examining room, I had to wonder who had it better: the beloved city pets who received constant attention and care, or their country counterparts, who had the freedom to follow their instincts and roll in decomposing deer entrails.

  “I don’t see or feel any cuts or abrasions,” I told the dog’s owner, a lean woman with work-roughened hands, leathery skin, and brittle, teased black hair. Her name was Marlene Krauss and she ran a hair salon out of her home. I could feel her sizing up my long brown braid the way a lumberjack sizes up a redwood.

  “In fact,” I said, double checking the pads of the rottweiler’s large paws, “I don’t think this is her blood at all. Queenie’s probably just been frolicking in something dead.”

  “Oh, I don’t care about that,” said Marlene. “She’s always getting into something.” When she moved, I caught a whiff of stale cigarette smoke and some drugstore version of Chanel No. 5. If I’d been completely human, the combination would have been strong enough to mask the usual vet’s office odors of cat urine, bleach, rubbing alcohol, and frightened dog. If I’d been completely wolf, I wouldn’t have made any olfactory value judgments. As it was, I was smack in the middle of my monthly cycle, which meant that the scent of Marlene was getting up my nose and on my nerves.

  “So what was the reason you brought Queenie in today?”

  Marlene tapped her manicured fingers impatiently on the steel operating table. “Because I think she’s pregnant.”

  “Oh,” I said, momentarily nonplussed. There I was again, making urban assumptions. In Manhattan, most people didn’t know that most dogs’ dearest wish is to roll in a putrid corpse. The experts theorize that dogs do it to disguise their own predator’s scent from potential prey, but watching dogs, you can see that there’s a wild, abandoned joy to be had from rolling around in something truly rank.

  Of course, I knew this from personal experience as well. But I try not to think about that part of my life during my working day. Compartmentalize, that’s the trick.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to check her?” Her voice sounded like it had been fed a steady diet of cigarettes and broken glass.

  “Of course.” Crouching back down, I looked at Queenie, who instantly licked me on the lips. Maneuvering my face so it was out of tongue range, I put my hand on the dog’s abdomen and palpated. Her mammary glands were swollen. “Were you trying to breed her?”

  “Not to a damn coyote.”

  “You think she was bred by a coyote?”

  “I could hear them howling, and when I went out to bring Queenie in, I found her rope had been bitten clear through.” Marlene went on to explain how she had just shelled out good money to fix Queenie up with a pure-blood rotty male, and the stud fee wasn’t refundable just because Queenie had hooked up with a no-good-thieving lowlife who wasn’t even from the same subspecies. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, because I wasn’t sure whether Marlene was talking to me or her dog, or both.

  And then it wasn’t amusing anymore, because Queenie started to whimper. She gave Marlene a particularly pathetic look, equal parts hurt and confusion. It probably affected me more than it should have, because I’d worn that look myself for the better part of a year, while my ex-husband criticized and cheated and infected me with a little something he’d picked up in the Carpathian mountains.

  I suppose I hadn’t been much savvier than Queenie, who didn’t understand what she’d done wrong by following her instincts, and certainly couldn’t make the connection between that long-forgotten afternoon with Mr. Wile E. Coyote and her owner’s current cold disapproval. I ran my hand over the short, filthy black fur on Queenie’s thick neck. It struck me that a woman who had time to apply little flower decals to the back of each nail ought to be able to hose off her dog before bringing her into the vet. I wondered if Marlene had been neglecting her dog in other ways as well.

  I was still crouched down next to Queenie, but I’d stopped petting her for a moment. She nudged me with her tan and black muzzle, then pressed her full weight against my shoulder and arm, knocking me back on my heels. Like a lot of big dogs, rottweilers have an inbred desire to lean on the unwary. “You’re a good girl,” I told her.

  Then, before Marlene could disagree with this diagnosis, I added my medical opinion: “She feels like she’s about two months along.”

  “Damn. I’d meant to come by a few weeks ago, but I just couldn’t find the time. Well, nothing else for it. How long will it take for you to clean her out?”

  I straightened up so that I could look Marlene in the eye, trying to decide how to respond. I had terminated animal pregnancies before, usually with a morning-after pill or hormone injection. Sometimes the mother is too small or too young to whelp a litter successfully. At other times, I had performed the procedure because there were too many unwanted puppies and kittens in the world, and the world isn’t kind to the unwanted. Nobody picketed the clinic or called me a killer: When it comes to veterinary medicine, the controversial is commonplace.

  But like most vets, I have my own moral code. I don’t believe in performing euthanasia on animals that aren’t incurable and in pain. I’m sorry you’re moving and can’t find a good home for Captain, but that’s not really sufficient cause to kill a perfectly good young dog whose only crime is being too big for your new apartment.

  I don’t dock the ears or tails of puppies, because I consider it mutilation, pure and simple. I don’t declaw cats until I explain that I’m basically amputating finger bones. And I do not abort puppies that are already viable outside the womb.

  “The problem here,” I said, “is that a dog’s gestational period is usually around sixty-three days …” I trailed off, managing not to add as you should know, since you were planning on breeding Queenie.

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Well, it’s just a bit late to do it now. Queenie’s due in about a week.”

  Marlene gave an exasperated huff. “Damn it.”

  “I’m sorry, but if you need help with the whelping or placing the puppies in good homes …”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Marlene snapped a leash onto Queenie’s collar. “How much do I owe you?”

  I looked back over at Queenie, who had the kind of broad, large-muzzled face that a lot of people consider frightening, but who struck me as a big, genial barmaid of a girl. “What are you planning on doing with the litter?”

  Marlene gave me a cold, hard look. “Since you won’t help, I’ll have to deal with it on my own, won’t I?”

  Queenie gave two quick thumps with her blunt stub of a tail, probably eager to be on her way outside, where the air was cool and the newly melted snow had left the ground covered with a smorgasbord of fascinating scents. I imagined the good-natured rottweiler giving birth, then lying back trustingly as her pups were taken from her one by one. Marlene would probably worry more about damaging her nails than any possible suffering as she dropped the pups into a sack and then deposited them in a Dumpster.

  I took a deep breath. “Wait a second, Marlene.” She paused in the act of rummaging through her purse, looking up with fake eyelashes and real animosity. But then I didn’t know how to continue.

  Back at the Animal Medical Institute, I had a coworker
named Lilliana who could gently steer a person toward a different decision. I lack that kind of finesse. I was aware that I was probably giving Marlene what my mother calls my disapproving librarian glare, and I tried to imagine what Lilliana would have said.

  “Are you possibly considering … disposing of the puppies yourself? Because I need to tell you that it’s illegal to kill them.” Oh, yes, that was wonderfully diplomatic.

  Marlene’s lip curled. “Weren’t you listening to me? She’s going to have a litter of coydogs. They’ll be bigger and stronger than coyotes, and they won’t be scared of people. But they’ll have all their father’s sneaky hunting instincts. You can’t give a coydog up for adoption.” Marlene snapped her purse shut, clearly deciding I had not provided satisfactory service and was therefore not deserving of remuneration. “You want to adopt out an enormous half-breed coyote so he can chew up some unsuspecting kid? Fine. But I’m sure as hell not going to be a party to it.”

  The growl that rumbled out of my chest shocked all three of us. I saw Marlene’s eyes widen as she clutched her purse with both hands, trying to back away. Gentle Queenie had gone stiff-legged in front of her owner, her muzzle wrinkling in warning.