“I had a long, miserable morning. I didn’t get much sleep today.” I risked scratching Bonnie behind her ear when I spotted her lip still quivering in silent warning at Midas. “I’m sorry if me trying to be funny before I’ve had my morning café mocha came off as offensive. I didn’t mean anything by it. I know Bonnie is a person, even if she’s a four-legged person at the moment.”
Goddess, someone needed to shove something in my mouth to shut me up. Preferably some form of chocolate.
“Bonnie is special,” Midas said gruffly, reining in the temper I excelled at provoking in him. “It’s my understanding you’re aware how special, so you’ll grasp that allowances must be made.”
“While it’s light-years beyond cool I have an actual fae in my apartment, it’s also illegal for necromancers, such as myself, to fraternize with them. Ignoring that, I can’t afford to sit on my hands until she irons out her kinks.” I checked my phone and grimaced. “I have a meeting with Bishop in an hour. Can you resolve this by then?”
“Are you a cat person or a dog person?”
“I don’t know.” Most Low Society necromancers performed no magic, so we required no familiars. “I’ve never had a pet.” I lifted a finger. “Or a sentient not-pet-friend-woman-person.” I pointed at him. “Don’t give me that squinty-eyed look, mister. I’m trying here. This is as good as it gets without caffeine.”
A twitch in his cheek below his right eye left me unsure if he was smothering a laugh or seconds away from a stroke.
“Bonnie.” He kept his voice firm but polite. “You have two choices. You can shift and come to work with me, or you can glamour yourself and go to work with Hadley.”
She whined at me, soft, pathetic noises, and her eyes glimmered, huge and impossibly liquid.
Basically, she dialed her pouting before bed up ten degrees. She might not be an actual dog, but she knew how to make the schtick work with a sucker like me.
“Fine.” I exhaled through my teeth. “How does glamour work?”
“Magic,” he said, and this time I knew he was laughing at me.
“Can we get this pony-sized dog show on the road?” I started tapping my foot. “Bishop is waiting.”
“Pick a form that won’t be out of place in a city,” he told her. “A dog is more practical if you’re dead set on patrolling with Hadley.”
Bonnie plunked on her butt, the claws on her front paws flexing like fingernails drumming, and then her outline shimmered and shrank.
“What is that?” The snow-white breadbox on knobby knees barked at me, a surprisingly big sound out of such a small body. “Wait. It’s that meme dog. Not Doge, that Shiba something. Shiba Inu? That’s a breed, right? This is…” I snapped my fingers. “A corgi. Yeah. That’s it.”
“A Pembroke Welsh Corgi.” He examined her with interest. “Look at her tail.”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“Exactly.”
“Why didn’t she do this last night?” I turned the question on her. “Why didn’t you do this last night?”
The much smaller dog, about twenty-five pounds’ worth, lolled her pink tongue at me.
“Bonnie hasn’t shifted since she joined the pack,” he answered for her, confirming my earlier assumption. “Ford told me she shifted to protect you. When she got stuck, it must have panicked her. She wouldn’t have risked compounding the problem by casting magic she might have trouble controlling.”
“The city has leash laws,” I reminded him. “She’ll have to wear a collar or harness and a leash.”
With a twitch of her huge ears, she manifested both and wagged her nub, mostly her butt, with pride.
Since I wasn’t getting out of this, I accepted my fate. “What do I feed her?”
“Human food is fine.” He dragged a hand over his mouth. “Hopefully she won’t stay like this for long.”
“Are you laughing?” I planted my feet and crossed my arms over my chest. “This is funny to you?”
The tempting curve of his lips thinned, but a gleam sparked in his eyes, which I shouldn’t have noticed but did. Clearly I hadn’t learned my lesson from our earlier clash of wills.
“No,” he said with false solemnity that hinted at a wicked sense of humor.
Bonnie woofed at Midas, proving neither of us believed him.
“Ford’s in the lobby.” He braced his hand on the doorframe, rubbed a scuff with his thumb. “He brought a casserole from his mom for the Randalls.” He gouged the wood with his fingernail. “He’s waiting on you.”
“He told me Mrs. Randall babysat two of his older brothers.”
“She has many children in the pack, but Shonda was the only one she birthed.”
They say it takes a village—or a pack—to raise a child. “He okay to work this case?”
“His brothers need the closure.”
That explained why Midas volunteered him. The buffer of years between Ford, his siblings, and Mrs. Randall also clued me in on how he could cut up with me without breaking down over her daughter’s death.
Curious despite myself, I found myself asking, “Does Ford usually cope through humor and flirtation?”
“For as long as I’ve known him.” Midas rolled his shoulders. “We all grieve in our own ways.”
During the past year I had spent enough time around sentinels, most employed with the Atlanta Police Department as a cover, to know he was right. Laughter and jokes were popular coping mechanisms. Alcohol was too. Drugs. Sex. Other vices. Humor was the least harmful, in my opinion, even if the release valve of laughter often got tutted as being in poor taste.
Stretching until my shoulders popped, I yawned hugely. “Tell Ford I’ll meet him downstairs?”
Midas noticed the bare strip of skin exposed between my pajama top and shorts, shut his eyes on an exhale, then turned his head. “What happened to using the fire escape?”
“First Snowball couldn’t fit through the window, and now she can’t manage the stairs. Look at those stumpy legs. Cute? Yes. Practical? No.”
“Snowball?” he echoed. “Her fae name can’t be pronounced by human—or necromantic—tongues, but you’re going to call her Snowball?”
“Between us,” I mock whispered behind my hand, “I hope the nickname shames her back onto two legs.”
Snowball flattened her ears against her skull, but it was no use. The fluffy butt ruined the stone-cold-killer vibe.
“I could call her Bonnie,” I told him, “which I assume is the name she chose for herself, not one you gave her, but it’s safer if people think I adopted a dog. Snowball will draw less attention, especially from the pack, who might notice me naming a dog after a woman I met just yesterday—today?—who has coincidentally vanished.” I gave her a reassuring pat. “The fewer people who know what she is, what she can do, the better.”
“I’m starting to see why Bonnie opened up to you.”
“Thanks to you, Ford has adopted me, and now I’ve adopted her. Maybe it’s contagious. Don’t come any closer, or you might get adopted too.”