Page 106 of The Dog in the Alley

In another bowl, I’d already mixed more vanilla, peanut butter, egg, and sugar.

I never make plain brownies. I’ve done raspberry, cream cheese, blondie swirl, mocha, triple chocolate, German chocolate, Black Forest… This batch was going to be peanut butter swirl. Because, let’s get real, have you ever met a dog that didn’t go nuts for peanut butter?

I wasn’t a great cook—decent, sure, but not great—but I was one hell of a baker. My brownies are always perfect, myfudgebrownies are decadent and rich, my cookies the perfect softness or crunch, depending on the cookie. I haven’t had a loaf of bread fall on me in probably a decade, and my pizza crust is so damn good I always make one that’s just breadsticks.

I can even do puff pastry, although I don’t very often because it’s a bitch.

I sighed as I scraped the brownie batter out into the pan with a spatula. I wasn’t usually a stress-baker, though. I liked baking, and I tended to do it when I was happy rather than anxious or worked up. Which made baking now a little weird, because I was happy that Taavi was okay, glad we’d gotten the stupid medical dispenser out of him, and also…somethingabout the fact that he was going to move out of my apartment and probably my life in two weeks.

I hoped it wasn’t going to make the brownies taste like shit.

After carefully swirling together the brownie batter and peanut butter, I put the pan in the fridge, then went back into the living room to see what Taavi wanted for dinner.

He was asleep, his head down on crossed front paws, one ear flopped over, his breathing deep and just a little uneven. A breath in, held for a half-second, then a heavy breath out. Breath in, held, breath out.

I didn’t have the heart to wake him up just to ask about dinner.

Surprise food for him, I guess.

First day out, probably good to start with something not heavy. Totally unlike peanut butter brownies.

Oh, well. The batter would keep for a day in the fridge if I needed it to.

I put the chicken noodle soup in a saucepan to heat up—on low—and started the grilled cheese assembly line, pulling out bread and buttering one side in preparation for grilling. That finished, I went back to check on Taavi, who lifted his head when I came in.

“I put on some chicken noodle soup for you,” I told him, and his tail thumped a little. “Were you feeling up to grilled cheese and ham? Or I could just make toast…” Jesus Christ, I had to slow down. “Sorry. One at a time, right? Grilled cheese and ham?”

An enthusiastic chuff.

“You got it.”

As I turned back to the kitchen I rolled my eyes at myself.

Clearly, I wasn’t used to taking care of other people. Especially not in dog form.

Who was I kidding?

I was a complete mess because I not only didn’t know how to take care of Taavi, but now that he was going to be an independent person again, I had no idea how to relate to him. I could deal with him when he was reliant on me—which, okay, I guess he was for the next two weeks—but after that he’d…

He’d be leaving. Period.

I’d known that eventually we’d figure out how to get him out of dog form. That was inevitable. We just had an actual timeline now.

Nothing was different.

Which of course didn’t help explain why I dropped three pieces of bread—thankfully butter side up, and those were now mine, rather than Taavi’s—and burned my fingers on soup as I tried to pour it into a wide bowl to cool down and take out to my patient.

I leaned against the counter beside the sink, running my now-stinging fingertips under the faucet, scowling furiously at myself.

I was a fucking cop for fuck’s sake. I’d faced down more than one gun—from a gangster-wanna-be and a high-as-fuck druggie in Milwaukee, and from a quasi-suicidal shooter and one of my supposed colleagues here in Richmond. I’d survived a crowd full of anti-Arcanid rioters intent on beating me to death. I’d caught and interrogated murderers, rapists, robbers, and pimps.

But ask me to bring some goddamn fucking dinner to a shifter in dog form that I—

That I what?

Well, that was the fucking magical question, now wasn’t it?

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