Page 27 of The Dog in the Alley

But Caro had—because Caro is quite possibly insane and definitely obsessed with animals, although I would say both in a good way—already come upstairs, stolen his collar, and embroidered ANUBIS on it in metallic gold thread during her shift.

Dispatchers talk a lot, but they don’t have a lot to do with their hands, apparently. Caro liked to embroider. She makes little name-samplers for everyone in the department with a desk, and God help you if you ‘lose’ them. Mine, of course, said HART over the background of a heart, but she at least had the good taste to make it an actual organ, not a little icon, and put antlers on it.

Like I said, the good kind of insane.

I’d also purchased a second doggy bed and a set of bowls so I didn’t have to haul a bed to and from work and had somewhere to put food and water next to my desk. At home, I fed him on actual dishes, since I figured pretending to be a real dog for most of the day was enough indignity and offering plates was the fucking least I could do to offset it.

I also let him sit on the furniture as much as he wanted. Again, because if he was going to be stuck as a dog, I could at least give him the courtesy of letting him sit where the fuck he wanted—doggy bed, people bed, or couch.

He slept on my bed, which I was actually getting used to, although it weirded me out a little that I was getting used to it. Otherwise, whether he was feeling the dog bed or the couch seemed to vary.

I wasn’t gonna be judgmental.

I was starting to get judgmental about my coworkers, Caro aside. Okay.Morejudgmental. What can I say? I’m a judgy person.

People kept telling me to stop feeding Anubis people food. And yes, okay, I get it. If he were an actual dog, feeding him eggrolls and cream cheese rangoon probably wouldn’t have been the best idea, especially since there were a lot of onions in those eggrolls. But I don’t tell them how to feed their pets, so they could fuck off about mine.

Who wasn’t a pet.

But I couldn’ttellanyone that.

Yesterday, I’d taken the doggo back to the vet, hoping that Zhou would be there at eight and I wouldn’t have to deal with someone else who was likely to question my sanity and make my life difficult. I’d actually contemplated waiting until midnight, but I got little enough sleep as it was, so I thought we’d risk it.

Zhou been there, although not alone this time. There were a couple patients’ owners waiting in the lobby, and there had been both a technician and another vet—the tech was human, but the other vet was definitely a shifter.

His eyes had gone wide and he’d drawn a breath to say something—probably to call me a dumbass—when Zhou had swept in, putting his hand on the other man’s arm. “Ah, Detective Hart. I hope there isn’t a problem with our friend here?”

The shifter vet’s dark eyes had glanced over at Zhou, then he’d smiled at me, the dark skin around his eyes crinkling with the expression above his surgical mask. I smiled back, then turned to the vampire as the shifter moved over to another patient and its owner.

“He seems to be doing pretty good with the leg, but— Can we take this to a room?” I asked the vampire.

“Of course.” Zhou led us back, Anubis hobbling gamely along beside me, the leash-for-show slack between us.

Once the door was closed, I turned to the vet. “I need this to not leave the room,” I began.

Zhou’s dark eyebrows rose over his dark blood-colored eyes. “If it does not endanger any of my patients, that’s fine. But if something you tell me might help to keep them safe, I make no promises.”

I thought about it. “Fair,” I conceded. “Will you at least keep it as on the down-low as you can?”

He gave a sharp nod.

“Okay.” I heaved out a breath. Anubis looked up at me and let out a whine. “Yeah, bud, I know. I’m not big on sharing.” Then I looked up at the vampire. “Someone is hunting shifters.”

“You said as much the other night,” he replied, implacable.

“Yeah. Well. We’ve found the rest who were with him. They… didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

I nodded once. “Well, we spoke to them—”

“I thought you said they were deceased?”

“I know a guy.”

Zhou’s eyebrows went up.

“He’s a medium,” I explained. “He talked to one of the others who was a wolf shifter, and that guy talked about not beingableto shift back out. Not that he didn’t want to, but hecouldn’t. I want you to check anything you can think of—illnesses, drugs, whatever—that would cause that. Because I’m starting to think my friend here can’t shift, either.”

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