Page 77 of The Dog in the Alley

I shifted a little uncomfortably. I like Caro. She’s a good person, and I’d never seen any indication that she gave two shits about the shape of my ears. But I didn’t know how I felt about her actually caring about the state of my well-being.

There were a lot of people who seemed to be more interested in that lately, and I honestly didn’t know what the fuck to do with it. I was used to just doing my job and taking the shit with the sparkles, and I wasn’t used to having other people there to shovel it alongside me.

My circle of people I had to think of as ‘friends’ was expanding rapidly, and I didn’t really know what to do with that. Was I expected to do shit like learn birthdays? That wasn’t really something I’d had to do for anybody but Elliot and my parents since… Well, probably high school.

I made a mental note to try to figure out Caro’s birthday. And probably Raj’s. And maybe Mays’s. And, fuck, Ward’s and Doc’s. Thanks to DMV records, I knew Taavi’s at least. June 23.

And that made me wonder if I needed to figure out Dan Maza’s and Dani Bowman’s…

Shit.

This is why it was so much easier to just not people.

But I guess people were now a thing I had to deal with.

Taavi let out a soft bark, drawing my attention back to where Caro was watching me, her brow furrowed.

“Sorry,” I apologized, recognizing that she must have said something to me while I was completely spaced out. “It’s been a long couple of weeks.”

Caro nodded, her dangling earrings sparkling. “No kidding. I asked if you’d maybe want to come out with some of us for a drink after work—I can try to find somewhere dog-friendly.”

I blinked rapidly.

No one had invited me out for after-work drinks since I was human.

Taavi chuffed softly beside me, reminding me that it was customary to actually answer things like invitations to drinks.

“Um. Yeah. Okay.” I swallowed, trying to figure out what the fuck to do with the weird swirl of emotions surging through the back of my throat. “Thanks.”

Caro beamed at me, dark eyes dancing. “It’s just dispatchers, mostly. And Dan and Dani.”

I nodded. I could do that. I didn’t know most of the dispatchers, but they also didn’t seem to hold my pointy ears against me. And Dan and Bowman were good. I could at least talk to them.

“Great.” Caro flashed me a smile, then stood, brushing her hands against the bright yellow of her work slacks. “Tonight? Six?”

“Okay,” I agreed, a little numbly.

Taavi danced around me as I made my way to my desk, although I ignored him until I sat down.

“Would you cut it out?” I half-heartedly muttered at him, and he sat obediently in his doggy bed, but didn’t stop staring at me, tongue hanging happily out of his mouth.

I sighed.

“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled, turning on my laptop and preparing to once again dive into the horror that was the MFM files, a set of which had been copied onto my hard drive. Raj had another copy, and the original jump drive had ended up in federal evidence.

At least today I didn’t have to look at any images—I was working the IDs Ward and Ezra Getz (although mostly Ward) had pulled together, cross-referencing them against the location data from the images and the database of MFM members in the same regions. I knew Raj was doing the same thing—as, most likely, were probably at least a one or two other federal agents somewhere in the FBI.

But I was the only one who’d worked the Ordo murders, and Raj wanted to see if anything raised any extra little magical flags for me.

So far, I hadn’t found anything, but I had far too many names yet to go through.

* * *

It was pretty muchthe end of the day when I wandered back to my desk after grabbing a cup of half-decent coffee and taking Taavi out to pee to find a blinking red light on my phone indicating a voicemail.

Most people who needed me had my cell, so it was probably either a reporter or a non-urgent witness report who’d been routed through to my desk.

I hit speaker so I didn’t have to pick up the handset and punched in the voicemail code.

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