A Feral Darkness (33 page)

      
"I haven't eaten," he said, when she looked at him. "And I don't imagine you have, either. Unless you got something seriously nasty from the hospital vending machine."

      
She shook her head, sinking into a sudden deep fatigue, and numbly offered up a food order when they reached the buzzy and incomprehensible speaker. She didn't argue when he paid for it, and she sat with their dinners warming her lap until he pulled up the long hill of her driveway fifteen minutes later. Emily had left the porch light on for her, bless her.

      
He pulled his burgers—two of them, and large fries to boot—from the bag and looked at where she sat gazing stupidly out the window. "Brenna," he said, "I'm not
everywhere
. Just where I want to be."

      
And that, she knew, should probably have some significance to her, something more than just the words themselves. But she clutched the bag and slid down to the ground from the high vehicle, muttering her thanks.

      
He smiled a crooked smile at her, suddenly looking just as tired as she felt. "Get some sleep. I'll pick you up tomorrow morning."

~~~

She woke up late the next day, alarm unset. She had just enough time to brush her hair out and rebraid it, using a surfeit of hair bands to double it up where she'd gotten sloppy, and to slap a toothbrush around in her mouth. She threw an apple and some crackers into a old lunch tote, spilled food into Druid's dish, and leashed him up to come along even as he ate—he wouldn't have enough outside time to follow it up with an entire day in the crate. She then made the mistake of donning her vest with the tote handles clenched in her teeth and the leash in one hand, and managed to get her hair caught in both the leash and the vest. As Masera's SUV pulled up the driveway, she hopped out to meet it on one foot, still pulling her sneaker on the other and leaving Druid in a quandary over how to heel to such a gait.

      
Masera was still not a morning person.

      
That was fine; she didn't feel much like talking, either. She ate her apple and gave Druid the core, which he seemed to find a novel experience and worth much extra drooling and excessive chewing. The Pets! parking lot was empty aside from her truck—not unusual for the managers to push the opening to the limit, never seeming to understand that she needed time to prep for the day's work
before
the first customer got there—but she thanked Masera and bailed out anyway, glad enough for the time to walk Druid along the grassy fringes of the parking lot. He didn't show any signs of flipping out against the lead; he'd been unconcerned about the parking lot since that first day.

      
Soon enough she was wishing she'd grabbed her sweatshirt, too, for the clear day wasn't nearly as warm as it looked. And looking at the truck, canted sideways with both driver's side tires slashed, she felt less and less confident about being here alone. So she jogged up and down the edge of the building until Roger finally pulled into the lot, and fell in behind him as he fumbled with his impressive set of keys and eventually got the door open, saying nothing much to her at all.

      
Roger was not a morning person, either.

      
Then, suddenly wary of what she might find, Brenna hesitated before the grooming room. The glass was clean; not even a smear where yesterday it had been splattered and dripping. But then, all the managers had always insisted on impeccable glass at the store front. Brenna had spent many a slow winter day cleaning the double set of airlocked doors.

      
She pushed her way inside, and had to concede that at first glance, someone had tried, truly tried, to clean and neaten. Nothing to be done about the mess of a schedule book; she grabbed a sheet of notepaper, also stained but serviceable, and started the list of clean-up chores.
New schedual
—darn, and cross-out—
new schedule book
. When she looked up, her first customer was on his way in. Chubby little Bichon Frise—
Bitchin' Frizzy
she and Elizabeth called the crabby members of the breed, of which there fortunately weren't many—and Brenna could tell at a glance that no matter what the owner wanted, there were too many mats in that soft coat to do anything but a cut down.

      
Well, he'd dry fast.

      
DaNise came in an hour after Brenna arrived, looking tired, glancing as carefully around as Brenna herself had done. "Not too bad," she said, although Brenna was already discovering sneaky stray blots and spatters—on the phone, along the edge of the counter. Inevitable, she supposed; they'd probably be discovering the widely strewn blood evidence of the attack for weeks.

      
"Glad you think so," Brenna said. "Two baths waiting for you, and the Bichon should be about dry."

      
DaNise took a deep breath. "Here goes," she said, and disappeared into the tub room.

      
Here goes
just about set the tone for the day. Non-stop. Barely enough time for Brenna to call Elizabeth's cohabitating boyfriend and learn that Elizabeth was sleeping off painkillers but that the doctors were worried only about her thumb, which had been bitten into the joint, and that while she'd be off grooming for several weeks, she could come man the counter a week or so earlier. After that it seemed like just about everyone in the store had time to drift through the grooming room and ask about the incident. Roger stopped by to ask a few pertinent questions, but Brenna gathered that he'd shown up the day before while the police were there, and pretty much knew the details.

      
If he called to ask about Elizabeth, she didn't know about it. He didn't ask
her
, that's all she knew.

      
Near the end of her shift, she remembered what else she'd meant to do the day before, which was to call Emily and sic her and the girls on Mars Nodens through the Internet.

      
Which is what she was doing when Sammi came into the store, her face grim for the second time Brenna had ever seen; Brenna put the phone to her shoulder and said a wary "What?" by way of greeting.

      
"It's not on the news yet," Sammi said. "They're keeping it out until they can learn more."

      
"
What
?" Brenna said, not willing to wait even the moment it took Sammi to frame her next words.

      
"Rabies." Breathing even more heavily than normal in her upset, she repeated, "Rabies. The man who took one of the dogs Janean rescued. He's dead."

      
Brenna didn't even ask. Of course the dog had been through quarantine or had its shots on record. Of course this shouldn't have happened.

      
And then, with Sammi waiting on the other side of the counter and Emily tucked away on her shoulder, her phone-remote voice saying
what do you mean, rabies?
, Brenna knelt to where Druid sat at her feet and ran her finger around his collar until she found the tag she'd cleaned what seemed like ages ago.
Rabies I/II
, it said.

      
Druid whined uneasily, looking at her with earnest love-me eyes, his speckle-backed ears dropped back against his head in worry and in acceptance of her hands. A second whine, a thinking-too-hard whine, and Brenna's world whirled slightly, with someone else's words in her head.

      
Shedding rabies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CHAPTER 13
THURISAZ
Foreseeing
If Roger had had his way, Brenna wouldn't have gotten days off at all. But for now, she had considerable power with Pets!—if she walked, the store would be without a groomer. If she left on bad terms, she could worsen Pets!' already tenuous reputation in the grooming community. So today she was out and about, decompressing. Not working.

      
Most groomers preferred the uncertain hours and higher wages per hour than the Pets! unusual retail schedule structure. Most preferred having more control over how they charged for their extra work, or for hazard duty with rough animals. Brenna had once opted for the health insurance that a Pets! position provided, and now found herself staying through inertia.

      
Or misguided loyalty.

      
Be loyal to
Brenna
,
she thought, jamming her backpack full of books outside the Parma Hill library. Paperbacks, mostly, because she could fit in more of them in one trip, except for one hardcover thriller she'd snatched from the
new
rack and couldn't resist. As if she needed any more thrills in her life right now.

      
The day—not her usual day off but nothing was
usual
of late—had been too gorgeous to waste. After an early trip to the spring with Druid, some target practice and a little much needed, old-fashioned rug beating, Brenna had pulled her bike out of the barn, topped off the air in the tires, and headed the handful of miles into town. She'd had books to return, but mostly it was just for the ride. The sun on her shoulders, the breeze in her face, the pleasant burn of active muscles in her legs. Of course, with her hair bundled up to avoid the bicycle spokes, her jeans taped with duct tape to stay out of the chain, her vented helmet, and the dorky sunglasses that fit her and the helmet both, she was also the ultimate in biking geekery.

      
As a glance at her ghostly reflection in the slightly smoked library glass door panels confirmed.
You've definitely got it
, she told herself in mock solemnity, but refrained from giving herself a thumbs up. That would be too weird.

      
And there were already enough weird things going on in her life.

      
She swung a leg over the bike and wove her way through small town traffic, flipping to a higher gear once she reached the shoulder of a more open road. The later part of the afternoon was ahead of her...maybe she'd get to some of those cleaning chores yet. Or maybe she'd finally put that new dryer vent hose in place. Or what the heck, maybe she'd sit down in the hammock with a good heavy quilt and read a book.

      
A crossroad presented itself; a different way home, but not much longer. On an impulse, she cruised around the corner.

      
Or maybe not much of an impulse after all. For there, bright white in the sunshine, the church cried out for her attention. And she thought of what Masera had once said, that the Christian philosophy wasn't contradictory to the idea that Mars Nodens lived in her back yard. Well, maybe that's not exactly what he'd said. Something about them not being mutually exclusive. Brenna stopped pedaling, straightening, leaving the bike to follow the road on its own.

      
Reverend Dayne's car sat in the incomplete spring shade of the single mature tree at the edge of the parking lot. Brenna's bike seemed to make the decision for her, wobbling slightly in its trajectory. She leaned over the handlebars and swooped into the parking lot, leaving the bike unlocked and the backpack leaning by the front wheel with her helmet propped against it.

      
She found Dayne in his office, absorbed in notations.
Writing his sermon
, she thought with guilt, knowing she was interrupting, suddenly not so sure this was a good idea anyway. And then he flipped a page and she realized he was looking at a television guide. Perversely, the discovery took away her nerves; she stifled a grin and cleared her throat, leaning in the doorway. Abruptly aware that her dorky sunglasses hung from her fingers, she jammed the earpiece into her back pocket.