A Feral Darkness (36 page)

      
Except that Brenna knew what Sammi knew, which was that the dog had gone through quarantine, and still hadn't been sick at the time of its new owner's death. The Center for Disease Control knew it, too, because they had copies of all of PePP's records. But no one said anything about that part of it anymore, not even Sammi.
Especially
not Sammi.

      
A silence that said more to Brenna than any amount of normal questioning.

~~~

The day before Elizabeth's return, in the morning lull immediately after Brenna opened and with Gary in the back doing mysterious manager-type things, Brenna found herself savoring the quiet half-hour before the first scheduled customer, lining the day's index cards out on the lower counter and trying to come up with the best strategy for getting through them all. DaNise could brush and prep this one out, she decided, putting a card to the side, and could be counted on to bathe several medium-sized mixed-breeds without help or intervention; those cards went to the side as well.

      
She was startled when the door to the parking lot yanked open—not a customer moseying in, but someone with great intent and no time to waste; Brenna could tell that even before she looked up. Still, she was entirely surprised to find Mickey there, looming over her from the other side of the counter. Not as though he had any particular intent to threaten her, but like it was simply his default mode—although in the first instant, Brenna couldn't be sure just why he was there—for work related reasons or because of Parker—and her confusion must have shown on her face.

      
Mickey didn't seem to care or even to notice. "I'm outta here," he said, rapping out the words. "You hang with Gil, I've seen you. Tell him this for me—" and Brenna almost lost his next words, so unused to thinking of Masera as Gil that she couldn't understand who Mickey meant—"Tell him it's been moved to Thursdays, same time."

      
"Tell him what?" Brenna said, still unable to understand what the whole thing was about.

      
"Heard me, didn't you? Tell him that. You don't gotta understand." He glanced inside and must have seen something he didn't like, because he reached for the exterior door. "You're his friend, you tell him that. Otherwise, like I said, he could be sorry. And you tell him to keep his mouth shut if he's stupid enough to get in that position."

      
And out he went, not straight out to the parking lot but directly off to the side; an instant later something out of sight peeled rubber—he'd either left the vehicle running or he'd jumped into the passenger side.

      
Before she'd even had time to process what had just happened, Gary came through the storeside door at what could only be called a run. "Was that Mickey Hefler?" he demanded.

      
Bemused, Brenna nodded; that was all for which she had time.

      
"What'd he want?"

      
That
, she didn't answer right away, because Masera's business was none of Gary's business, no matter how little sense any of it made. "He asked me to deliver a message, that's all. What's the big deal?"

      
"What's the message?"

      
"Well," Brenna said, carefully neutral in tone, "it wasn't for you." Then, when she saw his response building, she shrugged. "It didn't involve the store," she said, in case that's what he wanted to hear, and then repeated, "What's the big deal?"

      
"There's been food product missing over the last couple of months," Gary said, and in that moment went from about to pull a manager-bully moment on her to venting
to
her. "We had a couple of stock boys in mind for it. Mickey was at the top of the list."

      
"I get the feeling someone tipped him," Brenna said, finding herself irritated to be holding a message from Mickey-in-trouble to Masera-whose-brother-suspected-he-was-in-trouble. "I don't think he's coming back."

      
Gary stared at the empty parking lot for a moment and made a frustrated growling noise in his throat. "Fine," he said. "I'll bet whoever tipped him is still here." He went back into manager mode and gave Brenna a pointed look. "Don't tell anyone else about this."

      
Well, no. Except for Masera, who'd get his message when she saw him, along with a pointed question or two. But Brenna didn't remind Gary of that detail, just nodded. "Okay," she said, and went back to her schedule work.

      
Even with the odd Mickey incident, in the end the weeks added up to a seasonal normalcy, and Brenna allowed herself to be distracted by the normal routines of life, to fall into complacence. The day Elizabeth came back to work, dragging and grouching about the preventative antibiotics she'd been on, Brenna wasn't even thinking about the darkness or Druid's fits or even the way Masera had of catching her eye from the sales floor for just a moment of contact and the briefest of smiles, though she hadn't seen him for days. She was just working.

      
"The Damned Cat went home, I heard," she said, coming out to take a breather and assess the schedule for the rest of the day. Elizabeth had come in hours after Brenna and DaNise, once they were immersed in work and could use her help—handling the phone when things got crazy, intercepting the customer interaction, coming back to distract and beguile the wiggly dogs so Brenna could work quickly. In general, making Brenna's life a whole lot easier.

      
"I guess so," Elizabeth said. "No surprise. The damned Damned Cat ought to have been put down, if you ask me."

      
"You've got my vote there," Brenna said, which was all she
could
say without explaining about the darkness she was so sure had been involved. "Who's coming in next?"

      
Elizabeth smiled a wicked little smile, but her eyes looked tired. "Jeremy Cocker. In for a summer cut-down."

      
Brenna made a face. Nasty little biter, Jeremy was. Although...she'd noticed of late, that some of the less irredeemable dogs—the ones who simply hadn't ever been told they weren't the boss of the world—weren't as much of a problem for her as usual. As though she were somehow regaining a little of the feel she'd had as a child, the ability to touch them deeper than words or human dominance role-playing ever could.

      
Maybe Jeremy wouldn't be so bad today.

      
Though Elizabeth didn't look so good. Brenna said, "You okay? Maybe a full day the first time back was too much."

      
Rubbing her throat, Elizabeth scoffed. "A full day of
what
? Answering the phone? Copying over the customer cards that got too nasty?" She splayed her fingers. None of them were splinted anymore, but several were Vetrapped, and very few of them seemed to bend properly; they all bore scabs surrounded by angry red and shiny flesh. "I suppose I should feel lucky I'm doing this much so soon. It's those damned pills."

      
"Damned Cat's Damned Pills," Brenna muttered nonsensically.

      
Elizabeth burst into laughter; she shook her head when Brenna glanced at her, surprised. "You've been living alone too long, Bren," she said, reaching for her sports water bottle and rubbing her throat as she swallowed. Again.

      
Something in the oft-repeated gesture rooted Brenna to the spot, giving her chills from the base of her skull all the way to her heels.

      
Rabies. Wildly known as hydrophobia because its victims
couldn't swallow
. And the timing, though on the short end, was still right. From five days to as long as a year, with a couple of months average before the symptoms showed up. And then flu-like symptoms for a week. More or less. And then the classic symptoms. The swallowing. The thickened saliva. Even as Brenna watched, Elizabeth took another sip, swished her mouth, and laboriously swallowed.

      
Ridiculous. The cat had had its shots, had gone through quarantine and returned home.

      
So had the dog Janean rescued.

      
She opened her mouth to say something and nothing came out. What could she possibly say? A suggestion that Elizabeth get checked for a disease she'd been inoculated against, a disease that meant certain death once it became symptomatic?

      
And yet Brenna had no doubt. And even as she couldn't bring herself to say anything, she couldn't stand the thought of one more moment of
not
saying anything, of watching Elizabeth struggle to swallow.

      
"Take Jerome in if he gets here, will you?" she said suddenly, her voice sounding a false note in her ears. "If I don't take this chance to run to the restroom, I might explode before I get another."

      
"Go," Elizabeth said, waving an imperious hand as she made some final notes on the card for the young Springer Spaniel Brenna had in the back.

      
Brenna fled to the bathroom at the rear of the store, beyond the looming shelves piled high with dog food. Slamming the stall closed behind her, she leaned against the door, covering her face with her hands, pressing her fingers against the instant sting of tears in her eyes.
Stop it,
she told herself.
Stop it, stop it,
stop it
. You can't be so sure. You're being ridiculous.

      
She grabbed a wad of tissue, blew her nose, and made use of the facility. Stalling for time. By the time she reached the mirror at the sink, her nose was only mildly outrageous in its redness, and her cheeks residually shiny. Splashing cold water on her face helped; she blotted it dry with a rough paper towel and decided she could pass for over-tired, which she was.

      
But when she left the bathroom, she found she couldn't bring herself to return to the grooming room. She found herself pacing back and forth in the short hallway that held the bathroom alcove, not even mindful of the fact that Roger's office was at the other end of it and that of all things, she didn't want to have to explain herself to him.

      
Masera's voice came to her ear, a cadenced rise and fall as he spoke to one of his clients, his words not audible but the effect somehow making his accent more obvious to her. Without even thinking, she followed it, bursting around the corner of a tall shelf and surprising them all when she nearly plowed through Masera, customer, and dog—a chronically happy Golden Retriever who flung himself at her with protestations of love.

      
"
That's
what I'm talking about," the customer said, as the dog planted one big foot in Brenna's gut and the other jammed her breast. Modest though it was, that body part still knew insult when it landed.

      
"My fault," Brenna said, trying not to squeak. "I wasn't watching—"

      
But Masera had intercepted the leash and stepped on it, calmly asking the dog to go to a down position, removing his foot and repeating until the dog, all but bursting from its skin with the desire to express its exuberance to the world, stayed down. "That's what
I'm
talking about," he said. "Every time he gets out of hand. And you might want to think about making sure his food doesn't include corn. It's like feeding sugar to a child before bedtime."

      
The middle-aged man gave him a dubious look, running a hand over his bald pate as though to smooth hair that was no longer there—or maybe to check just in case something had grown back. "Corn? It matters?"

      
"It matters," Masera assured him, and stepped back just enough to make it clear he was moving on. "See you in class."

      
"Half an hour," the man said, perhaps confirming that he indeed knew when the class started. As soon as he stepped out, the Golden sprang to his feet and bounded away, taking the man with him.