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“No shit,” I agreed. “But it doesn’t change the fact that I need to know what he knows.”
Elliot made a humming thinking sound. “I don’t know, Val. Get a vet to do a general checkup and run a tox screen? If it’s trauma, though, you’re going to need a shrink who specializes in shifters.”
“I don’t think it is,” I told him. “We have a second shifter—well,hada second one, he’s dead now—who also couldn’t shift.”
“Then you’re going to need a vet who specializes in shifters. Or a chemist.”
“I don’t suppose you have any recs for me on that?”
“Not in your state,” came his response.
“Well, much as I love you, El, I can’t just bring doggo here back to Wisconsin just for a vet visit.”
He chuckled at that. “You’re no fun, Val. I want to meet your new friend.”
I snorted. “Unless you’re planning a sudden vacation down here that I don’t know about, I’m not pegging that as likely. And I still have to solve this fucking mess.”
“Too bad. You need more shifters in your life.”
“Ha. You still need to come out and meet Doc and Ward, you know.”
“So you keep saying.”
We talked for the rest of the time on my pizza timer, and then I let Elliot go do whatever he’d been doing when I called him. El was more than just a carpenter—he was a master woodworker and made enough money to get by selling his pieces at fairs and festivals, along with the occasional fine art gallery piece.
I really did miss him, though. We’d spent nearly thirty years of our lives together before I went and got myself kicked off the Milwaukee force by growing pointed ears. But I just couldn’t make myself give up the badge. So when I had the chance to keep doing it, even halfway across the country, I’d had to take it.
That said, there were more and more days recently when I wondered if that hadn’t been a bad choice.
I split the pizzas with my not-so-furry friend, cutting his half into smaller bites, which he happily gobbled up off a plate I set on the floor as I put in two more. One frozen pizza wasn’t enough for me, and, if the speed at which the damn dog was inhaling his, one wasn’t enough for him, either.
Just to make the whole thing a bit less undignified—or equally undignified, at any rate—I sat on the floor next to him, leaning back against the couch and eating my own pizza off a plate on the floor.
Then I put on my big-boy pants and called Ward.
* * *
Ward had askedme the one question I really hadn’t wanted to answer: “Why did you wait so long to ask?”
And I’d been forced to admit that I’d just sort of blocked out River Crane because I’m a heartless asshole.
Ward’s response to that, that I usually had other things on my mind, hadn’t really made me feel much better, especially since I knew he meant well. Nice people never fail to remind me, whether they mean to or not (and they usually don’t), about how very not-nice a person I actually am.
And then of course he’d just gone ahead and summoned River Crane.
She’d been dead for twenty-two years.
She’d disappeared twenty-five years ago.
They’d kept her alive for three years.
And I had no idea how the fuck I was going to tell that to Elliot. I also had no idea how I wasn’t.
Ward described to me where she was buried, very kindly ignoring all the sniffling I totally wasn’t doing on my end of the call.
The damn dog didnotignore it.
In fact, he crawled on his belly over to put his head and front paws on my thigh, looking up at me with big wet eyes that made my throat feel funny.
