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“He’s been with you for five days?”
“Yep.”
Raj shook his head. “Then drugs should be out of his system. Should have been within twenty-four to thirty-two hours, at most. Even with a heavy dose.”
Shifters had even faster metabolisms than I did.
“Aren’t there some drugs that stay in the system longer?”
“Not this much longer,” Raj replied. “Especially not without any symptoms of withdrawal.”
I didn’t want to ask if Raj thought Anubis was sick. First, because I didn’t want to freak the poor dog out any more than he already was. Zhou would find out soon enough, anyway. Second… I didn’t want to think about it. I also didn’t want to think aboutwhyI didn’t want to think about it.
Believe me when I say that I’m the fucking king of ignoring the elephant in the room and pretending everything’s hunky-fucking-dory. I’m from the Midwest. We do passive aggressive self-imposed ignorance like nobody else in the goddamn world.
6
I emergedfrom sleep like a diver coming up from the depths, slow and measured, the darkness behind my eyes slowly lightening as the rays of sun pushed their way through the gloom of sleep.
It was fuckinggloriousnot to be woken up by an alarm or a phone ringing.
I kept my eyes shut, enjoying the fact that I had actually slept for a full night.
A funny noise made me open my eyes and lift my head.
On the other side of the bed—taking up the whole damn thing—Anubis had stretched out, extending his front paws over his head, arching his back and flipping his head so that he looked at me upside down as his tongue hung out through a second yawn, which had been the source of the funny half-grunt, half-whine sound.
I turned my wrist over to look at the time—for the first time in I didn’t know how long, I’d slept ten fucking amazing hours. Then I rolled over to look at the dog, who was tangled up in the blanket I tucked around him each night. “Comfy?” I asked him, propping my head up on one hand.
Anubis made a funny grumbly sound, then chuffed.
I reached over and ruffled the tuft on his head.
He made another grumbly sound, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as he stretched out, his tail thumping on the covers.
He was cute enough that I seriously considered getting an actual dog for about five seconds.
And then I woke up enough to remind myself that actual dogs will absolutely shit on your floor and chew up your shoes, while shifters don’t do that because they’repeople. Unless they really hate you. Then they might do it anyway.
Which of course reminded me that this was a person I was petting, and that kinda freaked me out a little, so I got up, dragged the dog off the bed, and went to make coffee.
Coffee would make things better.
Coffee always made things better.
Not necessarilygood, mind you, butbetter.
I stood next to the gurgling coffee machine and ran a hand over my face, shifting from one foot to the other because my bare feet were chilly against the shitty linoleum floor.
The cold snap had graduated from ‘snap’ to ‘spell,’ as it had been going over a week now, and Virginia apartment buildings are not designed for sub-freezing temperatures to last longer than a couple hours. Even the goddamn walls were cold, and the floor, the water coming in through the pipes, and the air within about five feet of any window was all cooler than I wanted them to be.
I suppose I could have been halfway smart and put on socks, but the only socks I owned were either for running or work, so they didn’t provide much in the way of warmth, anyway. I rubbed at my arms, as well, since there is a window in my kitchen, and I was standing pretty close to it.
A soft whine from the entry drew my attention.
“It’s not done yet, bud.”
He tilted his head, studying me with his brown eye, and whined again.
