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“If you’re not asking about coffee and you don’t have to pee, I don’t know what you need,” I told him. We had a code for when he needed to go outside, and it involved pointed looks at the door. He wasn’t doing that.
He hobbled—less awkwardly than he used to—over and leaned against my leg.
Fuck all if I knew what that meant.
“I really wish you could just shift, doggo. It would make talking to you a fuckton easier.”
The next whine made sense to me—Me, too.
The coffee maker let out the gasping wheeze that signified it was out of water in its reservoir, and I went about fixing coffee for both of us, setting Anubis’s on the floor before picking up my own for a sip.
“What do you think about a nice breakfast?” I asked the dog.
He looked up and chuffed at me, coffee dripping off his hairless chin.
“Eggs Benedict?”
I got a head cocked to the side and a whine.
“You don’t know what that is?” Who the fuck doesn’t know what eggs Benny is?
Chuff.
“It’s, uh, poached eggs on English muffins with hollandaise sauce. I do mine with fried tomato slices and hashbrowns.”
I got a full-on bark at that, and laughed, a little startled.
“Shit, doggo. I’m going to take that as a very enthusiastic yes.”
Chuff.
* * *
The plateI’d put on the floor had been licked so damn clean it didn’t look like it needed to get washed—but there was no fucking way I was going to eat off a plate that had been licked clean by a dog, shifter or not, without that bastard going through the sanitize cycle in the dishwasher. Even shifter animals licked their own balls.
I’ve seen it.
Andfuckno.
I’m sure I was making a face as I put the plate in the dishwasher, and I know the damn dog was grinning like an absolute self-satisfied twit, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth, because I looked over at him as I picked up the plate between two fingers.
I had just finished cleaning up when my phone rang.
“Oh, fuck off,” I muttered at it.
I didn’t recognize the number, although it was local.
“Detective Hart,” I answered it.
“Um. Detective. This is, uh, Dr. Niles at Broad Street All-Night Veterinary Practice. I’ve, um, got some blood work tests for a, uh, Anubis?”
Zhou must have passed off the actual lab work to the daytime staff. “Yeah?”
“Well, his kidneys look fine, but… Um. Sir, have… Has your dog gotten into your medication at all?”
“Not unless he’s learned how to open a medicine cabinet and operate child safety caps.” At least his kidneys were okay. Not that it got us any closer to answers on what the fuck was going on, but at least he wasn’t sick.
“It’s a serious question, sir.” Niles did not sound amused.
