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When she frowned and kept moving the stethoscope around, Beth’s stomach did another bottom-out, like she was on a rollercoaster that was flying over a dip in its rails.
“What is it?” Wrath asked, like he’d caught the shift in the doctor’s energy.
Jane didn’t answer him. She lifted George’s jowl and peered at his gums.
They were gray.
Oh, God, Beth thought.
This wasn’t indigestion. The dog was dying.
* * *
Mortals, particularly of the human variety, existed in such a narrow bandwidth of understanding.
This was a good thing, Devina reflected as she re-formed at a secluded exterior corner of the Galleria Mall’s T-rex footprint. Such ignorance and all its blinded bliss kept nonessentials out of the way, and if things had to be done in their midst, camo and cover-up was much, much easier than dealing with supernaturals.
On that note, she brushed at her black leather pants and rearranged the form-fitting black cashmere sweater she’d changed into. Even though it was April, there was a nip in the air this morning, and besides, wearing a bustier for this investigation felt too close to the desperation that was squeezing her tits.
Squeezing not in a good way.
Glancing up, she noted the skies were laden with clouds, the sun’s warmth nowhere to be felt, the churning weather promising a cold, bracing rain.
So the vibe was right, according to her mood.
Stepping out of the shadows, she proceeded down the sidewalk, measuring the acres of empty parking lot. The Jurassic Park metaphor was apt on another level. These dying shopping centers were dinosaurs in retail fact as well as scale, their anchor stores lifting up off of the plains of concrete and rebar, floating off, some to the ether of the web, others into the purgatory of bankruptcy, many into liquidation and nonexistence.
Proof that the habit patterns of discretionary income spending could cause extinction events for whole sectors of the economy.
As she rounded the corner, she was very aware that she was attempting to distract herself with inane thoughts, and hey, that was fucking self-care, thank you very much. Just like the two guys she had gone out and fucked last night. And the eleven pints of Häagen-Dazs she had woofed back over the course of the last few hours. And the $119,863.95 she had put on her American Express black card at NeimanMarcus.com.
Not that any of that shit had helped any more than the mental chatter was. Her little lock of hair bullshit had failed as a locator.
Oh, and Love Is Blind 3 had really not helped. She’d made it through the first happy coupling-up and exploded her TV in a fit. Which had caused her to have to conjure another. Which had appeared on cue, obligingly turned itself on to cable instead of Netflix… and ultimately, thanks to a breaking news update, led her here to the mall.
Devina slowed down and regarded the busted front entrance of a Dick’s Sporting Goods store. Barricades, yellow police tape, and uniformed CPD officers had turned the crime scene into a tourist attraction, what few shoppers were coming and going stopping to stare.
Time to go to work.
Sauntering over, she caught the eyes of all of the cops, and given the way things were going for her, the fact that they clustered up against the tape to talk to her made her feel like maybe she wasn’t complete dogshit.
“Can we help—”
“—you, miss?”
“Can—”
“—we help you—”
“—miss?”
They talked over each other, each tossing out the same sentence as if it were a job requirement. Up close, they were interchangeable, all of them on the young side, like guarding stores that had already been burglarized was relegated to their relatively low level of competence and experience.
“I work here,” she said as she deliberately twirled her hair.
The Betty Boop, help-me-big-daddy bullshit was boring, but usually got the job done without her messing with men’s brains. Sifting through all their memories right now? No offense, but she didn’t need to see their wives and girlfriends giving them head while she flipped switches to get herself inside the goddamn store. And with so many of them? She’d have had to brainwash them as a group.
But hey, the male attention was definitely a balm.
“When I left last night,” she continued, “I forgot my phone in my locker. My manager told me to come down here and ask if one of you could escort me in to get it? I mean, I saw the news, I heard about the break-in.”
“We can’t let civilians in,” the one on the far left said as he jacked up his gun belt. “This is a crime scene.”
No, really? And here she thought it was a cock convention.
“Oh, lighten up, Jer,” someone said from the back.
As “Jer” got fluffy at the slap-down, an older cop with a been-there-done-that face and a six-beer-a-night gut pushed the young-buck others out of the way.
