Page 24 of The Fantastic Fluke

Seeming to sense my mood, Gideon was quiet for the rest of the walk. A walk that was cut short at the very end, when we came up to the house and found my grandmother’s car already waiting outside. Dammit.

Well, hopefully she didn’t mind me in my black work pants. They weren’t nice, but at least they weren’t jeans today. That had to count for something.

I rushed up the empty driveway to let foxy into the house, but then remembered that I was going to dinner. I couldn’t leave foxy hungry. It didn’t take long to get his dish out and put two scoops of food into it. I set it at the table and scratched his head as apologetically as I knew how.

“I’m so sorry, buddy, but I have to go. You eat your dinner and be good for Gideon, okay?” He cocked his head confusedly, but I didn’t have time to stay and fix it.

The answer to whether I wanted to have dinner with my grandmother was finally answered in its entirety for me. Even if by some odd chance she turned out to be amazing, I would say no if my presence was demanded again. I had responsibilities at home. Well, one responsibility, but that was enough. Foxy was more important than a woman who had spent three decades pretending I didn’t exist.

When I got back out, the driver didn’t seem especially bothered at having to wait on me, and he didn’t look at my clothes with a sneer or anything quite so Cinderella-story-ish. He mostly looked bored at having to sit in my driveway waiting on me.

“Sage McKinley?” he asked, in a tone that said he already knew the answer. I nodded, and he opened the car door for me. In fact, when he slid into the front seat, adjusting the rearview mirror, he met my eye. “Don’t worry. We’ll be right on time.”

I would never admit it, but some tension unwound from my shoulders at the reassurance. “Thanks.”

He nodded, flipped on his turn indicator, checked his side mirrors, and pulled into the nonexistent traffic on my street.

* * *

The house was biggerthan my block, and it didn’t have a driveway. It had its own damn road. No wonder my grandmother never visited when I was a kid—her house could have eaten my little two-bedroom place in one bite.

My face must have given away how overwhelming it was, because the driver spoke up from the front. “It’s not so bad. And Mrs. Mack is a great lady.”

“Mrs...” Was he talking about my grandmother? Or was there a cook or a housekeeper named Mack? “I’m sorry, this is a little surreal is all.”

He nodded back. “Don’t I know it. I almost passed out when the employment agency sent me over. Thought they’d made a mistake, and whoever answered the door was going to set the dogs on me.”

“I take it they didn’t?” I glanced around for the inevitable Dobermans or Rottweilers who would be there to eat intruders.

He chuckled as he turned the engine off and slid out of the car without answering. When he opened the door and I climbed out, he leaned in. “Here’s all you need to know about Mrs. Mack: the only dog on the premises is her familiar.”

He led me to the front door, where an older woman was waiting. Given her starched uniform, I presumed she was not my grandmother. She inclined her head deferentially and proved me right. “I’m Beryl, Mr. McKinley. If you’ll follow me, Mrs. McKinley is waiting in the dining room.”

She didn’t even glance at my clothes, let alone sneer. Just like the driver. I turned to ask his name, but he was already back at the car. I made a note to ask on the way home. I wasn’t going to be the kind of person who didn’t learn other people’s names based on social status.

Hell, both of them probably made way more money than me anyway. A thin blood relation to the woman at the top didn’t count for all that much.

The second I got inside, I saw what the driver had meant.

There was an English bulldog lying on a plush dog bed near the bottom of the stairs. He moved his head far enough to look at me when I walked in, and his stubby little tail started wagging tentatively when he locked eyes with me. I couldn’t help myself; I was drawn as though by magic to where he sat, mostly unmoving. This was my grandmother’s familiar? The lifelong companion of the terrifying woman I’d been dreading meeting?

“Hey,” I said to the dog, tentatively reaching my hand out to him. “I hope you don’t mind the smell of fox.”

He sniffed, and his tail wagged harder, so I reached up and petted his head. He leaned hard into me, and I couldn’t keep the goofy grin off my face. If the driver had been serious, maybe this wasn’t going to be an utter disaster. Familiars often had similar personalities to their mages, after all.

I stood after a moment, inclining my head to the, um, Beryl. Was she a maid? Housekeeper? Personal assistant? “Sorry. Can’t resist a dog.”

Me, the man who hadn’t wanted a dog.

Yeah, yeah, so I’m good at lying to myself. In my defense, Beez’s dog really was kind of a mess. Plus, dogs are a little like kids: a lot cuter when you only have to play with them, but don’t have to take responsibility for their care and feeding. I hoped foxy would eat his dinner when I wasn’t there to eat with him, a twinge of guilt blooming in my stomach.

Beryl wasn’t stiff or scowling; in fact, she was smiling at me. “His name is Rufus, and he’s a glutton for attention.”

“I bet he gets a ton of it. He’s adorable,” I answered, then cringed internally. Adorable? Had that really been the best thing I could come up with?

She nodded, though, and opened a huge set of double doors to one side of the foyer, revealing a dining room that should have been in fiction. Maybe it had been; it looked just like one of those tables in the movies where the rich couple sits at opposite ends and can hardly hear each other to have a conversation over breakfast.

Contrary to any image I’d been holding in my head, my grandmother was not wearing a ball gown or dripping with diamonds. The only piece of jewelry she had on was an ancient looking gold locket. Not even a wedding ring, even though I knew she’d been married for fifty or so years until her husband’s death the year before. It had been a major local news story, the death of an important McKinley.

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