Page 63 of Reaper and Ruin
He frowned. “Why not?”
I shrugged. “They made inquiries into her parents. They’re business people in the city. No criminal record.”
“So? Doesn’t mean they aren’t shady as fuck.”
“Try telling the Providence Police Department that. They didn’t come right out and laugh directly in my face while telling me I watch too much TV, but they weren’t far from it. They kept questioning Dax over whether they’d had a—and I quote—‘lovers’ tiff.’”
“That probably explains him storming out with steam blowing from his ears a few minutes ago. He didn’t even stopwhen I called his name. I was ready to take him off our Christmas card list—you know the one we’re sending as a family with Reginald the duck and Harold the ugly cat—but I guess we can still send him one since he’s a bit stressed right now.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I really wouldn’t want him to miss out on that.”
I put my arms around his narrow waist and hugged him harder, breathing in the scent of his cologne. “You are so ridiculous.”
“I know,” he whispered, pressing his lips down onto the top of my head. “But I hate when you’re sad. I don’t know how else to help, other than to make you laugh.”
I snuggled against him. “It’s okay. This is exactly what I need.”
“Yeah, this,” he agreed. Then pulled back and grinned down at me wickedly. “This, and cat snuggles!”
I widened my eyes. “Did you pick up Harold?”
“Without you? Never. But the shelter did call. He’s all up-to-date with all his shots, the vet has checked him over, and we’re allowed to go pick him up. You want to come?”
In that moment, with Nyah missing, the police, unsurprisingly, doing nothing, and my nerves a complete and utter mess from everything else, going to pick up an ugly cat with him felt like the easiest thing to say yes to.
I nodded.
X beamed. “Let’s go get our son. I’ve already named him Harold Nigel Meowington the Third. He’s a duke. His royal portrait is being painted in my head as we speak.”
“Please tell me you’re imagining him in a powdered wig.”
“Obviously. With a little waistcoat. And a monocle. Maybe a small sword.”
I sniggered, but he held the van door open for me, and I hauled myself up into it. Ten minutes and a drive back acrossthe Providence-Saint View border, we pulled up in front of the shelter. It sat at the end of a cracked asphalt lot behind a discount mattress store, flanked by a crooked chain-link fence. A hand-painted sign that just said Animal Haven in faded, flaking red letters, announced we had the right place.
Someone had attempted to brighten things up with plastic flowers jammed into old soup cans along the path to the door. It didn’t help. The building itself seemed like it used to be a dentist’s office in the eighties and had been slowly surrendering to mildew and despair ever since.
I pushed through the door, and the woman at the front desk looked up.
“We’re here about a cat,” I informed her.
“Your names?”
I introduced us and waited as her pink chipped fingernails flew across a keyboard.
She peered at the screen, understanding eventually washing over her pretty features. “Oh. You’re here for…” She bit her lip, her gaze flickering to X before coming back to me. “Harold.”
She said his name like someone might sayboil.Or like if she said it too loud, she might summon a demon.
X stepped forward. “Yes. I’m his new dad. This is his mom. We’re a very stable, very responsible family unit. I built him a cardboard castle and put sardines in the moat.”
The woman stared at him like she wasn’t sure if he was joking.
Honestly, he probably wasn’t.
She passed us an invoice, laying out his adoption fees and agreement, and X handed over his credit card without a second of hesitation.
Was it my imagination or did the woman breathe a sigh of relief once everything was signed and the payment had gone through?
“Just a moment,” she said cautiously, then disappeared through a back door.
