Black Dog Short Stories

by Rachel Neumeier

  Cassie snarled again.

  “Right, then,” said Miguel. He pulled the chair around so he wouldn’t quite be facing the cage and opened the book.

  The Hunting of the Snark might be completely frivolous and silly, but it was fun to read. Miguel had to pay just enough attention to it that he didn’t have to pay attention to Cassie, who gave up snarling and lay still instead, staring intently at Miguel. Though he tried not to look at her, he couldn’t help but glance over now and then, and after a while, he had the impression she wasn’t even blinking. Maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe black dogs didn’t need to blink either, and he’d just never noticed because no back dog had ever stared at him with such intensity and hatred. He could have done without Cassie staring at him like that now. Not that the monster was really Cassie. That was the whole point.

  Miguel read the whole poem. He didn’t let himself read too fast. Just the right pace for the poem. It was a fun poem, complete nonsense with its Barrister and Baker and Beaver, and its five signs of a Snark, and seeking it with thimbles and forks and soap and everything. And finding out it was a Boojum, of course, at the end. But every line flowed right off the tongue. He’d always liked it, but he thought he might never be able to read it again without thinking of this surreal scene: himself sitting outside a cage with bars wrapped in silver wire, with an unblinking monster on the other side waiting for its chance to kill him.

  It was a weird afternoon.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said at the end. “Maybe you’ll be able to shift back tomorrow, huh? What should I bring to read? Probably not Alice in Wonderland.” He paused.

  Cassie didn’t answer, of course. She just stared, her fiery gaze so filled with animosity Miguel was little surprised it didn’t blister his skin. He pretended not to notice. “Well, I’ll think of something. Something not too long. One of Shakespeare’s histories, maybe. All those power politics and things, it’s just like reading black dog history, you probably love the histories, huh? Or, hey, I could read you The Taming of the Shrew.”

  Cassie snarled, a slow, rising sound.

  “Just kidding. Richard III, then. At least Act I.” Miguel sauntered out. He didn’t let himself sag and shudder until he was up the stairs with the door shut firmly behind him.

  It had been worse than he’d expected, seeing her like that. Being hated like that. He had kind of expected to see something of Cassie in that monster, at least glimpses, at least now and then. But he had seen nothing.

  Probably the real girl had not even known he was there.

  But he knew he would go back anyway, the next afternoon.

  He rearranged some of the piles of books in the morning, though, before he went back downstairs. But though he finished dusting, he didn’t actually put all the books back on the shelves. Sometimes books were more useful in stacks. Disorderly stacks that didn’t quite keep to alphabetical order.

  He also found himself thinking, as he stacked up books, about what Cassie might like. Short stories by O. Henry? “The Ransom of Red Chief” was funny. “A Retrieved Reformation” had a nice ending. Maybe she would like short stories better than Shakespeare.

  Maybe he should ask her what she liked before the next full moon.

  He took both O. Henry and Shakespeare with him when he went downstairs. But as it turned out, he didn’t need to choose which to read to her. Cassie was already back in human form, a full night and half a day before he might have expected her to manage it.

  She had plainly just changed. She was curled into a ball on the cement floor, her arms drawn in and her face tucked down. She obviously hadn’t been wearing her winter-fairy dress when she’d shifted, and the reason was obvious, because she looked cold even in the ragged jeans and oversized white sweater she was wearing. She looked terrible, washed out and pale, and even thinner, as though weight had burned off her just over the three nights of the full moon. But she looked completely human. There was no trace of the monster left, to Miguel’s eyes, though no doubt a black dog would have still recognized her as a shifter.

  At first Miguel thought she didn’t even know he was there. Then she said, still not looking up, “Go away.”

  “Right,” he said. He was obscurely embarrassed, as though he’d walked in on a girl in the shower or something. He said, rattled enough fall back into his mother’s Spanish—he, who’d been reading and speaking colloquial English since he could remember—“Lo siento.” Then he said, “Sorry,” and started to back away again, up the stairs, clumsy because he was backing up—but that wasn’t why he felt clumsy.

  “Wait!” Cassie said, and uncurled suddenly.

  She looked even thinner and more desperate once she sat up. The wild look in her eyes might have belonged to a creature of frost and winter, a fairy, a woodland elf—but it was her, and not her shadow. Miguel wanted to say something, but what could he say? He wasn’t moon-bound. She wasn’t going to want sympathy from him.

  “I heard you,” she said. Her tone was fierce and angry. “I was there.”

  She didn’t say she was glad he’d come down to read to her. From her fury, she might hate him for it. Miguel nodded, awkwardly. “Right . . .”

  “You want to get rid of Étienne Lumondiere.”

  Miguel hadn’t expected that at all, and stared at her, speechless.

  Cassie told him, “We need black dogs right now. We need numbers. But Étienne isn’t the kind we need. He’s trouble. No human is going to want to be here as long as he is. He’s not worth that kind of problem.”

  “That’s what I thought,” admitted Miguel. “But I’m pretty sure Grayson isn’t going to see it that way.”

  “Yeah, not unless you plant the idea in his mind. You’ve already started, I know, but you could do better—and he mustn’t catch you at it.”

  “Yeah, working that out is the hard part—”

  “I know how. But not now. Come back in an hour.”

  It was easy, actually, in principle. Tricky in practice, though.

  It was all about getting Grayson to see Étienne Lumondiere as a threat to Dimilioc, as well as an asset. The Master had to decide he was an asset better used elsewhere, not kept close to Dimilioc’s central territory. And the Master had to be annoyed enough to get rid of him, but not so much so as to kill him—a fine line with a black dog. Plus Miguel and Cassie had to arrange everything without letting anyone, not Grayson nor Étienne nor anyone else, see they were doing anything at all on purpose.

  Yeah, in practice it was tricky. Without Cassie’s help, Miguel wasn’t sure how he would have arranged to get Grayson in the right spot at just the right moment. That had always been the key. Setting the hook was one thing, but landing the fish was the thing. It was more like hooking a shark. A shark was not what you wanted to catch unless you had very strong fishing line. And preferably a harpoon. Miguel had only words. And Cassie Pearson’s help, now. Miguel didn’t know exactly how she got Grayson to the library at just the right moment: she sure hadn’t asked the Master of Dimilioc for his personal help in finding just the right book. Or maybe she had; maybe she could actually pull off something like that.

  Miguel had been the one to get Étienne Lumondiere to the library on schedule, though. That part had been simple. He had just announced he was finished dusting, and of course Étienne had said, Are you? in that sarcastic, superior way of his and had come to check. No actual white gloves, but all the attitude. And of course Miguel had made sure to be pretty casual about alphabetizing the whole last section when he put the books back on the shelves, and of course Étienne was just the perfectionist to notice.

  “Careless,” he said severely to Miguel, who made sure to duck his head, all properly meek and apologetic. “Slovenly. What is this, all these books out of order?”

  “Anybody can find Wodehouse, once they get to the W’s,” Miguel pointed out. But meekly and apologetically. “It’s not like those got mixed in with Gibbon or anything. Anyway, they’re dusted—”

  Étienne ran t
he tip of one finger along the top shelf and looked at Miguel even more severely.

  “Well, you could dust,” Miguel suggested. He could hear someone approaching, out in the hallway. Just a few seconds more . . . he straightened his shoulders, met Étienne’s eyes, and said, not meekly at all, “Since you’re taller than me and can see up that high, maybe you should take over all the high shelves, if you care about dust so much.”

  Combined with that look, it was enough to make Étienne hit him. Miguel had been almost sure he would. Proud, Étienne Lumondiere. Proud and vain and very sure of his prerogatives. And not so concerned with Dimilioc custom or law, because he was so certain Lumondiere’s ways were superior.

  Étienne did not mean to hit him very hard. He only hit him with the back of his hand, with no claws or anything. It was more difficult than Miguel had expected to step into the blow instead of jumping back—he’d argued with Cassie about that; she’d said anything would do, it wasn’t necessary for Étienne to leave a mark. Miguel had insisted he needed to show at least a bruise. But when it came right to the moment, he tried to flinch in both directions at once and had to grab the back of a chair to stop himself stumbling. Which looked perfect, of course, so that worked out, though he hadn’t done it on purpose.

  He yelled, too, just a little, not enough to be embarrassing, just a small sound of shock, timed to coincide with the arrival of Grayson Lanning in the doorway, Cassie hovering behind him. Cassie looked hugely entertained, which was okay, since no one but him was paying any attention to her. Miguel’s face hurt, his cheek and eye both, but he had to suppress an urge to laugh—that would be insanely stupid, after all this trouble, but Étienne’s expression was funny. Grayson didn’t say a word, not then. He just gave Étienne a long, measured stare. Then he nodded to the door.

  Étienne didn’t exactly slink out of the room, but his attitude sure had changed.

  “Are you hurt?” Grayson asked Miguel.

  Miguel touched his cheek, carefully. That whole side of his face ached. He’d cut the inside of his mouth against his teeth. But he said, “No, sir. I don’t think so. I shouldn’t have been rude to him—”

  “True,” Grayson said, and walked out.

  “There you go,” Cassie said, pleased with herself and with him. “That should do it.” She came over to look closely at Miguel’s face. “Ow. You’re going to have a black eye.”

  “Yeah? Good.” He touched the inside of his cheek gingerly with his tongue. It hurt. “If we need to do this again, maybe he can hit you next time.”

  “Not very chivalrous,” she mocked him. “Black eyes are your business.” She glanced at the shelves. “Yeah, mixing Wodehouse up with Tennessee Williams, I bet that made Étienne mad.”

  “Seemed to,” agreed Miguel, satisfied.

  Étienne Lumondiere left Dimilioc four days later. In a way. Grayson sent him to Denver along with five other recently recruited black dogs to re-establish Dimilioc’s western sept. Once that whole region had been held by Dimilioc black wolves, mostly of the Hammond and Toland bloodlines, but over the course of the war between black dogs and vampires, the whole western sept had been destroyed. Every black wolf and Pure woman had been killed, their human kin scattered, except for a couple who had pulled back to Dimilioc proper, and even those had died later. But now, with the vampires gone, of course it was important to re-establish Dimilioc’s presence in the west. So in a way, you could consider that Étienne Lumondiere had only been sent to another part of Dimilioc. In a way, it was even a promotion: in Denver, Étienne would be Master because none of the black dogs that went with him approached his combination of strength and control. Miguel was okay with that. A Lumondiere black wolf, even a bastard like Étienne, would know how to run a civilized house, even if he would want to put a Lumondiere stamp on it. Working on that would keep him busy and occupied and out of everyone’s hair. Yeah, really, it was perfect.

  The day after Étienne left, Miguel came back from helping his sister and Cassie move furniture around in the guest room Cassie had picked—she wanted every single thing over ten pounds moved, and then moved again—and found Ezekiel Korte waiting for him in his room.

  Ezekiel was sitting in Miguel’s best chair—his only chair actually—playing solitaire on his computer. He glanced up when Miguel came in, though, and one corner of his mouth crooked upward. He looked faintly bored, faintly amused, and just a little bit scary because Ezekiel always looked a little bit scary.

  “What do you . . . uh, can I do something for you?” asked Miguel.

  “You’ve got some interesting files on here. Very broad-ranging. That big compilation of black dog activity out west is especially impressive.”

  “I’m supposed to collate that. For Grayson.”

  “Of course. I know he values the work you do for him.” Ezekiel stood up, a smooth, effortless motion, like a spring uncoiling. “He wants to see you. Now.”

  “Uh . . .” said Miguel. “Right.” He didn’t say, So why’d he send you? He didn’t ask, So why didn’t he pick up a house phone and call me? Sometimes a question was better left unanswered. Besides, maybe the answer was, No reason, and why borrow trouble?

  Grayson was in the conference room he used as a study. He was working on something, some kind of spreadsheet or something, Miguel could glimpse the open file. There were papers, maps and lists and things, all over his desk and half the long table. The door was open. He looked up when Ezekiel tapped on the door frame, gave a short nod, set down the pencil he held in one hand, and leaned back in his chair. He looked tired, Miguel thought. And impatient. And not amused at all. But that might have just been him. Grayson Lanning was not a man who often looked amused.

  Ezekiel slid into the room and leaned his hip against the edge of the table, perfectly relaxed and comfortable. Miguel thought about taking a chair to show that he was also relaxed and comfortable. Then he thought better of it. He said, “Sir?” in his most innocent tone.

  Grayson said without preliminary, “I had intended to send Étienne Lumondiere to Denver in six months. Or a year. I intended to send him with ten black dogs to support him, not five. Now I’ve been forced to send him early, with far less support than he needs and yet more than I could afford to give him. If he fails to establish control in the west, he will be embarrassed, but Dimilioc will be weakened.”

  Miguel said nothing. It seemed the wisest course.

  “I do not care to see my options constrained because of the self-indulgent tantrums of a clever boy who thinks he knows Dimilioc’s necessities better than I do,” Grayson added.

  “If you didn’t want to send him to Denver—” Miguel began.

  “You shamed him in front of me. I was forced to punish him. Now I am required both to demonstrate my continuing trust in his strength and ability, and to offer him a chance to win back my personal regard. Do you think he would be satisfied by some meaningless gesture?”

  This seemed like another good opportunity for Miguel to keep his mouth shut.

  Grayson said, even more grimly, “Thos Korte always considered a riding crop appropriate for human kin he wished to punish. Whatever else one may say for the method, it was certainly effective. And even humans rarely sustain any permanent injury from such punishment. They were nearly always back on their feet within a week or so, as I recall.”

  Miguel found himself glancing involuntarily at Ezekiel, who smiled. It was a scary smile. Miguel wrenched his attention back to Grayson. “I—” he began, and then stopped and made himself think. He said after a moment, “I didn’t mean to do anything to put Dimilioc at a disadvantage. I knew you would want to get Étienne Lumondiere out of the house eventually. I figured now would be as good a time as any.” He hesitated, then shook his head. “You wouldn’t have sent him now if you thought he couldn’t succeed. Or that his absence would put us in a real bind. But I’m sorry if I—if I misjudged.”

  Grayson leaned forward, folding his big hands on his desk. “I don’t like being led, Miguel. I don�
��t like being handled. I most particularly do not like to be considered stupid.”

  No, Miguel bet he didn’t. He tried not to look at Ezekiel. He said, “No, sir.” It was surprisingly easy to sound humble, this time.

  Grayson leaned back in his chair again. He said, his tone very level, “I notice the W’s in the library are out of order.”

  Miguel stared at him.

  “I think you had better put that section in order. In fact, I think you may take all the books back off the shelves, re-dust them, and put them back on the shelves, this time in perfect order. You had better start with the A’s in order to be sure every single volume is precisely in its proper place.”

  Miguel found his mouth was open, and closed it.

  “I notice this task took you several days when you did it for Étienne. You will not need to hurry when you do it for me. I will expect the job to take you a month.”

  “A month!” Miguel exclaimed, and shut his mouth again.

  “If you work at it for, oh, six hours a day. You may start today. I am sure the books will be the better for being thoroughly dusted. And the shelves can be polished properly. I don’t believe you attended to that adequately for Étienne. Three or four coats of that pleasant lemon polish should be adequate. You may put the books back on the shelves after each coat, so that people may find what they wish to read without searching through stacks on the floor. This will, of course, require you to take all the books off the shelves and put them back on repeatedly. I’m sure you will prove equal to the task.”

  “But—” said Miguel. “My work—the reports I’m supposed to collect for you—you said—I thought—”

  Grayson raised his heavy eyebrows “That work is indeed important to me and to Dimilioc. I’m perfectly certain you will manage to complete all your duties satisfactorily. Yes?”