That was no accident.
Brenna whirled to watch the pet store’s assistant manager retreat down the aisle, paperwork in hand. To judge by his casual stroll, he didn’t have the slightest idea that he’d just brushed against her backside firmly enough to create the whisper of denim hissing across denim.
As if.
Brenna exchanged a glance with Druid, her companion at work and home. His expression held nothing more significant than a strong desire to make off with one of rawhide bones shelved at just the right height for a low-slung adolescent Cardigan Welsh Corgi. He licked his lips.
“That just about sums it up,” Brenna muttered darkly.
When she’d offered to sub for her honeymooning pet groomer friend, she’d sensed something had been left unspoken. A hesitation in Elayna’s expression, the almost invisible decision to not go there.
But Elayna surely would have warned Brenna if she’d known Aron Miller would find so many occasions to bump Brenna in so many personal ways. Maybe she thought Brenna would be safe; she was there as a favor to the small store’s owner as much as to Elayna, providing experienced coverage for their customers. No grooming business could afford to disappoint customers at the beginning of the busy season. Word got around.
In truth, Brenna considered herself safe enough. After last year’s supernatural encounters with the ancient god Nuadha on her old western New York farm, the behavior of mere mortals rarely bothered her anymore, not even those who thought of themselves as gods. After all, Nuadha wasn’t the only force she’d encountered last spring. An ancient source of angry power... and one about which no one but her very significant other knew the truth.
No, Brenna wasn’t worried about handling Aron Miller. No matter that he was a big man, and given to lifting weights. Or that he was actually as good-looking as he thought he was.
The worst kind.
Druid whined gently and cocked his head at the rawhides, huge ears perked to their utmost. “As soon as we finish here, we’ll go back to the grooming room,” she told him. “You’ve got a fresh chewie waiting there.”
But Druid’s attention shifted, his ears lowered... warning her. A glance confirmed it. The man was coming back.
If it weren’t for Elayna, she would have quit the first time Miller ran a familiar hand down the long, thick length of her dark hair... and then all the way to the back jeans pocket in which she tucked the doubled braid. Only ten more days. Then she’d go back to supervising her own groomers in her own converted barn shop with her own Iban Masera running his dog training business beside her.
She thought of what Masera would do to Aron Miller if he caught the man touching Brenna and it put a smile on her face. Aron Miller took it as a welcome and hesitated as he reached her, his ever-present paperwork in hand. “Don’t normally let employee dogs come in,” he said, in case she hadn’t previously caught his munificence in the matter.
“Part of the agreement to get me here,” Brenna said calmly, ruing these rare moments of spare time during which she was required to sort merchandise, putting herself within Miller’s reach. “Do you want me to pull the bones that don’t seem to fit any of the shelf labels?”
“Leave ’em,” he said, still eyeing Druid. “Put ’em in the front. With luck someone will buy them before we have to explain them in inventory. Funny-looking thing, isn’t he?”
Druid, everything a young Cardigan could be. Crisp black and white markings with rich brown points and a smattering of freckles over his white muzzle and forelegs, thicker freckles charmingly crowded onto the backs of his ears. In form, short-legged and long-bodied, perfectly built for droving cattle over Welsh hills and ducking the kicks that might come his way. Funny-looking? Champion Nuadha’s Silver Druid? Dryly, she said, “Luckily for me the judges didn’t think so.”
“Ah?” he said, meaning no kidding, it’s a show dog?
“Ah,” she confirmed.
She shouldn’t have turned her back on him.
His touch was too personal, too definite. Brenna gave an exaggerated squeak of surprise and jerked around, making certain her elbow encountered the pit of his stomach on the way.
Impact. He doubled over, emitting noises like a dog with food on the way back up.
“Oh!” she said loudly. “Oh, I’m so sorry! You startled me!” Druid leaped to his feet, most interested in Aron’s noises, white-tipped tail waving — but Brenna found herself suddenly facing a surge of anger so dark as to be startling. Made uncertain by her own feelings, she was entirely convincing when she asked, “Are you all right, Aron? Do you need to sit down?”
He straightened with effort, speaking through gritted teeth. “No, no, I’m fine. Just an accident. You barely touched me.”
She knew otherwise, but she also knew her point had been made. “I’m sorry.” Sorry you’re such a jerk. “Sometimes I startle so easily — you just never know.”
He smiled grimly at her. “Think nothing of it, Brenna. My mistake.”
You better believe it.
But she should have known someone else would pay for it.
~~~~~
She found out soon enough.
Druid trotted by her side as she returned from lunch, striding the length of the long, narrow pet store to the grooming room off the back. Ordinary Druid, a maturing companion who showed none of his once profound supernatural quirks, aside from his uncanny ability to read people. No more uncanny than Brenna’s ability to read dogs, a reputation that had made the Pet Corral jump at her offer to sub for Elayna.
Otherwise Miller might have given her more than a tight smile and silence as he passed her, finally keeping his hands to himself. He might have muttered imprecations, or dismissed her on the spot. His face had that look to it, the look of a man who’s been dwelling on his humiliation, the look of resentment swelled to the bursting point.
But there was satisfaction around the edges. And Druid, rather than brush Miller’s legs as they passed in the limited space, dodged behind Brenna and took up the heel position on the wrong side.
When she entered the grooming area, Brenna found the teenaged cashier/floor help/cage cleaner very busy. Stacking towels, straightening shampoo, the crates pulled aside so she could sweep up the inevitable piles of hair behind them...
“Aron asked me to help clean up before your afternoon appointments,” she said quickly, meeting Brenna’s questioning gaze for the merest second before staring fixedly at the shampoo she’d nervously shuffled into confusion, a Rubik’s cube of clear plastic containers full of distinctly colored, diluted shampoo. Realizing what she’d done, she fumbled to put it right again.
“That’s funny,” Brenna said. “I’ve got a light schedule today.”
Coretta’s pale skin turned pink with a blush, and her averted glance couldn’t hide the extra shine in her faded blue eyes. Brenna’s mind went to the look on Aron’s face as they’d passed in the aisle. “Coretta,” she said, eyes narrowing, “Aron hasn’t bothered you, has he?”
“Of course not,” Coretta said quickly. “And anyway,” she added, not seeming to notice the contradiction of her own words, “I need this job. I need this job bad.”
“Coretta —”
“I need this job,” Coretta said, and this time desperation drove her words. She knocked over a bottle and snatched it back upright before it could spill, movements jerky.
Brenna knew it to be true. Small town jobs that a teenage mother could reach on foot from the home where her own single mother struggled to keep the family together... those were rare enough. But Mr. Lowry, the Pet Corral owner, also supported Coretta’s efforts to earn her GED, and even offered incentives for Coretta to attend the community college on the other side of the nearby city.
She did need this job.
Maybe Aron Miller didn’t need his.
The thought crossed Brenna’s mind as if someone else had thought it, full of intensity... and bearing just a hint of a dark skitter down her spine.
Just like the previous spring... except then, the sensation had been driven by the evil that stalked her, and this time it came from...
Within.
I’m not like that.
Surely not.
We cleansed the evil. A year ago we cleansed the evil. If anyone here still has a connection to otherworldly power, it’s Druid.
But Druid, snuffling with great interest at the gap between the stacked crates and the wall, was having a distinctly ordinary — if obsessed — moment. Not so much as a flicker of the wary sensitivity he’d once displayed to the threatening feral darkness.
Out loud she said, “I understand,” to Coretta. And she did.
But she didn’t think this would be the end of it.
~~~~~
The atmosphere changed overnight within the store, making the other employees wary and tentative and not knowing just why. Mr. Lowry, a kind older man, supervised the weekly merchandise sorting by cracking hearty jokes as he tried to hide a puzzled frown. Even Coretta seemed uncertain, not understanding exactly what had happened.
But Brenna knew. She’d seen it the summer before — seen a man touched by power and liking it. A different kind of power, but power nonetheless.
The problem was how to stop it. She could not ask advice of Masera, the man she normally told everything. She could not bear to admit to him the dark intensity of her anger; she feared to hear from him — he who knew so much of the old ways from his Basque mother — what malicious thing it might be. And she could not ask advice of her best friend Emily, who had never known of the supernatural battle waged on Brenna’s land and would never understand her reactions now.
She was on her own, except for Druid. And Druid remained more interested in snuffling behind the grooming crates than in cocking his beguiling ears at her frustration and fears.
Just over a week to go and she was out of here.
But she didn’t think she’d be able to leave it behind. Not Coretta’s plight, not Aron Miller’s behavior.
Not the darkness she felt within herself.
~~~~~
Brenna had a Lhasa Apso on the grooming table when Coretta burst in; she jumped in surprise, barely jerking the clippers away from the dog before she shaved an unintended path down the side of its abbreviated face. “What —”
“He just came in,” Coretta said, panic in her voice and panic on her face. She didn’t have to identify who. “He’s not supposed to be here today! I’m closing.”
The grim darkness surged inside Brenna’s mind; she clamped down on it, deliberately switching off the clippers and taking an unnecessary comb to the Lhasa’s long grizzled coat. “Tell Mr. Lowry, Coretta. I’ll call him for you, I’ll stand right with you while you talk to him —”
“It’ll only make things worse,” Coretta said bitterly, the words hard and certain. Words of experience. “Aron is management, and he’s a man, and he’s older. Mr. Lowry won’t believe me against him.”
“Then what —”
“Come back for closing,” the teen said, going from bitter to pleading, with such desperate hope on her face that Brenna, flooded by all the reasons she couldn’t or shouldn’t, stopped herself in mid-shake of her head. Closed her eyes on the frightening power she felt break loose within her and opened her mouth to say —
Druid barked, startling them both. “Hush!” Brenna told him, unnecessarily sharp. Druid only wagged his tail, pawing at the space between two crates and looking expectantly at her. “Not now,” she said, trying to change her scolding tone to merely firm and not quite succeeding. Normally sensitive Druid only went down on his elbows, sturdy Corgi butt stuck in the air as he peered — silently but no less interested — between the crates.
“Come back for closing,” Brenna said, trying the words out for size. “It won’t solve anything, Coretta. I can’t always come back for closing.”
“It doesn’t have to solve anything,” Coretta said; she clutched the side of the grooming table — young, so young, and so much smaller than Aron Miller — and said, “Please. This once, until I can figure out what to do. I don’t want to be alone with him!”
And Brenna didn’t blame her. She shoved away her own fears about that which lurked inside her, that which Aron Miller so easily drew from her. “I suppose,” she said, “I could leave the dog room without cleaning up.” The waist-high tub smeared with dirt and hair, the towels tossed over crates and crane-like stand dryers, and worst of all the day’s accumulation of clipped hair still strewn into every nook and cranny. “I’ll leave a note saying I had to run an errand and I’ll be back. That way he’ll even know I’m coming — he should leave you alone.”
Relief washed over the teen’s face. “Oh, please!” she said. “Just this time. I’ll figure something out before the next time, I swear I will!”
Brenna wanted to admonish her not to swear to anything. She knew from experience that you never knew who — or what — might be listening. Instead she let out a deep breath and said, “You’d better. This can’t go on; the man’s out of control.” Out of control the moment he started touching people he had no right to touch, but now... worse. Over the edge somehow.
Thanks to me. Me and my well-placed elbow.
“This can’t go on,” she repeated, and softened it. “If you don’t say something soon, I will.”
“No!” Coretta said. “I’ll deal with it, really I will. I just need to do it so people believe what I say about him... and not what he’ll say about me. It’s not like people don’t already talk about me.”
Brenna shook her head. “That doesn’t make any of this right. I’ll go with you to talk to Mr. Lowry. I’ll go with you to the police, for that matter. I’ll go with you to a support center. I’ll do what I can to make it easier — but you’ve got to do something.”
But she didn’t know if she could control the forces within herself until then. If in the end, she would be no better than Miller himself, carried away by dark power.
~~~~~
Closing. Seven o’clock with a spring dusk dropping into cold evening and a small town locking its doors for the night.
Brenna was late.
Stuck behind Parma Hill’s single major intersection and the three-car accident that blocked it, watching her truck’s dashboard clock while her knuckles whitened around the steering wheel. Late. Druid shifted uneasily behind her, ensconced in the truck’s half-cab in his usual spot but ignoring his flavored Nylabone, not usual at all. His soft whine made her stiffen in anticipation. That whine. The one she hadn’t heard since last spring.
She looked back at him, wondering if the warning was for her or about her. His eyes, glittering black in this light, gave her no clue. He nudged her arm, cold wet nose buffered by her jacket.
Abruptly, she’d had enough of the waiting. She jerked the truck to the side of the street, parking in a customer-only tow-zone for a business just as closed as the Pet Corral and earning an emphatic gesture of annoyance from the man in the car behind her.
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered at him, clipping Druid’s leash to his collar and hopping out of the truck to take off at a jog, cutting cross — lots and picking up speed when she hit the sidewalk again. The dimmed light of the Pet Corral sales floor first beckoned her — and then, when she reached the entrance and bounced off the locked doors, mocked her. “Dammit,” she hissed, breaking a year-old resolution to avoid functional curses.
Druid barked sharply at the door.
“I know, I know.” She gave the door a half-hearted and futile kick with her sneakered foot, and then they both stared at it with frustrated defeat.
From inside the store came a cry of protest and fear.
From inside Brenna came the darkness, a swell of strength, a touch of something not of herself. One kick, two — flying strikes with the potent precision of a trained warrior — I’m not — and enough force to break thick glass. She landed inside the store as Druid leapt through to join her, touching down on the old industrial carpet only long enough to bound toward the back, leash trailing.
She raced up behind him, her head full of pounding anger, and found the door to the grooming room closed. Locked. Druid danced before it, impatient, demanding. Inside, Coretta’s protests earned a laugh from Aron Miller. “You wouldn’t have stayed here alone if you didn’t want this —”
“I’m not alone!” Coretta cried. “Brenna’s coming back —” Her voice cut off with a shriek, the sound of ripping material.
And Brenna kicked that door open, too, throwing herself through it and onto Aron Miller, yanking him away from Coretta. The teenager grabbed the opportunity to slither away, knocking over the little rolling stand that held the grooming tools and groping among scissors and clipper blades. Miller turned on Brenna, flinging her into the stacked crates with the ease of his own fury. The crates toppled beneath her and she sprawled awkwardly among them, unable to gain any purchase — unable to do so much as roll out of his way as he descended on her.
Druid darted in at Miller’s legs, barking with fierce purpose — and darting out again. Herding dog heritage coming to the fore, darting in — and this time as Miller aimed a kick at him, ducking and dropping to roll, ancestral memory coming to the fore. Giving Brenna time to land a solid kick below Miller’s knee even as she sprawled among the crates.
It was enough to make him hesitate.
Druid fell instantly silent, leaving room for Coretta’s quiet crying, for Brenna to hear her own panting, for Miller to rip off a startling curse.
The darkness hovered within Brenna, waiting. Ready. She struggled with it, afraid it might get out of hand, out of control... beyond what she could explain. Her hand landed in a soft pile of dog hair from between the crates, that which she had not swept up before leaving. It poofed out across the floor, dust bunnies on the run. Druid dashed toward it, froze, and silently backed a respectful step.
Miller still towered over Brenna. “If you know what’s good for you —”
“I’ll what?” Brenna said, finally able to find the floor with her feet. She stood, glanced at Coretta long enough to see the young woman scooted back against the opposite wall, a pair of scissors clutched in a death grip. “Do you really think you can stop us from leaving? Do you think you can explain this away?”
He looked at Coretta, then back at Brenna — even at Druid, who scented the air around the crates, wary, but kept an ear cocked at Miller as well. Miller released a gusty breath and shrugged, most casually. “Go, then. It doesn’t matter. She’s only a slut who had a kid at thirteen and you’re just a strange chick who talks to dogs. No one will believe anything you say about me.”
“You think not?” Brenna raised an eyebrow, reached for the phone on the wall. The dial tone was loud in the sudden silence of the room; even Coretta seemed to be holding her breath. Druid, glancing into a shadowed corner, whined. Brenna said, “I think you’re wrong, but that doesn’t matter.” She hit the number nine. “Because Iban Masera will believe me, and Iban has friends on the force. Or didn’t you read the headlines last summer?”
She saw from his face that he had. She hit the number one. “You’d better get your story together.” And touched the one again.
“Wait!” Miller shouted, startling her so she jerked her hand away, scowling at him. She eyed Coretta, who shifted her grip on the scissors but otherwise seemed frozen — although her expression was clear. Be ready to run.
They didn’t have to. Miller’s voice softened, became what he probably considered soothing. “Look. You’re right. Things got carried away here. It was a mistake. A misunderstanding. It won’t happen again.”
“No kidding,” Brenna said flatly. She snapped her fingers, calling Druid away from the precariously jumbled crates; he responded only with a muffled whine. The kind of whine that would have bothered her, had she a moment to think about it. Did bother her, without that moment to do anything about it. She turned back to the phone.
“Look,” he said again, more desperately this time and more smoothly all at once, a tone that made her want to take a shower right that very minute. “At least let me turn myself in. Tomorrow. It’ll go better for me. And if I don’t do it, you can call them then.” He nodded back at Coretta. “When she’s not so upset. It’ll be easier on her that way.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed look.
Exasperated, he said, “What have you got to lose? Take the girl home. Turn me in if I go back on my word. At least give me a chance to talk to my family!”
Coretta whispered, “I’m not a slut. I loved him.” And then, with a sob, “I want to go home.” She looked small and frail and ready to break.
Brenna slammed the phone down, knowing herself for a fool... and unable to put the girl through hours of waiting and questioning and filling out forms and seeing Miller’s words echoed in the faces of those who heard his story. Slut at thirteen. Not this young woman who was trying so hard to get her life together. Darkness... power skittering down her spine... a weird whisper of sound bouncing around the corners of the room... But only Brenna heard it. Brenna and Druid, who’d come to her side suddenly hackled, suddenly ready to leave. Oddly, Brenna thought she heard the faint patter of blunt claws clicking on linoleum.
“Tomorrow,” Brenna said, hearing her words as those of a stranger; she fought not to react at the smirk on Miller’s face. She held out her hand, and Coretta slipped around the edge of the room to take it. Brenna nodded at the mess. “Get ready to explain why I’m not working here anymore along with the rest of the excuses you’ll need to make.”
It seemed like he might protest... but he didn’t. His face took on a secretive air, with nothing of resignation or shame whatsoever. Looking at that expression, Brenna gave an inward sigh. She had no expectation that he’d turn himself in... but it didn’t matter. She and Coretta would file a complaint in the morning, once she had the names of Masera’s friends.
Druid made a noise deep in his throat, looking at Brenna as if he had something to tell her and not enough of Lassie in him to do it. Not fretful, not worried... but full of significance he couldn’t share.
Brenna gave him a quick rub behind the ear as she recaptured his leash, and then she led Coretta through the store, leaving the broken grooming room door askew behind her. At the scattered glass of the front door she hesitated — should she call Mr. Lowry? — and then decided to let Miller deal with it.
Coretta said softly, “He doesn’t have a family. He doesn’t have anyone to tell. I bet he’s not even here in the morning.”
And a dark, acerbic voice within Brenna told her that even if he stayed, even if he was arrested, it was still a case of she said — he said. The anger welled up and spilled out, coming from the very center of her being and briefly claiming her ability to think.
“Brenna?” Coretta asked, glancing toward the back of the store, then at the broken glass before them.
Brenna shook herself out of it and bent to scoop up Druid lest he cut his feet on that glass. “Hefty,” she grunted at him, staggering slightly. Glass crunched under her sneakers as she headed out of the store, making arrangements with Coretta to meet here in the morning and head for the little Parma Hills police station together.
In her arms, Druid twisted, uncharacteristically restless, until he could stare at the back of the store. Even as they walked away he watched the store, ears back... whining deep in his throat.
Nuadha’s Silver Druid.
Knowing something she didn’t.
~~~~~
Brenna thought she might be sore and bruised when she woke, but she wasn’t. She felt oddly relieved given the day that lay before her, a day that garnered her an early back rub from Masera and a lingering kiss good-bye. Typically unspoken of him.
Druid, too, seemed fine, and Coretta, when they met her, looked tired but determined. They stared at the cardboard-covered Pet Corral door and exchanged a long look. Finally Brenna said, “I have to check.”
To see how Miller had left the grooming room, or if there was any indication that he’d followed through on his word to turn himself in.
Inside, Mr. Lowry was talking to their handyman, gesturing at the front door; he gave Brenna a nod and waved that she should come speak to him. “Be right there,” she told him, wondering if she should admit it was she who had — somehow — broken the door, and why.
“Let’s go out the back,” Coretta murmured, nudging her, not wanting to get caught up in talk... to answer questions. Druid trotted along behind, unconcerned, and halting smartly at Brenna’s heel when she and Coretta stopped short, realizing that the grooming room door no longer hung open; it was simply gone.
Repairs. Mr. Lowry hadn’t wasted any time.
But the grooming room...
Spotless, compared to the evening before. The equipment stand had been uprighted, the tools put away. The crates, sparkling clean, were again stacked against the wall. The tub area looked scrubbed.
Miller?
And Brenna frowned. For the first time in over a week, the thought of the man didn’t evoke the dark and frightening swirl within her. No skitters down her spine, no fear of who she was or what she was becoming.
Druid sat in the doorway and looked up at her, expectant in some way. As with the night before, knowing something he had no real way to tell her.
Except...
Brenna stopped Coretta when the girl would have wandered into the room. She took a few cautious steps forward herself, watching where she put her feet. Disturbing nothing. Trying to understand what was so different about the room.
Not a single stray hair. No clipped clumps, no brushed-out undercoat, no chunky remains of matted coats. Not even assiduous application of the shop vac had ever left this room so utterly devoid of hair.
Mr. Lowry came up behind Coretta, pausing barely long enough to ask, “Have you seen Aron Miller this morning, Brenna? Coretta?”
Brenna demurred with a distracted murmur, and Mr. Lowry frowned as he left, calling out a request to the cashier to try Miller’s number one more time.
“See?” Coretta said, conspiratorial in her whisper even though they were now alone. “No family. He just ran. He’ll only do this to other women, in other places.”
This time, the skitter did run down Brenna’s back. “I’m not so sure,” she said. Closer inspection of the floor hadn’t revealed hair... but she suddenly discovered a few faint patches of a rusty stain.
Paw prints.
She suddenly saw them everywhere. Some starkly rusty, some faint, enough for a dozen dogs — all of them secretive and fuzzy around the edges, as if made by a hairy Samoyed or Great Pyrenees or even an untrimmed Cocker Spaniel.
She tried again to call up the anger within her, and found nothing.
Fuzzy-edged footprints everywhere, growing fainter... disappearing if she looked directly, but otherwise filling the edges of her vision.
She fought a sudden impulse to pull the crates out and check behind them for the perpetually lurking dog hair... and then didn’t. She knew what she’d find.
Or rather, what she wouldn’t.
She backed up a step, Druid happy and relaxed beside her, panting slightly with a doggy smile pulling back the black-edged corners of his mouth.
It wasn’t my anger. None of it.
Not the part that had held the power. Not the part that had so frightened her.
That had belonged to someone — something — else. Something that had once come forth at her distress, had once again used her and used Druid... and used that which waited here in this room.
And then subsided again.
Until the next time.
Coretta’s words came laced with uncertainty. “I don’t understand. He cleaned up and then he ran?”
Druid leaned against Brenna’s leg. Nuadha’s Silver Druid. Knowing better than she the forces that had been at work in this place.
“If he ran...” Brenna started, but hesitated, looking at the paw prints she felt quite certain Coretta couldn’t see at all.
If he ran... he hadn’t gone far.
~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~