The Better to Hold You by Alisa Sheckley Read Free Book Online

like I said, you’re not one to back down—even from a brick wall, I imagine.” As he said this, the man moved so that now he was standing between me and the door to the bathroom stall.
    I felt a prickle of alarm at the back of my neck. “Did you follow me home from the subway?”
    He cocked his head to one side. “Ma’am?”
    I shook my head. He’d come to the clinic: There was no way he could know about my climbing adventure. “Never mind. Listen, I need to know what you’re doing here with this dog, Mr….”
    “Red Mallin. Friend of Jackie Roberts, owner of this animal.” “Friend” meaning boyfriend, I assumed. He held out his hand and I took it without thinking. His skin felt unusually hot, and at the moment our palms made contact I felt an odd little jolt of awareness. I realized that we were staring at each other. I wondered if, on some animal level, it was because I’d had sex that morning. Unsatisfying sex, a little voice interpolated. There was something about the way we were standing there that seemed inappropriate. Why weren’t we talking? I wasn’t frightened of him any longer.
    “So, ah, you’re Dr. Abra Barrow?” His finger indicated my name badge.
    “Yes.” My throat was dry, and I cleared it.
    “Yes.” He seemed discomfited. “Right. Now, I was just goin’ to explain—are you wearing something? Some scent?”
    “No.”
    “Ah.” He dropped his hand and inhaled deeply, as if trying to collect himself. Red seemed to be growing more nervous, not less, and that made no sense. I watched as a splotchy redhead’s blush climbed across his cheeks.
    “Well,” he began again. I spoke at almost the same time.
    “So Pia isn’t your dog?”
    Red and the wolf hybrid exchanged a complicit glance. “Nope. Jackie asked me to spring her out before she got herself in some kind of trouble.”
    I remembered Lilliana’s half-joking comment about Malachy’s wanting to experiment on Pia. Now that I thought about it, it had been a little strange that Malachy had wanted to keep Pia’s case, as it wasn’t clear that her owner could afford our ser vices. I found myself recalling Malachy’s statement that he’d hired me because of my connection with Hunter’s lycanthropy research and wondered: Does Malachy have some agenda with this animal?
    On the other hand, what was this man’s hidden agenda? “So why didn’t Jackie Roberts come herself?”
    Red had the ability to stand without shifting weight from foot to foot, which was something I liked. It seemed, I don’t know, forthright. “Well, she thought I might be able to make a case for Pia here not being more’n a tiny bit wolf. I’m kind of an expert. See? Here’s my business card.” He dug his wallet out of his back jeans pocket and extracted a cheap white card bearing a picture of a howling wolf or coyote in silhouette. I couldn’t help but notice that it matched the tattoo stretched over the swell of his right bicep.
    “Red Mallin,” he said, as if I couldn’t read it for myself. “Wildlife Removal Operator.”
    I looked at the card, then at him. “So why didn’t you go up to the front desk and assert your expertise, Mr. Mallin?”
    Red smiled, a little crookedly. “Well, I don’t know. Sometimes big-city types don’t exactly seem to value my opinion as much as I do.”
    “What’d you do with the owl?”
    “She’s still here. Kind of a trade.”
    I realized that it was mostly the graying hair that made him look older. That and the sunburn. I figured Red might still be in his late thirties. I found myself thinking that he looked like someone you might see on some reality TV shows, announcing that he was leaving his wife, the fat dyed blonde, for her sister, the emaciated dyed blonde without teeth.
    “I probably don’t want to know, but—where’d you get the owl?”
    “Someone’s attic. Listen, I swear I’m not some animal broker who goes around selling wild things to stupid people. I just want to bring this little