“Perfect.” Clover taps his shoulder, and the rat quickly climbs his torso and nuzzles his neck.
“You should take him to a certified vet, though. Ren and I are still studying.”
“Your love for everything that crawls precedes you.” His tone turns into a half-scold as he adds, “Hurry up with the studying part, my furry baby needs the best.”
I feel flattered and a little scared at the thought of having Clover as a recurrent client in the future.
He walks to the door but stops on the threshold after opening it. He spins and tosses me a little plastic container. When I look down in my hand, I realize it’s a stool sample container.
“I brought Mr. Squashy Nuts’s poop sample.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Ren told me to.”
That joker asshole.
I look up again to tell Clover this wasn’t necessary, but he’s disappeared. I move to the corridor and look both ways. Nothing. The other two times I saw him, he used the front door to leave and certainly didn’t perform a disappearing magic trick. Is he getting better at his work or worse because of it?
I go back into the exam room and look through the window to see if I can catch a glimpse of him. But there’s no one outside. The guy is curiously odd.
I look intently at the trees, feeling like there’s something there. I lean toward the window when my phone starts vibrating inside my pants pocket.
“Dare,” I answer.
“Hey,” he greets me with his deep voice.
“Clover just left.” I place the stool sample in a brown bag and write Ren’s name on it.
“I know. I was checking the cameras in and out of the shelter.”
“He snuck inside without alerting the security system,” I tell him, hearing the preoccupied inflection in my voice.
“He didn’t. I let him.”
“Oh, great.” A relieved breath leaves my lips.
“You are safe, Sully.” Those are the words I need to hear once in a while.
So, there’s no one else out there? I want to ask, still feeling…watched. But I don’t. Dare would have told me otherwise.
“A woman is coming with a ferret. She found it in her garden.”
“Aww, I love ferrets. Was it hurt?”
“Did not sound like it. Also, Perfect Friends, the pet shelter in St. Joseph, is full. Four dogs and six hamsters are coming your way. Want me to call Ren?”
“No. I’ll do it if I need to. Thank you.”
As I said before, having no guests at Pet Manor is a very rare occasion.
five
EZRA
I watch Sully entering the pet shelter as I step back under the trees on one side of the property, where I’m shrouded in darkness to avoid being seen by Ren. When he’s far enough, I move around the building. I can see Clover through the window in one of the rooms. I hear the conversation Sully had with Ren, so I wait for him to appear, and when he does, I can’t tear my eyes from him.
It’s a little annoying how he catches all my attention by just being there.
