Page 49 of Spiced!

“Papi,” I said. “You’re fine.”

Puck completed his inspection, sat back, and dook’d.

Mofongo sneezed directly on him.

Puck looked down at his fur, at his tiny arms and the spittle oozing off them, then he looked at Mofongo and blinked rapidly.

He dook’d again, differently this time, shorter, with a quality I couldn’t identify, and climbed directly on top of Mofongo’s back.

Mofongo froze. It looked as though he’d been shot with a tranquilizer dart and might never move again. Only his eyes darted back and forth in a failed attempt to see the ferret mounting his back.

Puck arranged himself there with great satisfaction.

Mofongo finally looked at me, his eyes pleading.

I looked at Brendan.

Brendan pressed his lips together very hard.

“Don’t you dare laugh at—”

He lost it, and his laugh was the real kind, full and unguarded.

Mofongo turned toward the sound with his ears at full deployment, and Puck rode the turn like it was nothing, still installed on Mofongo’s back like a medieval knight ready to charge into battle.

“He does that,” Brendan said, when he’d recovered. “When he decides he likes something.”

“He’s riding my dog. Like, literally, bareback.”

“Ferrets don’t use saddles, Adrian,” Brendan said through chuckles. “I’m pretty sure he’s decided your dog is his now.”

I looked at the pair of them—Puck draped across Mofongo’s back, Mofongo standing extremely still with martyred patience, struggling to accept a situation he hadn’t agreed to.

I felt the laugh coming before I could stop it.

“Gerald and Mofongo,” I said. “Puck and Mofongo. You’re collecting things to put on my dog.”

“Gerald isn’t on your dog.”

“Gerald’s on him in spirit.”

Brendan looked at Gerald, shrugged, and said, “Fair.”

Then he turned to the situation at hand. “Okay,” Brendan said, still watching Puck ride Mofongo in a slow victory lap of the living room. “Before any grilling happens, before anything happens, you made a promise, and I need to collect.”

“I make a lot of promises.”

“You said—and I’m quoting—‘Your life will change.’” He crossed his arms and leaned against the counter with the insufferable patience of a man who had been waiting a full day to collect on a bet. “The worm, Adrian. You drove over here to prove your skill. It’s time.”

And there it was, the thing I’d been holding on to since his kitchen texts: the smug little certainty of a veterinarian who didn’t believe a professional dancer could do a wedding-reception novelty move.

“Can I ask you something first?” I asked. “Why do you care so much? You’ve seen me dance on a bar. You watched me do things on a pole that are, medically speaking, ill-advised. Out of everything you could choose to make me prove my pedigree, the thing you’ve decided to litigate for two days is whether I can do a move eight-year-olds learn at birthday parties.”

He considered this as though reviewing a patient’s chart.

“Okay, here’s the thing.” He set down the dish towel he’d picked up for no reason. “The bar stuff, the pole—I have no idea if that’s good. It looks good, but I don’t know dance. I couldn’t tell if you’re a genuinely great dancer or just a very confident man with excellent lighting and a crowd that’s had four drinks. I have no instrument to measure it. You could be a six. You could be a nine. I’m not qualified to say.”

“I’m an eleven.”