Tainted Blood: A Generation V Novel

by M. L. Brennan

  “So your argument here is that I should date you to get some free food?”

  “I’m just saying that there are some perks.” She made a grumbling sound, and I grinned. “In fact, as a show of good faith, I’ll even get you a beer.”

  It was an old joke between us, and she couldn’t hold back her laugh. “Well, that’s the kind of big gesture that can get a woman’s attention,” she teased, deliberately flipping her pigtails.

  “Pizza and beer, Suze,” I deadpanned. “I have it on excellent authority that they go together.”

  Suze pushed her menu away as the waitress came up. “Large pizza, half vegetarian, half meat lover’s,” she rattled off our standard order as the poor woman, who had only expected to take the drinks, scrambled for her order pad. Suze paused for a moment and looked back at me, tilting her head in that very vulpine way of hers. Not looking away from me, she said, “Split the checks. But,” she amended emphatically, “the beer goes on his.” When the waitress left, she gave me a chiding look. “Don’t try to bribe me, Fort.”

  “It’s not a bribe,” I said mildly. “Just an incentive.”

  She snorted, but then changed the subject. I let her—we’d had these small snippets of conversation many times over the last month. If she’d ever told me flat out at any point that she didn’t want to be in a relationship with me, then I would’ve dropped it forever. But she hadn’t—and at times I could feel her dark eyes watching me when I wasn’t looking, considering and assessing, the same way I’d once seen her in her fox form, staring up at a bakery tin that I’d put on top of one of the high cabinets to keep away from her. She’d been weighing how much she’d really wanted it, and whether it was worth the effort.

  As it had turned out, a fox is very capable of jumping straight to the top of a refrigerator, then hopping on top of the hanging cabinets, scampering over to the bakery tin, and gobbling a third of the contents before you can stop her. Since then I’d just had to accept that no food item in my apartment was safe from Suzume.

  When I pulled out my wallet at the end of the meal, I discovered that it was now sporting a pair of glued-on googly eyes. I looked over at Suze, who was watching me with a look of sublime glee across her face. I shook my head and pulled out some cash, ignoring her delighted snickering.

  We drove back to my apartment, where Suze plopped straight onto the couch and started channel surfing. I called the results of the trip in to my mother, who seemed pleased by the results.

  “Talk this one over with your sister,” Madeline told me. “I’m sure the two of you can come up with a good plan of action.”

  “Mother, I’m not sure that Prudence and I work that well together,” I said. “The last time didn’t work out too well.” In fact it had ended in my holding a gun to her head, and then her attempting to kill my host father, Henry. Not a particularly great track record.

  “Nonsense, darling. You sorted out that wretched elf problem, and just had a few hiccups at the end.” I choked a little at her phrasing. “Besides,” she said, her tone sharpening, “you have many more years of sharing each other’s company. There’s no time like the present to figure out how to get along. Now, when will you be coming down again? She’s decided to continue visiting in her old room for another week or so, so you can see her whenever you want.” What a very genteel way my mother had with phrasing. Much better than mentioning that Prudence had had to temporarily move back into the mansion when Madeline began enacting her punishment plan. Apparently it was very hard to go to the bathroom with a broken thigh unless there was a helpful twenty-four-hour presence of staff willing to help out.

  “In a few days,” I told her. “The rusalka won’t need to be moved until the springtime anyway, so there’s no rush.” We exchanged good-byes, and then I hung up.

  Collaborating with Prudence again was right up there with a root canal as far as things I’d like to avoid. I put in a call to Loren Noka to check on whether any new messages or jobs had come in while I was out, pulling out and prepping a bag of microwavable popcorn as I went. Suze had given up on channel surfing and was now digging around at the DVD pile. Noka assured me that with the rusalka conversation out of the way, there was nothing that needed my attention.

  With the knowledge that I wouldn’t be running errands for the family business, I called up my floater job. A few weeks ago, I’d seen a flyer on the side of a bus stop shelter, and after following up on it, I had begun my exciting employment as the substitute dog walker for a local entrepreneur who had managed to corner the market in the College Hill area. Hank was a semi-retired semi-professional marathon runner in his fifties, and years ago he’d hit on the realization that he could get his necessary daily miles clocked up while at the same time hauling along some pampered canines and get paid for it. Since then he’d become something of a dog walker kingpin, with hordes of underlings, a permanently affixed Bluetooth, and a daily e-mail blast of schedules and locations. Working with my family had left my schedule too erratic even for working as a waiter, and so far this had been an almost unqualified success. After all, there isn’t that much of a difference between cleaning up after people’s dinners and scooping dog poop into plastic bags.

  Fortunately enough, one of Hank’s regulars was going to be out the next day, so he simply gave me her full schedule. It included a round of basic morning and afternoon poops, which were never more than a quick walk around the block, and also a long set of full exercise runs for a few people who preferred the dog exhausted and their furniture intact.

  Suze made a loud noise of disgust when I hung up, but said nothing. She was not a fan of the dog walking—she claimed that all the dogs marking me was really annoying. She’d thrown a fit the few times I’d met up with her after walking the dogs without going through a full shower. I assumed it was some kind of weird canine thing, since the dogs certainly noticed whenever I’d been around Suze—even a dog that might’ve been practically crossing its legs to avoid an accident had to slow down and give me a complete sniffing before we could make our way to the nearest patch of grass.

  The familiar opening instrumental strains of Wild Pacific floated through the apartment. “Don’t even think about it,” I snapped at Suze, who, having made her disapproval clear, gave a superior sniff and flopped back onto the sofa. I poured the popcorn into a container and handed it to her as a peace offering, then popped the DVD out and flipped the TV over to the classic movies channel. Luck was with me as the opening scene of Shadow of a Doubt filled the screen. Suze and I had very different tastes when it came to most films and shows, but Hitchcock was always a reliable compromise.

  The murderous Uncle Charlie had just been triumphantly squished by a train when keys rattled in the door and Dan and his boyfriend, Jaison, came in, carrying take-out food bags. As a couple, they were a study in contrasts. Dan was five foot five, dressed in an elegant dark gray peacoat, slacks, and a wine-colored scarf that was tied around his neck with a casually perfect knot that I knew would’ve taken me hours to achieve. Jaison was well over six feet tall, his medium-length natural Afro mashed under a battered Red Sox ball cap and an unzipped parka thrown on over a tan sweatshirt, with the carpenter’s pants that he’d probably worn to work that day, judging by a blob of dried mortar still attaching the pants to the top of his steel-toed work boots. And, of course, the small fact that Jaison was entirely human, while Dan was very much not.

  A round of polite hellos was exchanged. Both Suze and Jaison were in and out of the apartment regularly enough that everyone knew each other socially at this point.

  “Hey, Jaison. Over for dinner?” Suzume asked. I shot a suspicious look at her. Despite how innocuous the question had been, I knew that tone in her voice too well.

  “Dan and I grabbed Thai food,” Jaison responded.

  Suzume made a tsking sound. “Really, Jaison, why doesn’t Dan ever make dinner for you? I hear he’s a very daring chef.”

  I blanched, and from his position behind Jaison, Dan looked ready t
o strangle Suze, whose smile had just a bit too much trickster in it to be mistaken for friendly. I knew that my roommate was always extremely careful to cook only on nights when Jaison wouldn’t be staying over, and up until now I’d participated in the cover story that Dan wasn’t much of a cook.

  I hurried into the conversation, “Suze, plenty of people like eating out when they can. And I’m sure that Dan’s glad to get a break from washing out the pots.” I aimed a small kick at her ankle, but Suze was no stranger to the social-norm protection kick, and she smoothly lifted up her legs and tucked them onto the sofa, never breaking that wide smile.

  Jaison remained blessedly unaware of the undercurrents in the conversation, and his white teeth flashed against his dark skin in a wide, though slightly baffled smile. “I don’t mind doing a round of dishes in exchange for dinner,” he said, before turning one slightly confused look at his boyfriend. “But I thought you didn’t really know how to cook?”

  Dan very deliberately ignored the question and shoved the line of discussion into a completely new direction with a surprising lack of subtlety for a man currently studying the legal system. “What I’d really like is if we could convince the landlord to put in a dishwasher.”

  I did my best to help out, saying, “It would take a miracle, Dan. You wouldn’t believe the fuss Mrs. Bandyopadyay had to make when her stove had a gas leak.” Leaning in close, I whispered, “Be nice,” in Suze’s ear.

  While Jaison began transferring the take-out food from Styrofoam containers to plates, Dan came over to the couch under the pretext of checking out our pile of DVDs. I was treated to an extremely icy glare.

  “Turn that look ninety degrees to the right, Dan,” I warned. “I didn’t start this.”

  “She’s your girlfriend, so she’s your responsibility,” Dan said in a muttering pitch that nonetheless fully expressed his irritation. “Get her to knock it off.”

  “Sitting right here,” Suzume complained, “and resenting every implication and statement you just made.”

  “Dan, even if she was my girlfriend, which, for the record, she isn’t, I would still do what I’m doing now, which is to take this chance in advance to fully disavow whatever action she eventually takes to get back at you for those comments.”

  The expression on Suze’s face was definitely promising full retribution, and Dan was smart enough to look a bit concerned. Quitting while he was behind, he grabbed a disc at random and got up, grumbling, “I didn’t know living with you came with a fox involved. The kitsune are a menace.”

  Suzume watched Dan retreat, the gleam in her dark eyes hinting at future destruction of property or the ruination of reputations. I scooted closer to her and said softly, “He’s just sensitive about Jaison, Suze. That really wasn’t nice to tease him about.”

  She gave a very superior sniff. “If he wants to date dinner, then he should get used to it.” Then she fixed me with a sidelong look. “You’re both too sensitive about this.”

  “And your poking at Dan has nothing to do with Keiko?” Suzume and her twin sister had been arguing for months over Keiko’s relationship with a very nice, and wholly human, doctor.

  The glitter in Suze’s eyes warned me to back off from that topic. “I don’t know if you stuck up for me very well just now. That’s didn’t seem like very boyfriend-ish behavior.”

  I took the hint and dropped the family topic, but I couldn’t hold back a laugh at her mock-affronted demeanor. “Suze, the last thing you would ever convince me that you want is blind validation.”

  A very calculating expression filled her face, and Suzume made a surprisingly smooth slinking movement across the sofa that took the distance between us from comfortable and friendly to completely nonexistent, pressing us together from shoulder to hip in a way that made my breath catch. My body went on full alert, and I was uncomfortably reminded of just how long it had been since I’d had sex. Suze was clearly absolutely aware of every iota of her effect on me, and her voice became low and husky as she murmured in my ear. “If you know me so well, what do you have that I want?”

  Completely ignorant of just how loaded a question had just been asked, Jaison cut through the banal sounds of take-out food being dished out, saying in gleeful surprise, “The Sarah Connor Chronicles? Dan, I thought you hated the Terminator series!”

  Suze and I didn’t move. Behind us, I could almost hear Dan gritting his teeth as he very quickly reaped the reward of snagging a DVD at random from my pile. “Well, you and Fort both like it so much,” Dan covered. “Maybe I should give it another chance.”

  Without breaking eye contact with me, Suzume called, “That means giving it a full chance this time, Dan. Letting the series build its momentum. No calling it quits three episodes in.” Even as the sexual tension meter remained set on high, I fought a smile—Suze was never one to let a good chance for immediate payback pass her by.

  “Fort, are you up for watching the pilot tonight?” Jaison asked as he walked over to prep the evening’s entertainment. As he did, Suze leaned away from me, letting a natural-looking position adjustment break our physical contact.

  “Robots, time travel, Summer Glau, and violence?” I asked. If my body was destined to remain woefully unsexed, maybe my brain could at least get the condolence prize of sci-fi-induced dopamine. “Do you even need to ask?”

  Jaison grinned and offered me a fist bump of geek solidarity, which I was happy to accept. Then he looked over at Suze. “Even Dan’s giving it a chance,” he coaxed. “You might like it.”

  “Violence, sure. Summer Glau, maybe. Robots and time travel? Never. I’ll call a cab.” She gave my knee a friendly pat as she stood up. “Have fun scooping poop tomorrow.”

  “It’s just the career I dreamed about for four years at Brown,” I noted.

  Chapter 3

  I was not a big fan of being awake at six in the morning, especially during the winter months when the sun wasn’t even up yet, but it was the unfortunate downside in a temporary career option that revolved around the bladder control of canines. At least today the coffeepot was already going. Still dressed in my usual winter pajamas of a set of old sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, I propelled my zombielike self into the main room, where an already-dressed but still-rumpled-looking Jaison was pouring out the first coffee of the day. We exchanged the traditional pre-caffeine greeting of manly grumbles and commenced slurping.

  Dan was parked on the sofa, feverishly flipping through a set of his flash cards, muttering things under his breath about alter ego liability and undercapitalization. Jaison and I shared a look of perfect understanding—no salary was worth that. The stressed-out ghoul broke off his prepping for a minute. “Fort, the dish-soap bottle has eyes. Is your girlfriend behind that?”

  I shuffled over and checked beneath the sink. Sure enough, the Dawn container now had a jaunty pair of googly eyes. “She’s still not my girlfriend, Dan.”

  “Whatever the hell she is, she’d better remember that whatever kind of grand finale she’s working up to had better not involve defiling common property.”

  Silently, Jaison turned the handle of the coffeepot so that I could properly admire the eyes that were now affixed to it. By wordless agreement, neither of us mentioned it to Dan. I also decided that the addition I’d noticed on the ice cube trays the previous night could wait for a more opportune time.

  * * *

  The early morning passed in a quick series of doggy pee breaks. There weren’t that many of them—most dog owners, no matter how busy their work schedules, were able to run their dogs out for a fast poop before they had to head out for the day. But there were a few people who worked third shift and wouldn’t be home until almost noon, and one or two families had clearly gotten the dog as some sort of prop for their kid’s childhood and now attempted to farm out every inconvenient facet of the dog’s existence. Hank’s dog-walking kingdom was based on the very marketable importance of reliability—his clients might not always know who was going to be walking
their dog, but they knew that someone would be showing up, and in a timely enough fashion that they wouldn’t be coming home to find a puddle of urine in the middle of their carpet. To make that possible, Hank required all of his clients to hang a combination-based keyholder on their doors, the same way that real estate agencies did. Hank changed all of the combinations himself every month, to cut down on theft concerns. Each walker was e-mailed their walking schedule, addresses, and the combination keys the night before their route started, and in all the houses where I’d shown up to collect a dog for Hank, I’d never been given the wrong combination code.

  Once the morning sanitary checks were completed without a problem (though Venus, the elderly French bulldog, managed to take twenty minutes to locate her ideal spot before solemnly defecating on the front steps of a synagogue, while the very unamused rabbi watched to make certain that I collected every single particle of poop), I moved on to the exercise runs. For most of the dogs, a half-hour jog at a good pace was enough to ensure that they were left panting and happily mellowed out. Others, like Hercule, the Great Pyrenees, or Mogsy, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, ended up with a full hour. At two o’clock, my schedule temporarily shifted back to poop maintenance, giving several desperately grateful dogs a well-needed bathroom break to tide them over until their owners got home in the evening, but everything ran mostly on track, with the only hiccup being when Pip, the long-haired dachshund, attempted to attack, for no discernible reason, a mailbox. He ended up settling for peeing on it, but looked balefully over his shoulder several times as we departed. Whatever issues lay between Pip and the mailbox, they were clearly far from over.

  Despite the ignominy of scooping up dog feces and having my crotch ritualistically sniffed by fifteen different snouts, I enjoyed the work. Jogging around the College Hill area of Providence, even during November, was far less soul-crushing than any retail job I’d ever held, and the dogs were always happy to see me, which made them a cut above most of my former coworkers. Plus, spending the majority of the day jogging was good enough exercise that I didn’t have to maintain a gym membership. While there were the occasional moments of watching a dog urinate and pondering the usefulness of my Ivy League degree and periodic spots of weirdness like the day Ella (apparently an inveterate trash eater) pooped out two elastic bands, some chicken bones, and a condom, I’d so far been very happy at how the job was working out.