January in Atlantis - Alyssa Day (red white royal blue .txt) 📗

having been abandoned there the night before by some heartless person who’d decided he or she didn’t want little Fluffy anymore.

Her blood boiled at the thought, but anger wasn’t helping this little guy.

She took a deep breath and slowly blew it back out, consciously letting go of the anger and the pain and the worry, letting go of her own turbulent emotions over her own life, and then she reached for the tiny flicker of warmth deep in her mind that she could sometimes reach… sometimes just push…

There.

She’d never known how or why, but she’d always been able to do it. Even sometimes when she wasn’t trying. She could access that better part of her own nature that allowed her to share her warmth and caring with animals. An “affinity” is what people called it when they bothered to get to know her, or bothered to call it anything at all. A “gift” sometimes.

For a few tense hours in Arkansas, it had been a curse, and there had been those convinced that the eagle only flew down to her shoulder because Eva must be a shapeshifter or a witch.

Those men had carried guns.

She’d escaped, and her family had raced away from that lonely gas station out in the sticks, but ever since, she’d vowed to stay away from men with guns.

The puppy, who’d started toward her on his belly, eyes hopeful and miniature tail wagging, stopped, crouching low and whimpering. Picking up on her mental distress probably, poor little fellow.

She firmly pushed all thoughts of men with guns out of her mind and reached out again. Pushed again. The pup’s entire body quivered with relief and, perhaps, the first beginning of trust as he wiggled the rest of the short distance toward her and nibbled the bite of meat from her hand.

“I’m just going to take you to be cared for now, my sweet one,” she murmured, gently scooping him up and cuddling him close to her chest.

Eva heard the footsteps, even in the rubber-soled shoes, before she saw her boss turn the corner into the puppy room. She’d had reason to learn wariness, and being aware at all times of who was near her was important. She’d learned that lesson the hard way, and it was one she didn’t plan to forget.

“Hey, Mrs. Markowski. I’ve got this little one ready to go. Do you want me to make the run to the vet?”

Mrs. Markowski, the eighty-something director of the shelter and a one-woman dynamo, fund-raiser, animal savior, and wonderful human being—not to mention Eva’s landlady—shook her head. She shoved her white curls back from her face and smiled at Eva. “I’ll do it today. I’m going out to dinner with friends on the way back. You’re good here until our nighttime volunteers show up?”

“We’re good,” Eva said, smiling at her boss. “I don’t know how you do it. You have the most active social life of anybody in town, and you run this place like a Swiss clock, not to mention all your other charitable works.”

Mrs. M shook her head. “Oh no, dear. So many others do so much more.”

“That’s not true at all, and you know it. Here, take Mr. Puppy here, and I’ll get his intake paperwork for the vet.”

Mrs. M brushed a bit of cat hair from her slim gray slacks and then gently took the puppy. At just over five feet and maybe a hundred and ten pounds, maximum, you wouldn’t think to look at her that Mrs. Markowski had retired from running the entire Early school district after forty years of being a teacher and then a principal at the local high school before that. But almost every person Eva had met at the shelter, and some she’d met at the bar, her paying job, loved to tell her about how they were former students who had fond memories of Mrs. M.

“You’re so good with them, Eva.”

Eva shrugged. “No more than anyone else. I just like animals.”

“Well, dear, I’ve run the place full-time for the past fifteen years, and yes, I find the pets love us just as much as we love them, and the reverse also applies. But you’ve got a gift. They trust you long before they would trust anybody else.”

Eva blinked, caught uncomfortably off guard to hear her thoughts spoken aloud. She didn’t let people in, not anymore. Not even people she liked and respected, like Mrs. M. She certainly didn’t share her thoughts, or her worries, or anything about her affinity.

On the other hand, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the new volunteer at the animal shelter managed to get animals to like her pretty quickly, and Eva’s landlady was sharp as a tack.

“Do you need to get going, or do you have some time to spend with Daisy?” Mrs. M nodded in the direction of the office. “I think she misses you. You know, I’m sure I told you this before, but I wouldn’t mind at all if you brought Daisy home to foster for some overnights and see if the two of you—”

Eva broke in before her landlady could finish that sentence. “I know. And it’s very nice of you. But I just can’t get attached right now. I have to move around so often for… because,” she ended lamely, unable, or unwilling, to tell Mrs. M the real truth.

She’d been lucky enough to find Mrs. M and the tiny studio apartment over her garage with the To Let sign. She’d been doubly lucky that the elderly woman had been willing to rent on a month-by-month basis, cash only, to a woman who couldn’t provide references, bank information, or anything else that any reasonable landlord would require of a tenant.

Mrs. Markowski, though, had talked to her for about ten minutes and then offered her the place. She had told Eva that if she couldn’t tell the difference between a good person and a bad person after eighty years on this planet, she may as well give up now.

Then she’d gone back into the beautiful two-story house she lived in all alone, now that her beloved husband Gus had died, and baked the most incredible apple pie Eva had ever tasted.

It had been almost surreal, like being trapped in a nightmare and then rescued by an angel. When Eva had plopped right down on the kitchen floor after eating her pie and played with the seven foster kittens, Lucky, the one-eyed dog (“He’s still alive and has one good eye, so he’s Lucky”), and the de-scented skunk that Mrs. M was caring for her in her home, Eva’s new landlady had immediately beguiled her into putting in a few hours a day at the shelter.

“No pay of course. In fact, I’m going to donate your entire rent to the shelter so I won’t have off-the-books rent on my conscience,” she had said briskly, her eyes shining. “But I can tell animals like you and you like them. It’s a perfect place to get some peace and think.”

And so it had been, Eva thought now, after Mrs. M had taken today’s crop of pets in need of medical care off to see Dr. Douglas. Eva grinned. There was nothing like cleaning out cages and restocking cat litter to make a person think about her choices in life.

She glanced at her watch and winced. She had to run or she’d be late again, and Noel wasn’t the type to appreciate lateness. Her manager at the bar was one of the most vile and disgusting human beings she’d come across in a while, and that was saying something, considering she’d always worked in bars.

Of course, she wasn’t counting Scott and his friends the Dark Angels in that tally. They were beyond slime—they were pure evil.

But for a boss, Noel took slimy about six steps further than anybody Eva had ever worked for before. He was paying her cash under the table, and whenever employers paid cash, they knew they could get away with a lot. They didn’t have to worry about taxes, they didn’t have to worry about employee complaints, they didn’t have to worry about unemployment compensation or sexual harassment lawsuits. Undocumented workers had no rights at all, and Eva couldn’t afford to give anyone her legal ID because Scott had more ways to track her than just through magic.

No ID meant that anybody who hired her had all the power. All they had to do was say hit the road, and Eva couldn’t protest because she didn’t have a leg to stand on. Unfortunately, it was her legs that were the problem. Or her butt, breasts, or any other curved part of her body that made slimy, lecherous men like Noel lick their slimy, lecherous lips.

Noel was always trying to get her in a corner, put his hands on her, or get her to laugh at one of a thousand raunchy jokes he liked to tell just to see her blush. It was harassment of the worst kind, but Eva was desperate. She’d run out of money just before she got to the last town and had still been looking for work there when Scott’s minions found her.

Again. When they’d found her again.

So she’d had to run—again—except this time with no money. This job in Early, Nevada, in the Copper Cantina Bar and Grill would have been a good one if not for Noel. Eva was making more money in the cantina than she’d made in the past five jobs before it. Tips were great in Early because it was a revitalized copper-mining town. The past decade had seen a dramatic rise in magic practitioners, ever since supernatural creatures, witches, and mages had allowed the world to learn that they really existed outside horror novels and scary movies. The magic users, with their need for copper to fuel or assist in many of their spells and rites, had brought new money to Early, and the mines had started back up into production, much to the delight of Early’s residents.

The only problem Eva anticipated was that where money came, the Dark Angels followed. She was only surprised there wasn’t a local chapter here yet, but she’d checked before deciding to stay in Early and had been assured that no gangs operated in this part of the state. Scott couldn’t possibly be here—not this fast—but if a branch of HDA came