Free Fear the Darkness: A Thriller by Becky Masterman

ungentlemanly way, tried to disengage the dog with “Down, Ebony! Down!” Ebony did not respond. But Mallory’s grabbing the large puppy paws and easing herself out of their clutches seemed to help more than the command.
    Ebony was forced to stay, and sat twitching with not totally suppressed joy at Adrian’s feet while Carlo introduced him around just in case and offered one of the chairs the Neilsens had vacated.
    “I’m sorry,” Adrian said. “I just came over to say hi because I recognized you and disrupted your whole conversation. I’d thought of getting a dog to keep me company and was going to ask around here. They have a bunch of rescue animals looking for homes if anyone is interested. Ebony is less than a year old. Can you believe someone didn’t want her?”
    I observed Ebony’s pound-for-pound destruction potential but didn’t comment.
    “But it looks like we’re going to have to have some obedience classes.” He shrugged. “What else is retirement good for?”
    “More wine?” Mallory asked, still looking a little distrustful of the dog.
    Adrian and Ebony, though quite adorable, had unintentionally made the talk small, and I welcomed my cell phone ringing even as I wondered what it could be about. I dug through my tote bag, pushing aside a water bottle, hand lotion, lip balm, all the usual accoutrements of living in a place where the humidity hovers around six percent.
    The phone stopped ringing when I found it. I opened the cover and saw the number was from home. I pressed the number to call back. Gemma-Kate picked it up in half a ring.
    “Is everything all right?” I asked.
    “I’m not sure,” she said. “I wasn’t sure I should bother you.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “I think one of the dogs is sick.”
    “Sick how?”
    “It’s throwing up.”
    “What do you mean, throwing up? Sometimes they get a little sick, eat weeds, throw up.”
    “I know, but this is sort of green and foamy … Aunt Brigid … he’s starting to breathe funny.”
    “We’re just up the road and we’re on our way.”
    I had pulled the phone away from my ear in preparation for closing it when I heard, “Oh my God, he’s jerking around!”

 
    Eleven
    We said quick good-byes, drove the short distance home, and came into the house to see Gemma-Kate standing helplessly over one of the Pugs lying in a pool of green vomit. Before either of us could react, the dog went rigid and then jerked into a seizure.
    “Oh God,” she all but shrieked, “he keeps doing that thing and I don’t know how to stop it!” She rocked with her arms wrapped about her as if she didn’t trust that her hands could do anything useful.
    I ran to the kitchen area and looked at an address we had tacked to the side of the fridge.
    “La Cañada and River,” I muttered to myself, while Carlo wrapped the sick, now shaking Pug into a towel and handed him to me.
    “I’ll drive,” he said.
    Gemma-Kate stood watching us, looking like the best she could do was keep from crying until we were out the door, but I couldn’t stop to reassure her just now.
    The female dog standing at my side, looking up at me with her buggy eyes like a terrified Elsa Lanchester meeting her new husband, was another matter. “Let her come along,” I said to Carlo. The Pugs did everything together.
    Carlo picked up the dog and we left, the well Pug whining in the backseat, me in the passenger seat holding the limp Pug in my lap while so much drool ran out of his mouth, through the towel and onto my dress, that it seemed he had to be vomiting it. I passed my finger over the oh-so-soft spot between his eyes and thought the words Hurry, Carlo, he’s dying, but I didn’t say those words. Maybe I said something like “It’s okay, Mr. Puggly Wuggly, you’ll be okay.” I know, it still embarrasses me, too, when I think about it.
    The ride took forever and it seemed as if each mile was marked by a further slowing of the dog’s breaths. Carlo went at least