Dad’s ashes, I figured that wasn’t going to happen any time in my near future.
Then I bit my lip and sighed inwardly. No matter how much I’d started thinking of him that way, wanting it to be so, I didn’t have a familiar. Fluke was biding his time with me until a real, powerful mage came along. Maybe the one Gideon was supposed to be training, since that was also not me. Or maybe he was just a hyperintelligent fox, which still wouldn’t be as smart as a familiar. No regular fox would ever be able to choose the right edition of a book.
“Congratulations, Mr. McKinley,” she told me as she led me out of her office. “Fluke seems like an excellent familiar. I’m sure you’ll have many happy years together.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
And that was that. We all left the registration office, and foxy was a whole new fox. Fluke the familiar, all registered and legal-like. He seemed to understand that something had changed. Maybe it was my imagination, but there seemed to be an extra spring in his step, his head held a little higher, like he knew he had the right to be where he was, when before he’d been taking up someone else’s space.
“Congratulations, Fluke,” I told him, scratching his head as we walked. “You’re legal. Plus, you know, now you’ve got a name.”
I looked over at Gideon, expecting more commentary about naming him on the fly, or calling him an accident, but he only gave a wry smile and shook his head.
I felt lighter than I had in years. Sure, one was dead and one was a fox, but I was spending my morning with two people I liked, and they were both kind of awesome.
Chapter Ten
Since the route back from the county offices led right past the coffee shop, I decided to divert there. Not for their mediocre coffee or decent sandwiches, but for the dog treats Fluke had liked so much when Beez bought them for him.
Today I got to be the hero.
He pranced in right beside me, and unless I was mistaken, there was a new air of confidence about him. I went over to the shelf of treats and looked down at him. “You want to pick one?”
He looked the shelf over, sniffing at them. They were all pretty uniform, mostly little plastic bags of ten or twelve treats. My smartass foxy, though, got up on his hind legs and pulled a bag off the second shelf—one that had at least twenty in it.
I snorted at him. “Glutton.” He gave me his innocent eyes, and I snorted again. “I know what you’re up to, monster.”
Knowing didn’t stop me from taking the bag he picked and getting in line, though.
“These are gonna have to last a while,” I told him seriously.
The man ahead of me in line turned to give me a questioning glance, then seeing that I was talking to Fluke, chuckled and turned back to the menu board. I looked up at it too.
Their coffee was seriously mediocre, but I could get a latte, I supposed. It was hard to mess up a latte with anything but the worst coffee. Or maybe, like, sour milk. Or white chocolate.
Maybe a mocha. No one could mess up a mocha.
The man in front of me reached the counter and started making his order, and Fluke leaned hard on my leg, looking up at me with those pleading eyes. I tried to play taskmaster, bad at it as I was. “Nope. Not till we pay for them, buddy.”
“Sir?” asked a shrill voice. “Sir, are you okay?”
I turned back to the counter in time to see the man in front of me take an unsteady step back, one hand clutching his chest, and the other reaching out to the side as though for balance.
I reached for him, but too late.
His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed to the floor.
For a few crucial seconds, I froze. I looked around the shop, but no one had moved. Everyone had turned to stare, and the barista was leaning over the counter, but not a single person had leapt up like they do in the movies, shouting that they were a doctor, and to clear the way for them. No one even stood up.
So I dove down next to him, Fluke sticking to my side as though he was afraid I’d disappear. The man’s pulse was wild, so fast and hard I could see it jumping in his neck before