manipulate the little buttons that were once second nature. Finally, I find what I’m looking for.
Twice I watch the video that purports to teach how to rig an emergency diaper with two dish towels (for absorbency) and a T-shirt (to keep it in place). Putting Nils on the mattress, I start my adventure in DIY diapering surrounded by those pups who have suddenly lost interest in the cheese chews.
Endlessly curious, they nose everything, especially the phone, which Nils has, after all, marked. Then one snuffles at the screen and switches to a video about Minecraft skins. “Hey,” I say folding the towel in thirds, “that is not helping.”
“Who are you talking to?”
Between the pups and the piss and the phone, I hadn’t noticed the door opening or the pups looking toward it. Or even that one close to me who has dropped his cheese chew and stares at it guiltily.
“Who are you talking to?” Evie says, at once furious and despairing. A second later, she barrels into me. I grab her thigh and twist, trying to get her away from Nils. The pups start barking loudly, the baby whimpers, and Evie seems intent on ripping a window into my chest.
I try to protect myself and Nils, whose body has rolled into the indentations made by two enormous adults thrashing next to him. There’s a sudden, excruciating pain in my big toe that makes me jump, and Evie takes advantage of it to jam her forearm into my throat.
“Who. Are. You. Talking. To?” she demands again, holding my phone with its now-blank screen in her free hand.
With one hand buttressed against her forearm, trying to keep my trachea from being soldered to my spine, I flail around with the other, fumbling to get my thumb to the little spot that will unlock my phone. By the third time, I hit the circle and swipe. After what seems like an eternity, she lets up the pressure on my windpipe and I curl on my side, gagging up my lungs.
“What is it?” she asks, holding up a picture of a wan, cheery woman, diapering a smiling dead-eyed doll.
Things are swimming in front of my eyes, my lungs feel like punctured balloons, and my toe is simultaneously on fire and being crushed by pliers because a pup has inserted her tiny needle teeth into either side of the joint.
Sucking in one discordant breath after another, I jab my finger frantically at Nils. “Dpr!”
My dizziness is joined by a cool tingling, and blood returns to my brain. “Diaper,” I repeat and she plucks at the clunky folds of dish towels held together by my T-shirt. “Look.”
The phone has gone black again, but I disable the lock before handing it to her. She hesitates.
“Look, Evie. Look at everything.” I flick through texts, emails, search history, maps. Showing her that the last call out was to Tiberius the day August died.
Nyala growls deep in her little throat, sending vibrations through her fangs and into my joint. I lean forward, inserting my fingers gently into her mouth. She growls again and tightens her jaws. I suck in a sharp breath through clenched teeth.
“Liðe, Nyala. Liðe.” The pup looks up with her bright, dark eyes, watching as Evie scoots around and rubs her thumb across the pup’s muzzle. “Nyala, let go.”
Her teeth slowly loosen in an agonizing grinding between the bones.
“Constantine…” Evie says, holding the phone gingerly in her hands, her finger absently tracing circles on the back. “I…”
“Whatever you say, don’t let it be ‘sorry.’”
“I should have trusted you.”
“No you shouldn’t. You have too much at stake to trust any of us. I have done so many things…” I close my eyes as though that will do anything to erase the draining horror of it all. “I am not a good man, Evie.”
She turns her head until her cheek is soft against my hand. “Why didn’t you just bring Nils to the Great Hall?”
“Do you know anything about babies?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing. We haven’t had one since… Since a long time. Do you?”
“A little more than nothing. You clearly had something on your mind.” I cross my arms in front of me and count out four fingers on each of my biceps. “You still do.”
She leans against me, her shoulder brushing mine. Then she pulls down Nils’s lower lip, revealing his two tiny, square teeth.
“How long will he be like this?” I ask.
“Depends. When they’re this young, they don’t understand the change. They don’t know what a