“Don’t be stupid,” said the vet. “I’m not letting her actually do anything surgical on the animal, and you’re not the veterinarian State Board. Like she said, an extra pair of steady hands. Speaking of which, hold this a sec.” He thrust an implement at her.
She looked at it with interest. It was kind of like a scalpel, nice and sharp on one end. It would make a good hand-to-hand weapon.
“I have questions I want to ask you,” Rodriguez said to her.
“So ask,” she said. She stood balanced on the balls of her feet and kept her eyes on the vet as she held the implement in one hand and flipped it, then flipped it again.
As she twirled the implement between her fingers, Jackson glanced sidelong at her. He said irritably, “Stop that.”
She stopped and stood quietly as she watched him inspect the dog. He probed the dog’s swollen neck, and his face tightened. He held out his hand and she handed the implement back to him. “Still has rope tied around his neck,” he said. “Get your fingers over here. Keep his skin pulled back so I can cut the rope off.”
“Shit.” She bent over and pulled the swollen, abraded flesh apart as best she could.
“Can you take me back to where you found the dog?” Rodriguez asked.
“Nope,” she said.
“That’s a pretty glib response,” said the sheriff. “You actually give your answer any thought?”
“I’m from New York,” she said tersely, sparing the sheriff a single sharp look. “I’m not familiar with this area. The desert all looks the same to me, and I wasn’t paying attention to where I was when I decided to stop to investigate the lump beside the road.”
“First you say you found the dog,” Rodriguez said. “Now you say he’s yours. Animal torture is against the law.”
“For God’s sake, John!” Jackson snapped.
“Something doesn’t add up about her story,” Rodriguez said, his voice hard. “There’s no damn way she could get an animal of his size and weight into her car all by herself.”
She angled her jaw out. Should she tell the sheriff about her telekinesis? She thought over recent events and stuck by her original instinct, remaining silent.
The vet said, “This dog was dragged behind a vehicle before the rope broke. Go check her goddamn bumper. If you find something, arrest her. If not, go away. We’ve got a lot to do here and it’s going to take a while.” He lifted one shoulder in a fatalistic shrug. “Unless, of course, the dog dies.”
“I’ve said that a lot in the last forty-five minutes,” she said. That dog had one of the strongest wills to live she’d ever seen. She had a feeling he wasn’t going to die on Jackson’s table. She added to Rodriguez, “If you’re going to ticket me, set it on the counter along with my license and registration. I’ll pay it before I leave town.”
The sheriff was silent for a moment. Then he growled, “Fine.”
Rodriguez slammed out the front door. In ten minutes he was back. He slapped papers on the corner of the counter. He said to the vet, “Call me.”
Jackson nodded without a break in his work. The sheriff left without another word.
Claudia’s stomach was in a knot by the time Jackson finally got the rope cut away from the dog’s neck. They washed him next, cleaning him of sand and grit. There were raw wounds all over his body. Jackson’s aged face was set, his pale blue eyes burning. She had a feeling she looked the same way. He took X-rays, diagnosed broken ribs and wrapped them, and he had to cut out two bullets. They worked for a long time in a silence that was broken only by Jackson’s brusque commands. She did everything he told her to do, and she did it quickly.
Jackson’s medicine was mundane, which was to say, he did not use spells in any of his procedures. She didn’t sense any sparks of Power on him or anywhere in his house, but then her magic sense was almost nil. Most creatures, items and places felt mundane to her. She’d never bothered to try discovering if her spark of Power was enough to cross over to an Other land because, in part, she couldn’t sense the land magic of the crossover passages.
Finally Jackson finished working on the dog. When he removed the endotracheal tube, straightened and stripped off his gloves, she stretched her aching back and shoulders and stripped off hers as well, tossing them into the hazardous-waste bin by the back door.
Jackson opened his battered fridge and pulled out two Heinekens. He popped the tops off the green bottles and handed one to her. Claudia accepted it and took a swallow. She watched him dig into his shirt pocket to pull out a cigarette lighter and a pack of Camels. He offered a cigarette to her. She shook her head. He tapped one out of the box, stuck it between his lips and kicked open the back screen door to step outside. When he held the door open for her, she glanced at the bandaged, unconscious dog.