“What the fuck is it?” Alice asked, taking a step back.

Bogo gave another bark, exposing his impossible mouth before running up to me with his tail-a-wagging. “Hey there Bogo,” I said and knelt down, scratching him behind the ears. I made sure to be careful with my new nails. “Remember, when you’re up here you gotta do the quiet barks so you don’t scare the locals.”

Bogo looked contrite and made a small “boof” noise.

“That’s a good boy,” I said, patting his side vigorously.

“Seriously, what the fuck is that,” Alice said.

Bogo gave her a look that seemed to say, “Really? I’m right here.”

I turned and looked at Alice. She was standing back, her stance wide and her hands on the chain around her waist. I determined I needed to calm her down before she electrified the not-dog.

“Don’t know what he is, to be honest,” I said, still petting the maybe-dog behind the ears. “All I know is that he’s well-behaved, sweet as a puppy, and the best-damned tracker I’ve ever heard of.” Bogo shook in excitement at the praise. “So please relax so he can do his job.”

Alice let go of her chain but didn’t relax her stance. It’ll have to do. I turned back to Bogo and fished the rag out of my pocket for him.

“Alright buddy, I got a different kind of job for you this time,” I said. “We aren’t hunting a bad guy this time.” Bogo turned his head to the side in the classic dog body language of Curious. “We need to find where the lady whose blood this belongs to has been. Do you think you can do that? Track where she came from?”

Bogo made a small “boof” noise and spun in a circle. “Right on, buddy,” I said, holding out the rag for him.

Bogo slammed his nose into my palm, dead center of the bloodstain. He sniffed and sniffed and sniffed like he was trying to set a speed record for breathing. He finished his sniff sprint with a final, deep inhale, his face splitting slightly to reveal his big mouth for a moment before he spun around and pointed south.

“Got the scent, boy?” I asked.

“Boof!”

“This is adorable,” Ida said. “In a weird way.”

* * *

We piled into the car. Alice was at the wheel again because Bogo needed to be up in front to navigate and she refused to touch him. Alice and I were both too big to sit in the back comfortably so Ida took one for the team once again and sat in the back while Bogo sat in my lap.

The trip was weird for its normalness. Bogo directed us down interstate 5 all day, his head pressed to the small opening I had made in the window. Bogo wanted the window all the way down but that made conversation impossible with the speeds Alice drove. She pushed my little four-cylinder for all it was worth, rarely dropping under a hundred miles an hour unless traffic got bad. Only one cop noticed us. I figured he must have had particularly high willpower because he gave chase for all of two miles before Alice had me hold the steering wheel while she stared into the rear-view mirror unblinking for 30 seconds. The result was the cop broke off and pulled a Uey like he was responding to a bank robbery.

“What’d you do?” I asked.

“Made him think his wife was cheating on him,” she said as she resumed driving.

“You read his mind?” Ida asked.

“No, just planted a thought,” Alice said, swerving around a station wagon.

“How did you know he was married?” Ida asked.

“Didn’t.”

There was a silent moment as Ida and I processed that.

“He’s going to be really confused if he isn’t,” I said.

Aside from that little adventure, there wasn’t much excitement. One can only be scared of Alice’s driving for so long before you either have a heart attack or become inured to it. If it wasn’t for Conner’s life hanging over my head, I might have enjoyed it. A road trip with my two friends. Hell, we should take a real road trip once this was over. I couldn't even listen to music with how worried I was.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Can’t he, like, tell us where to go? So we can fly?” Alice asked about an hour after sunset.

Bogo made a grumbly noise. He had picked up that Alice wasn’t too keen on him and he wasn’t taking it well. I scratched his ears.

“He needs access to the air the person traveled through, as far as I know,” I said. “He’s not really smelling the air so much as following a psychic trail. He can’t tell us where the trail goes the same way a bloodhound doesn’t know the exact location of the person he’s tracking. Plus, he can’t talk.”

“Boof,” Bogo said, sadly.

“I know you do your best, buddy,” I said, giving him a pat.

“I know he can’t talk,” she said. “But he’s pretty smart. I figured we could get a Thomas Guide and he can point at it or something.”

“If only,” I said. “I know of an entity that does something similar, but it only takes payments in human organs.”

“So, road trip,” Ida said.

“Road trip,” I replied.

“Boof.”

My memories started to come back, to my immense relief. Just snatches and impressions. The biggest memory to return was how Ida and I had initiated our relationship. It was fragmented and I only got a few moments, but what I could pick out was I said something along the lines of “Oh my God I missed you” and the next thing I knew we were making out while waiting for her stuff in the luggage terminal.

I had built it up in my head like a scenario from a movie, where we flirted here and there and then confessed our attraction during an action scene or something. Nope. Just a year of long-distance flirting and some public make-outs while Alice pretended to dry-heave in the background.

When it got too late and we were all flagging, we stopped for the night about ten miles outside Bakersfield at a little roadside motel that looked better put together than the average Motel 6. The girls went to arrange for our rooms while I took Bogo for a walk to stretch his legs. While I’ve never seen him poop, he does pee. And I needed to take him pretty far away as his piss is highly caustic and I didn’t want to have to explain why my dog was pissing paint thinner to anyone. Ida was waiting for us when I got back to the motel.

I gave Bogo one more pet. “Have a good night, buddy,” I said before walking over to Ida.

“Boof,” he said, hopping up on the hood of my car with surprising daintiness. He walked in a circle before lying down with his head on his paws.

“He is just… going to sleep on the car?” Ida asked, amused.

I nodded, tiredly. “He likes to sleep on something heavy,” I said. “Or maybe dense? Most of what I know about him is from observation.”

“What if it rains?” Ida asked.

“Oh, he’ll love that,” I said. “I really hope it doesn’t rain because it’s hard for him to remain incognito when he’s excited.”

She gave an amused smile before lifting up a room key with a jingle. “Come,” she said. “We’re in room eight.”

My heart skipped a beat. “We’re” in room eight. She caught the look on my face and took my hand in hers. “Any more memories come back?” She asked as we walked down the length of the building.

“A few,” I said. “But it’s like like I’m being handed random puzzle pieces and trying to figure out what picture they make.”

She squeezed my hand. “But it’s a good sign, yes? It looks like they will return to normal.”

“A very good sign,” I said.

We were traveling light. We each had a change of clothes, a jacket, and some toiletries. Alice had taught me a spell you could draw with water onto clothes that would clean them in ten minutes, which is apparently how we’ve been doing laundry. Unless I get those memories back overnight, she was going to have to teach it to me again. Ida unlocked the door and I saw my travel bag on the bed next to hers.

“We need to talk a bit before we sleep,” she said, pulling me towards the bed. She sat down and patted the space next to her. I sat down with her.

“Have you remembered our conversation?” She asked. “About… what is happening to you?”

She pulled up my hand, her fingers still entwined in mine. She touched the black skin of my hand with her finger to illustrate.

“No, but I can imagine,” I said. “I was worried about the possibility of contagion, wasn’t I?”

She nodded. “I just wanted to make sure we won’t do something we’d regret,” she said slowly. “Whatever that may be. The good news is you called your doctor and she said ‘over-the-clothes stuff’ is fine.”

Oh right. The doctor! With everything going on, I had forgotten about her. Jesus, shouldn’t she have called me? I patted my pockets but only found the phone I had picked up at Target. “First: that’s funny and slightly embarrassing but completely fine. Thank you,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Second: do you know where my phone is? She was supposed to call me with my blood results.”

She gave me a smile to my first statement which turned into a thoughtful frown at my question. “No, I don’t think I’ve seen it since you called her.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“Sunday night,” she said. “When it became apparent that things might get… ah, heated.”

With her accent, she pronounced “heated” without the H sound, which I found adorable and highly attractive. There was an awkward moment when we both became aware that we wanted to tear each other’s clothes off, but didn’t because we’re responsible adults. And then the moment went longer because we both looked at each other hungrily and thought “What’s the worst that could happen?” The silence became very uncomfortable until Ida finally shook herself and stood.

“Maybe it’s in your bag?” She asked, letting go of my hand.

Thank you for being the voice of reason, Ida.

Also: Dammit. I mean, yes, definitely, we should be smart about this. We don’t know what’s going on with my body. We need to be super-duper-safe. And, knowing me, if Ida and I did the deed while my brother was missing/in danger I know my stupid brain would compound the guilt I already felt, so it was a smart move all around to wait until later to get intimate. But all the same…

Dammit.