She cautiously waddled over to a bowl, glancing at us every few seconds to make sure we didn’t move. Once she’d ascertained that it was safe to eat and drink, she took her share and then coaxed the others out with a combination of nips and encouraging licks.
I sent Arkady for three warm wet towels. Each of us crept—or hobbled—toward one of the puppies to try and clean it off. No go. As soon as we got close, they yipped and bolted. It was like herding cats.
“What did that bitch do to them?” Arkady said.
I crouched down, cooing softly at the pug. For every step she took toward me, she took two back, but eventually she got close. I held out the towel for her to sniff, and when she didn’t run, gently wiped off her ears.
The pug gave a satisfied huff and some of the tension left her body.
“Why lock dogs up in a soundproofed room?” I said.
The pug sniffled, as if wondering that herself, then she got this constipated expression on her face and her skin rippled.
Even as a non-dog person, I knew that wasn’t standard behavior.
I scrambled back, wincing, as fleshy, wet tentacles exploded from her head, inset with teeth. So many teeth.
“That’s why,” Arkady said.
“Make it go away,” Miles said.
“I refuse to Cruella de Vil this puppy.” I skittered out of the way of a tentacle, flicking out at me like a wet towel.
“Did I say to skin and wear them?” Miles sidestepped a freaked-out poodle with a balletic elegance someone that massive should not have possessed. “The dog’s been infused with magic somehow.”
“You think?”
The poodle ran around in manic circles before breaking out in red eyes all over its body. This set off a Frankenstein chain reaction with one puppy bursting into flame, a black-and-white mutt sprouting a hammer head, and a black lab with electric magic exploding out of it, bumping on its ass around the room.
Favoring my good ankle, I lunged for one of the pug’s tentacles. It snapped back and hit my hand with a wet, meaty splat, the teeth almost breaking skin. I shuddered, lost my grip, and had to try again.
Arkady dove for the hammer-headed mutt before its flailing broke someone’s foot. With both of his fists once more stone, he pinned the thrashing animal in place. “That is not behavior agreed on by the Geneva Accords, Colonel Puppy.”
Miles had cornered the one that was flaming like a tiki torch. Cupping two large balls of flame in his palms, he stared it down until the dog acknowledged his alpha and rolled over, presenting his fiery belly.
Arkady nudged the pug away from the hammer-headed mutt before it could smash one of her tentacles. “Aw. The pug looks like my great-aunt Hyun-Mi. She had dental issues, too.”
“Not funny.” I glared at him.
“Gallows humor, pickle. You got this.”
With a silent wish that I didn’t hurt the poor thing, I hooked into the magic swimming through her tiny, panting body, shuddering at the sensation of pointy enamel embedded in wet flesh.
The magic in the pug didn’t feel like third-party smudges, which smelled like feces and felt like maggots. First of all, it was nowhere near as strong, and second of all, there were too many scents and tastes mixed up here. I tasted four: mint, fish, salt, and chalk. But I couldn’t discern the type of magic they represented.
I probed deeper, my brow furrowing. When the smudges had jumped into new hosts or someone was attacked with magic, like when a Medusa had turned my right side to stone, that invasive magic floated free inside a person.
“How is this even possible?” I said.
“What?” Arkady caught the hammer head mutt as he slipped loose, readjusting his grip on the puppy.
“The magic is knotted to them.”
“Like with a magic artifact?” Miles said. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m not. Tatiana got multiple Nefesh to infuse their magic into this pug and then knotted the powers together to bake them in. Like with an inanimate object.” I raised stricken eyes to the men. “Except these are living creatures with organs and hearts.”
Tiki torch puppy gave a heart-wrenching little wail. Miles stroked its tiny body, murmuring soothing words, before nailing me with a scowl. “Fix this, Cohen.”
“You think I don’t want to? This is uncharted territory,” I said, grabbing hold of the pug on her least toothy side. “What if I pull it out and yank a kidney with it? I could kill them.”
Tentacle pug whimpered. If Tatiana wasn’t dead, I’d have rained hell on her ass. The magic was so unstable that it was ripping these poor dogs apart.
I used my scary “don’t die” voice that I used on Moriarty and hoped the puppy responded better than the car did.
“Wait.” Miles pulled out his phone and began recording. “We’ll document it for Levi.”
“Or in case we have to answer for our actions later,” Arkady said.
“Oh good, if I mess up this gets to be puppy snuff theater.” Holding the pug in place, I sent my magic along the snare of knots inside her, searching for a weak point. A loose end that wasn’t fused to the puppy herself.
I found the end of the tangle, like a tied-off thread, near her left front paw. Closing my eyes, I visualized my magic as a needle piercing the center of that thread. Instead of pulling the invasive magic out to tangle in my branches, I fed a single hair-thin red branch into the first knot and made my white clusters bloom on it, dissolving the knot.
I cracked one eye. The dog panted shallowly, but she wasn’t fighting me, so I continued along the spiderweb to the next knot and the next set of white clusters. By the time I’d dissolved all the knots and pronounced her magic-free, I was crashed on my ass, with my throbbing injured leg stretched out, and my shirt clinging sweatily to my back.
“One down, four to go,” Miles said, tapping the button
