Tiger's Eye (5 page)

Thor swung his head around and the collie lifted hers. He trilled softly and flopped his tail a few times.

The sweet girl blinked her big lashes at Thor and put a paw on his hip. Prompted, she hoisted herself up and faced me.

Chance and I exchanged glances.

I took two steps back and said, “Come.”

The collie perked her ears forward, but stayed put as Thor rose to his full height. He lowered his snout and nudged her gently.

She took three seemingly painless steps toward me.

I said to Chance, “She isn’t limping. That’s good.”

I told her to sit and she did. A quick check beneath piles of fur didn’t reveal any lacerations or a collar so I asked Chance to bring the truck around to the curb closest to the trees.

After he was gone, I knelt in front of Thor, patting his concrete shoulder.

“Good job, boy. We’ll fix her right up.”

Thor threw back his head and bayed. Then he leaned in and gave my ear a quick nibble.

The collie cocked her head at me, her eyes like dull marbles that had once shone.

“What happened to you, sweetheart?”

In a way, I was glad Doc Zimmerman was out of town. This little girl needed far more serious care than any veterinarian could offer.

Chapter 5

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

—Groucho Marx

The Queen Anne house was dark when we pulled into the driveway at eleven o’clock. One porch light was lit, casting shadows across the lawn, and there were a few solar lights planted in the garden, but no illumination came from inside the old painted lady. She had been in my family for well over a hundred years. Maegan’s husband, Birdie’s father, built it with his own hands. His name escaped me now as an image of a silver-haired woman rocking on the porch infiltrated my mind.

Was that me in sixty years?

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Chance asked, bursting my vision. “Don’t they have to get up early to make breakfast for the guests?”

I nodded. There were three cars in the lot, which meant the Geraghty guesthouse was full to capacity. Although this time of year most bed-and-breakfasts throughout our small tourist town were booked on the weekends.

“What else can I do? Something’s wrong with her, and Fiona is the only one who may be able to help at this hour. Besides”—I thumbed toward the backseat where Thor was gallantly scrunched up in a corner, flappy jowls smashed against the rear window just so his new friend could nap comfortably—“I have no idea if
she
is intact but I know
he
is. I really don’t think it’s a smart idea to let Casanova bunk with Sleeping Beauty.”

“You’re mixing metaphors.”

“I’m exhausted.”

Chance ran a large hand through his sandy locks. “Okay, I’ll take Thor to the cottage and wait for you. Is that the plan?”

“Yep.” I twined my arms around his neck and brought his head to mine for a kiss I hoped held more meaning than I was able to show at the moment. I leaned back and searched his eyes. There were no shadows there, just raw emotion.

“You’re welcome, angel,” he said.

“You really need to come up with a new term of endearment.”

“I’ve been working on it.”

Chance got out of the car and lifted the patient off the backseat, setting her on the ground gently. She yawned, stretched, and waited for Thor to jump down. When he did, she began to follow him toward the cottage at the back of the property where I lived. The Dane stopped, turned, and made some sort of half groan, half yelp kind of noise and the collie halted.

I got out of the truck, grabbed my backpack, and approached her cautiously, both of us watching Chance
and Thor make their way to the cottage. Thor glanced back once as he crossed the threshold, then trotted inside.

That was the first time the smaller dog made a sound. It was a quiet whimper, as if she had just watched hope walk out the door. The night was silent again except for the chirrup of crickets.

I reached for my crystal bag and fished until I found the rose quartz wand. Rose quartz is best known for love spells, but it’s also a great stone for healing emotional turmoil and alleviating anxiety.

Tentatively I raised my left hand to the top of the dog’s head and placed it there. She was shivering, her muscles taut. The wand loose in my right hand, I turned to face the collie and swept my left palm over her soft fur, imagining as I did all the toxic energy leaving her body. I followed the sweep with the wand pointed toward her tail and walked the length of her, finally shaking it out at the end of the pathway that led to the back door of the inn. I lifted my arm toward the moon to recharge the wand with positive, feminine vibrations and blew out all the air in my lungs.

That would have to do for now.

The brown-eyed girl was standing where I had left her, and this time, as I made my approach, her tail wagged just a bit. I gave her a big smile and went in search of the key to the back kitchen door of the Geraghty house.

I bent down to pry open the mouth of the gargoyle that housed the spare key when a light flickered on. Then off. Then on again.

The kitchen door was a horizontal number, with the bottom half made of solid wood and the top glass framed in wood. In front of that was the screen door. I peeked
through the glass just as Fiona was reaching for the teapot. The light (which I identified as a night light) shone on, then off again.

Just in time for me to scare the living crap out of Fiona.

She jumped, but stifled her scream with both hands as soon as she recognized it was me. Since the kitchen was on the first floor, all the way at the back of the house, I was pretty sure her guests hadn’t heard. Those rooms were up the stairs and toward the front of the home.

However, I wasn’t sure if Birdie or Lolly had been startled awake.

Fiona rushed to unlock the back door and said, “Child, what on earth are you doing lurking around out there in the middle of the night?”

“Fiona, I’m sorry, I really need to talk to you. It’s sort of an—” She flipped the switch for the sconce near the stove, and I was so stunned by her appearance, I couldn’t speak for a moment.

Her skin was glowing—radiating almost—as if she hadn’t seen a day past thirty-five. Her hair was rolled in pink cushion rollers protected by a silk scarf, but other than that, she looked like she was getting ready for a photo shoot.

I asked, “Do you always go to bed with your makeup on?”

“Is that what you came here to discuss? Beauty tips?”

“No, of course not, it’s just—never mind. Why are you awake?”

Fiona left the door open for me to come inside and went back to the stove and her teapot. “It’s the darndest thing.” She opened the antique pie safe where they stored dried herbs. “I slept soundly for a few hours and then just
bolted right out of bed.” She shook her head, mumbling about chamomile and lavender.

She knew, albeit subconsciously, but she knew. They must have called to her. The dogs from the woods must have panicked and sought out a guide. Is that why she seemed even younger and healthier than usual? Did she somehow gather strength from the animal kingdom?

I held the door open for the collie. She gingerly stepped onto the cold tile and sat near me. “I think I may know why, Auntie.”

Fiona paused, her back to me. She cocked her head to the side and then slowly turned around, a wide smile tugging at her lips.

Her eyes fell to our houseguest. “And who have we here?”

The collie wasn’t shy around my great-aunt. The dainty thing just pranced right up to her, welcoming a pat.

Perhaps now is as good a time as any to explain why I came to Fiona for help with this damaged dog.

You see, all the Geraghty gifts are acquired, not taught. Sure, we’ve been schooled on herbal craft, spellcasting, recipes, even exercises for enhancing intuition. But true knowledge is gained only through experience, and Geraghty gifts are, in a way,
earned
.

Kind of like those merit badges they pass out to Girl Scouts, although rather than helping a disabled person cross the street, a Geraghty might just teleport him. If she had the ability.

Anyway, Fiona’s magic has always been matchmaking and love spells, but her passion—her “other calling,” if you will—was not discovered until she met her third and favorite husband, Patrick Edward Burns, DVM.

Dr. Burns walked into Fiona’s life right around the time she, like all Geraghty women, came into her true power at the threshold age of thirty.

The good doctor had just opened up shop in town, fresh out of vet school. The story goes that he was on his way to Chicago from Iowa, where his family lived, when he spotted an injured dog on the side of the road. The town had no clinic at the time, so he did the best he could patching up the dog’s broken leg with the supplies on hand and drove the animal to the nearest facility—fifty miles away. He decided then that he might be more useful in a small hamlet than a big city.

That’s when Fiona found herself with an ill Siamese kitten that belonged to an out-of-town friend.

“The little darling was a descendent of the familiar Mother brought home for me when I was still in the cradle,” she once told me. “That was before she knew my gift. Not all witches require familiars, but most start out with one. However, in my case they come as needed, so being attached to just one, well, that hindered my development.”

Fiona had embraced her gift right from the get-go and, unlike myself, never wavered from it.

“Your grandmother’s talent to heal works only on people, not animals. Therefore, I loaded the kitten into the car and drove him to the new veterinarian,” she had said. “He took my breath away the moment I laid eyes on him.
He was movie-star handsome and quite charming—like Cary Grant!”

Dr. Burns couldn’t find a thing wrong with the kitten, who perked right up on the exam table, chasing the penlight and pawing at the stethoscope around the vet’s neck. Burns couldn’t find a thing wrong with Fiona either. He asked her to dinner that day and they were married six weeks later.

Soon Fiona found herself working at the vet’s office, and she discovered a talent for healing pets in ways a doctor of medicine could not. You see, love comes in many forms, and while Fiona’s talent was romantic love, she also had a knack for healing soured friendships, spoiled partnerships, and broken families. (Why she was not able to reconcile Birdie with my grandfather, I’ll never understand.) So when animals came to the clinic with symptoms not relating to any affliction he could find, Burns trusted Fiona to heal their inner aches and pains—broken hearts and wounded souls. To hear anyone tell it, they were quite the team.

As I stood now in the Geraghty Girls’ kitchen, beneath the dim light of the toleware wall sconce, I thought how tragic it would be to lose a true soul mate.

Fiona had already run her hands over the collie whose name, she informed me, was Keesha. I explained how Thor had found her in the woods and that she seemed lethargic, omitting my role in drawing her, and dozens of other canines, to me via a botched spell. I figured she’d hear all about it tomorrow and I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture on living up to my potential.

Fiona said, “Nothing feels broken. No pain anywhere that she wants me to know about right now.”

Her eyes never left Keesha as she relayed this information to me. I was mesmerized, watching her work her gift, and I wondered if I would ever have that much faith, that much trust in myself even.

“Stacy?”

I rushed over to the apothecary table. Usually it was the center island of the kitchen, but now it served as a makeshift exam table with a bright bulb hovering above it. It smelled faintly of rosemary and lemon. “Yes?”

Fiona gave me a stern look. “Stop fidgeting. All that knee bouncing and nail biting is frightening this poor creature.”

Keesha gave me a forlorn look and I apologized.

“Dear, top drawer next to the sink, please fetch my reading glasses, and there should be a small flashlight. I’ll need that as well.”

I retrieved the items and handed them to Fiona.

She slipped the glasses onto her nose and lifted Keesha’s lips. “Gums are pink.” She flashed a light in both perky ears. “No mites.” She held each eyelid open and flashed the light across the dog’s pupils. “No sign of cataracts, or corneal disease. I’d say she’s rather young. Three, maybe four years old.”

“Can you tell if she’s been spayed?”

Fiona gently coaxed Keesha to lie on the table. She lifted her leg and filtered through the mass of wavy fur that covered the animal’s belly.

“No scar that I can see, no tattoo either, which is common today. Her stomach is fairly taut.” She lowered the collie’s leg and Keesha stood up, panting.

Fiona removed her glasses. “My guess is no, but you would need an ultrasound to be certain.”

She crossed to the sink and turned on the faucet to wash her hands. Keesha let out a sharp bark and sat on the table.

“How about a midnight snack?” Fiona asked, and Keesha raised both front paws and scratched at the air.

Fiona smiled and filled a ceramic mixing bowl with bottled water. “Presently, what she needs is sustenance and a good night’s sleep.” She set the water on the floor and I lifted the collie from the table. She lapped at the refreshment heartily.