Last Licks

10

“One more question I have to ask,” Sunny said as she absorbed what Elsa had to say. “I spoke to Luke Daconto as well. He mentioned being warned about Reese and the need for reports. Did that happen with you, too?”

Elsa nodded.

“Where did it come from? The head of therapy?”

She shook her head. “We don’t report to the same person—different kinds of therapy. I got the word from Rafe Warner. Guess the union has a mole in the administrative offices. The word went out that there was going to be a crackdown on overdue reports, so I made sure that everything I did was up to date.”

That sounded like the Rafe Warner whom Sunny knew. He rescued kittens; no doubt he’d warn people who stood to catch grief from the administrator, even if they weren’t in the union. It even made tactical sense—worker solidarity against Dr. Reese and so forth.

Elsa glanced at her wristwatch, and Sunny took the hint. “Thanks for talking to me. I know those memories can’t have been pleasant.”

“It’s okay now,” Elsa said. “Mr. Scatterwell can’t do anything else to me.”

They got off the bench they’d been sitting on and went back into the building, which was cooler. But after the heat and humidity, Sunny felt as if her hair had frizzed to about three times its normal size. That was annoying enough, but the tape holding the gauze pad over Shadow’s scratches was beginning to come loose. She used her left hand to hold it in place as she made her way to Ollie’s room, where she found Ollie had a new roommate, a pale-faced older man with crew-cut white hair. He lay very still in his bed, his breathing shallow and his eyes closed. But they opened as soon as Sunny came inside.

“Sunny Coolidge,” Ollie said with excessive courtesy, “meet Charlie Vernon. He’s having some breathing as well as walking issues.”

“You’re not going to talk too loudly, are you?” Vernon had an odd voice, hoarse yet breathy. “If I can just lie and take it easy, I’ll be all right. I need to sleep.”

Sunny and her boss exchanged glances. She knew Ollie wanted to talk, but that didn’t seem likely with Vernon there. She leaned over Ollie’s bed. “What do you say you get back in your wheelchair, and I take you for a spin?”

“Good idea,” he replied, reaching for the call buzzer. Camille appeared to help Ollie into his chair while Vernon pleaded that she do it with less noise.

The girl rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to be as quiet as possible,” she told him.

“I just want to rest,” Vernon whined. “It was a tiring trip from the hospital.”

As soon as she had Ollie settled, Camille left and Sunny rolled along right after her. Hope these wheels are quiet enough for Charlie-boy.

Out in the corridor, Sunny asked Ollie, “Any particular direction you want to go?”

“Just get me as far from that moaner as possible,” Ollie directed. “They moved him in while my back was turned. Came in from therapy to find him lying there. The first thing he asked me was if I played the TV too loud. Honest to God, Sunny, I have to wonder if they stuck him in with me as a punishment—or maybe to drive me crazy.”

“I’m sure they’re just trying to fill the beds, not advancing some master plan by Dr. Reese.” She soothed him with a laugh, but Ollie was in a fussy mood.

He turned his pique on her. “Did you have to go questioning Elsa?”

“In a word, yes,” Sunny told him. “And I think she was glad to have someone to talk to, in a way. If you ask me, sounds like good old Gardner was a letch with a lot to answer for.”

But Ollie wouldn’t let it go. “That’s what I mean,” he said. “She’s been through enough. I think she deserved a break.”

“You can’t go exempting people from an investigation just because you like them or feel sorry for them, Ollie. Especially when we still have so little to go on. We have to concentrate on the people parts of the case—motive and opportunity—because we don’t have a clue when it comes to means.”

“I’ll give you means.” Ollie nodded toward a rattling sound coming around the bend from the nurses’ station. A moment later, a nurse appeared, pushing a cart that looked like a miniature pharmacy on wheels.

“That’s everybody’s meds,” he told Sunny in a stage whisper. “Probably enough stuff there to kill a dozen people.”

The nurse gave Ollie a pleasant smile. “Hang on, Mr. Barnstable. I have some things here for you.”

“They’ve got these horse-pill calcium tablets,” Ollie grumbled to Sunny. “Wouldn’t be surprised if ten percent of the death rate around here is from people choking on the damn things.”

Each patient seemed to have an inches-thick binder containing page-sized blister packs of pills, rows of plastic bubbles containing single doses backed with cardboard. The nurse consulted a list, popped the appropriate pills out of their bubbles, and presented them to Ollie.

“Blood pressure pill and your calcium tablets,” she announced.

Ollie grudgingly took a small blue pill and two amazingly large ones, along with the plastic cup that the nurse filled with water. He managed to choke down the big pills but told the nurse, “You should be giving people their calcium in ice cream sodas.”

The young woman laughed. “There’s a thought. But I don’t think it works that way.”

Now that Ollie had taken his medicine like a man, he was free to go wherever he wanted. But when Sunny turned to go down the hallway ending in the therapy room, her boss nixed the idea. “Not down there,” he said. “I’m beginning to think about that place like the line from the old movie.” He did a passable Bela Lugosi impersonation, intoning, “‘His is the house of pain.’”

Sunny noticed, though, that Ollie waved to Elsa Hogue when she briefly stepped into that hallway, and Elsa waved back.

Swinging farther around the nurses’ station, Sunny instead rolled Ollie down the hall to the solarium at the end of the residential ward on this floor. The various rooms were quiet, and Sunny caught glimpses of carefully made beds or a knot of older women watching something on TV. One of the residents sat in a wheelchair, reading a book by the light from her window. She looked familiar, and Sunny realized she was the lady who beat time to Luke Daconto’s music.

She also noted the paintings on the wall, some apparently done by talented amateurs.

Maybe there’s a painting therapy guy, too, Sunny thought. And maybe a needlepoint therapist, as they passed some framed samples of that craft. Just as she was wondering if she’d end up in a place like this someday, the murmuring calm was shattered by a strident voice crying, “I’ve had enough of this crap!”

“Yep, sounds just like me, say, fifty years from now,” Sunny murmured.

Ollie glanced up at her. “What?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she told him. “Just a passing thought.”

Sunny wheeled Ollie away and back toward the nurses’ station.

“Have you made it to the front parlor?” she asked him.

“I got a glimpse of it while they were wheeling me in on a stretcher,” Ollie told her. “That’s about it.”

“I haven’t really examined it myself,” Sunny admitted, her steps taking them down the long hall that led to the front entrance. The sound of muffled bells came through the paneled wall stretching to their right. “I guess the auditorium or activity room or whatever they call it must be on the other side,” Sunny said. “Sounds as if Luke is rehearsing his bell ringers today.”

“Thank goodness you’re not trying to drag me into that!” Ollie gave a relieved sigh.

At last they reached the parlor, where some of the residents sat with guests, enjoying a visit. Sunny noticed that there was plenty of space around the spindly chairs and overstuffed couches to accommodate walkers and wheelchairs.

It was certainly decorated in eclectic (or more likely, donated) style. They passed a fine-looking grandfather clock in a dark walnut case, tocking along in stately grandeur—and running about fifteen minutes behind. Several aquariums dotted the side walls, with rainbows of tropical fish swimming around. The far wall had an enormous, medieval-style fireplace with a make-believe fire dwarfed in the space. Ribbons of red, yellow, and orange cloth danced in a forced stream of air from a fan, their fluttering giving the impression of flames. On the mantel stood several very nice-looking figurines, and above them on the wall hung a slightly mangy hunting trophy.

Sunny peered up at it, trying to identify the species. Something African probably. Antelope? Hartebeest? Okapi? The taxidermy specimen stared down with an accusatory look in its glass eyes.

“Let’s go,” Ollie muttered. “That creepy thing is giving me the same look as the stupid deer that put me here.”

Sunny started moving again, taking the turn in the corner slowly to avoid an unoccupied armchair—or so she thought.

But a head popped over the side, masked in ginger and black fur.

Sunny stopped. “Hello, Portia.”

The cat took advantage of the pause to transfer herself from the chair to Ollie’s lap. He sat frozen in the wheelchair, his hands gripping the armrests. “Ah, jeeze.”

“Take it easy,” Sunny advised. “Portia is a friendly cat. You remember how she sat with Gardner.”

“Yeah,” Ollie muttered, “right before he went off to the big battle of the bands in the sky.”

Actually, Portia showed herself to be a pretty smart cat, resting her weight on Ollie’s unhurt leg. Maybe she smelled the surgical wounds on the broken one.

Ollie sat very still, looking down dubiously at the cat in his lap. Portia tipped her head back, staring soulfully at him with her emerald eyes.

Trust a cat to climb all over the person who’s not very sure with them, Sunny thought.

“She wants you to pet her,” she told Ollie. “That’s her and her brother’s job here, to visit with the residents and let themselves be stroked.”

“Don’t say ‘stroke’ to an old person,” Ollie joked. “What do I do?”

“Bring a hand up, don’t stick your fingers out, let her sniff the back. When she’s comfortable with you, she’ll probably make the first move.”

Ollie extended his hand hesitantly. Portia sniffed it, examined it, and then stretched her head forward.

“Just pat her gently.”

Ollie followed her instructions, barely touching Portia’s head. “The fur’s so soft,” he said in almost a whisper.

Portia evidently thought his petting was nice, but she wanted something a bit more vigorous. She thrust her head against Ollie’s palm, and he quickly pulled his hand away.

“She liked what you were doing,” Sunny explained, reaching around the side of the wheelchair. “But she wants some of this.” She began to scratch Portia between the ears.

Ollie, though, stared at her hand, not at her technique. “What happened there? Did your cat do that?”

A bit belatedly, Sunny realized that her gauze pad must have fallen off somewhere along the way while she was wheeling Ollie around.

“It was an accident,” she told him.

He sat looking warily down at the cat. “And this is an accident waiting to happen. Can you get her off me?”

Portia wasn’t eager to leave Ollie’s well-padded lap. It took Sunny’s best cat-handling techniques to lure her away, and even they might not have worked if Portia hadn’t been eager to get a good sniff of her.

Good luck with that, Sunny silently told the cat. Shadow stayed away from me after I took my shower.

In the end, Portia wound up back in her armchair, looking rather disgruntled.

Ollie wasn’t too happy, either. He sat stiffly in his wheelchair, a faint look of pain on his face. Discussion time was over. All he wanted was to get back to his room and stretch out on his bed.

Sunny steered him back to the rehab ward. Just before they reached Room 114, they encountered Camille.

“Do you think you can help get Mr. Barnstable into bed—quietly, so we won’t upset Mr. Vernon?” Sunny asked.

Camille took on the challenge, setting Ollie safely back in bed. Sunny whispered her good-byes and left with the aide.

“He’ll be able to catch a nap until suppertime,” Camille said. “Then maybe he won’t be so tired.”

“Um . . .” Sunny showed the girl her scratched hand. “Do you think I could get a bandage to cover these?”

“Those aren’t from one of our cats, are they?” Camille asked, shocked.

“No, no, I got it at home,” Sunny assured her. “I had a gauze pad on, but I lost it.”

“Let me go and talk to the nurses,” Camille said.

Sunny watched from a distance as the aide walked up to the nurses’ station and started talking to one of the nurses on duty.

“Hey,” a voice said in Sunny’s ear. She turned to find Luke Daconto standing beside her, grinning. “I was just going over to see how Mr. Barnstable is doing.”

“By now, he’s probably asleep,” Sunny told him. “He had a difficult day today, since Portia the cat forced her attentions on him.”

“Oh, yeah,” Luke said. “It’s hard to escape when you’re in a wheelchair.”

Sunny nodded. “Especially when the cat is in the chair with you.”

He laughed. “Maybe it’s mean to say, but I’d have loved to see that.”

“Yeah, when he was trying to pet her . . .” Sunny tried to duplicate his awkward attempt. Luke caught her hand. “What happened here? Looks as though you had a run-in with a feline fiend yourself.”

“My own cat got a little too frisky, I’m afraid.” Sunny pulled her hand back. “Frankly, I blame Portia. My guy was zoning out on her scent.”

“As you say, that can make male cats a little frisky. We used to have a lot of them running around the house when I was growing up.” Suddenly Luke knelt to open his guitar case. “Yeah, I thought I had a little bottle in here.”

“Little bottle” was a perfect description. He held up one of those miniature booze bottles usually found in minibars or on airplanes. With this one, however, the label was long gone, as was the booze. Now the bottle held a thick, yellowish, viscous . . . something.

“Mom’s all-purpose lotion,” Luke explained. “I keep a bottle of this stuff and an emery board around to deal with torn calluses.”

He held out his hand. The fingertips he used on the fretboard of his guitar were all heavily calloused. “Screws up my chords and hurts like crazy, when one of these suckers tears free. So I use Mom’s lotion. She taught me how to make it over our stove. For a long time, she had a thing for guitarists, so she was very popular.” Luke laughed. “Mom used to call herself the ‘hippy-dippy chippie.’ We lived in a commune in California. She was the local healer, making all sorts of potions and lotions. When she passed away, she left me all her secret recipes.”

Sunny looked dubiously at the contents of the bottle. “What’s the secret recipe for that?”

“Ham fat and herbs,” Luke promptly replied, and then scratched his head. “Or was that her secret recipe for scrambled eggs?” Sunny laughed, and Luke smiled at her.

“Just put a little on your finger and rub it on the end of one of those scratches,” he said. “It kills any germs and takes the pain away.”

Sunny took the bottle, unscrewed the top, and let a tiny driblet of the yellowish stuff fall on her left forefinger. Then she gingerly dabbed it on one of Shadow’s scratches.

“Wow!” she said. Almost immediately, the ache was gone, and her skin felt cool and comfortable.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Luke said.

“Can I use a little more?” Sunny asked.

Luke waved. “Keep the bottle. I’ve got plenty more at home. Put a bandage over those scratches for now. But when you get home, when you go to bed, just cover them with the lotion. Let them breathe.”

Sunny took a little more of the yellow stuff, put it over the other scratches, and flexed her hand. The pain was gone. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I can make a suggestion,” Luke replied.

She looked at him suspiciously.

“I have a gig tomorrow evening,” he said. “And I’d love it if you could come.” Did he mean, like on a date? Sunny didn’t know how to answer.

“And if you could bring other people, that would be wonderful,” Luke went on, not even seeming to notice her hesitation. “It wouldn’t hurt if the manager thinks I can draw a crowd.”

“Well, sure,” Sunny said. “Where is it?”

“A bar called O’Dowd’s,” Luke said.

“O’Dowd’s?” she echoed. “Why would you want to play in the worst dive bar in Elmet County?”

“Where were you when I did the deal?” Luke teased. “One bar pretty much looks like another when they’re cleaning up the morning after. I stopped by, they agreed to give me a shot, and that was that.”

“I’ll do what I can, but it’s not going to be easy to get people to go down there.”

“All I can ask is that you try.” Luke snapped his case together and picked it up.

“I have one more thing to ask you,” Sunny said, “something that came out of the stuff you talked about with Will yesterday.”

“What?” Luke’s brown eyes got a little wary.

“You said somebody gave you the heads-up that Reese was going after people for reports. Where did the warning come from?”

Luke looked a little relieved. “Rafe Warner. He’s a pretty decent guy.”

And a pretty busy one, Sunny added silently. She thanked Luke again for the lotion, and made sure the bottle was tightly capped before putting it in her pocket. He said good-bye and headed off to the front door.

Sunny glanced to the nurses’ station, where Camille was beckoning her over, holding up a gauze pad and a roll of tape.

If only a few drops of magic lotion could take care of everything, Sunny wistfully thought as she went to get bandaged.

*

Mike Coolidge almost dropped his remote when Sunny came home, joined him on the couch, and told him about Luke’s upcoming gig.

“O’Dowd’s?” Sunny’s father said in disbelief. “What was the kid thinking?”

“I think he was just happy to find a place where he could play.”

Mike frowned. “The crowd down there will eat him alive.”

“Maybe not, if some friendly faces turn up,” Sunny said hopefully. “Would you mind coming? Maybe you could ask Mrs. Martinson, too.”

“Helena? In O’Dowd’s?”

Sunny tried to imagine the fastidious Mrs. Martinson in a rowdy joint like O’Dowd’s, but the picture just wouldn’t come. “All right,” she said, shrugging in defeat, “that probably won’t work. But you’ll show up for Luke, won’t you?”

Now it was Mike’s turn to shrug. “I wouldn’t mind hearing him do something besides ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ Just remember, I’m not as good at barroom brawls as I used to be.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Sunny got up and went to the kitchen, where she found Shadow back in his usual spot on top of the refrigerator. She went up on tiptoe and he leaned down ’til they were nose to nose. She heard him sniff and his eyes widened, but he stayed where he was.

Sunny zipped up the stairs for a quick shower. That should remove any temptation, she thought. But just to be sure, she unloaded her pockets and sent her T-shirt and pants down the chute to the laundry. Then, in a fresh shirt and shorts, she went downstairs to see what Mike had gotten off the shopping list.

After checking the fridge, she stuck her head around the entryway to the living room. “I see you got some tomatoes and cold cuts. We still have romaine. How does salad and a sandwich sound?”

Mike thought that sounded pretty good, so Sunny went to the kitchen and got to work. While she was slicing the tomatoes, she looked down at her scratched hand. Luke’s lotion had washed off in the shower, and she was getting prickles of pain again. When she finished her preparations, she went back upstairs, applied a little more of the viscous yellow stuff, and taped a new gauze pad over it. She descended the staircase and stepped into the living room again. “Dinner’s ready.”

Mike got the glasses and poured seltzer for both of them—raspberry flavored this time. Meanwhile, Sunny set out a meal for Shadow.

As they ate, Sunny and her dad made small talk about the events of the day. “I’ve been hiding in the air-conditioning all day,” Mike complained. “Even when I went out this morning to the mall, it was sticky.”

“Sticky or stinky?” Sunny said. “Didn’t you say it was supposed to break this afternoon? I left the umbrella in the Wrangler—”

Even as she spoke, a thunderclap detonated over the house like a small bomb. The whole place shook, and Shadow abandoned his supper and dashed over to Sunny’s feet. But he wasn’t cowering. His head and tail were both up, one scanning the area for trouble to be dealt with, the other lashing around in agitation.

“It’s okay.” Sunny leaned down and petted his bristling fur. “Nothing to get upset about. It’s only thunder.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “I’m told that it’s lightning you have to watch out for.”

The sound and light show lasted only about twenty minutes, but the heavy rain that followed stayed on. Sunny and her dad finished their meals and the dishes. While he went back to the living room to see if the storm had done anything to their cable service, Sunny stayed in the kitchen by the phone, trying to think of anyone else she could call to go to Luke’s show tomorrow evening.

This is when you realize how much your life has shrunk, she realized. Most of her friends from the old days had, like her, left Kittery Harbor and gone off into the wide world. The ones who remained were all married and didn’t have that much in common with her anymore. Finally she punched in the number for her old high school classmate, current vet Jane Rigsdale, who thought a guitarist in O’Dowd’s sounded like a hoot. “The problem is, Tobe’s got tickets for an outdoor concert in Portsmouth tomorrow night—that is, if the Piscataqua doesn’t break its banks and sweep everything away.”

Desperate to boost the friendly audience count, Sunny went into the living room. “I tried asking Jane to O’Dowd’s, but she has a date for tomorrow. Do you think any of your friends might want to come?”

“I don’t think Zach Judson’s been in that dump since he was your age,” Mike said. “And Ken Howell swore years ago never to mention O’Dowd’s in the Courier. Every time he’d mention a fight or a drug bust there, it only advertised the place to other lowlives. So he stays away. If he actually saw something there, he’d feel he’d have to write about it.”

He gave her a sly smile. “I did talk to one person while you were off phumphing around in the kitchen, and he agreed to come.”

“Really? Who?” Sunny asked.

“Will Price.” Mike raised his hands to cut her off. “Before you start in, he didn’t mention that you’d called him. Besides, he’d be a good man to have at our table.”

Sunny gave him an unwilling nod. Quite a number of the creepy types in O’Dowd’s knew that Will was a cop. If he showed up out of uniform, they’d probably behave themselves, thinking he was there undercover. “I was, um, waiting,” she said, realizing how lame that sounded.

“You mean you weren’t going to call him because you didn’t want Will to know you were going to see another fellow—even if you were only watching him make music.” Mike sighed, looking more dadlike than he usually did. “Maybe you don’t talk much about it, but I know it bothers you that Will hasn’t been a bit more serious.”

“I haven’t asked for anything more.” Sunny winced at the defensive tone that crept into her voice. “I’m just glad there’s someone around to go out with every once in a while.”

Mike nodded. “Look at it this way. He agreed to go out with you when you’re going to watch this new guy in town play guitar. That’s got to mean something.”

“Right,” Sunny said. “Because all us girls just love a guitarist.”

She decided it was time to find a new conversation topic. “Have you heard anything about Alfred Scatterwell?”

“I asked among my friends,” Mike replied. “Seems he’s not very political . . . not much of anything really. All he seems to do is sit in his house, counting his money and waiting to inherit the rest. Helena suggested you stop over tomorrow morning. She might have something more for you.”

“Okay, thanks.” Sunny sat and watched the news with her dad, at least until the weather report.

“Looks like that storm cleared the air.” Mike tuned off the air conditioner and opened the window. They heard the sound of a breeze, but no rain.

“Good,” Sunny said. She watched a little more TV with her dad, then excused herself to go upstairs and call Will.

“So,” he said when he answered, “I understand we’re going to watch Luke Daconto perform. That seems awfully chummy, considering he’s a possible suspect.”

“You never know, he might decide to confess onstage as an encore,” Sunny responded, thinking, Thanks a lot, Dad.

“Speaking of which, how was your day of interviews? Did you learn anything from Elsa Hogue?”

“Well, she doesn’t like Alfred Scatterwell,” Sunny said.

“You don’t have to like someone to take their money.”

“But would you trust them if you thought they had a cruel streak?” Sunny asked. “That’s how Elsa described him. Either cruel or very self-absorbed.”

Will made a noncommittal noise over the phone. “Anything else?”

“She got a warning about Reese and his demands for paperwork, just like Luke. And, in fact, it came from the same person. Even though the therapists are independent contractors, the union warned them—specifically, Rafe Warner.”

“What do you think?” Will asked. “Workers of the world, unite?”

Sunny hesitated for a moment. “There’s something I didn’t check with Luke. According to Elsa, she went to the nurses’ station to bum some caffeine and found Luke there doing the same thing.”

“That puts them both pretty close to the ever-popular Room 114.” Will’s voice got quiet. “But only Elsa Hogue admitted it.”

“How about you? Did those lists that Rafe gave you lead to anything?”

“Only to getting my friends pretty ticked off at me,” Will admitted. “It was a lot of stuff for them to be checking out. They could have gotten caught.”

He sighed. “No one seems to have a criminal record, and they haven’t been buying any new cars or boats.”

“Huh?” Sunny said, then, “Oh. Spending their ill-gotten gains.”

“Right. However, my friend in Boston did find a car service that had a Maine run. The driver was supposed to pick up a passenger on a flight from Hartsdale Airport down in Atlanta, arriving around half-past twelve. But the flight was delayed by almost an hour and a half.”

“Factor in another hour and change for the trip up to Bridgewater, given the traffic . . . that would tie in with Gavrik’s arrival.”

“That’s the good news,” Will said. “Unfortunately, it also gives the doctor an alibi, assuming Ollie’s right about the killer being in the room with Scatterwell. Gavrik would have been on the plane.”

“I still wouldn’t mind asking her what she was doing out of town,” Sunny said. “Or even better, you can ask. Something’s going on there.”

They agreed to tackle Gavrik the next day—and to have another chat with Rafe about the good doctor.

“Then after Daconto is flushed with success from his O’Dowd’s debut, we can ask him about his bad memory on the night that Scatterwell died.” Will laughed.

“You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” Sunny snapped.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound that way,” Will apologized. “All I want is for something to let us get a fingernail into this case.”

They chatted a moment more, then Sunny said good-bye, hung up the phone, and went back downstairs.

“I think I’m going to hit the hay,” she told her dad.

She climbed the stairs, glancing back to find Shadow at her heels. “No AC tonight,” she told him. “I really hope we’re back to normal.” Sunny opened the window, closed the blinds, and changed into shortie pajamas. As she was taking off her watch, she saw the gauze pad.

“Let’s give it a try,” she muttered, going through the stuff from her pockets. There was the miniature bottle. She undid the top and poured a small dollop onto the scratches.

“Well, it feels better.” She peered at the scratches, holding her hand under the bedside light. Was it her imagination, or did they not look so pink? She could only hope so.

But she wasn’t the only one who wanted to inspect the wounds. Shadow successfully dodged the left hand trying to keep him away, bringing his nose to her right. He made a sad noise at the sight of the scratches, sniffed at them three times, then pulled back and sneezed with a vigorous shake.

“Whatever it’s made with, the stuff is potent.” Sunny laughed and hopped into bed. Shadow followed, snuggling under the sheet and a thin blanket.

Soon enough, they were both asleep.