Chapter 79 – Emotional Support Animal
Ethan found the small black booklet the Continental had left in the clinic's emergency contacts — the one tucked behind the false back of the second drawer, which he had discovered entirely by accident and chosen not to question. He flipped to the page marked Special Services and dialed.
It connected on the second ring.
"This is Rayne."
"Ethan Rayne? Rayne Clinic?"
"That's right."
"Would you like to place an order?"
He looked down at the script printed in neat type at the bottom of the booklet page.
"Yes. Dinner for one."
Twenty-eight minutes later, three knocks. Measured. Unhurried. The knock of someone who was not in a hurry because they never needed to be.
Ethan opened the door.
A dark panel van sat at the curb with its lights off. Three men stood at the clinic entrance — one in front, two behind. The man in front was older, grey-haired, wearing a dark canvas jacket and a wool cap he removed when the door opened. The two behind him were dressed in black from collar to boot, carrying cases the way tradespeople carry tools — practically, without drama.
"Good evening, Doctor." The older man's voice was the voice of a person who found their work straightforward and satisfying. "We're here for the cleanup."
"Come in."
They came in. Nobody spoke unnecessarily.
The older man — Charlie, Ethan realized, the name Marcus had given him — did one quiet circuit of the room. He noted the blood distribution, the bullet holes, the body, the shattered equipment case. He did not appear troubled by any of it. He nodded once to the two behind him.
"Standard."
They moved.
Heavy plastic sheeting came out of the cases, pre-folded into sections, spread on either side of the body with the efficiency of people who had done this specific sequence so many times it had become something close to choreography. The body was transferred to the sheet — and with it, the pistol, the spent casings Ethan had already collected into the trash, two items that had skidded under the exam table that Ethan hadn't noticed.
Charlie had noticed.
The wrapping took four minutes. First the heavy plastic, rolled and tucked at each end. Then a layer of cling film — methodical, head to toe, no gaps, sealed at every seam. Then the outer layer of thick black plastic, cinched with zip ties at four points.
The whole thing looked like industrial shipping packaging.
While the second man handled the body, the first worked the floor and walls. He produced a canister of something and a powder Ethan didn't recognize and worked them into the bloodstains with a tool that was somewhere between a brush and a scraper. He found spatter patterns Ethan had already cleaned. He found ones Ethan hadn't — the lower edge of the doorframe, the underside of the cabinet lip, a single droplet on the baseboard behind the door that would have been invisible to anyone not specifically looking for it.
Nineteen minutes after they walked in, the clinic floor looked like it had been installed that morning.
Charlie put his cap back on. He gave Ethan a small, precise nod.
"All done, Doctor. Enjoy the rest of your evening."
One gold coin changed hands. Charlie accepted it with the same nod. The two assistants carried the wrapped package to the van with the casual competence of a moving crew handling furniture.
The door closed softly behind them.
The van pulled away.
Ethan stood alone in the immaculate clinic and looked at the floor where fourteen minutes ago there had been a body, a significant quantity of blood, and a considerable amount of evidence.
He was reasonably good at cleaning up after difficult situations.
These men were in a completely different category.
Professionals, he thought, with genuine respect. Stick to what you know.
He locked up, stood on the sidewalk for a moment, and tried to locate what he actually wanted.
Not food, exactly. Not sleep. He'd taken a hit — the Shadow magic expenditure had been significant, the bullet had grazed his shoulder before the shield fully engaged, and even with his own Healing Spell applied, there was a residual weight to the evening that food and sleep didn't quite address.
After a moment he turned south.
He wanted coffee. And pie.
And if he was being completely honest — he kind of missed Max.
The Williamsburg Diner was still lit up, the neon in the window doing its warm buzzing thing, the smell of coffee and something baked reaching him half a block away.
He pushed the door open and walked into an ongoing negotiation.
The woman at the counter had a dog — medium-sized, sandy-colored, wearing a small vest — sitting on the stool beside her with the composure of a dog that had been in diners before and found them acceptable.
Max was on the other side of the counter with her arms crossed and the expression she used when she had already decided how this conversation was going to end and was waiting for the other person to figure it out.
"No pets," Max said. "Health code. Also personal preference. Also the sign on the door."
"He's not a pet." The woman gestured to the vest. "He's a registered Emotional Support Animal. It's perfectly legal."
"Sure." Max nodded. "Translation: you couldn't find a date."
"I have anxiety."
"Translation: you didn't want to eat alone."
"I have a doctor's certificate."
Max looked at her. "Translation: you have a printer."
A brief silence settled between them while the woman processed this.
"Fine," the woman said. "Men in this city are impossible."
Max's expression shifted into the particular satisfied smile of someone who had been patient and was now being rewarded for it.
"There it is." She reached under the counter. "I'll get him a biscuit."
Max disappeared into the back. Caroline materialized from around the corner, leaning on the counter with her elbows.
"Hey — has Ethan been in lately? You two doing okay?"
Max reappeared with a dog biscuit and a studied casualness. "We're fine. Last time I saw him we almost did something extremely inadvisable on his exam table."
Caroline blinked. "So you're still—"
"We're something." Max shrugged. "Mostly what we are is I bake, I deliver, he eats them. Every single day. Not one left over."
Caroline looked at her. "Wait — you've been delivering to the clinic every day?"
"Yeah."
"So since you started delivering — he hasn't come here?"
Max went still.
She stood in the middle of her own diner holding a dog biscuit and processed this for a moment.
"Huh." She set the biscuit down slowly. "He comes in for the cakes and now the cakes come to him, so he doesn't come in." She tilted her head. "I don't know if that means he likes my baking more than he likes me, or if it just means he's lazy."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive," Caroline said.
"No," Max agreed. "They are not."
The front door opened.
Ethan walked in.
Caroline looked at Max. "Okay, you can stop wondering."
Max turned, saw him, and deployed her automatic smile — the real one, not the customer-service one. "Doctor. You look like you had a day."
"I had several days back to back that were technically one day." He sat at the counter. "Coffee. And whatever pie is left."
"We have cherry and something that used to be pecan."
"Cherry."
"Good choice." She poured the coffee. "Small cake?"
"No."
She put the coffeepot down. "I'm sorry?"
"I've had three today. I set a limit."
She pressed a hand to her chest. "You limited yourself. You're regulating my baking like it's a controlled substance."
"It basically is at this point."
"I'm going to choose to find that flattering." She slid the pie across the counter. "You're off meat? You look like someone who had a rough encounter with meat recently."
"Something like that."
She studied him for a moment with the directness she applied to most things. "You okay?"
"Yeah." He picked up the fork. "Getting there."
Caroline came back from the far end of the counter where she'd been on her phone, looking the specific way she looked when something expensive and unfair had just been confirmed.
"Max." She said it quietly.
"I know that tone." Max turned. "What happened."
"The DA's office wants a deposition for my dad's case. The lawyer I talked to — Hutchinson — says his rate is eleven hundred an hour." She set her phone down. "Just to consult."
Max looked at Ethan. "Hey, Doctor — your clinic have a lawyer on retainer?"
"No."
"No lawyer?" Max pointed at him. "What do you do if something goes wrong? What if you accidentally—"
"I don't do things by accident," Ethan said. "Only on purpose."
Max stared at him for a beat, then burst out laughing — the real one, loud enough that the woman with the dog looked over. "Oh my God. You are perfect for this diner, I swear."
She turned back to Caroline, who had graduated from worried to the specific expression of someone calculating how bad this actually was.
A man in a suit came through the door — late forties, the posture of a person who billed by the hour and was aware of it at all times. He located Caroline immediately and made his way over with the unhurried confidence of someone who knew their leverage.
He informed her that Mr. Hutchinson's calendar had an opening Thursday, that the deposition would likely run three to four hours at minimum, and that he'd need a retainer before they could proceed.
Caroline went slightly pale.
"Mr. Hutchinson." She turned the full force of her Channing-family-bred composure on him. "I understand your rates are what they are, but surely there's some flexibility given the circumstances—"
"Caroline." He said it not unkindly but with the finality of a man who had this specific conversation regularly. "I'll need a retainer by Wednesday."
He left his card and went back out the door.
Caroline looked at the card.
Max touched her arm. "Come here."
They went into the back kitchen. Ethan watched through the pass-through window, not pretending he wasn't watching.
He could hear Max's voice — lower than usual, the particular register she used when she wasn't performing anything.
"I can give you my five hundred from the trial tomorrow. And I can pull another hundred from the cupcake fund."
A pause.
Caroline's voice: "Max, that's the cupcake fund."
"I know what it is."
"You've been saving that since—"
"I know how long I've been saving it." A beat. "I always figured if we had to break it open, it'd be for something like this. Just figured it'd be you doing something stupid, not your dad."
"That's basically the same thing."
"Basically," Max agreed. "Yeah."
Ethan looked at his pie.
He'd walked in here because he needed something that wasn't the clinic, wasn't the Continental's world, wasn't the specific weight of what the evening had been. And somehow he'd ended up watching two people who scraped together every dollar they had and still found a way to give some of it away when it mattered.
Not a bad place to land, he thought.
Closing time.
The last customer out. Oleg's dishes done. Caroline counting the register with the focused efficiency of someone trying to make math be different than it was.
Max came around the counter with her jacket over her arm and tapped Ethan's shoulder.
"Still here?"
"Still here."
She tilted her head. "You're still doing the trial tomorrow?"
"Going." She said it the way she said most things — like a door that was already closed.
He looked at her. "Then why are you asking me to come home with you if you have to be up early for a drug trial that requires you to have baseline hormone levels?"
Max looked at him.
He looked at her.
"The trial's at nine," she said. "It's currently eleven-fifteen."
He did the math.
"That's a reasonable window," he said.
"Last call." She held up his coat. "Yes or no."
"Yes."
"Then move," she said, and shoved the coat at him. "Before I remember why I usually make better decisions than this."
He caught it, stood up, and followed her toward the door.
Caroline called after them without looking up from the register: "Be responsible."
"Always," Max said.
"I was talking to Ethan," Caroline said.
The door closed behind them.
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