Telling her the price, I smiled and thanked her when she told me to keep the change. Just as I went to say something else—the devil on my shoulder taking over—there was a scream from the end of the bar that made everyone jump and look to see what was going on.
Sadie was jumping up onto the top of it, now screaming, “Gimme, gimme, gimme!” at an older woman who was carrying like a hold all in her hand with an exasperated frown on her face.
“Sadie Odessa Dahl, will you control yourself,” she muttered as she reached her, her voice audible only because I’d walked down to see what was going on.
Having also heard the commotion, Levi, Gramps, Noah, and Tate had come out of the office to see what was going on and were standing watching it all with perplexed looks on their faces.
“Hey, MeeMee,” Sadie squealed, hugging the perfectly put together woman.
The poor woman’s eyes bugged out of her head as she was crushed into Sadie with the force of the hug and then met mine as she mouthed, “Help me” with a small smile on her face.
The humor seemed so at odds with how she looked that I wasn’t sure if I was okay to laugh or if I should help her. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone so elegantly dressed in my life. There wasn’t a hair out of place in what I swear was a professional chignon, and her slacks and a silk blouse were immaculately pressed. My family dressed however the hell they wanted to depending on the weather, so I couldn’t help staring and wondering how long it took her to get dressed in the morning. Did she even spend that time on her appearance on a Sunday? Hell, she was even wearing three strands of pearls around her neck.
“Darling, we’ve discussed your overbearing greetings before,” the woman, MeeMee, replied, patting Sadie on the back.
Not letting go—in fact, I swear she squeezed her even tighter—Sadie just chuckled. “And when have I ever followed your rules?” Then, punctuating it with a loud kiss on her cheek, she let her go.
Taking a step back and patting her hair, the lady’s mouth twitched. “Mmm, this is true. If you did, I wouldn’t have had to take care of this ugly creature.” She pointed at the bag she’d carried with her. “He’s evil, and he needs to go on a damned diet, Sadie Odessa.”
Clapping her hands excitedly, Sadie sat down cross-legged on the bar and opened the bag, making cooing noises as she reached into it. “Who’s my big boy? Mummy missed her baby, yes she did.”
I was expecting a Pomeranian or a Chihuahua. Instead, she brought out… something from the bowels of hell.
Elijah had walked around with Grams to join the others, and when she lifted it high enough for them to see, they all took a step back and stared at the animal in horror.
“Sadie, that thing is as far from a baby as a fish is from a bird. It weighs three times what it should, and I know that because I weighed it. It also consumed an entire tub of moisturizer like it was milk.”
“You’ll hurt Dobby’s feelings,” Sadie murmured, rubbing her face on the things head, making us all cringe.
If I had to describe it, I’d go with the love child of a butterball turkey, a forty-pound one, and one of the evil Mogwais from Gremlin. Oh, and it was bald and looked like it wanted to rip her head off.
“Dobby?” Tate choked.
“Yeah,” she sighed, rubbing her cheek on it again. “There’s a chain of gardening stores in the UK called Dobbies. I found him eating out of a bin when I visited a mate at Christmas and we went to get her decorations from one. I couldn’t call him Dobbies because there’s only one of him, so I went with Dobby.”
“So, it doesn’t like socks?” I asked, thinking I was funny making a Harry Potter reference.
Turning around to look at me—and I wish she hadn’t because I made eye contact with it—she said brightly, “I have to be careful when I wear them because he eats them when I take them off or builds himself a nest with them.”
“Because he’s a minion of Lucifer himself,” MeeMee added, looking at all of us as if to say, are you surprised? Look at it!
Taking a hesitant step closer, Elijah drawled, “He looks—”
“Evil?” MeeMee suggested.
“Weird?” Gramps added.
“Ugly?” Tate muttered, taking a step back when it hissed at him.
“I was going to say pissed. He looks pissed,” Elijah explained, cringing when the thing looked in his direction again. “Does he have some sort of health problem?”
“When I first found him, I wondered if he did, but the vet I took him to said he was a Sphynx.”