Lie Down with Dogs Read Online Free

good. From here on out, I was calling this suspension a vacation. A much-needed one.
    “I’ll let Mable know on my way out.” I stood on numb legs, flashed them a smile and then got the heck out of Dodge.

Chapter Four
    M ai found me in our apartment hours after the magistrates dismissed me. I was curled up on our old brocade couch wearing Eeyore pajamas with a melting pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Therapy on my lap. She walked through the door as episode fourteen in season eight of Supernatural ended, just in time to catch me wiping drool off my chin from watching Dean slide on his Clark Kent-style glasses.
    Life didn’t get better than this. How had I forgotten Netflix was my soul mate?
    Mai stepped between me and the television. She plucked the soggy carton from my lap and set it on the coffee table. “Do you want to talk about it?” She brushed her hands off on her pressed khaki pants.
    “No.” I leaned around her. “I would like you to get out of the way, though.”
    “You’re self-medicating.” She perched on the couch beside me. “What happened? Did Shaw—?”
    “No.” I cranked up the volume. “I haven’t heard from him in days.”
    “Then what’s with the pity party?” She tugged my ponytail. “And why didn’t I get an invite?”
    I licked the melting goo off the spoon I refused to surrender. “I got suspended.”
    “For how long?” She hooked her arm around my shoulders and pulled me down until I slumped over her lap. After resting the side of my face on her thigh, she popped the spoon from my mouth. “Tell Auntie Mai all about it. What happened?”
    “Two weeks.” A tear leaked from the corner of my eye. “Without pay.”
    “Damn.”
    “I took a case without clearing it through the magistrates. Consider my wallet—I mean wrist—slapped.”
    “Double damn.”
    I sniffled. “Exactly.”
    She slid the hairband out of my hair and combed her fingers through the tangled strands. “Look at it this way. In a year, you’ll be queen and no one will be the boss of you. In the meantime, might I suggest having Righty or Lefty snap off the magistrates’ arms and beat them with their own hands?”
    I sob-laughed at the mental picture.
    “So,” she asked casually, “what are you going to do for two weeks?”
    I lifted my arm. The tiny Roku remote hung from my wrist on its purple nylon tether. “This.”
    “Yeah.” Mai rolled it—and the topmost layer of my skin—off me. “No.”
    “Freaking monkeys.” I rubbed the angry red line until my healing abilities kicked in and the mark vanished. “Not cool.” I rolled onto my back. “You don’t mess with a girl’s season pass to oblivion.”
    She tossed the poor remote across the room, where it bounced onto a sand-colored rug and hit the stained-white tip of a bleached cow skull’s horn. Don’t ask. Mom went through a Western Gothic period after we moved to Wink. Cow hides up on the walls, skulls on the tables, horn coat hangers...
    Between Mai’s cherry-blossom hand-me-down furniture and my death-to-all-bovines accents, the apartment was clash of floral and macabre. We had a love blossoms in the desert theme happening.
    “I have a plan,” she announced.
    “The last time you said that, we woke up in a Minotaur herd’s bull pen with no pants on.”
    She jostled my shoulder. “But we had fun. Right?”
    “They pierced my nose.”
    “Come on.” She waggled her eyebrows. “It looked sexy.”
    “Mom almost killed me.”
    Leaning over me, she examined my nostrils. “You can’t tell it ever happened.”
    Thanks to my healing abilities, and not my best friend.
    I clamped a hand over my nose. “Do you mind?”
    “Not so much.”
    “What’s your plan?” I slapped my hands up over my eyes. “Say it fast, like ripping off a bandage.”
    “You. Me. Daytona Beach.”
    “That’s it?” I peered through my fingers at her. “You want to hit the beach?”
    “Why not?” She ticked off reasons on her fingers. “It’s hot.