Tease Tuesday for 8 October (Special Team Kornetsky Edition!)

The normal process of the Tease is interrupted this week, because today is when FIXED (Gin & Tonic Investigations #2) by L.A. Kornetsky officially hits the streets!

 

So today’s excerpt will be clearly identified. Don’t get used to it. :-D

 

 

The dogs were gossiping.

The grey tabby paused, halfway down the fire escape, and surveyed the sidewalk below her.  It was late afternoon, the sun cool and fading, dappling the pavement with shadows. The humans she could see from her vantage point were walking faster than they did in the evening, heading somewhere important.  And the two dogs out in front of the Busy Place, one a shaggy black mutt of dubious Labrador ancestry, the other a fawn-coated shar-pei, were paw-to-paw, sprawled next to the bike rack, which tended to hold more leashes than bikes.

Dogs gossiped about everything, very little of it interesting.  But she had a vested interest in one of those dogs, so she made her way down to the street, and joined the conversation.

The smaller dog acknowledged her with a sniff at her ears, which she allowed only because it was Georgie, and she allowed Georgie things other dogs would get hissed at, for.  The larger dog ignored her utterly, still talking.  “They don’t like it.  They don’t like it at all.” 

The tabby thought that the Labrador sounded more like a hound, mournful and worried. 

“They never like anything,” Georgie said.  “Do they know what they don’t like?” 

“Who doesn’t like what?” the cat asked, inserting herself into the conversation.

“There’s something happening at the old place,” Georgie said, as though that explained everything. 

It took Penny a minute to remember: the old place was the shelter Georgie had been at, before her human took her away.  The Labrador had been there too, apparently, or at least knew enough to spread gossip.

“You keep track of what happens there?”  She couldn’t fathom why. 

“Mmmm.”   Georgie put her head down on her paws, her square-jowled face level with Penny’s.  “The dogs there are unhappy.  Not that anyone is every really happy there, it’s not a happy-place, but this is different.  Things aren’t right.  They’re…. wrong.”

“A little more detail, please?”  Anything that bothered Georgie bothered Penny, but ‘wrong’ wasn’t helpful. 

Dogs weren’t built to shrug, but both the Labrador and Georgie managed it.

“Wrong,” Georgie repeated.  “Smells wrong, sounds wrong.  For months now, it comes and goes and comes back. That’s what they’re saying, anyway. But it’s not where they are, it’s happening somewhere else in the building, so they don’t know.”

            “No way to know.  But everyone’s upset.”  The Lab definitely had hound in him, somewhere.

            “So?”  Penny looked at them, then sat down and began washing her paw, waiting for them to figure it out.  When they just stared at her, she paused mid-groom and twitched her whiskers at them, half-annoyed, half-superior.  Dogs. “So if you need to know something, and you can’t sniff it out, get someone who can open doors.”

            Georgie lifted her head, one ear flopping over while the other stayed upright.  Her wrinkled face didn’t really have expressions, but Penny could see comprehension gleaming behind those dark brown eyes, finally.

            “Humans,” the shar-pei said to her canine companion with the air of solving the problem.  “Humans can do it.”

            “Humans?”  The Labrador looked confused but excited.  Then again, Penny thought with a sniff, they usually did.

            “Our humans,” Georgie clarified.  “They sniff things.”

“Humans sniffing?”  The confusion turned to a dubious disdain for human noses.

            “Human-sniffing.  And door-opening. They go anywhere, look at anything. We just have to figure out how to get them to look.”  Georgie turned her head to look at Penny.  “How do we get them to look?”

            Penny finished grooming her paw, and swiped it over her ears.  “Leave that to me.”

 

from FIXED by L.A. Kornetsky on sale TODAY!

 

Links to Buy:

Amazon | B&N.com | Book Depository|Indiebound|Simon & Schuster