Ezekiel loved Greece. Really, he did. It was a lovely country, great food, lots of old, expensive stuff for the taking, but he definitely did not love this particular Greek island. Or the slimy wet caves on this particular Greek island, where a group of occultists were trying to open a gate to Hades like the geniuses they were. And where they had apparently chained up a pair of very big, angry hellhounds. Real ones, that were real unhappy about being locked up.
The occultists had been swallowed up by the portal they'd tried open, which Cassandra had immediately closed with a helpful Greek translation from Jacob. With the threat to their doorway gone, the hellhounds vanished; apparently, they only appeared when someone tried to dick around with the door to the underworld, like satanic guard dogs. According to Jacob, that really was their purpose. Which was cool, really, but Jacob hadn't been the one to keep the stupid mutts occupied. No, that'd been all Ezekiel, and he was ready to go home and binge-watch a season of Daredevil on Netflix, well away from any hellhounds or underworld trapdoors. He'd gotten enough cardio for the week, thanks very much.
"What is he doing?" Ezekiel asked wearily as he trudged back to his lovers, holding the fading stitch in his side. Jacob had gotten down on the ground and had wriggled halfway down a tiny passage in the cavern wall that barely looked big enough for him, and Ezekiel hoped the git wouldn't get himself stuck.
"I have no idea," Cassandra replied. "I think he said he heard something."
Jacob let out a victorious, albeit muffled, shout and wriggled his way back out of the narrow little tunnel, muddy and slightly damp. "Cass, Jonesy, look what I found!" he declared joyously, holding up a small, squirming hellhound puppy.
Ezekiel took a step back. "No," he said immediately.
Cassandra let out a joyous little squeak at the sight of the puppy, then turned around to face Ezekiel with eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, no?"
"I mean, no, we are not taking it with us." He was nearly eaten by one of those damn things, they were not taking one with them, no matter how small or fluffy it looked at the moment.
"What do you want to do, leave it here? We can't exactly take it to a shelter."
"Put it back!" he exclaimed, because duh.
Cassandra placed both hands on her hips and glared at him. "Oh, sure, let me just go ahead and open the portal that we just spent an hour closing, I'm sure the fully grown ones would just love to play another game of tag," she drawled sarcastically, brandishing the Greek spellbook that they'd lifted off the occultists. "Come on, Jones, it's just a puppy. Besides, we let you keep Stumpy," she protested.
"Stumpy was not optional," Ezekiel countered. "Stumpy was a stalker pet, and furthermore, Stumpy did not try to eat me."
"We're not going to leave it here, Jones, it'll die," she insisted.
Ezekiel turned to Jacob for support and felt himself deflating before he even got a word out. Ignoring his lovers' bickering entirely, Jacob had unzipped his jacket and tucked the puppy into his layers, holding it close so it stayed warm, and he was stroking its small head with two fingertips, speaking to it softly. And just like that, Ezekiel knew he'd lost, because never in his life had he heard Jacob Stone coo over anything. "Fine," he sighed heavily, shoulders dropping; Cassandra beamed. "But you guys are explaining it to Jenkins."
Needless to say, Jenkins was not impressed with their little souvenir. Ezekiel was kind of hoping that the old man would back him up, but he'd apparently underestimated the true power of Jacob Stone's puppy-eyes.
Despite looking ready to give them a lengthy lecture on wild magical animals not being pets and the Library not being an animal shelter, Jenkins finally just heaved a sigh and held out both hands. "Let me see it." The hellhound puppy squirmed and whimpered pitifully, trying to find its way back to the scent of the man that'd already become associated with warmth and safety. Jenkins opened its mouth and studied its teeth, then inspected the bottoms of its paws before handing it back to Jacob; once he'd tucked it back in his jacket, the puppy stopped making that piteous crying sound. "Well, Mr. Stone, you're lucky. It still has its milk teeth, and its footpads haven't fully formed yet. It's young enough to imprint on you, so it's likely not to eat you."
"Likely?" Ezekiel repeated incredulously.
Jenkins gave him a sardonic smile. "Highly likely."
The possibility of being eaten didn't seem to effect Jacob at all; he was grinning like a ten-year-old boy at Christmas; Cassandra kissed his cheek and skipped away, saying something about making a supply run, she'd be right back.
"You act like you never had a pet before," Ezekiel remarked as they walked out of the lab. "I mean, you've had a dog, at least, right?"
Something flickered behind Jacob's eyes, and he shrugged in a motion that was way too forced-casual for Ezekiel to believe it. "Yeah, I did, but my, uh, my pop got rid of it."
Well, damn. If Ezekiel wasn't sold before, he definitely was now. He didn't like Jacob's father. At all. He'd carried a vague dislike of the man ever since it became clear just who was responsible for instilling a lot of Jacob's doubts and issues, but it became a lot clearer once he met the man in person and saw what a first-rate arsehole he was. And then there were occasions where Jacob would say something like that, one sentence with so much more behind it, and Ezekiel would really fucking hate Isaac Stone.
Instead of asking, though, Ezekiel just said, "If it chews up my shoes, I'm taking it back to the cave."
Jacob cast him a sideways glance. "Do you really not like dogs?" he asked, and he sounded almost unhappy when he said it, like he was afraid Ezekiel would actually make him get rid of it.
"No. I'm afraid you're gonna end up liking that thing more than me and Cassie," Ezekiel replied with a smirk, elbowing him lightly.
Jacob was one of those people that usually liked animals more than other people and would never allow someone to get away with ill-treating animals. They'd gone out on a date in Madrid once and walked past an alley where a trio of adolescents, certainly old enough to know better, had cornered a stray dog and were tormenting the poor thing with a broken piece of a broom handle. Ezekiel's Spanish was a little rusty, but he'd understood the historian perfectly when Jacob strode over and told them to leave the dog alone and go home before he took that stick and beat them with it, see how much they liked it. He was pretty sure that one of the punks had started crying when they were running away.
And although he was only fluent in nine languages, he knew how to say 'can I pet your dog?' in 17 more.
The historian's ears turned a little pink, as if he knew exactly what Ezekiel was talking about, but then he gave a sly smile and replied, "Cassie, never. You...maybe."
"Oh, shut up."
A bit of research confirmed that the puppy was a Greek hellhound, as if there was any doubt to begin with, and honestly, Ezekiel hadn't even known there was more than one kind. Jacob named her Lysistrata, which was almost immediately shortened to Sissy. She understood Greek the easiest, naturally, so Ezekiel and Cassandra both got a rudimentary lesson in the language. And despite Jenkins' warning them that hellhounds had a nasty habit of eating people, Sissy never once so much as nipped at them. She chewed a dozen rawhides to pieces once she started teething, but she never bit.
Cassandra presented Jacob with a collar for Sissy, one of those spiked leather ones in hot pink, complete with a shiny set of tags. Never one to miss an opportunity, Ezekiel found a harness and leash that matched, much to Jacob's amusement.
And when a terrified shrieking sent Ezekiel and Jacob both running, thinking something had happened to Cassandra, they were instead confronted with the sight of Sissy sitting beside a bookcase and looking up at Flynn, who had scaled the side of the bookcase with impressive speed for a man wearing corduroys. After that, Ezekiel believed that letting Jacob keep his pet hellhound was the best decision ever.