Day Job
Chapter3: D is for… Daycare?
"Hey, Lauren!" Lauren turned. She had been so occupied with her work, which for now was mucking out stalls in the petshop's stables, that she hadn't noticed T-chan sneaking up behind her. "Don't worry." He said, frowning. "The count doesn't want me to eat you, so I won't… for now at least. I just wanted to tell you that you are on daycare duty."
"Daycare?" Lauren asked, surprised. T-chan grimaced.
"Yeah. 'If you won't fetch Chris in for tea and get him settled for a nap, then just get Lauren to do it. Unlike you, she has an attention span…' That's what the count said. So, here I am." Lauren smiled at him, still keeping a safe distance.
"Who's Chris?" She asked.
"The Detective's kid brother. He's a good kid." T-chan answered, almost smiling, but with emphasis on the almost.
"And here I was thinking this was a pet shop… there are kids here, but no pets!" She said, annoyed.
"Chris is in Philippe's room. Three doors that way, make a left and go in the second door on the right." T-chan told her, avoiding the question her previous statement had held.
"Got it." She sighed, and turned away, walking towards the door.
She followed the turnings through the corridors that she was just beginning to become familiar with. It was strange. The shop hadn't looked this big from the outside. No one had bothered to explain, so she had learned not to ask. "Three… left… two doors… on the right…" She repeated, memorizing the instructions and making all the appropriate turnings.
She burst through the door and blinked, temporarily blinded by the sunlight.
There… There's an ocean in the pet shop? Lauren stared in shock, almost not registering a little blond boy climbing out of the water under the sun that beat down on her.
It was raining outside this morning…The boy ran up to her, shining droplets falling out of his hair. He was smiling. "Hey. I'm Chris. Wait, what am I doing! She can't hear me…"
"Hey, Chris!" She said, ignoring the second statement.
"You can hear me!" he said, with obvious delight. It was then when she realized that his mouth wasn't moving.
"Yeah…" She said, quietly. "I guess I can… I'm Lauren, by the way."
"Nice to meetcha, Lauren!"
"Nice to meet you, too, Chris!" She said, cheerfully.
"You know my name!" He said with obvious delight.
"Yeah." Lauren replied. "T-chan told me." She grimaced a little. Chris noticed the expression and smiled.
"Don't mind him. T-chan's not that bad."
"Not that bad! He wants to eat me!"
"He does that to everyone." Chris told her. "Hey, Lauren. Do you happen to know where all the animals are? I mean, this is a pet shop…"
"Unfortunately not. Why don't you ask the count? Plus, there is Q-chan…"
"Oh, yeah. But the count says that he's really human…""Kyu?"
Lauren looked up and smiled at the adorable little winged, fanged rabbit. "Umm. Human, yeah." She said.
"Hey! The count said so, so it must be true." Chris complained. Lauren humored him and dropped the subject.
"I guess the count was wrong about me, though." She told him.
"Wrong? How so?" he asked.
"Oh, he said I had an attention span. Now, where do you normally take naps, Chris?"
Chris smiled his cutest, most innocent little boy smile. "Actually, I usually don't" he said, as casually as possible.
"Nice try." Lauren said, and led him out of the strange ocean room.
"Bye-bye, Phillipe!" he yelled.
"Bye, man!" the boy in the water called back.
After Lauren had finally gotten Chris to sleep, using a tea on the third shelf called 'Chris's naptime tea', she had gone back to the stalls and finished the mucking out. Strangely, the stalls were still empty of horses, though beautifully dressed men and women seemed to enjoy hanging out in some of the recently cleaned ones.
When she was finished, she went back to the main room and found Count D, her question still burning in her mind.
D sat with the detective, afternoon tea and a small plate of fruit tarts on the table. They looked serious, not fighting for once. The detective was talking…
"It's just… well… my partner's grandmother. She's the prime suspect for the murder of a group of pre-schoolers. He's all broken up about it, and then they take him off of the case, won't tell him anything… see, the thing is, the guy needs someone to talk too. And I can tell, but really, I just suck at that kinda thing. So I thought maybe I could get him a pet. For comfort, you know. Just nothing creepy or dangerous, okay? This is for a good friend of mine, and if anything happens to him you will be behind bars faster than you can say 'Chinatown'. Got it?"
Creepy? Dangerous? Lauren thought.
"We don't sell anything "creepy" or "Dangerous", detective." The count said coldly.
"And those man-eating rabbits were…?" Leon asked.
Man eating RABBITS? What kind of a place am I working at?"Cute!" D answered with a smile, completely unfazed.
"They most certainly were not!"
"They were too!"
"They nearly destroyed the city!"
"That has no affect on their appearance!"
"Oh, whatever."
Lauren stepped out before the argument could become even more heated. She would have to ask her question later.
D sighed. It had not been a good day. He had been fighting with the detective all through teatime, and the afternoon had not been much of an improvement. Really, what had that family expected to happen when they put their panther on a "healthy" vegetarian diet and then sent their three-year-old daughter in to play with her? He had reasoned with the angry parents for an hour, but in the end they had refused to return Sasha to him, deciding she was dangerous and needed to be put down. They had broken one of the rules of the contract, so they couldn't sue him, but right now a beautiful and gentle friend of his was going to die, and there was nothing he could do. They had her sedated right now, under perfect control. Humans were safety obsessed nowadays, having lost all pride and honor. It used to be when a human fought a panther… but that was long ago. And even back then, humanity was no better. Just braver, less powerful… less dangerous. It used to be that humanity had the ability to see other creatures as human, as people like themselves, without the incense…of course, some humans were different…
He would have to tell her, she deserved to know.
"Speak of the devil." He muttered, his keen ears picking up faint footprints. He would tell her. She would tell Chris, of course, but he would have to learn eventually.
"Laur-" his words cut off abruptly as he caught sight of the shadowy presence across the room.
"Father."
