Read Bloodlines for Free Online Page A

ladylike pose on the couch.
    I found myself glancing around. As you probably know, malamutes are among the few creatures on earth that never talk unless they have something to say. Consequently, they often remain silent for hours. On the other hand, most of them are almost ridiculously friendly. I began to feel alarmed. If, in fact, Missy were tucked behind one of the couches, chairs, or love seats or hidden under one of the dozens of tables, there must be something horribly wrong with her.
    “Mrs. Sievers,” I said in my firmest dog-training voice, “where is Missy?”
    Enid Sievers gestured vaguely toward the back of the house and asked, “Or maybe you’d like a chocolate-covered cherry?”
    “Thank you,” I said. “Maybe later. Right now, I’d like to see Missy.” Then I finally caught on. “Mrs. Sievers, would you like me to get her?”
    “Would you? I have a terrible time with her.” Her odd, vaguely mechanical voice was pitifully grateful, and she finally rose from the couch and gestured to me to follow. As I trailed after her through a furniture-Packed dining room and into an out-of-date, surprisingly bare lime green kitchen, she went on about her troubles with the dog. “She’s knocked me over five or six times! And I know she doesn’t mean it, it’s just that she’s terribly strong, and, of course she’s very young and so vigorous! And I know she misses Edgar—he used to take her for her walkies every morning and twice at night, when he was able. Edgar worshipped this dog— and I’ve hired a boy to walk her, and that helps, but it’s not enough! And I can’t let her run through the house, can I? Just imagine!”
    And I did. Candy dishes emptied and smashed, porcelain figures flying, lamps crashing to the floor, tea tables toppled... How the hell had a malamute ever ended up in this worse-than-a-china-shop? I knew the answer, of course: Puppy Luv, that’s how.
    Mostly because I’d entirely dismissed Enid Sievers’s claim that Missy was an outstanding specimen of the breed, I expected to see the opposite: a tiny “malamute” with some obvious Siberian husky in her; or maybe a grotesquely oversized monster with bad hips; or simply a poor specimen, a malamute with a snap tail and coat; or perhaps a wooley. A wooley? That’s a malamute with a really long, shaggy coat. Woolies are spectacularly pretty, but that coat isn’t what the standard calls for, so you can’t show woolies in the breed ring. Anyway, Missy wasn’t one. In fact, for a pet shop dog, she was surprisingly decent looking, and she was loaded with personality.
    As it turned out, she’d been confined to a large pantry at the back of the kitchen. The little room had been stripped of its original contents and furnished with a mammoth red dog bed, a set of stainless steel bowls, and a big Vari-Kennel complete with a cozy-looking fake-sheepskin crate rug. Enid Sievers had supplied me with a sturdy inch-wide leash, and I’d cautiously opened the door, but the second Missy caught sight of me, she dashed forward, wiggled all over, rubbed her head vigorously against my knees, and then veered, dashed in a couple of happy circles, and returned to me.
    “Hi, pretty,” I said, massaging her neck and rubbing the top of her head. “Are you a good girl?”
    She plunked her bottom on the floor, flattened her ears against her head, rose up a little, gently placed both front paws in my hands, and held my eyes in hers. I was crazy about her, of course. I am a complete sucker for dogs, but especially for malamutes. And here’s the damn i thing, the real killer: Her color and facial markings were a whole lot like Kimi’s. Gray dog, white trim with a little tan, the full mask, the whole bit. Her eyes were paler than Kimi’s, her coat was a lighter gray, her tail was shorter, and her build was more delicate than Kimi’s—she’d end up smaller than Kimi, I thought, with legs and feet too fine for the breed—but the superficial resemblance