The line was slow. With only one crotchety old lady working the sign-in desk, Jay wasn't surprised it was taking so long to process each dog. If there had been even one more clerk available he might have been assigned already. It was annoying and there wasn't anything he could do about it. People like him didn’t get hired for check-in duty.

Someone coughed behind him, and the woman two spots in front of him shifted to send an angry glare backward. She was ignored as the line shuffled forward. Jay huffed slightly and tried not to be impatient for his turn. It was another slow five minutes before he could step forward again, and then a grumbling few more before he could face Harriet. "Anything for me today?" he asked. Jay did his best to keep the slight whine out of his voice. After almost an hour of waiting he was desperate to work.

Harriet was almost 90 years old, covered in burn scars, and still working at Dog Services. That made her cranky and slow even on the best of days. Jay had tried bringing her snacks once and she'd held a grudge ever since.

"Just the usual," she said with a toothy grin. Jay ignored the gaps between the yellowed, broken teeth and grimaced at the small paper she held out to him. "You gonna take it?"

The usual. The same job she'd given Jay for the past several months. Jay swore she even got the other clerks to save it for him. It barely paid enough for a warm lunch for one person; Jay needed to feed himself and his little brother and pay rent. It was never enough. But Harriet wouldn't give him other jobs if death duty was on the list. "Don't you have anything else?" he asked. Asking was bound to keep this going tomorrow, yet Jay couldn’t stop his mouth.

Harriet cackled, as Jay expected. "For a little lap dog like you?" The choking laugh sounded like she was halfway to breaking a rib. "That's a good one."

"Fine," Jay sighed. He couldn't take his eyes up from the pathetic work order she waved at him. He didn’t need to be able to read to know the details; he’d taken the job enough to know what it entailed. "I'll take it,” he said and gently took the fragile paper from her.

"Room three," Harriet grinned broadly, spit flying from her mouth through the spaces in her teeth.

Jay nodded and moved from the counter with the slip in hand. The job wasn't hard or bad—all he had to do was sit in a hospital for a few hours and let those going through the worst hold him and cry themselves out into his fur—but it was halfway to charity work. And Jay needed to pay to keep his brother housed and fed. Rent was due in a week, and at this rate, they'd have to choose between sleeping and starving.

The line shifted as Jay moved out of the way and towards the back rooms. The cougher had started up again, getting more nasty looks and grumbles. At least the dark looks weren't being shot at Jay.

"Here," Jay said as he shoved the work order over to the guard protecting the ritual rooms. Dog Services didn't waste a lot of space on making their building look bright and cheerful; the lobby was the check-in station and less than 20 steps away was the hall of rooms where their workers were transformed into canines. The reversal rooms were down a second hallway from the opposite direction, and just as protected. They didn't allow their rooms to be used by anyone not employed by them. Magic for the untrained was expensive; customers paid for the transformations, paid a portion to the Services, and whatever was left went to the worker.

The guard grunted as he accepted the paper, a sly smirk creeping up his face as he read the assignment. "Death duty again? Sucks to be you."

"Yeah, yeah," Jay grumbled. "Laugh it up."

Harley snorted. "You should start working different hours," he offered as he gave Jay an obvious once-over. "The big jobs pay big coin."

Jay frowned and shook his head. "I don't have the build for a guard dog," he said. "And I need to get home for Ken."

"Guard dogs ain't the only long jobs."

A shudder went up Jay's spine. Overnight jobs for lapdogs were shady at best. Possibly illegal. Even the nanny dogs sometimes had to put up with crazy requests. "You trying to imply something?"

"Look at you talkin' all fancy," the guard scoffed. "I seen your little mutt self. Ya could do a few jobs. Pretty as my sister when you’re a dog."

Jay rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Now you're talking nonsense. Can I go through?"

Harley's cruel cheer didn't change. The man's mustache twitched as he held back more laughs. "Yeah, your order's legit."

"Should be, since you saw me get it," Jay grumbled. He didn't see the guards give the other dogs as much hassle. Harley seemed to like trying to make conversation with him, and Jay just didn't understand that. Harley was a guard, Jay was a dog. Dogs didn't mix with guards. That's just the way it was.

Jay took the order back and shuffled down the hall until he arrived at room three. It was the same room he'd gone to almost every day since he'd first tripped up with Harriet so he didn’t need directions anymore. He knew very well why she kept assigning him to this room. The old lady would love to see him dead or disfigured. She didn't like any of the dogs, and Jay had been unlucky enough to draw her attention by trying to be nice.

The room was dark and almost silent. The wizard who operated this circle was blind, so he didn't care if there was enough light in the room to see.

It was dangerous. If the person wasn't positioned exactly right in the ritual circle things could go horrifically wrong. The light from the hallway wasn't enough. At best he might stand only slightly off and end up with a partial transformation that would land the lucky in the brothels until they earned enough to reverse the process. He kept silent the thought that Dog Services used this room deliberately for that, just as he kept silent the thought that he could fix himself if necessary.

His magic didn’t work like theirs. So long as he wasn’t dead.

Jay set his work order on the low table by the door and found the center of the ritual circle by memory. Jay knelt briefly to feel the runes etched in the stone and confirm he was in the correct position. Taking a deep breath, Jay braced himself for the shock of the forced change as he called out: "Ready."

The mage’s magic felt like static over his skin for a moment. Someone else’s magic on him was uncomfortable at best — it itched like mad. Then the static turned his veins to lightning as it worked under his skin and changed him from the inside out. His body shrank, compacting itself inward, and if he could have shrieked he would have. It didn't hurt, exactly, but the air in his lungs was suddenly too much, a familiar feeling that always made it seem like his chest might explode. Fur burst out of his skin, and with the magic, his clothes flowed into his body like water soaking into bread. Jay tipped forward onto four paws, and the distance to the floor was only half what his mind expected. He shook out his back paws as his tail grew.

He laid down for a moment and let the last of the tingles scrape across his skin. He knew without seeing that he would be a mid-sized dog, black, and with a pointed nose closer to a fox's than a dog's. Dog Services never bothered to identify his breed; he was a mutt. His father being a foreigner put him and his brother at the bottom of every pool in the city. He couldn't hide it. So Jay let himself be the strange dog, and took the low jobs offered so he could stay alive.

He couldn't stay panting on the floor for long. The next dog was going to come in and trip over him, and no one would like that. Jay padded back over to the door to pick up the work order and then went through a second door towards a smaller, colder hallway. It led directly to the brightly lit customer lobby, kept warm with fire pits, carpet, burning candles, and magic. The warm glow reminded him of the little fire puppy from yesterday’s parade and brightened his mood a bit. The playful fire had been cute.

Jay's client was sitting on one of the couches near the door, and looked sad in her second-hand uniform compared to the finery of the rich clients laughing by the bar or the gritty servants huddled next to one of the far fireplaces. Hospital work really was charity work; it was run on donations granted through the generosity of those with too much money and too little sense. If they really wanted to help they’d be helping, not throwing fancy parties and buying expensive jewelry.

Jay sat at the nurse’s feet and let her take the work order, then let his tail wag and his tongue hang out as she patted his head. It would be another day of sitting with the dying until they left this world. The smell of hospital would stay in his fur, get stuck in his nose, and it wouldn't clear for hours. The nurse clipped a collar around his neck and held the leash, then walked up to the customer counter for checkout. She didn't talk to him. They rarely said anything except to give him orders; Jay had learned to read their movements instead. Learned how to notice when their pace picked up or when a pointed finger was meant for him.

So long as it paid the bills, he didn’t care.