Bull read the letter, his face growing more grave by the line. "Cooper is coming," he said finally. "They've probably sent him to finish me off."

Detective Bull Hissrad of the Val Royeux Police Department finally gets a break in the spate of bizarre deaths across the city: everybody who’s ended up six feet under bought a pet from the absurdly-named Magister D’s Pet Shop in Vintown, and the vint who runs the place is just strange enough to be worth checking out. (Or, that time Bull was kind of a lonely, grumpy cop trying to figure out if Dorian was an ancient dragon hell-bent on exacting vengeance on humanity by killing people one at a time via the pretty inefficient method of selling them pets... or if he was just lonely and grumpy too.)