7
One of the most important qualities in a sire is a protective instinct for his or her childe. But you can go overboard.
—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire
After Jed’s face was sufficiently iced and Ben was coaxed out of the bathroom, Jane had yet another “explain the facts of the supernatural world” talk with me, where she explained that yes, werewolves and shapeshifters were a thing. Yes, vampires knew about werewolves but not shapeshifters, as Jed and his family were some sort of supernatural rarity. And no, I shouldn’t talk to humans about either, because nobody believed in shapeshifters anyway, and the werewolves were still waiting to see how well the whole Coming Out thing worked for the vampires before they made their debut.
Keagan, who was firmly planted on Team Jacob in the Great Twilight Debate, would have been so happy to know werewolves were real. But from what I gathered, they were less “dreamy dudes with soulful eyes and an aversion to wearing shirts” and more “rednecks who lived a little too close to their families and settled almost every argument with bloodshed.”
Ben’s resistance to draining a perfectly nice mutant land shark seemed to score extra points with Jane, even if she did insist that she wasn’t keeping track. We were allowed more frequent video chats and more unsupervised time. After the shark scare, Ben was less eager to run home and see his parents in person, so our yard time was less restrictive, too.
I was carving out a niche at work. I was slowly but surely working through my laundry cart of backlogged files. Sammy the coffee god learned my usual order, a bloody macchiato with a double shot of platelet syrup, and had begun leaving it on my desk for me every evening. I liked admin work. Jane gave me a series of objectives. I met them. There wasn’t a lot of critical thinking involved, but I had a sense of accomplishment, seeing all of those tasks checked off at the end of the day.
And whatever trust-based (or literature-based) issues we might have had at home, Jane was one of the least insane people I’d ever worked for. She was fair, made her expectations clear, and said thank you when you met them. She was very different from Mitch at the Chicken Shack, who once threw a bucket of drumsticks at me when I forgot to clean out the grease trap.
As promised, the “nope list” did grow every week. On this particular night, Jane was out of the office, meeting with other representatives. I was burning through the unfiled files, wondering what it said about me that my workload seemed to move twice as fast when my boss wasn’t around. Did that mean I was a good employee or a bad one?
The phone rang, and the caller ID showed an unfamiliar area code. I cleared my throat and used my most professional tone of voice to say, “Council Representative Jameson-Nightengale’s office, this is—”
But whoever was on the line was already talking. Well, ranting. He was ranting.
“I want an appointment with Mrs. Jameson-Nightengale immediately,” the voice demanded. “I’ve called and called, and my patience is at an end. This is unacceptable. If I have to park my car outside your office and wait for her in the parking lot, that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Well, I wouldn’t advise you to do that,” I deadpanned. “Can we start from the beginning, sir? What is your name?”
“You know very well that this is Dr. Allan Fortescue, PhD!” he shouted, emphasizing each letter of his postgraduate degree.
Also, how would I know that?
I glanced down at the caller ID. Oh. Yep, there it was, “Allan Fortescue, PhD.” How did he even get the phone company to put “PhD” on his phone line anyway?
On a hunch, I opened Jane’s “nope” spreadsheet and searched for the name Fortescue, while he continued to rant about his “research” and the hope he was providing to the undead community at large, despite our lack of support.
Yep, there he was again. With an asterisk. You had to really screw up to earn an asterisk from Jane.
“And I’m assuming you’re hoping to schedule an appointment with Representative Jameson-Nightengale?” I asked, working hard to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
“Yes, this is my fourth attempt to make an appointment, and every time, I’ve been told that her schedule is full. This is unacceptable!” he shouted. In the background, I heard a loud thump, like he’d slammed his fist against a table for emphasis. “I demand that you schedule an appointment within the next three days.”
I paused to let him think that I was checking Jane’s schedule. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Fortescue, but her schedule is booked solid, just so many meetings and then her travel schedule.”
I took a breath, hoping I sounded sincerely apologetic when I said, “She won’t be available until next month, at least. I’m so sorry.”
Also a lie. I was not sorry.
“Unacceptable!” he yelled.
“You keep saying that word. That doesn’t change the fact that the representative’s schedule is full.”
“Next Tuesday?” he demanded.
“She’s on the road.”
“Friday?”
“In meetings all night,” I replied, biting my lip. I really had to get better at lying if I was going to be a good administrative assistant.
He suggested, “The seventeenth?”
“She’s taking a personal day. For a doctor’s appointment.”
“Vampires don’t need doctors.”
“It’s an elective procedure,” I said, squinching up my face, hoping he wouldn’t hear the uncertainty in my voice. Thank God this wasn’t a video call.
“Unacceptable!” he yelled, and then hung up on me so hard that my sensitive ears rang.
“I guess it was unacceptable,” I muttered, making another note on Jane’s “nope” spreadsheet with a PITA ranking of eight. And I added another asterisk with the words “babbling loony.”
I glanced at the clock and wondered if it was too early in the workday to get another one of Sammy’s delicious coffee concoctions. The calendar app on my computer rang out a little ding of alarm to remind me that McDerpy—Dr. Hudson, I had to remember to call him Dr. Hudson—had asked me to report to the R&D floor at one A.M. to go over my cheek-swab test results. I definitely didn’t have time for coffee. But if Dr. Hudson broke out another swab, I swear, I was having two bloody macchiatos.
I shut down my computer and followed the Council’s strict security procedures, pushing my file cart into Jane’s office and double-locking the door. I walked to the elevator and realized that this was the first time I’d been allowed to use it on my own. I could use it to go to the top floor, walk out onto the street. Maybe go somewhere (gasp) completely unsupervised. And for just one second, my hand hovered over the “Ground Level” button. But alas, I couldn’t do it. Jane trusted me. She’d trusted me enough to leave me unattended in the office. I couldn’t pay her back by pulling a Shawshank.
Sighing over my own lame-ass integrity, I hit the button marked “R&D Subfloor.” I stepped out of the open doors, shivering at the lower subterranean temperatures. The R&D subfloor looked more like a hospital than an office. Slick gray tile, bare white walls, extremely unflattering fluorescent lighting. The hall was completely empty, no reception desk, no helpful medical minion to point me in the right direction. And all of the doors were shut tight.
Frowning, I walked past several doors marked “Hematology,” “Dermatology,” and “NO.” I wasn’t sure what “NO” was all about, but I’m sure it wasn’t good. It did sound like something Jane would put up on a door, though. And that made me smile.
I closed my eyes and tried to listen for any signs of “life” on the floor. But I didn’t hear one heartbeat, not one breath. Clearly, this was a vampire-only floor, which actually made me a bit more comfortable. At least I didn’t have to worry about my bloodlust. At the far end of the hallway, I heard the faintest murmur of conversation.
I followed it until I found Dr. Hudson waiting in what looked like any exam room in any doctor’s office in America—more gray tile, more white walls, jars upon jars of swabs and cotton balls. Ben was sitting on the end of a hospital bed, looking pretty uncomfortable. That probably had to do with Dr. Hudson and his gleeful expression as he polished a scary array of shiny medical instruments. Or possibly the fact that Dr. Hudson was wearing red suspenders and a red-and-white plaid shirt that looked like it was made from a picnic blanket.
I don’t know if the shirt-suspenders combo was his way of trying to make us feel at ease, but combined with the fact that he was somehow simultaneously grinning and whistling, it was anything but comforting. And then he saw me walking through the door, and the grinning and whistling increased. How could whistling be so sinister?
“Miss Keene!” he exclaimed. “Welcome, welcome! I was just explaining to young Mr. Overby that we’ve found all kinds of interesting tidbits in your test results, enough to warrant considerably more testing.”
“More testing?” I would say I tried not to whine when I said it, but that would be a lie.
“Righty-o!” he exclaimed.
“Like what?” I asked, edging toward Ben. Because while I was not necessarily on awesome terms with my childe, I definitely felt more comfortable with him and his lack of shiny sharp objects.
Dr. Hudson’s smile ratcheted up that much further. I was honestly worried that at some point the two corners of his mouth were going to touch behind his head. “For starters, your iron and hemoglobin counts are far above a normal vampire’s. Your DNA shows an alarming number of extra genes thrown into the mix, which may explain some of your more interesting traits.” He stared at me intently.
“Alarming?” Ben asked.
Dr. Hudson was doing this weird little shoulder-shimmy-nod thing that made him look like a psychotic bobblehead. “It’s fascinating, just fascinating, like a puzzle. I just want to take you apart, see what makes you tick, and put you back together.”
Ben and I stared at him, silent and horrified, both imperceptibly inching farther away from him. Dr. Hudson didn’t seem to realize he’d just said something incredibly creepy and moved from staring at me to rolling a covered medical tray to the bedside.
I cleared my throat. “What kind of DNA?”
Dr. Hudson winked at me. “Oh, a whole cocktail of goodies—animal, vegetable, and mineral.”
What sort of undead uber-nerd had sired this guy, and how could I ask him to take Dr. Hudson back? Like to a cellular level? And what did he mean by—what kind of minerals had DNA? What the hell were we?
When I didn’t respond with the expected girlish giggle, he added, “Just a little science joke. So, kids, we’re just going to expose you to some of our better-known weaknesses and see how you react. Now, Miss Keene, please have a seat.”
Ben raised his hand. “Can we get back to ‘vegetable’?”
“Yes,” I agreed, pointing to Ben as I climbed onto the hospital bed next to him. The papery mattress cover crinkled under my butt, but honestly, the fact that the Council was worried about hygiene was the only comforting thing in this room. “I would like to talk about that.”
Dr. Hudson waved his hand dismissively. “I submitted an initial report to Mrs. Jameson-Nightengale. I’m sure she’ll explain it to you.”
The idea that he couldn’t be bothered to give us details about our own DNA irked me. Dr. Hudson, for all his zip-a-dee-doo-dah cheer, was not a good guy. Hell, I wasn’t even sure he was a decent scientist. Because he whipped the cover off the tray, flourishing it like something in an infomercial, to reveal a small silver cylinder, a big wooden cross, a tube marked “Minced Garlic,” a couple of jars of liquid I didn’t recognize, and—
“Is that a wooden stake?” I asked, nodding to the pointy object in question.
Dr. Hudson shrugged, as if it was totally expected to find a wooden stake in a medical lab. “Well, sure, we have to know how you respond to being staked. That’s one of our key questions, isn’t it?”
I shook my head. “But it would be answered pretty definitively if we, say, burst into a cloud of dust. Which, even in the name of scientific discovery, seems a little excessive.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we should just get stabbed in the heart experimentally,” Ben agreed. “That’s kind of like claiming that someone’s a werewolf just because they die when you shoot them in the heart with a silver bullet. A bullet to the heart is going to kill pretty much anybody.”
“Let’s just see where the tests take us,” Dr. Hudson said, walking across the lab to check some machine making beeping noises.
“He’s going to try to do it anyway, isn’t he?” I asked, lowering my voice.
Ben nodded. “I’d say there’s about a ninety percent chance.”
“Do we have to stay for this? I mean, it’s reasonable to walk out of a medical appointment if you think your doctor’s going to try to scientifically murder you, right?”
“Jane told us to cooperate,” Ben whispered. “I think that means sticking around until he actively tries to murder us.”
“Can we take our first step toward meaningful friendship by being ‘not getting staked in the heart’ buddies?” I asked him.
“I’ll watch your chest if you’ll watch mine.” He grimaced, and while I could see him struggling not to glance down at my cleavage, he totally did. “That came out wrong.”
It was a long and unpleasant evening. First, Dr. Hudson exposed us to things that didn’t affect regular vampires. We were able to see ourselves in mirrors. We were able to hold crucifixes with no problem. He spritzed a small amount of holy water on our arms. Nothing. Having minced garlic rubbed on our wrists didn’t have any effect other than smelling gross to our super-sensitive noses.
“Now we move on to the more effective antivampire measures,” Dr. Hudson said, just a little too much excitement bubbling through his already upbeat voice. He took a shiny chrome canister from the tray. “This is a very weak solution of colloidal silver, just one percent, mind you, to test your sensitivity to silver. Based on responses from other vampires, it should inflict minimal damage, something like a moderate sunburn.”
“You sprayed this on other vampires to test it out?” I asked. “I feel so sorry for your interns.”
“It was a sacrifice they were willing to make for science. Now, shall we allow ladies first?” Dr. Hudson asked, motioning for me to roll up my sleeve.
I chewed on my lip. “Is this because I joked about your interns?”
“No,” Ben objected. “You should use it on me first.”
“No, actually, that makes sense,” I told Ben. “I’m patient zero. Whatever is wrong with us happened to me first. Maybe it will affect me differently from how it affects you.”
“I don’t like it,” Ben said.
“Duly noted.” I nodded, rolling up my sleeve. “But I get to determine whether I get sprayed with potentially dangerous chemicals. Because feminism.”
“I don’t think that’s applicable here,” Ben said as I held out my arm and took a deep breath. Ben took the other hand and gripped it tight.
“For science,” I said, blowing out a long breath. I gave him a little smile.
Dr. Hudson took the cap off the canister and spritzed the faintly grayish liquid against my forearm. At first, it just felt cool, like being hit with regular water.
“Nothing,” I said, jerking my shoulders. “Maybe we’re immune to—oh, holy crap balls!”
The skin of my arm puffed up like bubble wrap, peeling and turning an angry red. I hissed as the damage spread, growing from the size of a quarter to the width of my palm in seconds. The room filled with the smell of singed toast. The silver was dissolving my skin like wet tissue, and I was terrified that I would eventually see bone.
“Fascinating,” Dr. Hudson said, craning his neck to see how far the damage spread. “Just fascinating.”
This was not the response I hoped for.
“What the hell?” Ben yelled, his own hands smoking lightly from the microscopic mist of silver that had drifted over his skin. “Rinse it off now!”
“Oh, of course,” Dr. Hudson said, though he sounded vaguely annoyed.
The doctor took a bottle of distilled water, held my arm over a basin, and rinsed away the silver. It didn’t help. The burn continued to spread up my arm to my bicep, eating away at my skin. It was more tolerable than having my sternum crushed by a Frisbee weight but only by a little bit.
“It’s not stopping!”
“Screw this.” Ben reached into the refrigerator unit by the supply cabinet and pulled out a bag of donor blood. He grabbed Dr. Hudson by the collar of his lab coat. Dr. Hudson showed little to no reaction, jotting down his notes as Ben dragged him around. “Is this clean?” Ben demanded. “You haven’t screwed around with it? No silver or garlic or LSD or anything?”
Dr. Hudson shook his head. Ben tore off the top of the plastic bag and poured it into my mouth, splashing whatever missed my mouth down the front of my shirt. The burn stopped spreading, but it still stung like a bitch. Ben reached into the fridge and took out another unit of donor blood.
“Hold on, that’s AB negative, very rare!” Dr. Hudson cried. “And it’s my lunch!”
“Shut up!” Ben snapped, while I bit into the plastic directly this time and sucked down the blood like Satan’s Capri Sun, made of pure deliciousness, deep and rich, chocolaty with undertones of cherry. AB negative was officially my favorite blood type. Also, my arm was no longer burning, which was lovely.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, watching as the skin slowly smoothed out and reverted to an angry pink. It went nicely with the bright, bloody smear on the back of my hand.
“One more?” Ben asked, holding my arm in his hands, examining it.
I glanced down at my skin, which was now smooth and unblemished and a regular human color. A pale human but human. I shook my head. “I’m OK now. Thanks.”
I glanced down at Ben’s hands, which had stopped smoking but still looked stippled and red. Ben released my arm and stepped between Dr. Hudson and me.
“Well, I guess we can mark down yes for an allergy to silver,” Dr. Hudson said, smiling brightly. “Honestly, your sensitivity to silver is astounding. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You’re a dick,” I told Dr. Hudson as Ben handed me a wet cloth to clean my face.
Dr. Hudson jerked his shoulders and continued scribbling.
“You’re telling me that was a weak solution?” Ben growled.
“One percent concentration,” Dr. Hudson told him, showing me the label on the canister. “Most vampires wouldn’t have had a reaction like that. Look.”
He held out his own arm and pressed the button on the atomizer.
“Don’t!” I cried. And then I remembered the pain in my forearm and shrugged. “Never mind, Dr. Hudson. Go ahead.”
The silver spray dripped off his skin, and while it did turn just a little pink, Dr. Hudson didn’t have nearly the same damage. He smiled and waved his intact limb at me, as if his lack of burns should somehow make me feel better. Clearly, this was a weird “neo-vamp” symptom that didn’t affect regular vampires. But what if Ben was somehow even more sensitive to silver than I was? What if Dr. Hudson sprayed him and Ben lost his arm?
“See?” Dr. Hudson chuckled, wiping the silver off with a wet wipe. “Easy peasy.”
“You’re not spraying Ben with that,” I told him very sternly. “He had a reaction just from the blowback from spraying me. Let’s assume we both have the same reaction.”
“But you were correct. You could have very different levels of response,” Dr. Hudson protested. “We need to collect complete data.”
“No,” I insisted, a rumbling growl creeping into my voice. “We are not guinea pigs. We’re human b—well, we’re people! You can’t just torture us and claim it’s for science like that’s a get-out-of-war-crimes-free card.”
“Mrs. Jameson-Nightengale was very clear that she wanted comprehensive tests,” he said, staring at me with blue, derpy eyes that had gone cold and calculating, like he was trying to figure out how long he could keep me down on the lab floor without anyone noticing. “She said she wanted results, damn the consequences.”
My eyes narrowed, and I picked up on the tiniest twitch of a vein near Dr. Hudson’s temple. No. He was lying. That couldn’t be true. And the twitchy vascular system was his tell. Jane wouldn’t risk Ben like that. And while she wasn’t pulling for permanent custody of me, I knew she wouldn’t set me up to be tortured. She wasn’t that cold.
Quicker than I’d ever moved before, I stepped around Ben and moved very close to Dr. Hudson. I snagged the stake from the medical tray and pressed the point to his throat. My voice reached a low, gravelly octave I’d never heard come out of my mouth. “You. Will. Not. Spray. Him. With. That.”
“You’re a little off the mark,” Dr. Hudson told me, just a little smugly, as he glanced down at the stake. “I know you probably haven’t taken anatomy, but you’re going to have to move it a little lower. That won’t kill me.”
“But it will keep you from whistling for a while,” I shot back, pressing just a bit harder.
Dr. Hudson’s nostrils flared, but he placed the silver canister back on the tray. “Righty-o, we’ll just move along.”
“No, we’re done,” Ben told him, grabbing my uninjured arm and pulling me toward the door. “We won’t submit to any more tests without Jane being here. This is insane.”
“Oh, I don’t think we have to worry Jane about this,” Dr. Hudson chirped. “After all, we do need to know how you handle sunlight.”
We turned to see Dr. Hudson quickly slide on a pair of heavy rubber gloves and one of those masks that welders use. Another lab vamp-lackey, whom I recognized as Dr. Gennaro through his own welder’s mask, walked briskly through the lab’s rear door, holding a weird lantern with a purplish lens.
“What is that?” Ben asked as I grabbed the doorknob and rattled it. The hallway door had locked behind me. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? When it wouldn’t budge, I resorted to yanking on the doorknob to try to force it off the frame. I threw my weight against it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Help!” I screamed. “Help!”
“This is a UV lamp,” Dr. Hudson told us in his “professor teetering on the edge of a complete nervous breakdown” voice. “Think of it as a suntan in a box.”
Ben and I locked gazes and threw ourselves across the room at lightning speed. Ben swiped the stake from my hand somewhere near the bed, which I didn’t appreciate, because it left me weaponless. He launched himself at Dr. Hudson but overshot with his super-strong legs and smacked against the wall. The hit apparently dazed him, because on his next try, Dr. Gennaro stepped between them and knocked the stake aside.
Ben threw him to the tiled floor, but Dr. Gennaro swept his legs out from under him. Ben’s head hit the floor with a thud. The stake clattered to the floor and slid under the bed. I picked up the nearest heavy object—a bedpan—and swung it at Dr. Hudson’s head. But I missed, because Dr. Gennaro kicked the backs of my knees, folding my legs under me, and I flopped to the floor like a fish.
Ben groaned. “My head.”
“This is embarrassing,” I told him. “We have to learn how to fight.”
I chucked the bedpan at Dr. Hudson, but he easily sidestepped it, because unwieldy metal objects are really hard to throw, even with vampire agility. My back hurt too much from the collision with the tile to do much more than fling my leg up and drop my foot down heavily on Dr. Gennaro’s crotch. He curled up in agony on the floor, which made me a little happier.
In a voice I’m sure he thought was soothing, Dr. Hudson said, “Now, we’re only going to expose you to a low setting for five seconds. The skin damage should be minimal.”
He turned on the lantern. The lab was filled with warm, bright light. I ducked my head under my shirt and braced myself for the heat, for the pain. I heard Ben let loose a short yelp and felt his arms wrap around me, the cloth of my shirt trapped between my face and his chest. I closed my eyes, buried my face against him, and waited to turn to ash.
Nothing.
I pulled down my shirt and found that we were intact. We were both absolutely fine. Our cheeks weren’t even pink. Gennaro, however, had lost a sleeve in his scuffle with Ben, and his bared arm was covered in small, shallow blisters. Also, his carefully slicked-back hair seemed to be smoking.
“That was a bit of an overreaction, don’t you think?” Dr. Hudson asked dryly as he lifted his welder’s mask.
“No, I don’t think that it was an overreaction,” I said, scrambling to my feet and helping Ben up. “But I still think you’re a dick.”
I moved closer, sort of pacing back and forth, as if I could find a way to sneak around Dr. Hudson.
Meanwhile, he was inspecting my face and hands with that sinister, gleeful expression. “No visible damage or distress. Pupils normal. But that could be a result of your interference, pulling your clothes over your face to protect yourself—not very helpful, I might add. I think we’ll prepare for five seconds at medium intensity.”
“What?” I cried as Dr. Hudson pulled his facial protection back into place.
A lot of things happened at once.
Dr. Gennaro shouted, “No!” And started smoking.
Ben scrambled under the bed—to find the stake, I guessed.
I grabbed the small fire extinguisher mounted on the wall and whacked the butt against the doorknob. But it didn’t budge. That was one very strong doorknob.
“Ben!”
“I can’t reach the stake!” Ben yelled.
I turned on Dr. Hudson, raising the fire extinguisher above my head. I didn’t want to brain the good doctor, but I didn’t feel he’d left me much choice. And he looked completely unconcerned about the fact that I was holding this giant can over his head. He was adjusting the knobs on the lamp like it was a camera and he was getting ready to take my picture. I was much more comfortable pointing a stake at his throat. I should not have let Ben take the stake from me like some horror movie “last girl.” If the sunlamp didn’t evaporate me, I would start carrying a spare stake in my sock or something.
Just then, there was a loud thump from the hallway and a woman’s voice shouting curse words.
Dr. Hudson’s head whipped toward the sound. Ben took advantage of his distraction and kicked out at the lamp of horrors, knocking it against the wall and smashing it.
Dr. Hudson frowned at Ben. “Well, that was rude.”
The door flew open, and Jane came storming into the lab. Seeing my bloodstained shirt and Ben’s whole “recently wrassled with an overcoiffed lab rat” look, she shot a poisonous glare Dr. Hudson’s way. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m running some standard tests,” Dr. Hudson said, all casual-like. Because that’s what you’d expect of a sociopath who thinks evaporating someone in the name of research is OK.
“He wanted to try staking us,” Ben said, climbing to his feet. “Just to see what would happen.”
And because I was more than a little irritated with this whistling scientific tool, I held up my injured arm. “He burned me with silver, Jane. He burned me real bad.”
“What?” Jane exclaimed, holding my arm up to take a closer look at the new, shiny pink skin. She sent another filthy glare at Dr. Hudson. “Are you insane? How could you?”
“You asked me to find the limits of the kids’ abilities.”
Jane swept the instruments off the tray and sent most of them bouncing off the wall. “Did I really have to specifically tell you that meant ‘without stabbing or burning them’?”
Dr. Hudson didn’t reply, but given his expression, I would say yes.
“My methods might be a little invasive, but we can’t stop now. We were just getting to the interesting bits. For all her additional strengths, Miss Keene has an acute anaphylactic reaction to even a weak concentration of silver. And Mr. Overby had a reaction to just a light secondhand misting. Their reaction to UV rays remains a question, because certain parties continue to interfere with the testing.”
“Yes, pardon the hell out of us for not standing still while you try to give us a certain-death suntan,” Ben shot back. “What makes you think you have the right to do something like that?”
Dr. Hudson whirled on Ben, practically screaming at us. “These tests fall under the purview of my position as chief science office with this Council office! I decide which protocols are reasonable and the level of acceptable consequences. Not you. You are the test subjects. You are expected to participate in these experiments cheerfully.”
Gone was the Mr. Rogers of scary vampire medicine, replaced by a very cranky man in a picnic shirt who did not like having his authority questioned. But honestly, this version of Dr. Hudson was less creepy than the McDerpy persona.
Ben didn’t have a chance to respond, even with his superspeed. Jane drew up to her full considerable height and got right up in Dr. Hudson’s business. “And as your local Council representative and your boss, I approve all of your experiments. And your budget. And whether you get a Christmas bonus or not. And I’m telling you right now that you are not to do any sort of tests on my wards, Meagan Keene and Benjamin Overby, without my consent and supervision. Do you understand me?”
Dr. Hudson’s jaw set in a stubborn line, but he said, “Yes.”
“You don’t approach them. You don’t contact them. You don’t even look in their direction without written permission. And if you do, I will use every person in Dick Cheney’s contacts list to make sure you spend the rest of your unnaturally long life scrubbing out expired blood-storage units at the Red Cross. Get me?”
Dr. Hudson nodded. Hell, I knew I would have agreed to anything Jane asked me to do. I’d never heard her sound so scary.
“I need verbal confirmation that you understand completely, Dr. Hudson,” Jane barked in the scariest, most authoritative voice I’d heard her use yet.
Dr. Hudson seethed. “Yes.”
Jane’s smile was downright frosty. “Excellent.” She turned to Ben and me. “Come on, kids, let’s get you home. Gabriel’s making dinner, which means it’s safe to drink.” She hooked an arm around each of us and gently pushed us out of the lab. She looked over her shoulder. “You are skating on very thin ice, Dr. Hudson.”
The moment we cleared the door, she nodded silently—but very emphatically—toward the elevator. Then she popped her head back into the lab and said, “And for God’s sake, clean up Gennaro and get some blood in him. He’s smelling up this whole level.”
Ben held the elevator door open until Jane was safely inside. She slapped the button for the ground level and waited for the doors to slide closed, then threw her arms around Ben. “Are you OK?”
He nodded, relaxing into her arms a little, like he’d finally dropped his fight-or-flight response. “I won’t lie. It was scary as hell. But we’re OK. Meagan managed to get a few good shots in. I was basically useless, which is humiliating.”
“Not true,” I began, letting loose a surprised “Oof” when Jane let Ben go and wrapped me in the tightest embrace I’d had in years. I froze, my arms sticking out at weird Frankenstein angles. It was like I’d temporarily forgotten how hugs worked. It took an embarrassing number of seconds for my brain to communicate to my arms to unclench them and let them drape around Jane’s back. And then I did this strange, awkward little pat thing, because I honestly didn’t know what else to do.
“Ben did just fine. I mean, we both need vampire self-defense lessons something awful, because our fight skills are embarrassing. But he did get blood into me when I was burned. He showed quick thinking.”
I decided not to mention the whole “I had the stake, but you snatched it out of my hand” thing. It seemed like a dick move. And behind Jane’s back, Ben gave me a surprised, warm smile that made my knees go all wobbly.
“I’m sure you were both appropriately badass.”
“This is above my pay grade, I’m sure, but can I make some sort of formal suggestion that you fire Dr. Hudson?” I asked. “I think he’s crossed the line from scientist to full-on lulu. I don’t like the idea of coming to work every day and knowing he’s in the building.”
“He’s got a pretty ironclad contract with the Council. I can’t fire him unless he disobeys my direct orders, which is why I was so careful with my wording just now.” Jane finally stepped back, examining my arms and my still-slightly-bloody chin. “I can’t believe he did this. I thought my introductory ‘I’m your new boss’ memo made my stance on living and/or undead experimentation pretty clear when I took over the job.”
“Must have been one hell of a memo,” Ben muttered.
“It was twenty-three pages long,” Jane said, preening just a little bit, as the elevator dinged and opened on the lobby level. Gigi was waiting there with my purse and Ben’s messenger bag. And of course, she did not look like she’d just gotten into a bloody wrestling match with evil nerds. Wearing a super-cute combination of skinny jeans and a boyfriend jacket, she looked like she’d just stepped out of Girls Who Would Make a Better Girlfriend Than You Magazine.
“Hey, Jane, why did you need—? Oh. My. God. What happened to you?” Gigi’s perfectly glossed mouth dropped open in shock. “Meagan, are you OK?”
“No, no, I am not,” I told her, in a voice I meant to be much friendlier, but I was pretty much done with everything at this point.
What I did not expect was for Gigi to step into the elevator, hit the emergency stop button, and wrap her arms around me. Was it Ninja-Hug Meagan in the Elevator Day? Did I miss a note on Jane’s calendar? I couldn’t quite relax the Frankenstein arms, but I did give her a sort of flipper pat on her shoulder.
“Whatever it was, don’t let it scare you away, OK?” she said, leveling those big blue eyes at me. “We need more nonpsychos working in this office.”
I snorted. “Thanks.”
Ben was staring at the two of us with a strange, conflicted expression on his face.
“Ben, not the time,” Jane told him, shaking her head.
“What?” Ben exclaimed. “My ex-girlfriend is in close contact with my . . . sire lady person friend. These thoughts can’t be helped.”
“Try harder,” Jane scolded.
“Oh, Ben!” Gigi scowled, slapping at his arm.
Meanwhile, my jaw dropped as I stared at Ben’s “sorry not sorry” face.
“OK, well, Ben, you are done for the night. I’ve shut your computer down and clocked you out,” Gigi said, handing him his bag. “Jane, I’ve shut you and Meagan down for the night, as you requested in your cryptic and completely misspelled text—which makes way more sense now. Meagan, it seems that we’re still hugging with one arm.”
“I didn’t know whether to say something or not,” I told her. “As Ben’s sire lady person friend.”
Ben groaned.
“Good luck with that,” Gigi said, jerking her head toward him, making me snicker.
“I have Jane to take over the weirdest of the siring duties,” I said with a shrug.
Gigi’s dark brows rose. “No, I mean, you and Ben—”
“Thank you, Gigi. I think we’re abusing the emergency stop function at this point,” Jane interjected. “We’re going home for the night. If anyone asks, you didn’t see us.”
Gigi gave a little salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
If Gigi wasn’t careful, I was going to end up liking her. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.