“Sure, fine.” Rachel waved me away too. To her I looked like another kind of visitor, me and my two legs.
* * *
I walked back out the way I’d come. I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t want to sit down and be normal just yet.
First, I wanted to change my scrubs. Helen’s coffee had stained the ankle of my pants when it’d fallen, and I still smelled tangy like stomach contents, at least to my mind. Maybe the Shadows’ vapor had singed my nose. Where had the parka-wearing woman gone? I didn’t think I wanted to know.
Did I feel safer about things now? I hadn’t ever done anything to Viktor—but between the dents in my car and the were-women, I didn’t know. Maybe he was insane. Since two weres had attacked me in the mall parking lot, and the Shadows had only killed one tonight, I didn’t feel safer, really. I pulled off my scrub top angrily.
Helen had been so controlled when she’d been attacked. It must be fabulous to have a power you could call on when you needed it, just wrap it around you like a cloak—or know that you were already dead, or partially dead, and therefore mostly invulnerable. I yanked off my pants and threw them into the soiled linen cart forcefully.
I liked my job. I liked knowing things. I didn’t think I’d like being normal. But I wasn’t so sure I wanted this anymore, worrying about my life and smelling like puke. I opened my locker and redid my ponytail in the little mirror magnetized inside. On the top shelf inside I saw my dish towel holding Anna’s ceremonial knife.
I’d made a promise. I’d see it through. But after that—who knew. I straightened my scrubs, pulled my lanyard to hang outside them, and slammed my locker shut.
* * *
The rest of the night passed in a haze. Winter’s care was like moving deck chairs on the Titanic. When we turned him, he didn’t resist, and the blackening of his toes and fingers was creeping higher, slowly but inevitably. I helped Rachel, I helped Charles, I helped Meaty—I couldn’t wait for morning to come.
Since I didn’t have a report to give, I snuck out as soon as I could. How would I know if the were-escort for me was safe or not? I should have asked Helen for a password.
I got out of the last elevator and started walking toward the lobby doors, scanning the couches full of unfamiliar faces.
“Looking for someone?” said a voice I almost knew. I turned around, and Lucas unfolded out of one of the lobby’s chairs.
“Oh—it’s you.”
“Yeah.” He looked as rumpled as I felt. His clothing was wrinkled, his face was haggard, and he reeked of sweat.
“Have you been here all night?”
“I came straight from the fights. I was worried I’d miss you if I slept in my car.” He swung his arms around fluidly, waking dull limbs up, and grinned. “Thank God the moon’s near or I’d need you to go get me ibuprofen, Nurse.”
I snorted. “So sorry to inconvenience you. There’ve only been two measly attacks on my life.” If that woman had gotten to me last night, I’d have needed something stronger than an ibo to ease my pain.
“Sorry. I guess that wasn’t funny.” He jerked his head toward the lobby doors. “Let’s get out to the parking lot and away from all these people. Then we can figure out our plan.”
I followed him out toward the visitor parking lot, past the late day shift workers and bureaucrats coming in. Timekeepers and social workers, doctors and lawyers, all the bees that kept the hive running.
The visitor lot was nearly empty as we reached my car. “Did you find anything out the other night?”
Lucas shook his head. “Not yet. We’re still running Viktor down.”
“And you’re sure it’s him?”
“Viktor ran Winter down. You saw him do it, even if you don’t remember seeing it. Viktor’s after you because he feels guilty, and he’s scared you’ll tell,” Lucas explained with a shrug.
“You’re sure about all of that?” I asked. I sure as hell wasn’t.
“Trust me. Viktor and I have a lot of history. More than either of us would like.” He stared into the snow beside my car, then shook himself, almost dog-like, and his gaze rose to meet my own. He smiled. “Besides—do you have any other enemies I should know about?”
“Do you want the long list, or the short list?” I said, and leaned back against my cold car. “It’s just that I wonder if he’s working with vampires.”
Lucas’s face froze in surprise, then he laughed at me. “Weres and vampires? No. Never.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. We hate them. Viktor may hate us, but he’s still a were—he hates vampires more. We just have to protect you until my pack finds him, is all. I’m glad you asked us for our help.”
And despite the cold outside, and the fact that there were still mysterious weres after me and possibly vampires as well, I said, “Me too.”
Tiredness hit me like a wall, and maybe, although I wouldn’t have liked to admit it aloud, I did feel safer with Lucas around. I was glad Helen had sent him and not some were I didn’t know.
“Now you look like you could use an ibuprofen,” Lucas said gently, teasing.
“It’s been a long night.”
He thumped the truck he leaned on. “I already knew which car was yours, so I parked beside you. I’ll escort you home.”
My bed and a shower sounded like a fabulous idea—and then I had a vision of him expecting to guard me from inside my home, complete with Gideon and Veronica. “Okay. But you can’t come inside.”
“You mean your boyfriend doesn’t know?”
“What?”
“You always smell like a strange man. I just assumed.”
“Yeah—no.” I had not yet gotten so desperate that I needed to Frankenstein a half-man, half-parts-liberated-from-my-kitchen boyfriend. I’d be buying fresh batteries long before that. “He’s just a friend.”
“You have a lot of strange friends.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said, and grinned at him. “So—I guess I’ll drive, and—” I began, hunting for my keys.
“Do you eat?”
“Yes,” I answered without thinking.
“Good. I can guard you at a restaurant just as easily as I can at your house. When will you be up?”
Keys found, I looked up. “That’s cheating,” I protested.
“Unless you wanted to cook for me. I don’t mind eating in,” he pressed with half a shrug. “It’s the fights you know. Have to keep up my strength. I’ll even take a shower.”
“Wow. A shower. That’s it. I’m in,” I said, deadpan. He waited, grinning. I realized I wouldn’t win if I didn’t muster up more energy to fight—and I might just not mind losing, anyhow. “If I say I’ll see you at seven, can I finally go home?”
“Sure thing.”
“I’ll see you at seven then, Lucas. Good-bye.” I waited until he got into his car before I got into my own.
Lucas’s truck followed me all the way home, and he didn’t get out of it, good to his word. Any more people hanging out in my apartment, and I’d have to start charging rent.
Minnie greeted me at the door, and Gideon was still communing electronically with my wall. “You’d better not be stealing cable,” I told him and went into the back.
A shower washed the last of the potentially imaginary vaporized puke smell out of my hair, I ate the very end of Christmas’s leftover mashed potatoes, and I crawled into bed at a quarter to nine.
* * *
I think I slept like the dead. Not as dead as Veronica, but close. I woke at six P.M. to a dark house, and a snuggling happy cat. Out the window I saw a dark sky and falling snow.
One hour to kill before dinner. I wondered how tonight would go. Company I could talk to, that wasn’t plugged into my wall or resting inside of my closet, might be nice, even if it was under duress.
It was in the silent dark when I was home alone, dealing with all my problems by myself, that I could admit that I missed Ti. He was the last man I’d dated. Zombie, really … but he’d felt like a man. Like a grown-up. Someone I could count on and rely on, up until when he’d left me. He had reasons for going, and they’d sounded valid, but I couldn’t rationalize away feeling left behind, especially when there was no guarantee he’d be coming back. There’d been a brief, so brief, window when I thought I wouldn’t have to be alone again, and that made my current loneliness sharp, nestled against my breast like a viper.
I decided not to feel bad about going out on my not-a-date tonight. Instead of tricky potential feelings with Asher, Lucas would be a better, less entangled, way to feel in control. He was handsome, and hey, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d gone out with a dog.
“What do you think about that, Minnie?” I asked, and reached over to knuckle her head.
My phone rang, and UNKNOWN NUMBER lit up its screen. A part of me got excited, and then another part of me squashed that part back into the box with the tight lid where it belonged.
“Hello?”
“Edie Spence?”
It wasn’t a voice I knew. Unknown really meant unknown. “Yes,” I answered, swallowing down a small knot of disappointment in my throat, trying to pretend it’d never been there anyhow.
“Are you alone right now?”
“Is this a prank?”
“It’s Viktor. Don’t hang up.” I waited on the other end of the line. “You have to listen to me—I’m not the one trying to kill you, I’m being set up. They just need an excuse to kill me, the same way they killed my father. Anything a member of the Deepest Snow pack has to tell you is a lie.”
I sat quietly in bed. “How do you expect me to believe you?”
“How can I prove it?” Viktor gave a rueful laugh. “If I could, don’t you think I would? But they’ve set me up—and there’s orders now to slaughter me on sight. I don’t have time or opportunity to come up with proof. I only know how they are, how they’ve been in the past. They murdered my father, and killed half my father’s pack. They’ll kill you too.”