Everafter Series 2 - Nevermore (24 page)

*

As swiftly as I could, I pushed the tube onto the needle and inserted it into Sebastian’s arm. He watched my every movement attentively, and my hands sweated under his scrutiny.

“I’ve wondered what it would be like,” he said, too softly for any but me to hear.

“What?” I watched the tube fill with red. When it was time, I replaced it with another, feeling the irony of my role as phlebotomist.

“You. Taking my blood.” Startled, I met his gaze. His eyes were dark and intense. “But not this way.”

I refocused my attention on the tube. Alexa had once claimed that Sebastian wanted me. I had laughed her off, dismissing his flirtation as a game that amused him. I played along sometimes, as I had at that fund-raiser a few weeks ago. But what if Alexa was right, after all? How was that possible? Men like Sebastian, who had their pick across genders, were not traditionally attracted to me. What did he see? And why wouldn’t he give up the ghost, having witnessed the magnitude of what Alexa and I shared?

Once the second tube was full, I pulled the needle from his skin and reached for a Band-Aid, hoping he would take the hint and let the subject drop. But he grasped my wrist. “No need.”

I watched in awe as the tiny hole squeezed out one last drop of blood and closed before my eyes, Were physiology asserting itself against the unwelcome intrusion. Sebastian smeared the crimson drop onto his index finger and held it up to my lips.

“Taste.”

The scent of his blood was wholly unlike Alexa’s—redolent of musk, reminiscent of a pungent forest floor at the first spring thaw. My mouth watered. I couldn’t help it. But I could still control myself. I turned my head away.

“I appreciate your generosity.” The words sounded taut, constricted, even to me. Breathing shallowly, I loosened the tourniquet and rose to my feet. “Thanks to your precedent, we’ll have a lot of samples to compare.”

All around the room, Clavier’s staff were drawing blood from the other shifters. Once they were finished, we could run a battery of tests on every tube and try to isolate whatever factor was making Brenner’s kin immune. I labeled both vials and placed them in the insulated case at my feet, intent on moving on to my next patient. But Sebastian blocked me.

“What can I do now?”

I blinked in surprise. “You’re asking
me
?”

“As far as I can tell, you’re the only one who has been able to make any sort of breakthrough in this whole mess.”

I considered the options. “Malcolm and Helen seem intent on making sure that Brenner can’t stage a coup here. But whatever fortifications they come up with will be ineffectual if they don’t find the traitor.”

“So you’re certain there is one?”

“The virus came from a Consortium lab that was trying to create a way to temporarily block the change.” When Sebastian’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, I hurried to continue. “Only for shifters who wanted to. Or needed to, so as not to endanger their covers. But the virus proved fatal, and Clavier thought he destroyed it.”

“And you believe him?” Sebastian sounded incredulous.

“I think so. I’ve seen him lie plenty, and this time, he honestly looked confused. He and Helen are convinced that someone stole the virus for your father and falsified the records.”

“In which case, that person is probably still hanging around. And you want me to try to find him?” He looked around the room. “While I’m locked up in here?”

I shrugged. “It’s the only thing I can think of. Maybe when you’re talking to your siblings you can ask around? See if they’ve heard or noticed anything unusual?”

He seemed skeptical. “Not much to work with, but I’ll try my best. What’s your plan?”

I hefted the cooler. “Once we finish collecting here, I need to take one set of samples to NYU. My lab at Tisch has more sophisticated equipment than the facility here.”

“You’re going out? Doesn’t my father have a price on your head?”

A fresh surge of anxiety buzzed beneath my skin at the reminder and I patted the gun concealed at the small of my back for reassurance. “I’m armed.”

He stared at me for several silent seconds before resting a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll see what I can do. Be careful, Val.”

I watched him walk toward a group of his kin at the back of the room, his strides long and confident, as though he were the jailor rather than the prisoner. It bothered me that he’d been acting as though he had some kind of claim on me, when nothing could be further from the truth. I didn’t like it. Shrugging off the sensation, I turned to my next patient. The sooner I ran these tests, the sooner I could make Alexa well again. The sooner everything would go back to normal.

Normal. Right.

Chapter Twenty

I waited until after ten o’clock to arrive at Tisch, hoping my lab would be vacated for the night. There was no way I could justify to my boss the kinds of tests I needed to run on the shifter blood samples. They involved commandeering technologies and techniques that I had helped use but had never operated by myself, and the uncertainty was making me anxious. Distracted. Which is why I didn’t notice Olivia until she put her hand on my arm, a few feet from the front door.

“Val? Is that you?”

“Olivia?” She was dressed in a loose T-shirt and frayed jeans, as though she’d thrown on clothes as an afterthought. But Olivia never did anything as an afterthought, and she never jeopardized the carefully coiffed image she’d been sporting ever since landing her job in the DA’s office. Besides, why was she pacing the sidewalks outside the hospital late at night?

“Are you here to see Abby, too?” she asked.

“Abby?” The more she spoke, the more confused I became.

“Oh—you’re not?” Flustered, Olivia began to babble. “I’m sorry, I just thought that, well, when I mentioned her at that gala it seemed like you knew who she was so I thought that maybe…”

Abigail Lonnquist. I remembered now. She was the daughter of the ambassador to China. At the charity gala back in January, Olivia had told Alexa and me about the savage attack that had landed Abby in the hospital. Caught up in our hunt for the Missionary, I’d never followed up on whether he had successfully turned Abby.

“I know her,” I said, cutting Olivia off. “What happened?”

“She’s come down with something and the doctors have no idea what it is.”

A sick vampire? Had Brenner found a way to modify the virus to affect us, too? Or was this unrelated? “What are the symptoms?”

“At first, it seemed like a fairly harmless upper respiratory thing,” Olivia said. “But then…” Swallowing hard, she wrapped her arms around her stomach as though to literally hold herself together. Clearly, she cared a great deal for Abby. “Early this morning she went into these convulsions, like a seizure. She fell and hit her head, and now she’s unconscious.”

I frowned in confusion. Olivia was listing almost every known symptom of the Were virus. If Abby was a shifter, then it was likely that she was only alive because she’d knocked herself out. But then the Missionary hadn’t been the one to turn her, all those months ago. What the hell was going on?

“I want to see her,” I said. “Will they let us in outside normal hours?”

Olivia nodded. “My job does have a few perks.”

I let her lead the way into the hospital and across the lobby to a bank of elevators. “How is Alexa?” she asked as we waited. And then she turned to me in alarm. “You’re not here to see her,
are you?”

“No,” I said, my insides twisting at the memory of Alexa lying in our bed, pale and frightened and trying not to show it. “I’m here to work. I’ve been interning at a microbiology lab.”

“Oh,” Olivia said as we got into an elevator.

I expected her to follow up on my inadequate answer—to press me on why I was working in the middle of the night—but she just stared at the panel of lights as we ascended. Where was the seasoned investigator and hard-ass attorney that had plagued the Consortium for the past month? She had gone from borderline panicked to withdrawn and distracted in a matter of seconds. Just how long had she known Abby, anyway? Were they in love? I didn’t know whether to hope so or not, because it sounded like Abby didn’t have a very strong control of her animal half. She would probably lapse right back into the seizures if she regained consciousness.

“Here we are.” Olivia opened Abby’s door and we slipped inside. The room was dim but my eyes adjusted almost instantly. Abby lay motionless in the bed, her long blond hair draped across the pillowcase like some kind of halo. Her eyes were closed, but they flickered rapidly in REM. I wondered what she was seeing, feeling—whether her inner beast was pushing her consciousness, shoving her toward wakefulness.

Suddenly, instead of Abby I saw Alexa as she would appear on the cusp of the full moon, less than two weeks away. Alexa lying pale and wan, locked in a deadly internal struggle with her feline half. Alexa, losing the fight.

Swallowing down a surge of bile, I forced back my panic. “Has she been getting nosebleeds?”

Olivia, who had taken a few steps into the room, spun to face me. “How did you know?”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Bullshit
,
Val!” She was on me in seconds, fingers wound tightly in the material of my T-shirt. I could have broken her grip easily, but I let her shake me. “You know something. What do you know?”

“Get a hold of yourself,” I said, more harshly than I’d intended. “I’m not the one responsible. I’m trying to piece it all together myself.”

“Responsible?” Olivia’s voice was shrill. I’d never seen her lose control like this. “Someone did
this to her?”

I considered my options. Maybe, just maybe, I could make this situation work to the entire Consortium’s advantage. “The investigation you’ve launched into Helen Lambros and Malcolm Blakeslee—I don’t know why you’re doing it, but I need you to call off your watchdogs. And I need to know who’s feeding you information.”

Olivia’s mouth worked silently. “Are you telling me, are you honestly saying, that my investigation has something to do with Abby getting sick?”

“They’re related, yes. I can’t tell you more than that.” When she withdrew her hands from my shirt and took a deep breath, I realized she was going into full-on state’s prosecutor mode. I held up one hand. “I mean it. There are things I cannot and will not tell you. You’re going to have to trust me.”

Her face darkened. “If you don’t start talking, Val, so help me God I will call a detective and—”

I made a snap decision and cut her off. “Alexa is sick too. Like Abby. I’m here trying to find a cure.”

The self-righteousness left her like air from a balloon. “Alexa is sick?”

“Yes. And they will both die if I don’t get to my lab soon.” I ran my free hand through my hair. “I’m close to figuring this out. But I’m not there yet. Let me do my work. And please, I need that name. You’ve been tricked, Liv. You’ve been used as a diversion.”

Olivia took a few steps back and collapsed into one of the chairs next to the bed. For several seconds, she stared at Abby’s expressionless face. And then she squared her shoulders.

“I don’t have a name.”

I set down the cooler that I’d packed full of pureblood Were samples and took the chair next to hers. “What do you have?”

“A routine.” She hesitated but I didn’t push, not wanting to give her an excuse to clam up. “Every morning on my way to the office, I pass an Irish pub. If there’s a flag hanging in the third window, then I step into the coffee shop two doors down.”

“And then?”

Again, Olivia glanced at Abby, as though hoping she would wake up and render this entire conversation moot. But the only motion came from her restless, dreaming eyes.

“Just outside the coffee shop is a bus stop. He waits there, reading a paper. When he sees me, he ducks inside the store and I follow. While we’re in line, he hands me a memory card. We never talk.”

“What’s on the card?”

Olivia shrugged. “It varies. Names and dates, sometimes. Copies of tax returns. Very occasionally, account numbers.” She leaned into my space. “How are you mixed up with Lambros and Blakeslee, Val? They have some really shady business practices going on. You should get out.”

I almost laughed. My fate had been sealed when the Missionary had sunk his teeth between my ribs, almost a year ago now. There was no such thing as “getting out” for me. Ever. And as for the Consortium’s business practices, I was betting they had illegal deals dating back five centuries.

“It’s not what you think,” was all I said. “What does he look like?”

“I’ve never even fully seen his face. Only in profile.” Olivia closed her eyes. “Tall. Very muscular—like a body-builder. Brown hair. Wearing a black suit. Black T-shirt most of the time.”

For a moment, it seemed as though my heart might stop. It stuttered painfully before breaking into a gallop against my rib cage, forcing me to gasp for breath.
Darren.
God damn it. How could Darren be the traitor? It was incomprehensible and perfectly intelligible, all at once.

“You know him?”

I had to stop him, to shut him down, to alert Helen. Except if I did that, then the game would be up, and Balthasar Brenner would know that we held his traitor. He would accelerate his plan. But what then? Should I let Darren continue to walk unthreatened among those whom he was betraying?

I scrambled to my feet and lurched toward the door. I couldn’t think this through by myself, but I didn’t want to call Alexa and risk making her upset. The result could be deadly.

I had to talk to Sebastian.

“I have to go.”

“But, Val—”

“No.” I consciously channeled the Missionary, for once cowing Olivia into silence. “We’re running out of time.” I gestured toward Abby. “Call me if something changes. Until then, leave me alone. I’m trying to save her, and Alexa. You have to trust me.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” she whispered as I crossed the threshold into the hallway. She probably didn’t think I could hear her. But I could.

*

As soon as I exited onto the twelfth floor, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Sebastian’s number. He picked up on the first ring.