Moonshifted (29 page)

When I returned, I gave Meaty a thumbs-up sign. Still on the phone, Meaty nodded and continued to frown. “No. I don’t care who you have to find. We have a contract with you.” Meaty’s voice dropped as the conversation continued. “I shouldn’t have to remind you about our agreement—the Consortium requires you,” Meaty said, then stopped and pulled the receiver away to glare at it.

“Meaty—what’s going on?”

Meaty slammed the red phone down in disgust. “They’re leaving.”

“Who?”

“The Shadows. A prisoner of theirs escaped, and they’re giving chase.” Meaty glared at the phone as if sheer anger could change things.

“Leaving?” I whispered.

Meaty’s gaze rose to mine. “No one else can know of this. Go get Charles.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but I ran off the floor.

*   *   *

I found Charles in the men’s locker room. I entered after I knocked on the door. “Charles—”

“Don’t even try to stop me, Edie.” I’d never been into the men’s locker room before. It looked a lot like the women’s, only there were a ton more empty lockers here. I looked away while Charles finished pulling on his clothing for outdoors. “If they’re gone, there’s no reason to stay.”

“Maybe they’ll be back fast,” I said, aware of how lame it sounded.

“Are you willing to bet your life on it?” The inside of Charles’s locker was decorated with black-and-white photos of a lovely middle-aged woman. He pulled out all his belongings and started taking down the pictures.

“She’s beautiful,” I said.

“She is. And I’m going to go spend some time with her now.” The photos he carefully pressed into an ancient nursing care book, then put this into a bag. “If the Shadows are gone, I don’t know how long we have left. I’m taking her, and I’m going away. Someplace warm—someplace safe.”

“You’ll take your cell phone with you, right?”

“Sure. But don’t bother texting me until this is through.” He pushed his feet into winter boots and reached for the door behind me. “It’s been nice knowing you, Spence. Don’t get any more scars.”

After that, he left. I walked back onto the floor in a daze. Charles had been my anchor on Y4. Knowing I could turn to him for help allowed me to feel safe. Now?

“Edie, your assignment’s changed. You’ve got Charles’s daytimer, too. Don’t worry, I’ll help.” Meaty’s voice was reasonable, even.

Don’t worry?
I repeated inside my head. There was no way I could help it.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

“Just let me go to the bathroom first,” I told Meaty.

“All right. I’ll see you when you get back,” Meaty said, with an emphasis on the word
back.
We couldn’t all abandon ship tonight. If word that the Shadows were gone got out—traveled into one of our patient rooms, wafted up the elevator, went around the corner—we’d all be sitting ducks for whatever came our way. Charles’s sudden absence we could explain, but not Charles’s and mine together.

“I’ll be back,” I promised, and then rushed back off the floor. I ran into the locker room, pulled out my purse, and dialed Jake. He didn’t answer. I tried him again, and again. Who else could I call? I thought about dialing Sike—but even if she wasn’t an assassin, she wasn’t likely to care. I scrolled through the names on my phone’s contact list—the only one who would understand the gravity of the situation, and might be able to do anything about it, was Asher. I hated to ask him for a favor again, but I dialed him anyway. He answered on the second ring.

“Edie?”

“Asher—thanks for the other night,” I started off strong, then paused. How best to explain it? It was quiet on the far end of the line this time. I imagined him in his library, lying on his couch, reading a book.

“You’re welcome. What’s wrong now? You only call me when you want something.”

I was abashed. He was right. “I’m sorry, Asher.”

“It’s fine for now. Just know that someday soon when I want something, I’m going to call you.” He didn’t sound like he was teasing.

“Anything. Just ask it. Only help me out one last time.”

“Okay.”

“You remember my brother? He’s selling drugs. He’s in trouble. I’m trapped here for the rest of my shift—I don’t know what to do.”

“What about the Shadows?” Asher asked.

“They’re not reliable,” I said, choosing my descriptor carefully.

He made a thoughtful noise. “How unreliable currently are they?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Are you in danger?”

“No. I just need Jake to be safe.” It was what I’d always needed, for almost as long as I could remember. “He’s homeless. He stays at the Armory, downtown. He’s selling this stuff called Luna Lobos, which has something to do with the weres. Plus he’s an idiot. You know what he looks like. That’s pretty much all you need to know.”

“All right, Edie. I’ll get on it.” It sounded like he was setting a book down and standing up.

“Thank you so much, Asher.”

“You’re welcome. You’ll owe me after this, though. We’ll figure out how much for, later.”

“Like I said. Anything.”

“I may take you up on that.” He hung up on me before I could say anything back.

I felt a little better, going back onto the floor, and found Meaty waiting for me, just in case.

“I’m back. Like I said I would be,” I said.

Meaty nodded solemnly. “Thanks.”

*   *   *

So now I had Charles’s patient, and no report, on top of the other four. I flipped through the charts and caught myself up to speed—Mr. Hale was also the victim of a gunshot wound, much as Javier had been. Because Mr. Hale was some vampire’s daytimer, though, he was eligible for vampire blood to heal him. I found the authorization from from the Throne that signed off on it—I’d never seen an actual order before. It was written on vellum, like Anna’s party invitation. I wondered if all the vampires had the same stationery, with a snort. On the bottom was an imprint into something that I hoped was wax, but looked more like a scab. There was a design in the center of it that looked roughly like a dagger or some kind of handled tool. I scraped at it with a fingernail, and a crusty piece came off.

“Ew.”

The County transfusion lab kept donations of elder vampire blood for Y4. Vampire blood was a rare commodity—despite all the blood they drank in, very little of it ever came out again. The metabolic processes that created blood had slowed in death like the rest of them. Anna, as a living vampire, seemed to be the only known exception.

I set the chart aside and sat up to look over the nurses’ station. Our daytimer patient was watching me. When he caught me looking, he waved for me to come in.

I walked over to his room and stood in the door. He looked as sketchy as the mute weres down the hall, face riddled with old pockmarks and a sheen of grease. He smelled rank, like old sweat and urine. A scrub-down with mere shaving cream wasn’t going to save my nose from him, assuming he’d even let me. “Hey lady—where’d my other nurse go?”

“His wife got sick, he had to leave.”

The daytimer shrugged, then winced. “Can you give me anything for pain? I got pain, bad.”

“Let me look at your chart.”

I hoped that Charles had caught things up before he left so I didn’t double-med the guy. Then again, there was almost no way he could die on my shift. Him getting vampire blood was almost the reverse of a Do Not Resuscitate code. Nothing I could do to him tonight would kill him, except if maybe I was carrying a bottle of holy water across his room and tripped on top of him.

I grabbed five milligrams of morphine out of the Pyxis, his max dose, drew it up, and took it in to him. My badge with my name on it was in my scrub pocket; I’d put it there so it wouldn’t dangle over the weres as I tucked them into bed. I was supposed to pull it out and hang it outside the isolation suit so that patients could ID us. I decided not to bother with that this time. I’d be fine being
hey lady
for the rest of the night.

“Whole syringe, eh?” he asked when I came in. “You sweet on me?”

I ignored him. “How badly do you hurt, on a scale from one to ten?”

“Bad. Baaaaad,” he said, writhing in bed to illustrate it. “I got shot, lady.” He flipped the covers back to show me his bandaged leg.

“Didn’t you get vampire blood this morning?”

He laughed at his own lame joke. “Aw, lady, you caught me. But how many times can I get morphine for free?”

“Why would you want morphine, if you can get vampire blood?”

“You think I get vampire blood for free?” He rolled his eyes and flipped his covers back.

I prepped a saline flush in the room, and gave him all of the morphine. He wasn’t going to die tonight, and I didn’t want to hear from him again.

*   *   *

I finished all of the charting on my weird patients by the end of the night. Report was minimal, since none of them had done anything. I was on my way to the elevator when Gina caught me.

“Hey, where’d Charles go?”

“Food poisoning,” I lied, and felt awful for it.

Gina made a face. “That’s what he gets for eating all those Hot Pockets.”

*   *   *

I wondered who would guard me safely home this morning—and how everything would go down tonight. Just as I made it to the lobby, Helen and a twenty-person entourage were coming in. She smiled at the sight of me, and separated herself from her group.

“Go on ahead, everyone,” she said, gesturing them onward. “You too, Fenris.” She shooed her son, who’d tried staying behind. He gave me a quick wave, behind her back. “There’ll be a lot of visitors today. Many want to pay their last respects to their leader.”

I was sure Winter’s day-shift nurse would love that. I couldn’t blame them, though; this might be their last chance to see him alive, if his current condition could even be called that. Helen’s guests walked around us, all in different shades of black. I was very glad Lucas wasn’t in their number.

“You called it off with him, I assume?” She smiled at me indulgently once we were alone.

“There was never anything to call off, really.”

“Says you. Wolves can be surprisingly sentimental. Still, it was for the best. He’s going to be a pack leader—it’s a complicated life.”

“No one would know that better than you,” I said without thinking. She tilted her head at me as though I’d spoken words in a foreign tongue. “I’ve heard,” I added.

“Well, I can’t speak to what you’ve heard. But things will be over tonight.” She reached out to take my hand. “If he doesn’t get better when the moon comes, we’ll—” she began, and paused.

“Withdraw care,” I filled in for her, because it sounded less callous than
pull the plug.

She nodded, her face grim. “Yes. I’ll be signing some paperwork to that effect this afternoon, and then staying until the end. Moonrise is at five fifteen tonight. The rest of my pack will have to be afield with Lucas, ringing his time in. Even little Fenris will be gone. My father’s death will be my burden alone.” Her hand squeezed mine a little tighter. “Would you like to be there? You were at the beginning, it’s only fitting you would be at the end, too.”

I really didn’t want to—but I didn’t know how I could tell her no. My ride to Anna’s ascension wouldn’t come until eleven at night. Still, though—

“It would mean the world to me, not to have to be alone.”

I swallowed my refusal. No one should have to be alone and in pain when they didn’t want to be. “Okay.” I gave her a weak smile. “I just need to go home and sleep some now, then.”

“Thank you, Edie. Thank you a lot.” She reached out and patted a flyaway of hair from my ponytail down in a maternal fashion before going on down the hall.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

I wonder what the person in the black foreign car following me thought I was doing, cruising the alleyways and homeless shelters of downtown that morning. I’d left a message on Asher’s phone, and on Jake’s, and neither one of them had gotten back to me yet. I didn’t know where else to check. I’d hit all the big shelters I’d heard of, and I didn’t know all the smaller ones. The people inside them were all nice, letting me look—my wearing scrubs and the slight tone of panic in my voice helped. Maybe they thought I was looking to make good on a New Year’s resolution, one day early.

Exhausted and beaten, I went home. The car parked nearby in my parking lot, but no one got out. I went into my apartment and stared disconsolately at my phone. I took a shower so I wouldn’t have to take one tonight, and crawled into bed after setting a four thirty
P.M.
alarm. I was almost asleep when a text buzzed my phone.

All’s well.
From Asher.

Thank u, thank u, thank u,
I texted back. One weight of many lifted, I fell asleep.

*   *   *

Four thirty came earlier than I’d have liked. I put scrubs back on, then pulled my car out onto the freeway. It being New Year’s Eve, there was some traffic, but no one was driving drunk yet. The weather wasn’t cooperating, the sky was full of ominous clouds, and the morning’s gentle snow had turned into freezing sleet.

When I parked in the hospital lot, the black car parked behind me.

I didn’t want to be down on Y4 during the day. None of my co-workers would be there, just people from the
P.M.
shift, and my co-workers didn’t usually appreciate people from other shifts lingering. Most people were smart enough not to, like Charles. I hoped that the poor weather hadn’t grounded their plane and that by now he and his wife were someplace safe and far away.

The elevators let me off, and I walked onto Y4. I nodded at the charge nurse, walked around, and found Helen standing near Winter’s door. When I arrived, she reached out and leaned into me.

“Thanks for coming, Edie.”

“You’re welcome.”

Lynn gave me a wide-eyed look at Helen’s actions. I gave her a helpless shrug and wrapped my arms around the clinging were.

“I hate to ask right now, Helen—but what’s Deepest Snow going to do with the rest of the weres in the hall?”

“It’s possible the moon will help with their problems too. We’ll incorporate them into our group—just because they were Viktor’s doesn’t mean they can’t be ours.”