by Chloe Garner
He raised his eyes to look at her.
“Do you want the truth or do you want me to keep lying to you?” he asked. “You seem to like it when I lie.”
“I’d prefer that the truth was something other than it was,” Tina said. “That’s different than liking it when you lie.”
“Every single one of them,” he said. “Going back to the first party I won, which was the third one, by the way. I’ve always been popular. They all come find me within the first year or two, and I take them away for a couple of weeks of shut-in entertainment at a luxury spa in Norway.”
“Norway,” Tina said. “You offered me Fiji.”
“I offered Sherry Fiji,” Hunter corrected. “I’ve never offered to take you anywhere. Yet.”
“Norway wasn’t a place, going back that far,” Tina said. She wasn’t certain when Norway became an actual country, but she was certain enough that vampires wouldn’t have gone there for pampering, two-hundred years ago.
“Couldn’t afford it, back that far, true,” Hunter said. “There were other options.”
She shuddered at what his tone told her.
“They didn’t mean anything to you,” she said, and he shook his head.
“More fun that way, in certain ways. Ginger came a few times. Is this too much information yet? I’m trying to get there as fast as I can without actually being creepy.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I don’t want to know that. I… I might be busy at lunch.”
“With your technicians and your calibrations and your test images,” Hunter said. “I imagine.”
She sat down in front of Tell’s laptop, pulling hers out from under the couch and setting it on her lap. She looked back at him and shook her head, motioning to the couch next to her.
“Come sit?”
He checked his watch.
“Ten minutes,” he said. “Then I’ve got to go check my hair for the next meeting.”
“Your hair?” Tina asked, and he nodded.
“People are judgey,” he said, sitting. He handed her a glass.
“I keep wondering if it’s possible for this to work,” she finally said, very aware of her timer ticking in the background. “If I’m being foolish for… Why we both keep after it, despite everything.”
He laughed.
“I never ask myself that question. You’re one of my important people and that’s just the way it is. Should I be sleeping with you? Hell, no, but I want to, and I like it, and… Come here.”
He put a knuckle under her chin and his thumb to her lips, drawing her toward him and splitting her lips to kiss her, just once, slow and soft.
“I love you, I care about you, and I find you immensely interesting and engaging,” he told her. “Asking a question about whether the value of the relationship exceeds its cost is a math… If you need to do it, you do it, but I don’t think I understand how you can. And I’m good at math. At some point, though, dear, you’ve got to stop recalculating it and just go with your decision. You know I’m not your ideal in a lot of ways. So what? So the hell what?”
“Yeah,” Tina said softly. “I see your point.”
He ran his thumb back along her jaw, then stood.
“And I need to leave right now, because if I sit here another second, I’m not going to make my meeting.”
“That wasn’t ten minutes,” Tina said, frowning.
“No, but it’s about to be a lot more than that,” he said.
“Is it?” she asked, and he grinned.
“You’re adorable.”
The technicians started showing up at midnight, trickling in until the last one arrived sometime after two in the morning. Three woman and a man, Tina only knew that they were being paid well and that they weren’t human. They set to work on their machines, talking occasionally to each other and mostly focusing on getting themselves set.
Tina went from one to the next, making sure that they were familiar enough with the hardware, when one of the women looked up at her approach.
“I flew in from Washington, DC to do this,” she said. “This is my machine. Just back off and tell me when you want to start taking images.”
Tina frowned and nodded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who is the patient?” the man asked.
“We’ll start with me,” Tina said. “I’m going to generate the baseline images, because I assume all of you know what a healthy human looks like.”
“If that’s what you’re hoping for, you’ve got a lot of learning to do,” the tart woman on the MRI said. “Every person I’ve ever looked at has been different. There’s no such thing as a healthy human.”
“You ever scan a vampire before?” Tina asked, and the woman pursed her lips and shrugged.
“No,” she said, an allowance.
Tina heard Hunter walking across the main room toward the ad hoc testing lab, but she didn’t turn her head to look.
“Well, let’s start with that and then you can tell me how hopeless this is.”
“You’re the boss,” the woman said, opening the door to the copper-sided room they’d built as a temporary shield for the MRI. Tina went in and the woman pulled out a sliding tray.
“Jewelry, anything with metal on it, any metal in you?” the woman said. Tina took off the necklace Hunter had given her and lay back on the sliding table.
“Nothing else,” she said.
“Let’s do this,” the woman answered.
It took most of the rest of the night, a lot longer than Tina had anticipated, for her to get through everything the first time, and that was even before she’d looked at any of the results. The technicians seemed to be happy with the equipment, though, and Tell did come let them take an MRI of his entire body after he got up and spent a couple of hours on his computer.
As dawn approached, Tina watched as Tell gave each of the technicians a key to an apartment somewhere else in the building - rooms rented or bought outright so that they wouldn’t have to come and go from the building. He asked that they order their food in, and at the rates he was paying them, no one argued.
And then he came to sit with her again.
“You happy?” he asked. She shook her head.
“No. I underestimated everything, and now I feel like I’m an idiot playing doctor.”
He drew a breath and nodded.
“I can understand how it would look that way.”
“I can’t even read the images they’re taking. I mean, the X-ray, I’ve looked at those a thousand times in cartoons and on TV and stuff, but when they actually show me an X-ray of my chest next to an X-ray of yours? I have no idea what I’m looking at, even when Tyler is going on about how much of a difference there is to density everywhere.”
Tell smiled like she was working up to the punchline of a joke.
“This needs a trained research team with twenty-five years of history to it,” Tina said. Not me, with no technical degree and no medical degree, and four high-priced pieces of medical equipment for a week.”
“You’ve got three days,” Tell said, holding out his arm.
Spots.
She shook her head.
“I have no idea what I’m trying to do here,” she said. “I mean… Even if there was something genius there, I have no idea what it is, and there’s no way I’d see it.”
“So take your doctor friend out for a very late dinner tomorrow night and have him look at them,” Tell said. “You do your best work when you’ve got someone to talk to. I’ve seen it in action. The four of them?” He indicated the weight room. “They’re just here to work the equipment. I didn’t hire any of them for their desire to help you figure this out. But Tony sounds like he’s the guy to do it. And you can’t see him after tomorrow.”
“Why not?” Tina asked.
“Because you’re hanging out with me,” Tell said. “And I’m about to spike a fever. You ought to keep your wandering-about time to a minimum, after that.”
“Can I even feed?
” Tina asked, a new realization.
“So long as you don’t touch me and you scrub down well before you go out, I think you don’t have a choice, but you need to be sparing about it, and I need to confine where I spend my time to just the exam room and my own. Hunter is going to be playing nursemaid.”
“Can I catch it from you?” Tina asked. “Not like, an infection, I guess, but… I’ve never thought about transmitting it to a fountain by having been around you.”
“It was a plague,” Tell said. “We need to be aware and be cautious.”
Tina shook her head.
“Then I won’t. I won’t feed until you’re a vampire again and we’ve decontaminated everything.”
“Then you need to plan on finishing this in two more nights,” Tell said. “Take all of the data you can imagine wanting and deal with it all afterwards. Because you can’t go three nights without feeding. Not and expect to help me with Kyle in any meaningful way, after that.”
Tina nodded, getting out her new phone. She texted Tony - hopefully he was asleep at this point - and asked when he was available to meet. It was risky, going to get him, because… Well, because everything she was doing was risky, these days, but Tell was right.
This was a conversation she needed to have in person, over the data.
She looked at him.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“A little wimpy,” he admitted. “Though I can’t be sure how much is in my head.”
“I didn’t have any luck following up on Colette with the time I had,” she said, and he grinned.
“She’s good,” he said. “You have to just skip over all of the obvious strategies and start looking for the more obscure ways of tracking her. She was underground with me for like six months, and she learned stuff faster than you’d like to imagine.”
“Tell, how much about necromancy do you think she actually does know?”
He shook his head.
“If you ever meet her, don’t ask that. Okay? She doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Have you ever wondered if maybe she doesn’t know a lot more than she let on? I mean, did she just happen to look out the window and watch them kill a guy?”
“What she told the police,” Tell said. “Would she call the police if she knew what was going on?”
Tina paused.
“I probably would. Freaks next door thinking they know how to resurrect a guy? Surely they can’t be serious, right up until they are, and then I’m calling the police and trying to get them arrested for freaky murder.”
He snorted.
“Fair enough. What does it matter?”
“I don’t know,” Tina said. “Just a stray thought that came to me. She saw them kill a guy. If that was it, then she’s simply a witness to the fact that they succeeded. She doesn’t know any of their secrets. Were they that secret-y that it worked? Because… I don’t know, the more time I spend with these guys, the more I imagine them shouting it from the rooftops, in the right part of town, figuratively speaking… Not keeping it completely hush-hush. The method is the big secret. Right?”
“What are you suggesting?” he asked calmly.
“I don’t know,” Tina said. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. So how do you find one woman with no identity in a city of almost a million?”
“I’m wondering if she didn’t come by bus,” Tell said. “It’s more her style, and the ticket lists are actually a lot harder to get to. No telling what city she came by way of… She’s a ghost.”
“And where would she stay?” Tina asked. “It’s not easy, without an ID.”
“She has an ID,” Tell said. “What she doesn’t have is a credit card. I checked, and her cards are inactive back home.”
“Okay,” Tina said. “Who takes cash?”
“Low end,” Tell nodded. “Hard to search.”
“Could you just hit up a bunch of them in a night and see if you could smell her?” Tina asked. “Would you recognize her by scent?”
“Would if I was still a vampire,” Tell answered. “Which reminds me. I need to eat again. I keep forgetting that regular meals are required, again.”
She nodded.
“You have enough? Do you need me to go out for anything?”
He nodded, waving at the kitchen.
“We keep it stocked for fountains well enough. If you’re going out tomorrow, it might be worth a grocery run, but even then… Vince can get anything I really want. I don’t like you spending any more time out than you have to, just for the important things.”
Tina sighed, leaning back against the couch.
“How are we going to find her, Tell? Other than going in after her when they catch her staring, next time?”
He shook his head.
“I’ve got some time yet. You mind if I use your phone?”
“Um,” she said.
“I was going to pick out the four or five most likely dives and see if I could get someone there to tell me if she’d checked in.”
“You think they’d tell you?” Tina asked. He grinned, coughing once and scratching at his arm.
“You forget how long I’ve been doing this. If I can get them to pick up the phone, I can get them to tell me.”
“Keep it under five, I think,” Tina said. “Any more than that, and we could find this number.”
“Assuming that the Order is sophisticated as we are isn’t a bad place to start, but you should know it’s unlikely,” Tell said. “And the Order aren’t the ones you’re worried about, with Tony. It’s two different cases on one phone.”
Tina nodded. It did make her feel better.
“All right,” she said. “I’m going to go get something to drink and then I’m headed up for bed. Going to look at those images for a little bit before I have to lay down.”
He looked over at the den.
“Has Hunter surfaced today?”
“I can hear him,” Tina answered. “He’s been on calls all day. Just came out for a bit before you got up.”
“Good,” Tell said thoughtfully. “For a second there, I was worried that he’d sneaked out to try to deal with Sophie on his own. Strange that I wouldn’t notice him being gone.”
“I’m not going to let him out, either,” Tina said. “And I think he knows better, anyway.”
Tell nodded.
“Yeah. All right. Well, I suppose I’ll eat and then get back to work.”
“You should go enjoy the sun, out on your balcony,” Tina said. “I liked it out there.”
He smiled.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s freezing out there.”
She shook her head.
“You probably do know that I didn’t notice, actually. Any rate. Enjoy being human for whatever it’s worth.”
“Yeah. Rest well.”
She nodded, going to get a glass of blood out of the fridge and then taking her laptop upstairs.
She could open the images across all of the machines and lay them next to each other, hers and Tell’s, and certainly things were different, but she had no idea what she was looking at.
She needed to be able to compare to another human and another vampire, to see what was common to vampires, and what was common to humans…
She was just going to have to talk Hunter into doing it. Sure, maybe the MRI was out, but the others.
She focused on Tell’s heart, even though her scientific mind knew that his heart was just a specialized muscle and that it was no more likely to contain a cure for whatever caused vampirism than anything else. More likely in his brain. Or his liver. Or something. His heart didn’t deal with illnesses the way so many other organs did.
It just pumped the blood.
But blood.
She kept coming back to it.
Blood.
She wanted to believe that that was where it was going to be.
Hunter came up about thirty minutes later, kicking his shoes at the door and coming to lay down next to
her.
“You know that there’s really no point to you putting those on, in the morning,” she murmured, pulling up another set of images. “You aren’t going out.”
“But I do sometimes leave the room where my conference is set up,” he answered. “My argyles are professional enough for what they are, but they’re hardly enough, on their own.”
She grinned.
“How did your meetings go?”
“You could tell me,” he answered playfully putting her hair behind her ear with his finger. “You can eavesdrop all you want, now.”
“They aren’t really clear enough,” she admitted. “I can hear what you say, but that’s only from certain parts of the apartment and only when I’m focusing.”
“I had a meeting late tonight, the second to last meeting of the night, that went really well,” he said, settling in next to her and putting his hands behind his head. “Have you ever been to Paris?”
“You’re doing a land deal in Paris?” Tina asked incredulously.
He laughed.
“Yes, but the land isn’t in Paris. Just the paperwork. I’m leaving the dates on closing undefined, right now, because of the inconvenience with Sophie, but when I can get out of here… Do you want to come with me?”
“Should I be flattered or offended that it isn’t a spa in Norway?” Tina asked without looking at him.
“Could do that, too, if you wanted, though I would have guessed that it wouldn’t be your speed.”
“You can’t exactly go to see the Louvre after dark,” Tina muttered.
Stopped.
“You can’t, can you?” she asked, not waiting for a response. “All of those things that I always thought I’d probably go do someday, I’m not going to do them, because the sun is always up while they’re available.”
“Well, I don’t know exactly which dreams you’re feeling crush, but you can absolutely get into the Louvre on whatever hours you want, if you’re willing to sign a big enough check. Most of the world works like that. I wouldn’t recommend going to see the pyramids like that unless you’re really passionate about it, because getting stuck out in the desert because your bus blew out its engine will literally kill you, but most anything that’s actually in a city… It’s just knowing who you need to know.” He rolled his head to look at her. “Besides, with what you’re working on here, maybe you can go see it as a human, anyway.”