by RJ Blain
Unfortunately, one of the syringes contained enough active viruses to ensure infection and jumpstart my immune system. Once the viruses took hold, a doctor specialized in magic-aided recovery would work to mitigate the worst of the symptoms and coax antibodies to life so my body could do the rest on its own. Within a week, I’d be a functional human being again, and they’d release me from the quarantine ward.
“Since Miss Gardener required four days within the glass coffin, she will have a lengthy recovery process, requiring a full battery of antibodies plus treatments for dehydration and malnutrition. Any questions?”
Had the requirements for top-level containment at the CDC gone down since my certification, or was Professor Yale taking advantage of a live body for demonstration purposes? Probably both. Gorgon bile incidents happened often enough, but victims of standard petrification didn’t require contamination treatment. The dust, on the other hand…
Every last student raised their hand. Spiffy. I had either gotten the ultra curious batch or the green newbies.
“Go, Puck.”
Puck? Who the hell named their kid Puck? A girl in the front row bounced on her toes and lowered her hand. “Why is it called a glass coffin? Wouldn’t crystal containment sound cooler?”
Good God. Someone had named their daughter Puck, and she cared more about the name of the equipment than the lives of those who needed it for survival—or to prevent an outbreak.
“Miss Gardener, would you please address her question?”
Professor Yale truly loved me. Why else would he be so nice and give me the pleasure of knocking the ignorant girl down a few pegs? I struggled to keep from grinning. “Of course, Professor Yale. While ‘crystal containment’ sounds nice, it lacks one very important thing. Any guesses on what that might be?”
Every single student shook their head, and Professor Yale leaned against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest, and graced me with a smug smile.
I matched his smile and turned it on the girl. “Puck, what happens when someone has no access to water for seven days?”
“They get dehydrated.”
I prayed for patience. “Incorrect.”
“What? My answer is most certainly correct.”
“Incorrect.” How would she handle my direct challenge of her too simple answer? If she was like every other student qualified to join the CDC, she’d probably flip her lid—I’d done it more than my fair share of times before I figured out everything I knew about life was wrong when it came to preventing the spread of infectious diseases and handling dangerous substances.
Puck twisted around and glared at Professor Yale. “She’s just a victim. Tell her she’s wrong.”
Oh boy.
Someone had tried the same stunt when I’d been in his classes, and by the time Professor Yale had finished with him, he left with his tail between his legs and never returned. I wondered how the old man would take Puck’s attitude.
If he thought she was worth her spot in the class, he’d handle her gently. Otherwise, I doubted she’d ever show her face at a CDC education center again.
“Miss Gardener has top-level certification in six different branches of the CDC with exemplary performance records handling some of the world’s most dangerous substances in live situations. Do you know why she was in a glass coffin?”
The girl had enough sense to slouch and flinch at his words. “No, sir.”
“Miss Gardener, please continue your explanation on the purpose of glass coffins. I would appreciate if you forgave my interruption.”
Score. I had earned major brownie points from the CDC’s meanest professor. It wouldn’t buy me a cup of coffee, but I’d savor the moment later, using it as a reminder of my success when I was busy coughing my lungs out thanks to some infection. “In order to prevent any contagions from escaping, glass coffins are completely sealed. The masks used with them provide oxygen to the occupant. If the contagion isn’t neutralized, the occupant dies. If the mask fails, the occupant dies. If the neutralizer doesn’t scan clean within seven days, the occupant is left to die, however long that may take. Seven days is the typical limit. After death, the victim remains in that clear little box and is buried. That’s it, that’s all. When you put someone in a glass coffin, you’re waiting to see if they can be revived—if they can be revived, thus the word coffin.”
Every student in Professor Yale’s class either blanched or winced.
Puck did both. “Oh.”
“You’re not going to tell them you inhaled a lungful of gorgon dust, Miss Gardener?” Chief Quinn murmured in my ear.
I screamed, grabbed the nearest object, which proved to be the IV stand, and turned to bludgeon the police chief to death with it. The catheter ripped out of my arm. The man dared to back away, and infuriated over how badly he had startled me, I pursued him while treating the IV stand like it was a giant club. “I’ll kill you,” I hissed.
Professor Yale sighed. “Miss Gardener, please don’t use your medical equipment as a weapon.”
Chief Quinn laughed and disarmed me without breaking a sweat. “You’re dripping blood all over the floor.”
“And whose fault is that?” Taking hold of the IV stand, I strained in my effort to liberate it from him. “What’s wrong with you, sneaking up on me like that?”
“I wanted to confirm you’d made it through revival without incident.”
I gave up trying to reclaim the IV stand and clapped my hand over my bleeding arm. Snarling a few choice curses, I returned to the examination table and hopped up on it. “Who let him in here, Professor Yale?”
“He activated the seal and mask, Miss Gardener. He’s fully within his rights to be here. Perfect timing, Chief Quinn. Perhaps you can impress upon my class the severity of this lesson.”
“In ten words or less, please,” I muttered.
“A city full of dead people.”
Everyone in the room froze, and I had to give the man credit; he’d gotten the point across all right. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Miss Gardener, on behalf of everyone at my station, thank you for detonating the bomb in your apartment rather than at your workplace. We’re very appreciative. Professor, are you almost finished with her? I need to ask her a few questions. I even helpfully removed her IV for you. I also brought her some clothing, which I left at the nurse’s station.” Chief Quinn set the IV stand down beside the examination table and shook my former professor’s hand. “Thank you for coming in to help.”
“Of course. Don’t tell Miss Gardener this, but she was a very promising student once she figured out how to think on her feet. You can’t take her out of this ward, but I’ll remove my students so you can have some privacy. Everybody out. Bailey, put a bandage on your arm for now unless you think you’re going to bleed to death. I’ll ask a nurse to come by later and reinsert the catheter.”
I forced a smile when I wanted to scowl at the thought of having the IV replaced. “Thank you, Professor Yale.”
“Let’s try to avoid a next time, all right?” Without waiting for an answer, he herded his students out of the room, leaving me with Chief Quinn.
Every time I saw him in his blue uniform, I wanted to jump him. Flushing, I turned my head so I wouldn’t have to admire the way his clothes clung to his body. “I know for a fact you have at least thirty qualified operators on staff. There was zero reason for you to be the one handling the mask and coffin sealing.”
Huh. Maybe I should have said something else instead. A thank you would have done the job without sounding quite so bitchy. Damn it.
“You’re welcome.” Chief Quinn sat beside me on the examination table. “Made it to the bathroom this time, I hear?”
“Hell yes. Yale can suck it. He told me it couldn’t be done.”
“Why do I have the feeling everything you do in your life is prefaced with that statement?”
What an asshole. “Hardly. What do you want to know? I have an appointment with every virus known to man in the next few hour
s. Wouldn’t want to miss it. I’ll probably wish I had died.” Fine, I was whining, but I had earned a good complaint session or two. A bomb had blown up in my face, and I came too close for comfort to a permanent stay in a glass box.
“You’ll be fine. Were you aware someone put a geas on you?”
Someone had put a what on me? I scowled. “A geas? Why would someone waste such high level magic on me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to hide the identity of the person who gave you a bomb tainted with gorgon dust? Seems like a logical conclusion to me. If they’ve got the skills to make gorgon dust without becoming infected themselves, a geas is child’s play.”
Okay, while I deserved the rebuke, did he really have to sound so damned snarly about it? “Someone really put a geas on me?”
“That’s what knocked you out in your apartment. We’re speculating you were about to say something that would violate the geas, and you were punished as a result. Perkins noticed it, and after I got the mask in place, we called in a few people to remove it. It’s gone, but we couldn’t figure out the exact conditions to trigger it. We have a few guesses, though.”
“Magnus McGee gave me the phone. He said it had important information on it regarding a missing person, and he wanted to hire me to locate them.”
“Magnus McGee was found dead yesterday morning in Central Park in a rather compromised position. His partner was a tree.” Chief Quinn grimaced, and when I glanced his direction, he was hard at work untangling tubes and righting bags on the IV stand. “I had assumed he was the culprit. A few of my cops had seen him near your workplace.”
“I quit.” Chief Quinn’s small role in my change of employment status shouldn’t have pissed me off so much, but it did. It was bad enough Mary had ditched her shift, but to have done it with him? I wanted to wring both of their necks over the stunt.
Mary and Chief Quinn. Together. That the thought had crossed my mind at all was proof the universe hated me. Why had I agreed to help him in the first place? If I hadn’t taken his stupid camera and gone hunting for his wayward wife, I could go back to my wishful thinking and fantasizing without reality getting in the way.
Chief Quinn sighed. “I heard. Your boss was rather upset over it, and then she found out someone had tried to kill you on top of it. She didn’t take that well at all. I questioned her rather thoroughly along with the rest of the store’s staff.”
“Did you enjoy taking her for a ride, Chief Quinn?” Shit. Why did my mouth always have to go blurting the bitter things I didn’t want anyone to ever hear me say?
“Should I take that as an invitation to explain the situation?”
The anger of having dealt with an eighteen hour hell shift flared back to life. “I really don’t give a shit what two consenting adults do in your car. You know what I do care about? Not being left alone to run the shop for eighteen hours. So what if you took her for a ride in your car? I don’t care who she dates. At least she could’ve called someone in to take her place. What happened instead? I soloed my job from opening to closing. To add insult to injury, your former brother-in-law bombed me with gorgon dust probably hoping to get rid of you, since someone had probably told his wife about the certified barista you called in for consulting work. I was just the bonus. If he took me out, he had a damned good chance of being able to eliminate you from the picture.”
Silence.
Crap, crap, crap. I had said too much. My face flushed, and I scrambled to find some sane justification for unloading all my speculations, one that didn’t involve magic.
“I see.” His lifeless tone partnered with his completely neutral expression told me everything I needed to know. My barbs had struck true, and he wasn’t happy about it at all. “Is there anything else you want to tell me, Miss Gardener?”
How could I possibly be so mad at someone yet still be so attracted to him? At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t know which end was up. Since ‘I’m not wearing anything under this gown’ qualified me for early admission into an asylum and counted as sexual harassment, and ‘spank me, I’ve been bad’ wouldn’t go over so well, either, I mumbled, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I’d be pissed, too, if someone had tried to kill me in his effort to get revenge on someone else. I’m a big boy. I can handle anything you throw at me. That’s all I needed to know. Thank you for your time, Miss Gardener. Enjoy rehab.”
How did he make sliding off an examination table look good? It really wasn’t fair. Considering I’d already ruined any chances of having a civil conversation with the man, I went all in and threw caution to the wind. “I’m not wearing anything under this gown.”
He walked towards the door without reacting to my words. Fine, if he wanted to play hardball, I’d play hardball. “Hey, Sammy. If you want someone to teach you how the reverse cowgirl should really be done, give me a call. I know some girls.”
There. Not only did I pour gasoline on the situation, I lit a match and tossed it on. It wasn’t like I ever had a chance with a man like him anyway. It was better for me if he avoided me indefinitely.
Chief Quinn slammed the door so hard I felt it from across the room. For some reason, my victory only made me feel even worse. Damn it.
I deserved every bit of hatred the man threw my way.
Chapter Four
It took two weeks for me to recover enough to escape the hospital, thanks to one baby virus who decided to grow up and become pneumonia. I was stuck with the cough for another week or two, but I could deal with the prescribed bedrest, lots of fluids, medication, and taking it easy.
Those might become my famous last words, as I hadn’t expected the NYPD and the CDC to join forces and napalm my apartment. From the outside, there was no evidence anyone had waged war on the interior of my home, but sure enough, everything inside had been reduced to piles of gray ash. While I stood in the doorway trying not to cry, my landlord gave me my formal eviction notice, which claimed I had willfully brought dangerous substances into the building.
Yippee.
Too tired to fight the false accusation, I accepted it with a nod, folded the slip, and stuffed it into my pocket. At least it would provide evidence I had lived at the building. That might help me get a replacement identification card.
In retrospect, I deserved it. Taking out my bad day and time in a glass coffin on Chief Quinn lowered me to the same basic level as pond scum. I owed him an apology. Hell, I owed him a lot more than an apology. In a stunt worthy of the worst type of asshole, I had made everything worse.
I realized I hadn’t had a single visitor or phone call the entire time I’d been in the hospital, and it was no wonder why I didn’t have any friends. I’d driven Mary off, burned bridges with my other co-workers by tattling on them, and there was no one else in my life. In a way, it simplified things for me. Since no one cared what happened to me, I didn’t have to go to the hassle of sending thank you cards.
I really needed to stop lying to myself. I’d seen the pity in the nurses’ eyes when I pretended I didn’t care no one came to see me. They had caught me checking the door whenever someone walked by. Whatever goodwill I had earned trying to keep the gorgon dust contained in my apartment I had promptly lost by being a complete bitch.
While I could have made it easy on myself and gone to the CDC for a temporary identity card I could use to replace my driver’s license, I headed for the NY DMV. If I went to the CDC, I’d run the risk of running into someone I knew, particularly from the police department.
The last thing I needed was a run-in with Chief Quinn after what I’d done.
After I visited the DMV to replace my license and the bank to replace my debit card, I’d have to swallow every last bit of my pride, stuff it in a closet, and call my parents. I wondered if they’d talk to me.
I doubted it.
A little after noon, I left my former apartment building and headed for the DMV. The twenty-minute walk cleared my head a little and gave me a chance to prepare for inevitab
le hell. It took two hours to convince the skeptical clerk my home—and wallet—had been torched with napalm. The eviction notice came in handy, as did the doctors and nurses at the hospital. They helpfully corroborated my story but hunted down what remained of my pride and beat it to death in the process.
At least I walked out with a replacement driver’s license in hand. With it, I replaced my bank card with minimal fuss. Too much of a coward to request a balance, I gambled Mary had paid me for my final shift and the rest of my owed hours. I requested two hundred in cash, which the teller gave me without a word.
I almost cried, and it took every bit of my flagging strength to ignore her incredulous stares.
With everything I could do without a home accomplished, I began the tedious task of finding a phone. Why were pay phones so uncommon? I ended up stepping into a hotel and begging the lady behind the desk until she relented and let me use the phone. She kept giving me dirty looks while I dialed my parents’ number.
It’d been years since I’d spoken to either one of them, and I didn’t even know if they still lived in the same house in New Jersey.
“Hello?” my mother answered.
She sounded so sweet on the phone, the exact opposite of me. Maybe the universe didn’t hate me after all. “Hey, Mom.”
Silence. Then again, I was probably wrong. I elevated ‘don’t cry’ to the top of my list of things to avoid in the next ten minutes. “Uh, this is going to sound really bad, but the CDC napalmed my apartment. Is there any chance I can stay with you for a few days?” I hesitated. “Please?”
“No.” She hung up on me.
I should have known. The universe really did hate me, and so did my parents, and I had earned every bit of their loathing. I placed the phone in its cradle and forced a smile. “Thanks.”
I left. Without a credit card, few hotels would let me rent a room for any period of time. If Mary had given me my earnings, I had a hair over six hundred and twenty dollars. What the hell was I supposed to do on six hundred dollars? With that little, I couldn’t afford to pay out the first and last deposit. In a month, the first bill for my hospital stay would arrive, I wouldn’t be able to pay it, and my battered credit rating would tank completely. While the CDC would likely compensate me for my hospitalization, even before I had quit my job like a spoiled rotten brat, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the additional expenses, not without a great deal of overtime.