There was silence from both parties concerned for a moment, giving Phoebe a moment to peek out the window of the lab and watch wide-eyed as Sam took out the looming security guard with a move she’d only seen in Jackie Chan movies.
Her mouth fell open. Wow. Entomologists were all sorts of kick-ass hot, huh?
Just as Sam pushed his way into the lab, Nina crackled on the walkie-talkie. “Barbie? That was a damn fine rant. One that fucking would have brought a tear to my eye if not for the fact that I can’t cry, but I love to make people cry. Which is exactly what I’m gonna do to you when I get my hands around your scrawny, mouthy neck—”
“Big Mouth!” Sam shouted into the walkie-talkie. “Shut it and get here now.” He gave Nina directions, pulling Phoebe to his side in a manner so protective it made her want to smile—and cling for dear life.
But she couldn’t. Not with that over there in the corner.
Sam was the first to move, striding over to the corner, his hands on his hips. “What the hell is going on?”
Phoebe went to his side, clutching his arm but staying partially behind his broad back. “How did you find me?”
He rooted in his jean pocket and pulled out a silver clip she’d had to keep her hair up under her mask. It shined in the eerie light of the lab. “It must have fallen out when you were teleporting. It was by a door that led to an elevator I’ve never encountered before. So I took the elevator and pressed the only button it had. That brought me here.”
Nina burst through the door to come up short behind them, skidding to a halt. “Who flattened the security guard?” she asked.
“Sam did,” Phoebe couldn’t help but gush. “It was like something out of a movie. He went all Bruce Lee on the guy. How did you learn to do that?”
He flapped a dismissive hand. “Took some karate lessons a long time ago. Plus, I am a vampire, right? All big and strong. It wasn’t hard. We have other things to worry about right now.”
“Holy fuck,” Nina muttered. “Leave it to you to find something like this, princess.”
Sam was the first to lean against the gurney.
The gurney with the dead body on it.
Covered in a sheet with nothing but the toes sticking out at the end of the bed, the outline it made was small, and probably female, if the red-painted toenails were any indication.
“Again, I ask, what the hell is going on? We make pest control, for Christ’s sake.” He peered under the bed and Phoebe followed his eyes as he scanned the countertops.
“What are we looking for?”
Sam shrugged. “Something—anything. Paperwork, maybe? I don’t know. There’s no computer anywhere—so clearly, they’ve just stowed the body here. Seems to me if they’re really performing tests on human subjects, they’d have lab results, right? We need to see them. Maybe I can decipher what they’re giving them.”
As the horror of what she was seeing began to seep in, Phoebe found she had to will herself not to crumble.
Nina nudged her hard. “Hang tight, grasshopper. The last thing we need is for you to pass out.”
Phoebe instantly straightened. As though on autopilot, she moved from behind Sam and went to the side of the gurney to begin searching the few cabinets on the wall as Nina began to sift through the paperwork on the various work surfaces.
Sam was the first to say what Phoebe was dreading. “We need to know who this is.”
Each of the women stopped cold in their tracks when Sam’s fingers went to the sheet that covered the body. Phoebe closed her eyes, then forced them open. She would not hide from this. No. This was a head-on kind of thing. No matter what, she was going to be conscious when and if they found out what had made them different than all the other vampires. If the answer lay in a dead body and O-Tech shenanigans, then so be it.
Sam’s long fingers, pale and strong, pulled the sheet back, folding it to the body’s waist. Nina leaned in, sniffing her for the scent of what they most feared. She nodded soberly with a curt bow of her head. “Yep. She’s vampire. Damn it,” she spat. Straightening, she stepped away from the gurney, pinching the bridge of her nose.
And that left Phoebe not so sure she was as all about the brave like she had been just seconds ago. She stumbled backward, knocking over a silver tray of gadgets, yet she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
Sam was instantly at her side, gripping her at the waist. “Phoebe? What’s wrong?”
Oh, God.
OhmyGod.
Nina grabbed her hand and squeezed it, giving her a good shake. “Phoebe, what the hell?”
Fear held her tongue. Terror rose and fell in waves of prickly heat along her spine.
Sam stood in front of her, blocking her view of the body. He cupped her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. “Phoebe, talk to me, sweetheart.”
She shuddered, over and over, a violent chill wracking her flesh. “I … Oh, God. I know her …”
Sam’s voice rose enough for Phoebe, even in her horror, to realize it was urgent she answer them. “How do you know her, Phoebe? Who is she?”
Phoebe shook her head in denial, her eyes darting from Sam to Nina in frantic horror. God, no. They were testing humans. She knew that now as sure as she knew a fake pair of Manolo Blahniks. “She goes to the same doctor I do,” she choked out.
Nina’s face held instant concern, her eyes becoming hawkish, piercing hers. She pushed Phoebe’s mussed hair from her eyes with gentle fingers. Fingers so tender, Phoebe had to stave off a dry sob. “What kind of a doctor, Phoebe?”
She winced, her hands trembling with violent, jerky twitches. “A neurologist.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed, his grip on her growing tighter. “For?”
She slammed her eyes shut, wanting more than anything to be able to do something as simple as gulp and avoid the pity she knew would follow once her secret was out. There was no hiding from this because it could help them discover the answer to what was happening to she and Sam. And even if it couldn’t save herself—it might save Sam.
Phoebe opened her eyes and forced herself to look Nina and Sam in the eye. Her chin lifted, her words were steady. “Early-onset Alzheimer’s.”
* * *
WANDA brought Sam a bag of blood, placing it between his two hands and cupping them with hers. She squeezed his fingers and smiled the Wanda-was-born-to-nurture smile. “You okay?”
Sam’s mouth tightened into a firm line. “I don’t know what to say here, Wanda. Why didn’t she tell us?” Damn. His gut burned, and whether it was the phantom pain of his long-gone humanness or not, he didn’t know. He only knew it ached.
Wanda slid onto his couch, smoothing out her skirt to her knees. “I imagine because she didn’t want anyone to know, especially Nina. But I’d bet that’s why she looked for our vampire to begin with. Because she wanted to know her before she couldn’t remember her,” she said, her voice hitching to his sensitive ear.
If he still had a heart, he knew it would clench in sympathy. In dread. In sadness. Fuck. Where was compartmentalization when you needed it?
You’re too involved, Sam. This isn’t one of those cases where the end justifies the means. You don’t just think she’s beautiful in an aesthetic and you-won’t-remember-her-the-moment-the-job-ends way. You think she’s beautiful-beautiful. The kind of beautiful that brings with it emotions like sorrow, pity. This isn’t Sam just sympathizing with someone who’s been dealt a harsh hand. You got a whole other ball of wax up in here.
“She’s so damn young, Wanda.” He attempted to force the words out in a purely I’m-sorry-another-human-being-is-terminal kind of way. The bitch of it was, they didn’t come out that way.
Wanda nodded, her sleek ponytail rubbing against the back of the couch. “She is indeed. Thirty-three, I think Mark said.”
His disbelief had floored him back at O-Tech, and he’d lost his professional composure, making him surer than ever he liked Phoebe a great deal more than he should.
That they’d made it out of O-Tech wit
hout being seen after finding what they’d found, hearing what they’d heard, would always be a miracle as far as he was concerned. Every last lesson he’d been taught since he’d joined the agency had flown out the window with Phoebe’s news.
The dead body he could handle. He’d handled plenty in his time.
The idea that Phoebe could have been mixed up in this before she’d been turned or that her body could have been the one on that gurney? Not so much. “What are the chances? I mean, really. Thirty-three?”
“It’s very, very rare, I hear,” Wanda replied, her tone somber.
“But there is good news, Master Samuel,” Archibald offered, breezing into his living room with a frosty mug. He took the packet of blood from Sam and poured it into the glass.
“And what’s good about any of this?” Sam asked, misery lumping in his chest.
Archibald pulled a towel from his shoulder and wiped his hands on it, his eyes wrinkled upward into a warm smile. “Miss Wanda hasn’t shared with you the miracle of vampiric intervention?”
Sam’s head cocked in Wanda’s direction and she smiled, giving him a pat on the arm. “Phoebe doesn’t have Alzheimer’s anymore, Sam. Just like her heart isn’t a living organ, essentially, neither is her brain. The disease that was damaging it no longer exists. I know, it makes no sense that you can be walking and talking without critical organs, but there it is.”
And like a house had been lifted from his shoulders, instant relief flooded Sam. The science of it was extraordinary. The unbelievable miracle of it—better still. “Does Phoebe know yet?”
Wanda winked. “That’s what Nina’s in there telling her as we speak. Any second now, you’ll hear the word fucktard, possibly followed by the harmonious strains of breaking glass. But fear not. I’ll intervene if need be, and of course, Nina will pay for whatever she breaks over Phoebe’s head. It might not be a bad thing to let the two of them duke it out so we can eliminate all the tension between them.”
Sam let his head drop to his chest in gratitude to a universe that had, in some bizarre twist of fate, managed to save Phoebe. He tugged at his turtleneck, a renewed disbelief mingled with confusion making his head spin. He had several degrees and a postgraduate, yet still, he couldn’t wrap his brain around the science of this. “This—all of this makes absolutely no sense.”
“Hah!” Archibald shouted, swatting Sam playfully with his kitchen towel. “What does, sir? Has anything that’s happened to you since your turn made sense?”
“True dat, Archibald. True dat.” He paused for a moment, steepling his hands under his chin. “But here’s a thought. We’re not like the other vampires. What if this anti-aging cure all your ills doesn’t apply to me and Phoebe because we’re a different kind of vampire?”
“You may have different abilities, yes, and that could well be because of whatever’s going on at O-Tech, but you’re not breathing, are you? And yet still you walk among us,” Wanda reminded him.
He smiled in irony. “Point.”
Archibald crossed his arms over his chest. “Thus far, I’ve gathered this much. You found a dead female vampire, but no information on her other than what our Phoebe knows. There was no way for you to search the facility further due to the awakened security guard, whom Nina wiped clean of all memory, leaving us with no one to question. What I wonder is, why didn’t she suffer the heinous death your mystery woman did?”
Yeah. He wondered that, too, as he sipped his evening feeding. “The only thing I can gather is maybe she managed to survive longer during the testing. Maybe she was a stronger candidate? She certainly didn’t die by way of what you claim is a typical vampire kill. No wooden stakes through the heart—her head was still intact. If I could have just poked around more—maybe grabbed some of those vials in the room …”
“So thoughts on where we go from here, sir?” Archibald asked, handing him a cocktail napkin and pointing to the side of Sam’s mouth, encouraging him to wipe it.
Sam couldn’t help but hide his grin behind the swipe of the paper napkin. “Why do I get the impression you’re really enjoying this, Archibald?”
Archibald gave him a sly smile with the rise of one bushy eyebrow. He clapped his hands together. “Because I am, Master Samuel! In my humble opinion, there’s nothing quite like a good episode of Murder, She Wrote, and while I certainly understand to compare your situation with a one-hour drama is absurd, and quite possibly appears insensitive, I mean no disrespect. However, I will admit, I can’t help but wait with bated breath for our next move.”
Sam got it. Everyone was an armchair sleuth until they actually had to live it. “Well, I guess now we just have to get to that doctor and find out who that patient was and how she got to O-Tech. Phoebe didn’t know her by name. She only recognized her from the office waiting room.”
Wanda winced, rubbing her arms with her hands. “You took a picture of her with your phone to show them?”
The high he’d experienced a moment ago evaporated. “I did.” And if he were smart, he’d send one to the agency, too. But he hadn’t figured a way around keeping them from sending someone else in to help him. Someone who’d discover what had happened to him. Like maybe that prick Lewis who was always up in his face. What they’d discovered tonight was big. Big, and ugly, and clearly financed by some madman.
O-Tech was headed for some serious fallout if they could prove pest-control manufacturing wasn’t the only thing going on there. People were dying. How he was going to blow that wide open and keep everyone safe became an insurmountable worry. Focus McLean. Focus on one piece of the puzzle at a time.
“And how do we get them to give us the information about this poor soul?”
“Leave that to me, Wanda,” Sam reassured. He wasn’t quite ready to tell them that he had a badge gifting him with credentials that would have him in and out of that doctor’s office in no time flat.
Not just yet.
NINA had Phoebe cornered in Sam’s bedroom, her face a mask of cold anger. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”
“Why the fuck would I?” Phoebe shot back. “Would you have whispered soothing words to me? Made me cookies and warm blood and tucked me in?”
Nina’s full lips sneered. “Because, moron, it’s important information. So why didn’t you tell me?”
Because she’d rather be dead? Oh, wait. She was. Okay, because she’d rather live an eternity not getting to know Nina than have her sister want to know her because she felt sorry for her. “Would it have changed how you felt about me telling you I was your sister, Nina? Would it have made you feel sorry enough for me to let me into your nonexistent heart?”
Nina jabbed her shoulder with a sharp finger. “I guess we’ll never know, will we? Know why? Because you didn’t tell me, dipshit.”
Phoebe jabbed her back, squaring her shoulders to make herself appear taller. “You know, it wasn’t like I had a lot of time to do or say anything. One minute I was thinking we could have a cup of coffee and talk, and the next I was ass end down on Sam’s fang. Since then, it’s been a hundred miles an hour at warp speed. There wasn’t really time for intimate chats by the fireplace and long walks on the beach.”
“It takes two seconds to say, ‘Nina, I have fucking Alzheimer’s.’”
“Okay. You count. Ready, set, go. Nina, I have Alzheimer’s.”
“Not funny, Forgetful Barbie. Not even a little.”
Fine. Not funny. Phoebe softened just a little, allowing one of her biggest concerns to fly freely from her lips. “I didn’t want to start a relationship with you thinking I needed your pity. I also didn’t want it to be the only reason you agreed to let me into your life—because you wouldn’t have been in it for long before I didn’t know who you were anyway.” Jesus. That stung to say out loud. But it was the absolute truth.
Much like everything else, Nina made her regret opening up. “But you found me because you were afraid you wouldn’t be able to look for me when your brain turned to oatmeal. So no matter when I
found out, there sure as shit was going to be pity involved, shortcake.”
She had no rebuttal for that. Yes, of course she’d intended to tell Nina, and still, there was even more to tell, but not before they’d at least found a way to connect. As of right now, they’d missed the connection mark by a planetary system. She’d had no idea her disease could affect anything vampiric, and since this had all begun, she most definitely hadn’t wanted it to hinder their search for answers. In guilt, she averted her eyes.
But Nina wasn’t going to let her off the hook. She cupped Phoebe’s jaw, forcing her to gaze into her dark, menacing eyes. Nina’s jaw was tight, her teeth clenched together. “Here’s the score, cupcake. I’m not a nice person. I know it—everyone else knows it, too. I call it as I see it because life was once too short to fuck around. When you’re a total bitch, it tends to weed out the people who’ll conveniently forget to have your back when the shit flies. Now that my life’s not so short, it’s too long to fuck around, playing games and pretending things are something they’re really not. I’m rude. I’m crass. I’m impatient. I’m so fucking honest some call me brutal. I also have a nasty-ass tongue I sharpen with a straight razor every day, and I don’t like a lot of people. Some foolishly mistake me for being angry with them. The only thing I’m angry about is that people spend so much time being asshats on my life-dime. I just point that shit out to them—and, yeah, I do it with glee. But get this much straight. I’m not so much of a bitch I’d wish that special Alzheimer’s kind of hell on anyone. Anyone.”
Phoebe’s throat was tight to the point of uncomfortable. Yes. Nina was all of those things. To a lesser degree, so was she, but she’d had a strong female presence in her life to soften her impatient edges.
Nina’d had only their father, which had left her with some very crude, and lacking, self-expression. “I was hoping by the time I was forced to tell you, we’d have been well on our way to establishing some sort of bond. Utter fool was I.”
Nina chucked her under the chin with a sly grin. “You’re not a fool because you have some disease you have no control over, Phoebes. You were dealt a shitty hand at such a young age, and that so sucks. But you’re definitely a fucking fool.” She rolled her tongue along the inside of her cheek. “Wanna know why?”
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