And whatever trust-based (or literature-based) issues we might have had at home, Jane was one of the least insane people I’d ever worked for. She was fair, made her expectations clear, and said thank you when you met them. She was very different from Mitch at the Chicken Shack, who once threw a bucket of drumsticks at me when I forgot to clean out the grease trap.
As promised, the “nope list” did grow every week. On this particular night, Jane was out of the office, meeting with other representatives. I was burning through the unfiled files, wondering what it said about me that my workload seemed to move twice as fast when my boss wasn’t around. Did that mean I was a good employee or a bad one?
The phone rang, and the caller ID showed an unfamiliar area code. I cleared my throat and used my most professional tone of voice to say, “Council Representative Jameson-Nightengale’s office, this is—”
But whoever was on the line was already talking. Well, ranting. He was ranting.
“I want an appointment with Mrs. Jameson-Nightengale immediately,” the voice demanded. “I’ve called and called, and my patience is at an end. This is unacceptable. If I have to park my car outside your office and wait for her in the parking lot, that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Well, I wouldn’t advise you to do that,” I deadpanned. “Can we start from the beginning, sir? What is your name?”
“You know very well that this is Dr. Allan Fortescue, PhD!” he shouted, emphasizing each letter of his postgraduate degree.
Also, how would I know that?
I glanced down at the caller ID. Oh. Yep, there it was, “Allan Fortescue, PhD.” How did he even get the phone company to put “PhD” on his phone line anyway?
On a hunch, I opened Jane’s “nope” spreadsheet and searched for the name Fortescue, while he continued to rant about his “research” and the hope he was providing to the undead community at large, despite our lack of support.
Yep, there he was again. With an asterisk. You had to really screw up to earn an asterisk from Jane.
“And I’m assuming you’re hoping to schedule an appointment with Representative Jameson-Nightengale?” I asked, working hard to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
“Yes, this is my fourth attempt to make an appointment, and every time, I’ve been told that her schedule is full. This is unacceptable!” he shouted. In the background, I heard a loud thump, like he’d slammed his fist against a table for emphasis. “I demand that you schedule an appointment within the next three days.”
I paused to let him think that I was checking Jane’s schedule. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Fortescue, but her schedule is booked solid, just so many meetings and then her travel schedule.”
I took a breath, hoping I sounded sincerely apologetic when I said, “She won’t be available until next month, at least. I’m so sorry.”
Also a lie. I was not sorry.
“Unacceptable!” he yelled.
“You keep saying that word. That doesn’t change the fact that the representative’s schedule is full.”
“Next Tuesday?” he demanded.
“She’s on the road.”
“Friday?”
“In meetings all night,” I replied, biting my lip. I really had to get better at lying if I was going to be a good administrative assistant.
He suggested, “The seventeenth?”
“She’s taking a personal day. For a doctor’s appointment.”
“Vampires don’t need doctors.”
“It’s an elective procedure,” I said, squinching up my face, hoping he wouldn’t hear the uncertainty in my voice. Thank God this wasn’t a video call.
“Unacceptable!” he yelled, and then hung up on me so hard that my sensitive ears rang.
“I guess it was unacceptable,” I muttered, making another note on Jane’s “nope” spreadsheet with a PITA ranking of eight. And I added another asterisk with the words “babbling loony.”
I glanced at the clock and wondered if it was too early in the workday to get another one of Sammy’s delicious coffee concoctions. The calendar app on my computer rang out a little ding of alarm to remind me that McDerpy—Dr. Hudson, I had to remember to call him Dr. Hudson—had asked me to report to the R&D floor at one A.M. to go over my cheek-swab test results. I definitely didn’t have time for coffee. But if Dr. Hudson broke out another swab, I swear, I was having two bloody macchiatos.
I shut down my computer and followed the Council’s strict security procedures, pushing my file cart into Jane’s office and double-locking the door. I walked to the elevator and realized that this was the first time I’d been allowed to use it on my own. I could use it to go to the top floor, walk out onto the street. Maybe go somewhere (gasp) completely unsupervised. And for just one second, my hand hovered over the “Ground Level” button. But alas, I couldn’t do it. Jane trusted me. She’d trusted me enough to leave me unattended in the office. I couldn’t pay her back by pulling a Shawshank.
Sighing over my own lame-ass integrity, I hit the button marked “R&D Subfloor.” I stepped out of the open doors, shivering at the lower subterranean temperatures. The R&D subfloor looked more like a hospital than an office. Slick gray tile, bare white walls, extremely unflattering fluorescent lighting. The hall was completely empty, no reception desk, no helpful medical minion to point me in the right direction. And all of the doors were shut tight.
Frowning, I walked past several doors marked “Hematology,” “Dermatology,” and “NO.” I wasn’t sure what “NO” was all about, but I’m sure it wasn’t good. It did sound like something Jane would put up on a door, though. And that made me smile.
I closed my eyes and tried to listen for any signs of “life” on the floor. But I didn’t hear one heartbeat, not one breath. Clearly, this was a vampire-only floor, which actually made me a bit more comfortable. At least I didn’t have to worry about my bloodlust. At the far end of the hallway, I heard the faintest murmur of conversation.
I followed it until I found Dr. Hudson waiting in what looked like any exam room in any doctor’s office in America—more gray tile, more white walls, jars upon jars of swabs and cotton balls. Ben was sitting on the end of a hospital bed, looking pretty uncomfortable. That probably had to do with Dr. Hudson and his gleeful expression as he polished a scary array of shiny medical instruments. Or possibly the fact that Dr. Hudson was wearing red suspenders and a red-and-white plaid shirt that looked like it was made from a picnic blanket.
I don’t know if the shirt-suspenders combo was his way of trying to make us feel at ease, but combined with the fact that he was somehow simultaneously grinning and whistling, it was anything but comforting. And then he saw me walking through the door, and the grinning and whistling increased. How could whistling be so sinister?
“Miss Keene!” he exclaimed. “Welcome, welcome! I was just explaining to young Mr. Overby that we’ve found all kinds of interesting tidbits in your test results, enough to warrant considerably more testing.”
“More testing?” I would say I tried not to whine when I said it, but that would be a lie.
“Righty-o!” he exclaimed.
“Like what?” I asked, edging toward Ben. Because while I was not necessarily on awesome terms with my childe, I definitely felt more comfortable with him and his lack of shiny sharp objects.
Dr. Hudson’s smile ratcheted up that much further. I was honestly worried that at some point the two corners of his mouth were going to touch behind his head. “For starters, your iron and hemoglobin counts are far above a normal vampire’s. Your DNA shows an alarming number of extra genes thrown into the mix, which may explain some of your more interesting traits.” He stared at me intently.
“Alarming?” Ben asked.
Dr. Hudson was doing this weird little shoulder-shimmy-nod thing that made him look like a psychotic bobblehead. “It’s fascinating, just fascinating, like a puz
zle. I just want to take you apart, see what makes you tick, and put you back together.”
Ben and I stared at him, silent and horrified, both imperceptibly inching farther away from him. Dr. Hudson didn’t seem to realize he’d just said something incredibly creepy and moved from staring at me to rolling a covered medical tray to the bedside.
I cleared my throat. “What kind of DNA?”
Dr. Hudson winked at me. “Oh, a whole cocktail of goodies—animal, vegetable, and mineral.”
What sort of undead uber-nerd had sired this guy, and how could I ask him to take Dr. Hudson back? Like to a cellular level? And what did he mean by—what kind of minerals had DNA? What the hell were we?
When I didn’t respond with the expected girlish giggle, he added, “Just a little science joke. So, kids, we’re just going to expose you to some of our better-known weaknesses and see how you react. Now, Miss Keene, please have a seat.”
Ben raised his hand. “Can we get back to ‘vegetable’?”
“Yes,” I agreed, pointing to Ben as I climbed onto the hospital bed next to him. The papery mattress cover crinkled under my butt, but honestly, the fact that the Council was worried about hygiene was the only comforting thing in this room. “I would like to talk about that.”
Dr. Hudson waved his hand dismissively. “I submitted an initial report to Mrs. Jameson-Nightengale. I’m sure she’ll explain it to you.”
The idea that he couldn’t be bothered to give us details about our own DNA irked me. Dr. Hudson, for all his zip-a-dee-doo-dah cheer, was not a good guy. Hell, I wasn’t even sure he was a decent scientist. Because he whipped the cover off the tray, flourishing it like something in an infomercial, to reveal a small silver cylinder, a big wooden cross, a tube marked “Minced Garlic,” a couple of jars of liquid I didn’t recognize, and—
“Is that a wooden stake?” I asked, nodding to the pointy object in question.
Dr. Hudson shrugged, as if it was totally expected to find a wooden stake in a medical lab. “Well, sure, we have to know how you respond to being staked. That’s one of our key questions, isn’t it?”
I shook my head. “But it would be answered pretty definitively if we, say, burst into a cloud of dust. Which, even in the name of scientific discovery, seems a little excessive.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we should just get stabbed in the heart experimentally,” Ben agreed. “That’s kind of like claiming that someone’s a werewolf just because they die when you shoot them in the heart with a silver bullet. A bullet to the heart is going to kill pretty much anybody.”
“Let’s just see where the tests take us,” Dr. Hudson said, walking across the lab to check some machine making beeping noises.
“He’s going to try to do it anyway, isn’t he?” I asked, lowering my voice.
Ben nodded. “I’d say there’s about a ninety percent chance.”
“Do we have to stay for this? I mean, it’s reasonable to walk out of a medical appointment if you think your doctor’s going to try to scientifically murder you, right?”
“Jane told us to cooperate,” Ben whispered. “I think that means sticking around until he actively tries to murder us.”
“Can we take our first step toward meaningful friendship by being ‘not getting staked in the heart’ buddies?” I asked him.
“I’ll watch your chest if you’ll watch mine.” He grimaced, and while I could see him struggling not to glance down at my cleavage, he totally did. “That came out wrong.”
It was a long and unpleasant evening. First, Dr. Hudson exposed us to things that didn’t affect regular vampires. We were able to see ourselves in mirrors. We were able to hold crucifixes with no problem. He spritzed a small amount of holy water on our arms. Nothing. Having minced garlic rubbed on our wrists didn’t have any effect other than smelling gross to our super-sensitive noses.
“Now we move on to the more effective antivampire measures,” Dr. Hudson said, just a little too much excitement bubbling through his already upbeat voice. He took a shiny chrome canister from the tray. “This is a very weak solution of colloidal silver, just one percent, mind you, to test your sensitivity to silver. Based on responses from other vampires, it should inflict minimal damage, something like a moderate sunburn.”
“You sprayed this on other vampires to test it out?” I asked. “I feel so sorry for your interns.”
“It was a sacrifice they were willing to make for science. Now, shall we allow ladies first?” Dr. Hudson asked, motioning for me to roll up my sleeve.
I chewed on my lip. “Is this because I joked about your interns?”
“No,” Ben objected. “You should use it on me first.”
“No, actually, that makes sense,” I told Ben. “I’m patient zero. Whatever is wrong with us happened to me first. Maybe it will affect me differently from how it affects you.”
“I don’t like it,” Ben said.
“Duly noted.” I nodded, rolling up my sleeve. “But I get to determine whether I get sprayed with potentially dangerous chemicals. Because feminism.”
“I don’t think that’s applicable here,” Ben said as I held out my arm and took a deep breath. Ben took the other hand and gripped it tight.
“For science,” I said, blowing out a long breath. I gave him a little smile.
Dr. Hudson took the cap off the canister and spritzed the faintly grayish liquid against my forearm. At first, it just felt cool, like being hit with regular water.
“Nothing,” I said, jerking my shoulders. “Maybe we’re immune to—oh, holy crap balls!”
The skin of my arm puffed up like bubble wrap, peeling and turning an angry red. I hissed as the damage spread, growing from the size of a quarter to the width of my palm in seconds. The room filled with the smell of singed toast. The silver was dissolving my skin like wet tissue, and I was terrified that I would eventually see bone.
“Fascinating,” Dr. Hudson said, craning his neck to see how far the damage spread. “Just fascinating.”
This was not the response I hoped for.
“What the hell?” Ben yelled, his own hands smoking lightly from the microscopic mist of silver that had drifted over his skin. “Rinse it off now!”
“Oh, of course,” Dr. Hudson said, though he sounded vaguely annoyed.
The doctor took a bottle of distilled water, held my arm over a basin, and rinsed away the silver. It didn’t help. The burn continued to spread up my arm to my bicep, eating away at my skin. It was more tolerable than having my sternum crushed by a Frisbee weight but only by a little bit.
“It’s not stopping!”
“Screw this.” Ben reached into the refrigerator unit by the supply cabinet and pulled out a bag of donor blood. He grabbed Dr. Hudson by the collar of his lab coat. Dr. Hudson showed little to no reaction, jotting down his notes as Ben dragged him around. “Is this clean?” Ben demanded. “You haven’t screwed around with it? No silver or garlic or LSD or anything?”
Dr. Hudson shook his head. Ben tore off the top of the plastic bag and poured it into my mouth, splashing whatever missed my mouth down the front of my shirt. The burn stopped spreading, but it still stung like a bitch. Ben reached into the fridge and took out another unit of donor blood.
“Hold on, that’s AB negative, very rare!” Dr. Hudson cried. “And it’s my lunch!”
“Shut up!” Ben snapped, while I bit into the plastic directly this time and sucked down the blood like Satan’s Capri Sun, made of pure deliciousness, deep and rich, chocolaty with undertones of cherry. AB negative was officially my favorite blood type. Also, my arm was no longer burning, which was lovely.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, watching as the skin slowly smoothed out and reverted to an angry pink. It went nicely with the bright, bloody smear on the back of my hand.
“One more?” Ben asked, holding my arm in his hands, exa
mining it.
I glanced down at my skin, which was now smooth and unblemished and a regular human color. A pale human but human. I shook my head. “I’m OK now. Thanks.”
I glanced down at Ben’s hands, which had stopped smoking but still looked stippled and red. Ben released my arm and stepped between Dr. Hudson and me.
“Well, I guess we can mark down yes for an allergy to silver,” Dr. Hudson said, smiling brightly. “Honestly, your sensitivity to silver is astounding. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You’re a dick,” I told Dr. Hudson as Ben handed me a wet cloth to clean my face.
Dr. Hudson jerked his shoulders and continued scribbling.
“You’re telling me that was a weak solution?” Ben growled.
“One percent concentration,” Dr. Hudson told him, showing me the label on the canister. “Most vampires wouldn’t have had a reaction like that. Look.”
He held out his own arm and pressed the button on the atomizer.
“Don’t!” I cried. And then I remembered the pain in my forearm and shrugged. “Never mind, Dr. Hudson. Go ahead.”
The silver spray dripped off his skin, and while it did turn just a little pink, Dr. Hudson didn’t have nearly the same damage. He smiled and waved his intact limb at me, as if his lack of burns should somehow make me feel better. Clearly, this was a weird “neo-vamp” symptom that didn’t affect regular vampires. But what if Ben was somehow even more sensitive to silver than I was? What if Dr. Hudson sprayed him and Ben lost his arm?
“See?” Dr. Hudson chuckled, wiping the silver off with a wet wipe. “Easy peasy.”
“You’re not spraying Ben with that,” I told him very sternly. “He had a reaction just from the blowback from spraying me. Let’s assume we both have the same reaction.”
“But you were correct. You could have very different levels of response,” Dr. Hudson protested. “We need to collect complete data.”