“No way,” Blanca scoffed.
“Then how…?”
“He wanted us to sell some of his products, said we could make a lot of money. You know, sort of like Mary Kay cosmetics. My mom used to do that. Multilevel marketing, I think it’s called,” Blanca explained. “He was really pushing it. He’s kind of a…creeper, in a ‘clueless old guy’ way.”
Joel is several years younger than I am,Harper thought.I feel old.
“I think he’s cute. And he’s notthatold,” said Jenny. “He’s not, like, dad-old. He’s kind of cool old, you know? Like, he has his own car and a job and everything.”
“Not much of a job, if you ask me,” said Blanca.
“Better than most of the guys we know,” responded Jenny with a cynical snort. “They’re still living with their parents.”
Blanca rolled her eyes, and a silence fell over the table. Harper suspected this was not the first time the two had had this discussion, whether over Joel, or over men in general. She remembered that feeling, the tension between the tug of female friendship and the lure of potential romance. Strangely enough, it made Harper realize that she missed that kind of interaction. She needed to make more friends. Women friends. As much as she appreciated Tariq, he was a man. And he wasTariq. She could hardly confide in him that her feelings toward him were starting to feel…complicated.
A loud clacking of high heels on tile broke into Harper’s thoughts.
Great. The Nemesis.Not exactly the woman friend she was hoping for.
“Dr. Grae,” Naomi said with a cool nod as she passed their table, a to-go cup of steaming coffee in her hand.
“Dr. Ruger.” Harper returned her greeting and watched as her colleague wound her way through the café’s tables and took a seat near the window.
“It’s weird to see professors here at the café,” Jenny said in a soft voice. “Like when you’re a kid and you see your teacher at the grocery store.”
“Right?” answered Blanca.
“Want to hear some tea?” Jenny asked, leaning over the table.
“Sure,” Harper said. “Spill.”
Jenny lowered her voice. “I heard that Dr. Ruger is doing the guy who wants to develop the land the abandoned buildings are on, on base. You know, like the ones we explored?”
“She’s— You mean she’s seeing Benjamin Philips?”
Blanca nodded. “Yeah, I think that was his name. Rich guy, lives on 17-Mile Drive.”
Interesting.
“I was hoping to talk to him for the podcast,” said Jenny, determination shining in her eyes as she typed a note to herself into her phone. “I wanted to ask him about the development plans. A lot of people are saying he paid people off to hush up the contamination issues.”
Blanca gestured toward her friend with a smile. “She’s becoming a real investigative journalist, this one. Oh, by the way, we got a picture of the thing we wanted to show you, the thing in the barracks. The weird box.”
Blanca handed Harper the phone to show her a photo of a hinged wooden box filled with bottles and little drawers.
“This looks like an old medical cabinet,” Harper said. “Very cool.”
“The kind that goes on a wall in a bathroom?”
“No, these were portable. They were used by doctors, back in the day.”
“So it doesn’t have anything to do with vampires?” Blanca seemed disappointed.
“Not at all.”
“It has some weird symbols on it, and like a strange language, see?” asked Blanca.
The cabinet was engraved on the top:Gift est in pondere * Medicamentum in Gift est *Kuu ku me koypon.
