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“Which is barely a baby in shapechanger terms, and you know it.”
“I know it, but you try expla
ining it to my good wife.”
Gabriel groaned. “Don’t tell me she’s plotting another matchmaking session?”
“Well, it seems she has this second cousin who would be perfect—”
“Tell her I have a girlfriend I’m perfectly happy with.”
Karl raised his eyebrows. “Really? You with a girlfriend? I’m just not seeing that.”
“Depends on how you define the term ‘girlfriend.’?”
“Ah. A bed buddy.” Karl nodded. “Not as good as the real thing, but a suitable decoy for determined matchmakers. She won’t be put off for long, though. You know that, don’t you?”
Gabriel opened his mouth to reply, but it was lost to a sudden buzz of awareness. Though perhaps buzz was the wrong word to use—it was more a flash fire that ran across his senses and then slid deep inside, seeming to warm his very soul. He glanced at the door as it opened and Sam stepped in, nodding a brief acknowledgment Finley’s way before her gaze met his.
The awareness that burned his mind was more than one-way now. He could see the flame of it in her eyes.
She stopped in the doorway and said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “Karl asked me to come.”
Her angry gaze switched to Karl. “Why?”
“Because you both need to hear what I have to say.” Karl hesitated. “And I don’t think either of you are going to like it.”
Gabriel met Karl’s eyes again and saw the compassion mingled with excitement in their brown depths. Something clenched in his gut. Whatever Karl had to say, it boded no good for his future.
“Fine, but that doesn’t mean he comes into that room with me.” She thrust a finger in the direction of O’Hearn’s office. “My business is not his business.”
“I’m afraid,” Karl said heavily, “that in this case, it is.”
Karl’s comment left her looking more disgruntled than before, if that were possible.
Not that Gabriel could really blame her. Hell, the last few months hadn’t exactly been easy for her, and here he was, the creator of many of those problems, sitting in on her medical briefing.
It was a wonder she wasn’t ranting and raving about the injustice of it all. He would be, in her place.
Then the door to the office opened and O’Hearn’s matronly figure appeared. “Is everyone here? Good. Why don’t you all come in and get yourselves something to drink?”
Sam walked straight to the autobar and ordered a double scotch. Gabriel did likewise. She raised her glass in a brief salute, then downed half its contents before sitting on the chair nearest the window. Her hair gleamed like fire against the darkness gathering outside, but the rest of her seemed cloaked in shadows.
He sat on a chair opposite her—not that he really needed to see her reaction to anything said here this evening; he could feel it all. The link that had sprung to life the minute she walked in the door had become a freeway of emotion. If it weren’t for the fact that he was so used to blocking his brother, the assault might have overloaded him.
Karl and Finley helped themselves to coffee and sat down to either side of him. O’Hearn leaned against the edge of her desk.
“Okay, I’ll start this off,” O’Hearn said. “I’ve managed to isolate coding sequences from four different races—shifter, changer, vampire and were. But there was one I couldn’t identify. I called in Finley, but he’s been unable to define the sequences either. Then there was the problem of the unknown chromosome.”
“How can there be an extra chromosome?” Sam asked, her voice terse. “From what I understand of genetics, humans have forty-six chromosomes, and they work in pairs. So how can there be just one unknown chromosome?”
O’Hearn raised an eyebrow, as if surprised by the question. “Humans do have forty-six. Vampires who were once human have forty-eight. Shifters have fifty, changers and weres fifty-two. If any of those becomes a vamp, then they gain an extra pair of chromosomes. You, my dear, have fifty-five.”
“Meaning what?” Sam crossed her arms. The gray ring around the blue of her eyes gleamed ice-bright in the fading light. “You said you detected partial shifter coding, but even with the extra chromosome that still only gives me a max of fifty-three.”
Finley cleared his throat. “The two extra come from the vamp coding we found.”
