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“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Philip said, shaking his head. “I overreacted because Angel didn’t answer, that’s all.”
He’s covering. He needed to talk to me on my own, and he knew there was no way Marcus would leave if he knew Philip hadn’t exactly been himself when he came at me a few minutes earlier. On top of that, Philip obviously didn’t want Marcus to be jealous. Perfectly natural for a nice guy like him, especially since he didn’t know we’d just broken up.
A pang went through me. Broken up, and Marcus was moving away, at least for a couple of years. Marcus and I had been through a number of ups and downs over the past year and had broken up and gotten back together more than once. But he’d always been around. Near. He’d made me a zombie, saved my life. And he’d been a part of that life ever since.
“I feel perfectly fine,” I told him. “What did Dr. Nikas say?”
“I left a message,” Philip said. “I’m waiting for him to call me back.”
“I’d like to hear what he has to say when he does.”
Marcus twitched his hand toward mine then pulled it back. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Totally,” I reassured him.
His eyes went to Philip and stayed there for several seconds, no doubt assessing and deciding whether it was safe to leave me with him. Philip looked perfectly fine now, though a little pale.
Marcus drew a breath and released it. He was the third wheel now, I realized with a sharp pang, and he knew it.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said. “If that’s all right, that is.”
“It is,” I replied. “Thanks for the ride home.”
He leaned in and brushed his lips against my cheek, cast a hard look at Philip that clearly held all sorts of Hurt her and I will destroy you type messages, and then turned away, climbed into his truck, and drove off.
I waited until his tail lights disappeared around the bend of the road, then rounded on Philip. “What the hell was that?” I demanded.
Philip exhaled. “I came by to see if you were home yet. I didn’t see your car, so I called, but you didn’t answer. I decided to wait a bit to see if you’d come by.” He lifted his chin toward the end of the driveway. “You pulled in, and I had every intention of waiting until Marcus was gone, and then—” His face lost all color. “It was like I was watching myself go and yank the truck door open,” he continued. “No way to stop it and no idea what was coming next. Like being a backseat passenger in my own body.” He shook his head. “Then it was gone. Left me dizzy and with a headache like the one at the lab this morning, but worse. The headache’s almost gone now, at least.”
Well, that sounded like all sorts of suck. “What about this?” I asked and pointed to the blotch on my arm. “You don’t have any brains on you?”
Philip exhaled. “Angel, that’s the problem. I’m tanked. It doesn’t touch it.”
Permanent rot? An ugly twist of fear curled through me, and I had to fight the urge to rub at my arm. “We should call the lab and try and get hold of Dr. Nikas again,” I said.
He nodded agreement. “I left the voicemail earlier when I noticed the rot, but shit’s going downhill.”
“Yeah, weird freakout episodes justify another call,” I said with a glower. “Come on in. I’ll make the call, and we can go from there.” I led the way up the driveway and inside.
“Okay if I use your bathroom?” Philip asked.
“Yeah, no prob,” I replied and tried not to think about what condition the bathroom might be in. Horrific, most likely, even though I’d cleaned the toilet only last week, with possible nastiness that ranged from hair in the shower drain to Dad’s skid-mark underwear hanging from the toilet flush handle, with a dying roach in the sink for added ambience. Best not to even think of it. “Since you’ve already left a voicemail for Dr. Nikas, I’ll try Jacques or Reg,” I added.
“Sure thing,” Philip said. “I’ll be right out.”
Detouring to the bedroom, I snagged a bottle of brains out of the fridge. A few gulps later, I peered at my arm in dismay as Absolutely Nothing happened. Shit. Double triple quadruple shit.
Returning to the living room, I hit the lab’s number. Jacques picked up on the first ring.
“Leroux,” he snapped out.
“Hey, Jacques, it’s Angel.”
“Oh. Angel,” he said with unmistakable disappointment. Who was he expecting at this time of night? A hot exotic dancer? “What do you need?”
“Philip had a freaky episode, and we both have matching pre-rot patches on our arms,” I explained. “He left a message for Dr. Nikas, but that was before he pulled a caveman stunt and tried to drag me out of Marcus’s truck.” Philip came out of the bathroom with a hopeful look. I shook my head and mouthed Jacques, and he grimaced in disappointment. “It’s not his normal Plague stuff,” I continued to Jacques. “I think it’s a reaction to the procedure this morning. Is Dr. Nikas around?”
Jacques remained silent for a moment. “He’s not available,” he finally said then cleared his throat as though choking down the urge to say more.
