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Chapter Eighteen
Blake
Tamsin falls quiet while we’re driving, and I can’t tell if it’s because of the weather or if she’s stewing about something. She always did get quiet when she was mad or upset. Until it built up long enough, and then her words held all the fire and sting of a true Scottish woman. I offer several times to drive, but she refuses. The stubbornness isn’t new, either.
It takes an extra hour to arrive in Edinburgh what with the snow driving down like it is. When we finally pull up at the back of the hospital, Tamsin lets out a big sigh and her rigid posture relaxes. She looks over her shoulder at Luciana.
“She’s almost due for another dose of neutralizer,” she says, brow crinkled. “I’m going to administer that really quickly.”
I nod. “I’ll text Devon and have him come out here to show us where we’re headed.”
A couple minutes later, I see my friend jogging out through the snow. I hop out of the van, and we go around to the back to help Tamsin get Luciana out. We’re parked behind the eastern wing of the hospital, a smaller part of the building than the rest, and opposite the public wing with the emergency room and whatnot. It’s practically a dark alley back here. In the distance I can see Edinburgh Castle and the university.
When I open the door, Tamsin lowers Luciana on the hydraulic lift, then reaches out to shake hands with Devon. Right as she touches him, she freezes, and her eyes widen. She’s seen through his glamour. The one that makes him look like an ordinary human.
“Oh—you’re actually a—”
Devon ducks his head and tucks his wings behind his back. “An angel. Yep.”
“Dr. Tamsin MacPherson, meet Dr. Devon Lightburn,” I say with a smile. “Devon runs the supernatural wing of the hospital here.”
“Nice to meet you, Tamsin. Now follow me, let’s get out of this nasty weather.” Devon glances up at the gloomy sky and waves us toward the back door.
I help Tamsin push the gurney through the several inches of snow that have fallen in the last few hours. We made it to the city just in time. The sky is dark, and the snow is just getting heavier.
“So, how exactly do you manage to run a supernatural medical facility right here in the public hospital?” Tamsin asks Devon, eyebrows raised.
Devon shoves open the back door and holds it as we wheel Luciana inside. “Officially, we are known as the Hawthorn and Broom Medical Research Laboratory. We work on very hush-hush cutting-edge projects funded by private corporations, so security clearance is required to gain access to this wing of the hospital. At least, that’s what we tell everyone.” The angel shoots us a placid smile. “Hiding in plain sight. Works just about every time.”
I blink in the stark fluorescent lighting, and my inner wolf cringes as dozens of scents barrage my nose. Bleach and cleaners and medicines and IV drips and plastic. All smells I don’t have to be around when I’m up in the hills, nothing but sky surrounding me. Tamsin seems right at home, however. She’s perked up visibly, a marked difference from her closed-off demeanor during the drive.
As she chats with Devon, I find myself wondering if her change in attitude is simply because our harrowing drive is over, and we’re now out of the cold, or if it’s because she has more in common with a fellow doctor than she has with me. Which, now that I think of it, is probably true. She begins to describe Luciana’s ailment to him, and her testing for a cure thus far, and it’s almost like they’re speaking another language. I feel a roil of discomfort in my stomach.
Devon leads us down a couple of short hallways. We pass several other doctors and nurses, all wearing navy blue scrubs or white medical coats. They nod in greeting, but don’t look twice at the orange-skinned, horned demon we’re wheeling through the halls. Eventually, Devon opens a door and gestures for us to go inside. It’s a large patient room, and next to it is an adjoining lab equipped with every conceivable piece of high-tech equipment. Tamsin’s face glows when she sees it.
“This is exactly what I need,” she says with a nod to Devon. “I can’t thank you enough for letting us drop in like this.”
“That’s exactly what we’re here for,” the angel says with a smile. “Now, I’m curious, how does Luciana respond to…”
The two of them go into doctor speak again, and my mind wanders. I look down at Luciana, feeling almost as incapacitated as she is. I want to be useful to Tamsin, but I’m a fish out of water in this place. Or rather, a wolf out of his den.
Devon helps get Tamsin set up, showing her where everything is in the two rooms. They hook Luciana up to a lot of high-tech monitors, and then Tamsin explores the lab and chooses a very large, very fancy microscope and something she calls a blood analyzer. There’s a natural chemistry between them as if they’ve been colleagues for years. I might worry about competition with Devon—after all, he is a handsome, dark-haired, six-foot-two angel just a couple years older than Tamsin—except I know he prefers men.
After a while, though, Devon has to return to caring for his own patients, and he leaves us to it. Tamsin makes sure that Luciana’s vitals are stable, takes some fresh blood samples, and dives into her experimentation in the lab. I stand in a corner and watch her work. She’s borrowed a white coat from one of the supply closets inside the lab, and in her form-fitting dark jeans and the coat she looks incredibly sexy. Really, the whole fact that she’s a brilliant scientist renowned in her field is a giant turn-on, too. I’ve never understood men who are threatened by powerful women.
To make myself useful, I go over into Luciana’s room periodically to check on her. We can’t see her from the metal table that Tamsin has all her equipment set up on, though the door is open between the rooms so we can hear if anything goes wrong. But I can tell it makes Tamsin more relaxed for me to check on her, and that’s the least I can do while she’s over there analyzing cells and mixing up chemical compounds to test.
After a couple hours, I wander off to find us some food. The supernatural ward has its own small cafeteria, though the selection is abysmal. My best choice ends up being two limp roast beef sandwiches. But Tamsin doesn’t complain when I bring them back, she just pauses to take two bites of the sandwich, eating mechanically as if she isn’t even tasting it. Then she hands it to me and gets back to work.
She logs each permutation of her testing on her laptop which feeds the results into a program that helps her move progressively through logical variations of her experiment. Another couple of hours pass, and then two more. At one point I check in with Devon to arrange a place to stay, and find out there’s an extra staff apartment in the building behind the hospital we can use. But then he leaves mid-evening to go home. When I get stir crazy from time to time, I find an outer hallway and peek out the window. It’s practically a blizzard outside, with snow piled up a good two feet. We aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Shortly after midnight, Tamsin lets out a string of expletives and slams her hands down on the table. Sparks of green magic shoot from her fingertips.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, moving off the wall where I’ve been leaning and walking over to her.
“It’s my magic,” she growls. “Ever since I’ve come back to Scotland it’s been going a bit haywire. And today it’s been getting worse and worse. I can’t concentrate with it buzzing around incessantly like this.”
“I think you just need to take a break,” I say. “You’ve been going at this hard for hours and hours.”
