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“I don’t know,” Elisha barked, stomping past him with a pinched look on her face. She jabbed a finger at the lab behind her, where a couple of interns scrambled to pick up a stack of fallen papers from the floor.
He sniffed the air. “Is something burning?”
“I had nothing to do with any of this,” Elisha muttered, backing away from him. “I just want it known, for when Grace is better.”
“Any of what?” Anton asked. “What do you mean when Grace is better? What happened to her?”
A resounding bang made them both jump, and Elisha looked around with wide eyes.
“That.”She waved a hand behind her. “All of that. Grace isn’t here, which means Lou is running rampant, okay? And that’s bad. It’s like the science horde is a hive mind, and they’re just feeding off of her science mania.”
“Alrighty then,” Anton called after Elisha when she turned on her heel and bolted for the doors. If the woman who had exploded a whole bonfire would have none of the Geneva labs, then Anton wasn’t sure how he felt about pushing his own luck. Cautioning another look around the lab, he pushed on, careful to avoid a pile of what looked to be orange slime. Traces of glitter could be seen gleaming from desks here and there.
“It won't damage the equipment—these science freaks made sure of it—but god, it’s annoying,” Grace had said with a glare the previous day. Running a finger along a desk, Anton hummed at the glittery residue that came away on his finger. There was a certain charm to the whole thing. Even with the scientists acting as if they were wild boxcar hobos.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” he murmured, still picking his way through the lab. There were fast food containers across one set of tables, an overturned pair of stools, and even a half-empty bottle of vodka sitting on the floor.
What the hell had gone on here?
And what was Lou up to? Anton tilted his head, trying to catch a sound from the woman, but heard nothing in the immediate area. She wasn’t in the labs—at least not the immediate area—but she was close by. But that still didn’t explain Grace’s absence, or the state of her usually orderly and pristine labs. Or why Elisha had said ‘when Grace was better.’ He liked that the least of all in this whole thing.
“Has anyone seen Grace?” Anton tried. The remnants of the physicists shook their heads.
“We aren’t supposed to-” one of them began, before they received an elbow from their counterpart.
“Shut it!”
Anton snapped his fingers at them. “Hey-shut it? Pray tell, why?” When the pair of scientists looked like they might bolt, Anton glared at them. “I sign the checks around here, so if you know what’s good for you, you’ll sing like a canary.”
They both made a face at Anton’s threat. “Crap,” one of them muttered.
“Exactly. Now sing,” Anton ordered, coming to stand beside them.
“Lou is on a science bender,” one said with a nervous look over their shoulder.
“And?” Anton prompted.
“Grace got sick and Lou just…” They shook their heads and then waved their fingers. “It was like she just sort of took off into outer space. And there’s no one to stop her.”
“I heard she fakes her naps,” the other scientist added helpfully.
“Wait, Grace is sick?” Anton stood up straighter and peered around the lab with new eyes. Everything was beginning to click into place.
“This morning she went down like a ton of bricks.”
“Where is she?” Anton whirled around, scanning the lab for Grace’s bright pink hair.
“I’d check by her desk,” one of them supplied with a knowing look. “That’s all I’m going to say.”
“But there’s no one over there.” Anton threw a look toward the desk, before he pushed away from the two scientists. When he stood next to the desk, he spied what looked to be a sneaker sticking out from beneath it.
“Grace?” he tried.
A groan answered him and he sighed, stepping around the desk to see Grace huddled under it, glassy-eyed, with a mug of steaming chicken noodle soup to her nose. Scattered amongst the tissues were what looked to be an assortment of sharpies, a few random work papers, and a bottle of cough syrup. Anton clucked his tongue when he glimpsed the shiny metal of an emergency blanket wrapped around her shivering shoulders.
Grace wasn’t just sick. The woman needed to be in quarantine.
“What are you doing down here?” Anton asked, squatting down in front of her.
