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“Yes. Jackson gave me a very brief overview of the situation, but it was enough that I expected that you would be far worse off than you initially appear.” His gaze met mine. “I apologize for putting it so bluntly.”
I shook my head. “Not at all. I’ve been worse off, trust me. Today is a good day so far.”
The doctor glanced at Declan and Jackson. “I’ll speak with Jill privately for now. You can wait outside.”
“Sure thing,” Jackson said, and he was gone from the room in an instant.
Declan stayed put, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Mr. Reyes?” Dr. Reynolds said.
“I’m staying,” he replied.
“It’s okay,” I told him.
“I’m staying,” he said again, firmer.
I nearly smiled. My personal bodyguard didn’t take too many breaks from his current job.
Dr. Reynolds cleared his throat but didn’t protest Declan’s decision. “Very well,” he said. “How long ago were you injected with the formula, Jill?”
“Nine days ago, almost to the hour,” I told him.
“And the side effects?”
“Mostly pain.”
“Pain that you would describe as cold, hot? Searing? Piercing?”
“All of the above,” I said grimly. “Depending on the day.”
“How long has each episode lasted?”
“I don’t know, maybe a couple minutes each, at the most? Feels like much longer than that, of course. And they’ve stopped, it’s been three, actually, four days since anything bad happened with the side effects. That was when I was injected with the blood fuser.”
“I see.” He nodded as he scribbled down notes on a pad of paper. “Your hair and your eyes...their color has changed.”
I nodded. “After the fuser, my blond hair turned black. My eyes were blue before.” I watched him scribble faster as he bit his bottom lip. “I’m getting the feeling that you have the urge to say ‘fascinating’ again.”
“I must admit, I do.” He met my gaze directly. “How many vampires has the Nightshade taken?"
I needed to think about it for a moment since I’d all but repressed the violent experiences to keep them from haunting my every waking hour.
“The first was the vampire Dr. Gray wanted to observe with me from behind a two-way mirror,” I muttered, half to myself. “Then the vampire that Ma—” I stopped myself before I said the dead vampire’s king’s full name, even though I was sure if Jackson knew what had happened to Matthias, then Dr. Reynolds also knew. Matthias had handed me over to a vampire he believed was a traitor to see what would happen immediately after our introduction. “That’s two,” I said.
“And the woman at the diner the first night,” Declan said.
I glanced at him. “She didn’t get a chance to bite me. You got to her first.”
He nodded. “Right.”
Killing vampires may have been commonplace for him, but that woman had been the first I’d ever seen turn to ash right in front of me. It was a sight and an experience that had been permanently seared into my memory.
“There was a third,” I said, remembering with a shudder that there was another vampire who’d gotten a taste in Matthias’s underground lair. Again, the vampire king had used me as a distraction as we made our escape from a sudden uprising of his disgruntled followers and blood servants.
Dr. Reynolds now inspected my neck. “If these marks are eight days old or less, it seems that you are healing slightly more rapidly than one would expect.”
“I’ll take that,” I told him. “May as well be a slight benefit to all of this, right?”
