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“Understood,” I said.
Sarge nodded and pulled his radio off his belt. I expected him to head off to the next thing—as our sergeant he was incredibly busy and even though he patrolled with our squad he hadn’t been on the same team as me since my third week on the night shift, so I knew him the least out of everyone in our squad.
To my surprise, Sarge stayed on the sidewalk with me using his radio to call the boar and vamp incidences into the Cloisters.
Grove sidled up to us, glancing first at Sarge and then me. “You look okay,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m not really injured,” I said. “Just banged up.”
Grove nodded. “Sympathy,” he said. “Lots of sympathy. You want some poison?”
I blinked, trying to process what he’d just said. “Poison?”
Grove pulled a bottle out of his bag and shook it, sloshing the suspicious black liquid it encased. “It’s super potent! Guaranteed to wreck your digestive system.”
“Um, wouldn’t a healing potion be more helpful?” I meekly asked.
“I meant for the vamp,” Grove said. “Seems like he’s obsessed with you.”
I grimaced, thankfully no one could see it with my mask on.I hope not. A vampire of his caliber when I’m a lone slayer? That would be dangerous.
“Grove!” Brody barked. “Leave Blood alone—don’t try to get her to do your dirty work and test your dubious poisons!”
“No one understands my art,” Grove complained, theatrically slumping his shoulders. He wandered off, dragging his feet.
“T-thanks, Grove,” I belatedly called—hoping I hadn’t reacted too late.
Grove turned around long enough to bow at the waist to me.
Well, maybe I’m getting somewhere—even if they call me Blood. I absently rubbed at my shoulder.Grove, at least, has been more willing to talk to me.
* * *
Early that morning—soearly, in fact, that dawn was just burning on the horizon—I limped my way up the stairs of my apartment complex, grimacing with pain.
The rampaging boar had eluded the squad all night and was still at large. I didn’t get how a Clydesdale-sized pig couldhide, but its scent trail had disappeared and neither Brody nor Binx had been able to pick it up.
Although I’d been given the all clear with my health—no broken bones or serious injuries—I still hadn’t had enough time to swig a low-level potion. When Captain Reese heard about my encounter with the micromanaging vamp, she’d had me verbally report into her and then sit in on a meeting with Sarge and two other sergeants who had driven in even though they were off duty.
They’d asked me a lot of questions. I’d painfully choked on my words, but at least I’d been able to bumble through—though I kicked myself for not getting a picture of the downtown vamp. (Any kind of pictorial evidence would have given them something besidesmeto look at!)
All in all, it had been nerve wracking, and I deeply hoped I was never forced to undergo a situation like it again. (At the very least, if it happened again, I was going to insist on dragging my team in to give their own testimony!)
I reached the top stair, and the hot knifing feeling in my weakened right knee made me think I maybe should have taken the elevator instead of my usual stairs.
All I want is to take a potion and fall into bed.
I needed to shower, and I suspected that was going to make my shoulder sting like one of Grove’s poisons.
I sighed and leaned into my door, so worn out I needed to gather my strength before I made myself look for my keys in my backpack.
I heard the soft tap of footfalls in the stairway and my senses kicked in. “Busy night, Brunch?”
I rolled so my right side was on my front door—I was too tired to stand upright—and watched Connor clear the last few stairs. “That’s one way to describe it.”
I unthinkingly kept turning intending to let my back rest against my door. When my left shoulder touched the door it sent a bolt of pain through my body, so I rocketed upright.
Connor strode across the hallway with a frown. “You’re hurt?”
