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He puffed out his chest. “To their credit, it made me a better scientist.”
“But an unhappy man,” I said.
His shoulders slumped slightly. “Not unhappy. Unfulfilled. There’s a difference.”
“If you say so.”
I strolled along the perimeter of the lab, taking stock of every piece of equipment. I didn’t want this visit to be in vain. If there was something in this room I could identify that would thwart the new set of experiments, I hoped to lay eyes on it before I left.
“You intrigue us, Miss Clay.”
“You sure about that? Seems more like I scare the crap out of you.”
“You were unlike any other subject I had the pleasure of testing.”
I shuddered at his use of the word pleasure. There was a certain abhorrent perversity to it, like a kid who enjoyed torturing animals.
“You only say that because I ruined your science fair project.”
“Mr. Magnarella is serious about a partnership. He sees potential in you. Your knowledge alone is worth the price of setting his ego aside.”
“There isn’t enough room on planet earth to set that ego aside.”
He smirked. “Will I see you at the gala?”
“We’ll see,” I said, which I intended to sound noncommittal, but instead came out sounding ominous and threatening.
My gaze landed on the far counter, where a glass jar held what appeared to be a monstrous foot. My blood ran cold.
“Dr. Edmonds…”
He rubbed his hands together. “Yes, happy to answer any questions.”
“Did you, by any chance, experiment on a ghoul recently?”
His hesitation answered for him.
I motioned to the jar. “Only one?”
“In a show of good faith, I’ll tell you that we captured two, but one escaped.”
“And what happened to the one you kept?”
“We dissected it for research purposes.”
Only a psychopath would feel the need to add “for research purposes” to that statement. My animal torturing theory didn’t seem too far off the mark.
“Did you find the one that ran away?”
“No, but we didn’t look very hard. As you know, we don’t yet have quite the level of funding we had, so we need to choose wisely where to spend our time and resources.”
The ghoul that died on my walkway hadn’t been high or drunk; it had been drugged and experimented on by Edmonds.
“What were you hoping to learn from them?” I highly doubted any gods were eager to slip into a ghoul’s body.
“Ghouls are considered lesser beings, and therefore, have warranted fewer studies. Mr. Magnarella caught them creeping around his premises and decided to make use of them.” Edmonds smiled. “Waste not, want not.”
My stomach churned. “I think I’ve seen enough for today.”
