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If he’d been a different sort of person we might have hugged at that point, but we were who we were. He offered me his hand. We shook. He left to handle the antivampire crime wave. I stayed to try and help two of the victims.
25
The Wicked Truthhad slept through the debridement, which was for the best; now they were in a private room on the floor reserved for vampires and other preternatural patients. I sat beside their bed dressed in green scrubs, my wet hair sticking to the back of the chair anytime I didn’t flip it out of the way. There were more uniforms in the hallway by the door to our attacker’s room, because of course he had to be on this floor, too. Dolph had left to help coordinate the aftermath of tonight’s crime spree. I was waiting for Wicked and Truth to wake up; the idea was that I’d use my healing abilities to fix their open wounds now that the burned flesh was gone. Honestly I was exhausted and just wanted to go home and wrap my loves around me and sleep. Also, fresh burns hurt like fuck; how could either vampire be in the mood for literal sexual healing? You’d have to be more of a pain slut than Nathaniel, who was the biggest masochist in our poly group; the only person I knew who was a bigger masochist was Narcissus, and burns would be beyond his hard limit since it was one thing even the Oba of the werehyena clan couldn’t heal.
Neither Wicked nor Truth was into pain, so I wasn’t sure why I was still sitting here. I wanted to go home, and the idea of having sex in the hospital room, even for a good cause, was not a happy thought.There were cops just down the hall, I really didn’t want to tarnish my reputation even more, but it wasn’t just that. After everything that had happened tonight I just wasn’t in the mood, or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for anyone but Jean-Claude. Whatever he’d done to diminish the marks between us made it feel like a piece of my heart was missing.
Nicky and Ethan had gone to try and find food worth eating. They thought my low mood was partially from lack of fuel. Echo and Kaazim stood outside the closed door keeping watch; Fortune leaned against the wall near my chair. The dark blue suit looked black in the dim lights of the hospital room. She looked taller and more slender as she leaned against the wall like a female version of a mob enforcer, or the bad guy’s pet assassin in a James Bond movie. Then she looked down at me with her dark curls like a short halo around her head and grinned at me. All movie illusions were spoiled, but the truth was that I was sitting beside one of the best spies and assassins alive regardless of how cheerful she looked. I knew her vampire master was over two thousand years old, which meant she could be near the same age.
“There’s another chair,” I said.
“You know why I’m standing,” she said.
“Because sitting down it’s harder to draw weapons.”
“See, I knew you’d know why I was standing.”
I wiggled the gun in my hand. “Until I get something with a heavier waistband I’m going to be brandishing my gun.”
“There are pockets on the pants and top,” she said.
“I know, my phone fits just fine in them,” I said, patting the right-hand pocket.
“The gun doesn’t fit at all?” she asked.
I put the Springfield EMP in the pocket of the top. The top of the gun stuck out and the bulk of it pulled and pressed against the material so that it looked like I had a gun in my pocket, like this was all it could be. “If I walk with it in here I have to keep a hand on itbecause otherwise it bounces oddly against me every time I take a step.”
“Looks like it might catch on the material if you tried to pull it out in a hurry,” Fortune said.
“I can fit my hand in with it, sort of, so I’d probably just shoot through the cloth.”
“If you only wanted to hit someone low in the body,” she said.
“True, I have smaller guns at home that would fit in this pocket. Hell, I have a two-shot Derringer that I used to take when I jogged outside more that I shoved in the pocket of my shorts.”
“There are sports bands that you can reengineer for carrying that are a lot more comfortable than a Derringer in your shorts pocket.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know there were specialty places that would modify clothes for weapons back then, and awkward was better than not having a gun when I needed one.”
“A Derringer,” Fortune said, shaking her head. “They have to be right up on you for you to be certain of your shot.”
“If the bad guys weren’t close enough for the Derringer to be useful, then I had enough space to run like hell and get away.”
“At least you had a lanyard for your badge and tactical boots and socks in the marshal gear,” she said.
“Yeah, the high heels didn’t really go with the scrubs,” I said.
She grinned wider, her eyes shining with it even in the dim light. It made me think of Jason, one of my best friends and Nathaniel’s BFF.
“Your face went from happy to serious within seconds, what happened?” Fortune asked, her face sobering.
“Sorry, you’re beautiful, but your grin reminded me of Jason, and I’m beginning to have second thoughts about his visit crossing with my family’s visit.”
“I’ve still never met your Jason Schuyler,” she said.
“He moved to New York to be a ballet dancer before you moved here.”
“I remember the timeline,” she said. “You, Nathaniel, and Jean-Claude have been looking forward to his visit for weeks. Why would you cancel it?”
