“Last were-war,” Charles said with disgust from his post at the front desk.
I had just about everything done by the time our occupants arrived. Jorgen led them in, one by one.
Each of them looked more forlorn than the last—unwashed, shuffling men and women who said nothing and kept their eyes locked on the ground.
“Who are they, Jorgen?” They all looked homeless to me.
Jorgen waited awhile before speaking to me, as though he had to muster up the strength. “These are your attackers. Viktor’s mob. They attacked some of us too—only they didn’t get very far.”
The women who’d attacked me had been well dressed and able to drive a car. The people Jorgen led in, whom we placed in rooms one by one, didn’t look like they could manage to take an escalator.
Gina emerged from the third room with her arms crossed. “Are they under custody?”
“Until we get some answers, yes,” Jorgen answered.
“They can’t stay here indefinitely just because you’re mad at them. None of them is sick.”
“Humanity at large needs to be protected from them, and the moon is near. Do you want all these unmanaged new weres out on the streets?”
“So your pack’s assuming control of medical decisions for them? If something goes bad?”
“Sure. Why not?” Jorgen said with a shrug.
“I need to talk to Meaty.” She walked back to the main floor while I stood in the hallway with Jorgen. As soon as she was out of earshot, he turned to me.
“Don’t you have any shame, girl?”
I blinked and stepped back, unsure what he was accusing me of, unsure what to say. We were interrupted by Meaty, who came back with Gina.
“I don’t like it any better than you, Gina. I’ll ask the Consortium in the morning.” Meaty pierced Jorgen with a look. “Are there going to be any more surprises tonight?”
“Doubtful.” Jorgen made a gesture to indicate all of us. “Good day, ladies.”
Meaty snorted.
I helped Gina where I could. None of the new admits ever spoke. They’d go where you told them to go, sit, stand, lie, like obedient dogs, but they seemed as uninterested in living as Winter down the hall.
I assessed the first one while Gina sorted out the rest. I ran a blood pressure and took a temperature, and then realized I had no idea what the normal ranges were for weres anyhow. As the thermometer beeped, I nervously pulled the were’s mouth open, hoping he wouldn’t bite me.
He had fillings. He was brand-new, just like the weres that had attacked me.
Keeping a wary eye on him, I cataloged his belongings. Coat, shoes, no wallet or any other ID—and a vial of Lobos Luna in his pocket. I finished what I was doing as fast as I could and got out of the room.
“It’s creepy,” Gina said, meeting me outside.
“Where did they come from?”
“One of them had a voucher from the Armory,” Gina said with a shrug. “I should call a few shelters, figure out where they came from. It’s a raw deal to be homeless and then get forced into a pack.”
The combination of the Armory and the Lobos Luna was all I needed to hear. “About that—I need to go call my brother,” I said.
Gina’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t know that your brother—”
“Your mom, my brother, it’s the same sort of thing.” I interrupted. At least for right now, the Shadows were still doing their job of keeping him safe.
“Sorry, Edie,” Gina said, with the empathy that only someone else trapped working on Y4 could properly express for my situation.
“Thanks,” I said and ran down the hall.
I made it into the locker room and dialed up Jake. He was tired when he answered but he still sounded like himself. “Hey, Sissy. You want me to move in today?”
“No—not yet—Jake—you need to stop selling that stuff. Right now.”
I could hear him rearranging himself, fabric rustling in the background as he hunkered down wherever he was sleeping tonight, to talk more quietly to me.
“Is this about the cell phone? Because I realized I forgot the second I got on the bus—”
“It’s not. It’s not at all.” I tried to think of things I could tell him that would warn him off. “There’s been some Lobos Luna poisonings at the hospital. That stuff is cut with something, Jake.”
“No way. I use it every day.”
Internally, I groaned. “Are any of the people who used, or sold it with you, missing?”
Jake made a thoughtful noise. “Raymond’s still gone. Maybe some other guys. It’s hard to tell, though. It’s winter out, Edie.”
“I know, I know. Just promise me, Jake, you’ll stop selling—and stop using it, too.”
“No.”
“Jake—”
“For the first time in my life, I’m goddamn successful at something. And you can’t handle it, Edie. You can’t control me, and you can’t tell me what to do.”
I pulled my phone away from my face and stared at it in anger for a moment. “Which is why you want to move in with me? Because you’re so successful?”
“Edie, don’t go there. It’s late. I’m tired.”
He hung up on me. Dismayed, I walked back onto the floor.
Gina and I worked quietly until dawn together, and then went our separate ways. I went to find my keys, and found Jake’s vials of Luna Lobos in my purse. I snuck back onto the floor while day-shift nurses were getting report, and grabbed a lab sheet when I thought no one was looking.
“Unknown sample. Unknown source,” I jotted down. It was the kind of sample that made the lab want to come down from wherever they were and kill us—they weren’t keen on doing work that couldn’t be billed to anyone later. But maybe the Consortium had a slush fund for these sorts of occasions. Only the fact that I could say it came from Y4 gave me hope. Surely there was someone on our team down in the lab. Surely.
I put the lab slip and bagged-up sample into the pneumatic tube system, punched in the code for the lab, and wished it well as it got lifted and sucked off to wherever the lab was.
I walked straight through the lobby and out to my car. When another car left the parking lot at the same time, I knew I was still being guarded, especially once they followed me home. I let myself into my apartment, marveled at my carpeting and my couch’s newness again. I fed Minnie and walked back to my bedroom—to find someone who wasn’t me sleeping in my bed. It was Sike, and she was under a fur sheet, or maybe it was a fur coat. I could see her bare feet sticking out from underneath it, and her long red hair streaked across half my bed.
“Sike?” I asked from the doorway. I didn’t want to walk across the room and touch her, just in case she would be violent when she woke. “Sike?” I said, a little louder.
Her eyes opened, and she took a deep breath. Pushing herself up on her elbows, she focused on me. “You were gone half the night!”
“It’s called work. You should try it sometime.”
She sat up, stretched, and pulled her coat around herself. “I am working. You have no idea. Planning a Sanguine ascension ceremony is like planning a wedding, only all the guests could kill you.”
I walked into my room. “So to what do I owe the honor?”
“House Grey. Who told you about them?”
“A frightened were.” I sat down on the edge of my bed beside her to tell her Viktor’s story, but made sure her strange furry coat didn’t touch my leg. “About seven years ago, someone from House Grey visited his father and ruined this guy’s life.”
“That does sound like them. And makes everything infinitely more complicated for us.”
“Who are they?”
“A guild of vampires dedicated to their own causes, whatever and wherever they may be. Assassins, mostly.”
“And they’re part of the Rose Throne?”
“No. They’re part of every Throne, whether that Throne knows it or not. The best assassin is the one you least expect. The Rose Throne is continually at war with them.”
“Really?” I’d figured that since Y4 was in the business of caring for injured daytimers, if there was a war on, we would know. “Why haven’t I met any of them before?”
Sike narrowed her eyes at me. “Because when their people get injured, they let them die. Or rather—they make sure they die. They never leave any witnesses.” She snorted. “They don’t keep lipless freaks around, at any rate.”
Suddenly having released Gideon into her care didn’t seem like that great an idea. “Is Gideon okay?”
She gathered her coat to herself and put her arms through its sleeves. “As well as he can be. We found out who hurt him. House Bathory. Bunch of ingrates, trying to show her up. I wouldn’t be surprised if House Grey put them up to it, just to see how Anna would react.” Sike looked around my bedroom. “Your knife is still safe, isn’t it? Is it here?”
I inhaled to tell her, and then closed my mouth. I didn’t really expect Sike to kill me, but—she laughed. “Look how fast you learn! Don’t tell me. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. Keep it safe.”
“Why’s the knife important to them?”
“It’s not, and you’re not—they’re only interested in fucking Anna over without showing their hand. How they got weres to go along with them, I’ll never know.” She slid her feet into her cast-off heels. “Just two more nights. Anna’s ascension is happening, if I have to make it happen myself.”
“That coat is hideous.” There were patches of skin on it that had no fur; the fur that was there was uneven in length.
“Thank you. It was made for me by an admirer.” She stroked a hand along her side and stuck a hip out to model it briefly. “I brought it here for show-and-tell, in case your boyfriend was spending the night. It might have been a friend of his once upon a time.”