“I was right. It is improving,” he said. “But not enough for me to put you into further misery.”
“But I want to be miserable!” I protested as he rolled off me and propped himself up on an elbow. I sat up. “Wait. That didn’t sound right.”
“Jasmine, you are rubbing your leg against the side of my boot. And I am certain at least half of the writhing you were doing was to set your back against the comforter just to relieve the itching there.”
“Ah. Uh.”
He reached over and kissed me on the forehead. “When you have recovered, I promise to make up for every moment we have missed. And then some.”
I smiled. How lovely to have snagged a dude who kept his promises. Once I would’ve said there wasn’t more than one in the world. Now I knew there were at least two. And I had fallen for both of them.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
Iwanted to spend more time celebrating. Let Vayl know what he’d really done for me in this tiny bedroom whose bare white walls seemed to sparkle with silver-pink now that I knew Brude was trapped. But maybe I should wait. Yeah. Make extra sure I had control back before I started the festivities.
So I let Vayl return to the living room to check on Ruvin without saying a word about our success. And then, the moment I stepped into the hall, it dropped to the bottom of my priority list. Because, despite Vayl’s reassurances that Cole knew how to take care of himself, when I heard his chuckle thread around Kyphas’s laughter, I lost it. Just a little.
I called for Astral. “Snoop time,” I whispered to her as I knelt between the doors to my bedroom and the bathroom. “I want you to spy on Cole and Kyphas. But don’t you dare start singing. In fact, don’t talk at all. Don’t even record any audio.” There, that should cover all the bases. Besides, it seemed a little too invasive. “And above all, don’t get caught!”
Astral slipped into Kyphas’s room and began streaming video, mostly of Cole sitting by her bed, talking, sharing spoonfuls of pudding, smiling with his usual übercharm. He looked so comfortable! Didn’t he know demons had no net of values to prevent them from stealing the souls of great guys like him? When he helped her turn over, because her back had already healed that much, I nearly growled.
That’s it. The next time Raoul threatens to behead her, I’m handing him an axe.
I joined Vayl and Ruvin in the living room, but the waiting around we were forced to do didn’t improve my mood. We discovered that late-night television in Australia consists of crappy old movies or infomercials that none of us wanted to veg out to. With nothing to distract us, we took turns throwing a tennis ball down the hallway so Jack could race after it. How he managed not to smash into the wall I never could decide, but he always retrieved it without causing any damage.
In the kitchen, Bergman had finished centrifuging the blood. But the next part of the test would still take a while and Ruvin had started checking his watch.
“Are you sure this plan will work?” he asked Vayl for the third time. “The Odeam team did say they wanted me to pick them up at two a.m. That only gives you fifteen minutes to identify the rest of the infested.”
“It will be fine,” he said with a confidence I would’ve had to fake.
“Why are they leaving so early?” I asked.
He shrugged. “When they first called to book a ride from the airport, dade explained that they were just supposed to stop over at the guesthouse for a nap, to sort of rejuve after the flight. And then he wanted me to drive them to the Complex early, he said so they wouldn’t be tying up everyone’s computers during the busiest time of the workday.”
“Makes sense,” I told Vayl. “But that means if Bergman doesn’t get the tests done on time—”
“We will not know who is infected and who is clean.”
“Maybe they’ll find the body and call the cops. That’ll delay this whole deal by at least a day.”
“We both know the gnomes have probably cleaned up that entire mess by now.”
“But we can’t let them get into the Space Complex.”
We both turned toward the kitchen and said, “Hurry up, Bergman!”
“You can’t rush these things!” he called back. “That’s how you get false positives. And vice versa!” Which was why two a.m. found Vayl, Jack, Astral, and I in the Wheezer, following Ruvin and his clients in the Jeep, none of us any wiser as to who in the team, if any of them, had drunk the larvae-laced lemonade.
Since we’d decided to leave Cole back at the house to nurse/babysit (guard) Kyphas, we’d given Ruvin his party line doodads. He tried to do the chatty, but nobody’s ever up for light conversation at two in the morning. Especially not two software engineers, a marketing manager, and the mistress of a missing vice president. And, well, Ruvin wasn’t all that gifted anyway. So only once did they have anything to say.
And that was when they got into the Jeep.
“G’day, mates! Do we have a sleepyhead, then? I only count five of you and I’m sure I brought six from the airport.”
“Our team leader left a note saying he had a family emergency,” one of them replied shortly. “I’m surprised you’re not the one who drove him to the airport.”
“Oh, no, Mr. uh…”
“Johnson.”
“No sir, Mr. Johnson, that wasn’t me. I’m so sorry to hear… well, if there’s anything I can do…”
“Just get us to work before Tykes starts whining about his arm again.”
“It hurts!” came another voice, higher than the first and laced with pain. “I have a mark. Did one of you punch me when you were trying to wake me up?”
Chorus of denials, although I thought I heard a third voice, which must’ve belonged to the marketing guy, Pit, mutter, “I’d like to take a swing at you.”
Then Tykes said, “Look, Bindy’s asleep already. It’s a miracle that bimbo got dressed as out of it as she was before. Does she take sleeping pills?”
“Dunno,” said Johnson. “But she’s gotta be on something, because she wasn’t even upset when she heard dade took off.” Geez, had Cole given her a double dose of knock-out nose stuffing? I waited for more info, but that was the last any of them said.
I fell far enough back that they couldn’t have seen my headlights even on the straight sections of roadway. Sometime in the next five minutes the nail we’d driven into Ruvin’s back tire would release enough air to flatten it. Hopefully by then Bergman would have the results. Otherwise we’d have to move on to plan B. Which involved holding everyone at gunpoint until we knew for sure who to plug.
Vayl’s phone rang. Bergman, you are such a great—
“Hello, Martha,” Vayl said.
“Why is our secretary calling you?” I whispered. “It’s the Oversight Committee, isn’t it? They’ve found some sort of loophole and they’re—”
Vayl made a swift, cutting gesture with his hand. One he’d never used on me before. When his fingers clenched into a fist I knew the news was bad.
“When?” he asked.
While he waited, I tried not to dredge up all the possible nuggets o’ nasty she might be feeding him.
Problem was, in our business, that was all we ever dealt with. So nightmare visions kept slapping the backs of my eyeballs. Floraidh Halsey wasn’t as decrepit as we’d thought when we’d left Inverness.
She’d recruited a new coven and declared war on the CIA. Or worse, another zombie king had risen in Tehran, one too powerful even for our friend Asha Vasta to combat. Or—
“All right. Yes, I understand.” Vayl closed the phone. “Pull over.” I didn’t protest. He knew the risk we were taking with such a delay. Which meant I really didn’t want to be driving when he dropped the bomb. I eased the Wheezer onto the narrow shoulder, even remembering to activate the hazard lights before turning to face him. “What is it?”