I mirrored his sigh. “I know, but you keep forgetting to let me be a part of drawing that picture.”
“I get it. I really do,” he said. “I’m glad we’re still friends.”
“I am too,” I said, though I wondered how much he really did get it. It wasn’t the first time this issue had cropped up. At the same time, I was glad he still wanted to be friends. That was way better than pissed and distant, which would have made the break up a billion times harder. “Marcus, I know this is gonna sound pompous and preachy, but I’m really glad you’re taking control of your life and going to law school.”
“Uncle Pietro has been after me to do it for ages.” A corner of his mouth quirked up. “Looks like we’ve come full circle. A year ago I was the one getting you to take control of your life.”
I snorted and filed away the fact that Pietro had been nagging him. Another thing he hadn’t bothered to share with me. “I’m not sure me telling you to go to law school after you’d already been accepted compares to everything you did for me, but I’ll take the credit if you’re going to offer it.”
He laughed. “Sure, what the hell.”
“Do you know where you’re going to live?”
“I’ll drive to the city tomorrow and start hunting apartments,” he said.
Without me. “I think you’re going to fucking shine,” I said.
He leaned over and kissed me, chaste and sweet enough to make tears spring to my eyes. “So will you—”
Whatever else he was going to say got cut off as the truck door on my side flew open. Yanked open, I realized as I let out a stupid girly shriek and jerked back against Marcus. “What the shit?” I yelled, bringing my legs up to kick out at the attacker, even though all I could see was a looming shadow.
Marcus grabbed his gun from the console and was out the door in a flash to draw down on the assailant. “Back off!”
“Wait!” I yelled, then dropped my legs and leaned forward. Holy shit, it was Philip, face flushed and one hand gripping the truck door so hard I was shocked he didn’t dent it. “Jesus, dude, are you all right?”
Philip’s lips pulled back from his teeth, and he shot a hand toward me, even as survival instinct had me scrabbling back toward the driver’s side door. He got hold of my ankle for a second, then released it and staggered back several feet, hands held out as if for balance, and face pinched with an expression I knew too well as his splitting-headache face.
Marcus came around the front of the truck to my door. “Angel, you okay?” he asked, continuing to cover Philip.
“Yeah, I’m good.” I quickly slid out of the truck. “But something’s wrong with him.”
“No. No . . . nothing’s wrong,” Philip said, fighting to straighten. His throat worked as he swallowed, and then he plastered a sickly smile onto his face. “I was . . . worried about you. I called you, but you didn’t answer.” He held up his left arm, and the dim light from the truck revealed a mottled patch of skin above his elbow. “I, uh, had a reaction. I put a call in to Dr. Nikas, but I was worried about you.”
Marcus frowned and lowered his gun. Dread rising, I yanked my sleeve up. “Aw, crap.” My arm held a discolored spot in a matching location, and when I poked it with my finger I found it grossly spongy. Pre-rot. But how could I be rotting when I wasn’t hungry for brains?
Worry bloomed on Marcus’s face as his gaze shifted back and forth between us. “What does this mean?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Philip said, shaking his head. “I overreacted because Angel didn’t answer, that’s all.”
He’s covering. He needed to talk to me on my own, and he knew there was no way Marcus would leave if he knew Philip hadn’t exactly been himself when he came at me a few minutes earlier. On top of that, Philip obviously didn’t want Marcus to be jealous. Perfectly natural for a nice guy like him, especially since he didn’t know we’d just broken up.
A pang went through me. Broken up, and Marcus was moving away, at least for a couple of years. Marcus and I had been through a number of ups and downs over the past year and had broken up and gotten back together more than once. But he’d always been around. Near. He’d made me a zombie, saved my life. And he’d been a part of that life ever since.
“I feel perfectly fine,” I told him. “What did Dr. Nikas say?”
“I left a message,” Philip said. “I’m waiting for him to call me back.”
“I’d like to hear what he has to say when he does.”
Marcus twitched his hand toward mine then pulled it back. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Totally,” I reassured him.
His eyes went to Philip and stayed there for several seconds, no doubt assessing and deciding whether it was safe to leave me with him. Philip looked perfectly fine now, though a little pale.
Marcus drew a breath and released it. He was the third wheel now, I realized with a sharp pang, and he knew it.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said. “If that’s all right, that is.”
“It is,” I replied. “Thanks for the ride home.”
He leaned in and brushed his lips against my cheek, cast a hard look at Philip that clearly held all sorts of Hurt her and I will destroy you type messages, and then turned away, climbed into his truck, and drove off.
I waited until his tail lights disappeared around the bend of the road, then rounded on Philip. “What the hell was that?” I demanded.
Philip exhaled. “I came by to see if you were home yet. I didn’t see your car, so I called, but you didn’t answer. I decided to wait a bit to see if you’d come by.” He lifted his chin toward the end of the driveway. “You pulled in, and I had every intention of waiting until Marcus was gone, and then—” His face lost all color. “It was like I was watching myself go and yank the truck door open,” he continued. “No way to stop it and no idea what was coming next. Like being a backseat passenger in my own body.” He shook his head. “Then it was gone. Left me dizzy and with a headache like the one at the lab this morning, but worse. The headache’s almost gone now, at least.”
Well, that sounded like all sorts of suck. “What about this?” I asked and pointed to the blotch on my arm. “You don’t have any brains on you?”
Philip exhaled. “Angel, that’s the problem. I’m tanked. It doesn’t touch it.”
Permanent rot? An ugly twist of fear curled through me, and I had to fight the urge to rub at my arm. “We should call the lab and try and get hold of Dr. Nikas again,” I said.
He nodded agreement. “I left the voicemail earlier when I noticed the rot, but shit’s going downhill.”
“Yeah, weird freakout episodes justify another call,” I said with a glower. “Come on in. I’ll make the call, and we can go from there.” I led the way up the driveway and inside.
“Okay if I use your bathroom?” Philip asked.
“Yeah, no prob,” I replied and tried not to think about what condition the bathroom might be in. Horrific, most likely, even though I’d cleaned the toilet only last week, with possible nastiness that ranged from hair in the shower drain to Dad’s skid-mark underwear hanging from the toilet flush handle, with a dying roach in the sink for added ambience. Best not to even think of it. “Since you’ve already left a voicemail for Dr. Nikas, I’ll try Jacques or Reg,” I added.
“Sure thing,” Philip said. “I’ll be right out.”
Detouring to the bedroom, I snagged a bottle of brains out of the fridge. A few gulps later, I peered at my arm in dismay as Absolutely Nothing happened. Shit. Double triple quadruple shit.
Returning to the living room, I hit the lab’s number. Jacques picked up on the first ring.