knew how important a vaccine could be. He couldn’t possibly agree with my decision to trade myself for Phineas.
Which meant he might try to keep me here.
Bastian slid a plastic key card through the lock of a plain white door. I followed him, Baylor behind me, into a room that looked like every stereotypical biology lab I’d ever seen. I didn’t know the names of the machines or what they did. There were no chairs, no exam tables—just equipment—and the odor of blood made my stomach churn.
“What are you doing?” I asked when Bastian reached for a phone.
“Calling a lab assistant. Unless you know how to draw your own blood?”
I shook my head. He made the call and we waited. Bastian took some gauze out of a drawer, pressed it to his nose, and then stared at me until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“What?”
“Just trying to remember the fragile blond girl I first met almost five years ago,” he said.
“And I’m a bit disappointed we never managed to locate Chalice Frost and train her. This teleporting ability of hers would have been a terrific advantage.”
I blinked. I hadn’t expected that. “I think this teleporting ability of
“An advantage you’re giving away to Thackery.”
“Dude, even if I weren’t between a rock and a fucking hard place with Thackery, it’s not an advantage you’d get to use anytime soon. I’m not a Hunter anymore.”
“Perhaps not in occupation, but you’ll always be a Hunter in spirit. I’ve never chosen unwisely, Evangeline.”
The lab assistant arrived, a flighty, overcaffeinated young woman with boy-cut brown hair and black-rimmed glasses. She took one look at Baylor, who hadn’t put his gun away, and shrank back.
“Marie,” Bastian said, “Ms. Stone here needs a blood sample drawn.”
Marie nodded vigorously, those thick glasses slipping down her long nose. She filled two vials with my blood —such normal-looking blood. And maybe it was. Part of me hoped it was. “Do you need this tested?” she asked.
“Yes,” Bastian said. “Priority scan for absolutely anything abnormal, no matter how small.”
“Okay.” She took the vials to one of the other counters and put them in a rack for safekeeping.
“If you’re determined to do this,” Bastian said to me, “then may I request one further precaution?”
“Request away,” I said.
“Let Marie inject you with the internal tracking dye.”
I’d been injected with the radioactive dye a few times in the past without ill effects. Still, everything that had ever come out of R&D was now suspect. “Thackery’s probably the one who told Erickson how to develop ours and knows how to find it, so no thanks.”
“This is a new varietal that’s improved upon the old formula. It allows us to track you within a half-mile radius now. Thackery shouldn’t be able to scan you for it.”
“Is it detectable?”
“You mean when he tests your blood? No, it shouldn’t be.”
“Shouldn’t be.” I hated words like that. And yet, for all my suspicions, it was actually a damned good backup plan. As long as he wasn’t lying to me. “Okay, then.”
Bastian smiled. “Marie, can you fetch the D-34 solution?”
The lab assistant produced a bottle of blue liquid from a locked cabinet. I watched her insert a syringe, suck out a small amount, and flick it with her finger. She stepped toward me, and I held up my hand in a warning gesture. “Nuh-uh, him first.”
“We don’t need to track me,” Bastian said.
“True, but I don’t know what’s really in that bottle, or if D-34 is code for a sedative. You stay on your feet, then she can hit me with it.”
A flicker of respect passed across Bastian’s face. He unbuttoned his shirt sleeve and rolled it to just above the elbow. “Okay, then. Go ahead, Marie.”
She swabbed the inside of his elbow and made the injection. We stood there for a full minute afterward, everyone deferring to me. When Bastian remained upright, bemused, without showing any sign of passing out, I presented my arm to Marie. She prepped a new syringe. Heat flared outward from the injection site, dissipating seconds later. No dizziness, no nausea. So far, so good.
“You been here a while?” I asked Marie.
She nodded, wary of being addressed directly. “Yes.”
“A week ago, Gina Kismet sent a sample of liquid here. She was told it was an experimental antidote. Did you test it?”
She glanced at Bastian first, then shook her head at me. “I didn’t test it, but I saw the file. It was a deteriorating tracking liquid, meant to last about seventy-two hours. Its tracking range isn’t impressive.”
Damn. We still didn’t know how the pùca found the cabin, or how Thackery knew I’d survived the infection.
“I’ll get the computer you’ll need to track her,” Bastian said to Baylor. “Meet me back at the elevator.”
Baylor seemed poised to argue, but Bastian slid out of the room like a vapor. Marie discarded the used needles and went back to her blood work.
“How long will your testing take?” I asked.
“A couple of hours,” she replied, not looking at me.
Baylor and I retreated to the corridor. The networking hallways made navigating back to the elevator difficult, but Baylor seemed to remember the way, so I let him lead. We arrived first and waited. He’d finally reholstered his gun and stood there like a statue, the modern model of a dedicated bodyguard. We’d interacted quite a bit in the last month, but I really knew next to nothing about him. Nothing except his dedication to the Triads and his bullheaded integrity.
“Do me a favor?” I asked before I could talk myself out of it.
“Within my power,” he replied, a curious slant to his mouth.
“Don’t let Wyatt do anything stupid. He won’t like me going to Thackery willingly—hell, I don’t like me going willingly—but right now, I don’t see any other way to save Phineas. Thackery’s got the cards, and he knows how to play them. If things go badly and I …” My stomach clenched. “Just don’t let him do anything stupid, okay?”
“Like try to mount an ill-advised rescue and get himself killed?”
“Basically. Or, you know, hunt down another crazy elf and try to resurrect me again.”
Baylor smiled warmly. “I’ll do my best. Sure you wouldn’t rather ask Gina?”
“I think she could talk him down, but you’re more likely to actually knock him down, if it comes to that.”
“Understood.”
Bastian joined us a minute later, a laptop case dangling from one shoulder. “What are you going to tell the others about me?” he asked.
“You mean the lying-by-omission thing?” Baylor took a menacing step forward. “Nothing. But you’ve got one hour to come clean about it to the brass. One hour.” He didn’t have to make a threat—the violence was implied.
Bravo.
We went back up to the lobby; Bastian stayed below. Wyatt was stalking the elevator doors, looking ready to burst out of his skin. Kismet stood from the chair she’d folded herself into. Both were studies of anxiety and nerves.
“They’re all down there,” I said before he could ask. “All six.”
“What took so long?” His dark gaze roved over me.
“Little preemptive planning.” I told him about the tracking dye and my blood donation, but left out the details of Bastian’s confession. The latter because I didn’t need the headache of prying Wyatt’s hands from Bastian’s throat. I almost didn’t mention the blood—telling Wyatt I’d left a sample behind seemed like saying I didn’t think I’d be back. “It’s being tested downstairs, but I don’t know if they’ll have results before game time.”
