“Actually, yes. Sorry.” I frowned at myself. How was I going to get Anna to come closer tomorrow night when I was off shift again?
“I could … give you a finger?” He held up his right pinkie. “I don’t need all of them. One won’t hurt much.” I blanched, and he laughed out loud. “I’m teasing. It would grow back—but I’m teasing.”
I forced a grin. “Heh. Sorry.”
“You apologize too much.”
“Sorry—” I began instinctively.
“See?”
I rolled my eyes. He was right, but what did he know about me, and the things I had to apologize for?
I looked around the room. He’d been here for long enough to have photos on the walls—rows of uniformed men stood in front of large red trucks. A cafeteria tray sat on the shelf on the far side of the room. I walked over and picked it up. A rime of brown-gray sauce and a gnawed portion of a bone remained. “What was dinner?”
“Long pig?” he guessed. I looked askance at him and he waved his arms in a negating fashion. “I’m not sure. I eat what they send me.”
For a moment, I imagined him lumbering after me, slow-shuffling horror-movie style. He was far wittier than a movie zombie, but he was still technically undead. I lifted the tray—it had a good weight. I could hit someone over the head with it if I needed to. I turned around and kept the tray between us.
“How is it that you’re a firefighter, if you want to eat people?”
“I don’t want to eat everyone. I really only need flesh to regenerate. Which is why I’m here, so I can eat under qualified medical supervision.”
“So this?” I asked, dipping the tray.
“I have a don’t ask, don’t tell, policy.”
I supposed that, given the number of surgeries being performed in the hospital at any one time, and the number of people dying here—some of whose identities were unknown and some few of those who likely had no next of kin—it was possible that we did have enough extra flesh to go around, as disgusting as the thought might be.
“But why be a firefighter?”
“I’m almost indestructible. What else should I do?” He shrugged. “I get to have a well-paying job and save a few lives. I get burned a few times, heal up a few times, and then move on to a new town.”
“You’re the Bruce Banner of zombie firefighters?”
His lips broke into an easy grin. “A comic book fan?”
“My brother used to read them a lot.” I shrugged with the tray. I didn’t mention how fast he’d sold them when he’d found other pursuits.
“I only saw the movies.” He jerked his chin at me. “What’s the last movie you saw?
“It’s, uh, been a while.” Was he flirting with me? I’d only ever had patients who were detoxing flirt with me before, and they’d never been very subtle. More of a “Hey, nurse, can we fuck?” between periods of trying to run naked down the hall.
“That’s too bad,” he said. He was grinning even wider.
“Well!” I said, walking again toward the door. “I guess there’s not much that I can do for you tonight, Mr. Smith.”
“Call me Ti.”
“Ti,” I said, then managed to balance the tray on one hand and open the door behind me with the other. “So—just hit the call light if you need anything,” I said, all in one breath. “I’ll be right outside.”
“All right…” He squinted, his eyes searching my chest for my badge. “Miss Spence.”
“Call me Edie,” I blurted out, and made my escape.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“So, Gina—what’s Mr. Smith’s story?” I tried to sidle around to the were-corrals without anyone noticing. It wouldn’t do for Charles or Meaty to hear the tone of my voice.
“Just read the chart. Wait—why are you not reading the chart?” She stopped her own charting and clicked her pen. “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh,” she said, her inflection a wave. I sighed. It would be nice to someday live in a world where what I was thinking wasn’t always written on my face.
Gina grinned and rocked back in her chair, suddenly all business. Girl business.
“Frequent flyer. This is the third time he’s been here. He’s a nice guy, I’ve helped out with him sometimes. He just needs a place where human is on the menu to hide out while he heals,” she said and shrugged.
My stomach wanted to turn. But in comparison to everything else I’d seen or done in my nursing career so far—like, say, that I’d had stolen blood sitting in my fridge the previous night—I didn’t think I could throw any culinary stones. “Anything else?” I pressed.
“Nope. Keeps to himself. I don’t even know his first name.” She shrugged. “Mr. Smith is one of those made- up protective names—” she said.
“At least it’s not a month.” A fake name meant he had a name, at least. Was Ti his real name? I hoped so.
“Anyhow,” she continued, “not much else I can do for you. Half his chart’s made-up data, anyhow. Meaty’s going easy on you. You’re going to have a slow night.”
A slow night of sitting outside his room with far too long to think. My choices were obsess over a mostly unknown patient, obsess over my upcoming tribunal, or obsess over how I was going to get Anna to finally come talk to me at my house. None of those choices felt very appealing.
“Do you need any help?” I asked.
“I’ve got a blood draw I could use an extra hand on.”
The corners of my lips drew up into almost a vampiric grin. “Then I’m your girl.”
I used one wrong tube on purpose, in addition to the right tubes, and pocketed it instead of putting it into the room’s biohazard bin. Gina’s patient had been a nice elderly gentleman. I had a strange feeling that, once transformed, he’d make a very charming wolf.
I waited up that morning after getting home. The vial was in the parking lot between my car and my apartment. It’d still be dark for an hour, it was worth a shot. What else could I do to gain Anna’s trust? Maybe I should have asked Gina for some tips on taming feral things …
Dawn neared. As I thought about getting my blood samples to reuse at dusk, a white figure emerged. Anna again. I sat very, very still.
She was beautiful in a wild way, like a caged cat at the zoo. Now that she was nearer, I knew she was something I only wanted to appreciate with a moat and a safety fence between us.
She found the plastic vial in the snow, cracked its lid off with her teeth, and poured its contents out onto her tongue like a rare elixir. Then she spat in the snow with her lips curled high.
“Were-blood!”
“So you can talk—” I said quietly, knowing that at this distance her vampire ears would hear me just fine.
She turned and threw the vial at my window. I flinched as it came through the metal burglar bars and bounced off the window screen into the snow.
“I’m sorry. I was trying to help.”
“By poisoning me?” she asked. She had an accent—Russian for sure. She licked her tongue across the back of one arm, as if to clean it. Then she swiveled her head to stare at me, more animal than child. I blinked, and one second later, she was at my bars, her hands curling around them, peering in.
My heart pounded. The vampires and daytimers at Y4 had a thin veneer of humanity—the worst of it, yes, but some. Anna was entirely other and frightening.
“You can’t come in unless I invite you,” I said.
