said. There was a horrible pang in my heart when I said it; I hadn’t meant for it to come out that way, or maybe I did, because the words kept on spilling out and I couldn’t stop them. “I want to say I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” Doug said. “She bolted to protect you.”
“She didn’t have to,” I said. But I flashed again on her yawn. Her fangs. Those terrible fangs. Her eyes. Transomnia’s cold eyes. My fingers in his pruners. His foot in my gut. Sudden pressure grew in my abdomen, and I hunched over, trembling. I wanted to say something else, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
“Maybe… maybe she did,” Jinx said at last.
“I think,” Phil said softly, “Miss Frost has had enough excitement for the day.”
24. WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE…
Intense pain spiked through my hands. I opened my eyes to a darkened hospital room. A black figure with ominous red eyes stood at the end of my bed. He held up something shiny and dripping, like a little sausage. I held up my trembling hands: the first two fingers of each hand were gone, leaving raw stumps. As I watched, the other fingers fell away, one by one, leaving me with two bloody flippers instead of hands. And Transomnia laughed.
I screamed and sat up bolt upright, fingers tearing at the sheets of the hospital bed. It was midday; I had dozed off and fell straight into the same damn nightmare. My fingers throbbed painfully, but they were there. Thank God, they were all there. I rubbed the two fingers of my right hand with the thumb and fingers of my left until the tingling went away.
“I have got to get the fuck out of here,” I said.
And at that moment Philip strolled in the door, carrying flowers and a wry smile that both indicated he was up to something.
“Up for a tour of the campus?” he asked.
“Up for anything,” I said, “that gets me outside.”
Philip worked his magic on the hospital staff again and got them to cough up a wheelchair. Within minutes he was wheeling me out in the crisp October air, wrapped in his overcoat and feeling sunny.
“They say you’re going home Tuesday morning,” Philip said. “I’m actually surprised they’ve kept you this long, if you’re well enough for a tour of the grounds.”
“It’s the knee,” I said. “I think if it was just the cuts and bruises they would have sent me home already, but the doc’s keeping my knee under close observation.”
We curved round the grassy hollow in front of Emory Hospital, turning just short of the buzzing traffic on Clifton Road that cut the hospital and school in half. I looked up through the trees, at the sky: through the peeling red and orange leaves, a contrail slipped lazily by, the body of the jet that made it gleaming in the afternoon sun.
Through it all, Philip kept dropping little hints—notes of caution for dealing with Edgeworld clients, innocent-sounding little questions about the tattoos that I’d been working on, and so on. Finally I could stand it no more.
“All right,” I said. “You know something. I’ve felt the question hanging over me for the whole ride: ‘So, Miss Frost, knowing I’m hunting a killer that strikes the tattooed on the full moon, when were you planning on telling me you were doing a tattoo for a werewolf?’”
Philip laughed. “Okay. We can start there.”
“I met with him just after Rand released me from Atlanta Homicide—”
“That was the urgent tattoo you blew me off for the next day,” Philip said.
“One of them, yes,” I said. “He wants me to ink a control charm, claims he wants more control over his beast—”
“Making him a perfect target,” Philip said.
I hunched over in the chair, feeling defensive. ‘Wulf was a hardcore Edgeworlder, but I’d gotten a good vibe off him. He was sweet, in a rough, direct way, and would have been more handsome—though lost some of his wildness—if he cleaned up that scruffy—
My eyes widened. What I’d taken to be a homeless man, shambling along with a group of students suddenly broke free and began walking towards us with strong, purposeful strides. As he crossed the street, his face turned straight to me and I found myself staring straight into the firm jaw and direct gaze of Wulf.
“Speak of the devil,” I said.
“Hmmm?” Philip said. Then he caught sight of Wulf barreling down on us and brought the wheelchair to a halt