Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [75]
“Help me,” I swallowed, “sit up.”
She got an arm under my shoulders and lifted. Detective Tammy Reynolds was five ten, and she worked out at least enough to keep the other—read male—cops from giving her grief. She didn’t have much trouble getting me up, my back against the bathtub.
Staying there was my job, and that was a little more trouble. I propped myself on one arm and leaned against the tub.
She picked the rag up from the edge of the sink where she’d laid it, and put it against my forehead. The rag was cold, and I jerked away from her. I felt cold, that was a new symptom. I thought of something.
“Have you been,” I coughed to clear my throat, “putting cool rags on me?”
“Yes, it helps me when I’m sick.”
“Cold rags don’t seem to be helping me.” I didn’t tell her that it was probably one of the worst things she could have done for me. Ever since I had inherited Richard’s beast, or whoever’s beast, cold didn’t seem to help me when I was sick. I healed like a lycanthrope now, and that meant that my temperature ran hot when I was sick, like my body was cooking itself. A well-meaning doctor had almost killed me with ice baths for what they thought was a dangerously high fever.
I started to shiver.
She got up, rinsing the washrag out, and spreading it out to dry on the edge of the sink. “I threw up in the yard,” she said. She put her hands on the sink, head bowed.
I hugged myself, trying to stop the shivering, but it didn’t really help. I was cold. I hadn’t been cold earlier today. Was a new symptom good or bad?
“It’s a bad scene,” I said, “I’m sure you weren’t the only cop who lost their breakfast.”
Tammy looked at me through a trailing edge of her hair. She had to keep her hair above her collar, just like the male policemen, but she kept it as long as she could. “Maybe, but I’m the only one who passed out.”
“Except for me,” I said.
“Yeah, you and me, the only women at the scene.” She sounded so tired.
Tammy and I weren’t actually friends. She was a Follower of the Way, Christianity’s version of witches. Most of the Followers of the Way were zealots, more Christian than the right-wingers, as if they had to prove they really were worthy of salvation. Tammy had mellowed since she’d been dating Larry Kirkland, my fellow animator. But this was the first time I’d realized how much of that bright and shiny exterior had been worn away. Police work will eat you up and spit you out.
As women we needed to be tougher just to be accepted. Today hadn’t helped either of us.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. The shivering was beginning to get a little worse.
“No, it’s my damn doctor’s fault.”
I looked up at her. “Excuse me?”
“He gives me a prescription for birth control pills then prescribes antibiotics, and doesn’t warn me that while I’m taking the antibiotic, the pill won’t work.”
My eyes went wide. “I’m sorry, are you saying . . .”
“That I’m pregnant, yes.”
I know the surprise showed on my face, I couldn’t help it. “Does Larry know?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“What . . .” I tried to think of something good to say, and gave up. “What are you going to do?”
“Get married, damn it.”
Something must have showed on my face, because she knelt by me. “I love Larry, but I didn’t plan on marrying now, and I certainly didn’t plan on having a baby. Do you know how hard it is to get ahead in this job as a woman? Of course, you do. Sorry.”
“No,” I said, “it’s not the same for me. Police work isn’t my entire career.” The shivering had started up again; no amount of astonishment could keep me warm.
She took her own jacket off, showing her gun in its front holster. She wrapped the jacket around me. I didn’t argue, but clutched it closed with my hands.
“Is the shivering from the pregnancy?” she asked. “Someone said you said you were sick, are you?”
It took me a second or two, blinking