Dead Waters - Anton Strout [45]
What the hell, I thought, and took a hit of the stuff myself. I only hoped the woman in green wouldn’t visit me in my dreams. With my luck, I’d be naked without my bat, and I really didn’t want to look that up in any of the dream interpretation books.
12
The next morning we were up and out of the house like the devil was chasing us. For all we knew about that mark on Jane’s back, maybe he was. I reported the discovery of Mason Redfield’s killer to the Inspectre before dragging a worried Jane down to Allorah Daniels’s office/lab and calling her in. She was more than happy to get away from her Tuesday-morning breakfast meeting with the rest of the Enchancellors, most of whom looked like they might be asleep at the meeting table when I pulled her away.
Allorah guided Jane over to a bare, brushed-steel table that stood at the lab end of her office and had Jane lie down on it.
“Gah!” Jane cried out. “Cold!”
“Sorry,” Allorah said and set about examining the mark on Jane’s back by pulling up Jane’s plain black tank top until the writhing symbol was fully in sight.
I leaned over to look closer myself. “Don’t you have any of that giant tissue paper doctors use on their examination beds?” I asked.
Allorah turned her head and gave me a silencing look with cold eyes. “My apologies,” she said. “The creatures that I poke and prod at usually don’t complain.”
“Oh no?”
“No,” she said, turning back to her examination. “They’re usually dead or, at the very least, rotting.”
I was starting to think I had made a bad call bringing Jane to her. “Maybe we should take Jane to a regular doctor,” I said.
Allorah turned to me, standing up straight. “And say what exactly? That a mysterious woman dove through Agent Clayton-Forrester? I didn’t know that traditional medicine could cure that these days.”
“It’s okay,” Jane said, still facedown on the table. “Really. I just wasn’t ready. The cold of the table took me by surprise, that’s all.”
Allorah went back to examining the spot between Jane’s shoulder blades. She grabbed a digital camera off one of her nearby laboratory shelves and took several close-ups before setting the camera aside once again. She bent over Jane, so close she could have licked the spot.
“Strange,” she said.
“What is?” I asked, moving even closer to try to see what she was seeing.
Allorah reached inside her lab coat and pulled out a large circular necklace hiding within her own shirt. I was familiar with it. My psychometry had shown me Allorah in her younger days as a high school science teacher defending herself against Damaris, Brandon’s vampire consort. Just remembering the damage the circular blade had done sent a chill up my spine upon seeing it once again.
“Look at the designs in the mark on her back,” she said, showing me her necklace at the same time. “They remind me of the ones on my apotropaic eye. They look Greek in origin.”
“You sure about that?” I asked, studying the necklace against the symbol.
“Pretty sure,” Allorah said, twirling the necklace on its chain. “I got this in Greece.”
Jane propped herself up on her elbows. “I don’t care what it is,” she said. “I just want to know if you can get it off of me.”
Allorah looked down at her, meeting Jane’s eyes. “Like, cut it off? I could try.”
The color left Jane’s face and she put her head back down onto the surface of the table. I gave Allorah a look of disbelief. “You people skills still leave a lot to be desired, Ms. Daniels.”
Allorah’s face softened. “Don’t worry,” she said, putting a reassuring hand on Jane’s shoulder, smoothing her tank top back down. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Jane turned to her, glancing up with hope on her face. “You wouldn’t?”
“No,” Allorah said. “I don’t know how it’s bonded to you quite yet. We could try to remove it, but whatever may be protecting it might kill you in the process.”
Jane flinched at her words.
Allorah looked over at me. “What?” she said, defensive. “I’m much better at dissecting and dismembering.”
“Don’t we have—I don’t know—a witch doctor or something?