Page 46 of Land of Shadow

I catch my breath and straighten, barely maintaining my grip on the vial as I brace myself on the counter with my other hand. By the time I stomp into the hall, he’s gone.

“Fucking asshole! And who says ‘peril’ unironically?” I yell at the empty apartment. The only response is the pounding of my heart and the unwanted heat pooling in my gut.

14

The sample is only a slight upgrade from the last. We’ve been working on it for a week, making no headway on anything except more questions. Questions—we’ve generated plenty of those. Why are the red blood cells deformed? Where are the white blood cells? Why does the sheer amount of fibrin eclipse anything we’ve ever seen? And what can this blood do to help with the cure?

Wyatt, his eyes bloodshot and his face wan, plops down beside me as I work on my laptop. “When your sister cut her arm, you were right there, right?”

“Yeah.” I stretch and spin on my seat to look at him. “Why?”

“You’re certain you saw what we all saw?”

“Yeah.” I cock my head to the side. “Where are you going with this?”

He shrugs. “Nowhere. That’s the problem with these samples. There’s nothing in them that could create those results. There’s a lot of fibrin, sure. But it’s not like it interacts with anything outside itself. The math is not mathing, and the math isn’t going to math with what we’re being given.”

Aang leans over the other side of the lab table, his black hair sticking up every which way. “This guy—the superhuman—he comes to your apartment every night?”

“For like, two seconds. Just to ask me why I haven’t found the cure yet.” I’m just as frustrated as everyone else here, maybe more so. Valen has only given me a few terse sentences ever since the night he found Gage in my apartment. No messages, nothing to offer Gage.

“So, if we all jumped him …” Aang hands his head and groans. “I abhor violence, but we could like, take him down and just get a small sample?”

“Hippocratic Oath, anyone?” Evie sidles up, a coffee cup cradled in her palms. “You know we can’t do that.”

“I’m not technically a doctor.” Gretchen calls from her spot at her microscope. “I mean, a Ph.D. doctor three times over, yeah, but not an M.D.”

“That’s right.” Aang pops his head up. “We could hold him down, and you could just do a quick poke. We’d be all set.”

I shake my head. “Have youseenValen?”

“Yeah, on TV.” Aang shrugs.

“He’s huge. Like, massive. But not bulky. Wiry. And he moves fast, too fast for any of us to beat him at anything other than Scrabble.” I rub the bridge of my nose. “We aren’t getting anything from him unless he freely gives it.”

Evie makes ahmmmmnoise as a peal of thunder sounds outside. A storm front rolled in this morning, and it’s been pounding the capital for at least an hour.

“What are you thinking?” Wyatt’s hair is falling into his eyes now, and he’s gotten a habit of shaking his head frat-boy-style to clear his vision—which is cute but also very golden retriever when he does it.

“Why not the honeypot?” Evie taps her fingernail on her cup.

Without a word, Wyatt hurries off to his record collection.

“The what?” Aang asks. “Honey?”

“The honeypot.” She gives him a ‘come on, you know what I mean’ look. “Read a book, why don’t you. Afictionbook,” she amends. “The honeypot is what spies call it when they use sex to get secrets.”

My cheeks begin to go warm. “No. Absolutely not. Not on the table.”

Aang snorts a laugh. “All due respect to Georgia—” It’s quite clear he means zero respect is coming my way. “—but look at her. She dresses like a ragamuffin, keeps her hair in a tangled bun, and some days, well, I think we all know that some days she smells.”

“What? I don’t smell!” I fight the urge to sniff my pits.

Gretchen rolls closer, her eyes apologetic. “We all smell sometimes. Keeping late hours in here and not taking time to do self-care, is what he means.”

“I don’t smell.” Aang huffs.

“Your hair looks like you stuck your finger in a socket,” Evie points out.

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