Page 6 of Fortune's Ashes
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt ill; sickness wasn’t usually something I had to worry about. I’d always supposed that was a perk of being the phoenix. I scowled as I wondered if my nausea and fatigue were related to being a Cassandra. It made sense because nothing else had altered. If I was cursed not only with seeing the future but also feeling ill, I was liable to throw a genuine tantrum. Or indeed several.
‘Good afternoon!’
I smiled weakly at the woman behind the counter before glancing at the shelves. Man, there were a lot of vitamins here.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
I shuffled away from the vitamins towards the painkillers – but I wasn’t in pain. I gritted my teeth. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for something to help with nausea.’
‘Certainly. Is it for yourself?’
I nodded.
‘Are there any other symptoms? Fever? Headache?’
I considered. ‘No, I just feel sick. I might have eaten something dodgy. I have a metallic taste in my mouth.’
‘Is the nausea constant?’
‘It comes and goes.’ I scratched my neck. ‘But I’m quite tired. I’m under a lot of stress at the moment though, and I’m not sleeping very well.’
She looked at me kindly. ‘How long have you been experiencing the nausea?’
I shrugged. ‘A couple of weeks, I suppose.’
The pharmacist didn’t look away. ‘When was your last period?’
I let out a surprised bark of laughter. ‘I’m not—' I began.
Then I stopped.
Wait.
Oh.
The blood drained from my face. ‘I’m on the pill,’ I whispered. But I’d had a lot on my mind recently and I hadn’t been paying attention to my cycle. Dying tended to throw it off track so I wasn’t always as aware of it as I should have been.
‘The pill is very effective, but no birth control is one hundred percent,’ the pharmacist told me.
I was starting to feel nauseous again. ‘My breasts are a little tender,’ I admitted.
The pharmacist offered a tentative smile. ‘Maybe you should try a pregnancy test first,’ she suggested.
ChapterThree
Ipushed my sweat-dampened hair away from my forehead and stared at the vomit-speckled ceramic. Carrots. Why were there always carrots in puke?
‘You know,’ Laura said, appearing at the door and handing me a cool cloth and a glass of water, ‘it’s harder to extract DNA from someone’s barf than you might think.’
I dabbed at my skin and gulped down the water before wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and looking up at her. ‘Is that your way of telling me it won’t matter if I throw up over the next corpse I come across?’
‘Oh no, it’ll absolutely matter,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Don’t do it.’
Easier said than done. Right now I had more control over my chaotic life than I did over the contents of my stomach – and that was saying something.
‘But,’ she continued, ‘it’s not as evidentiarily helpful as other bodily fluids, and it’s not found at crime scenes as often as you’d think.’ She added after a thoughtful pause, ‘I’ve heard that it’s a positive thing in pregnancy, though. Morning sickness is a good indicator that there is less chance of miscarriage.’
I met her eyes. It was less than a day since I’d taken the test and I hadn’t mentioned my impending motherhood to anyone. But she wasn’t stupid and she was a doctor, a doctor of pathology rather than obstetrics, but still a doctor. I sighed, flushed the toilet and got to my feet. ‘It’s that obvious?’
