Meaty snorted.

I helped Gina where I could. None of the new admits ever spoke. They'd go where you told them to go, sit, stand, lie, like obedient dogs, but they seemed as uninterested in living as Winter down the hall.

I a.s.sessed the first one while Gina sorted out the rest. I ran a blood pressure and took a temperature, and then realized I had no idea what the normal ranges were for weres anyhow. As the thermometer beeped, I nervously pulled the were's mouth open, hoping he wouldn't bite me.

He had fillings. He was brand-new, just like the weres that had attacked me.

Keeping a wary eye on him, I cataloged his belongings. Coat, shoes, no wallet or any other ID-and a vial of Lobos Luna in his pocket. I finished what I was doing as fast as I could and got out of the room.

"It's creepy," Gina said, meeting me outside.

"Where did they come from?"

"One of them had a voucher from the Armory," Gina said with a shrug. "I should call a few shelters, figure out where they came from. It's a raw deal to be homeless and then get forced into a pack."

The combination of the Armory and the Lobos Luna was all I needed to hear. "About that-I need to go call my brother," I said.

Gina's eyebrows rose. "I didn't know that your brother-"

"Your mom, my brother, it's the same sort of thing." I interrupted. At least for right now, the Shadows were still doing their job of keeping him safe.

"Sorry, Edie," Gina said, with the empathy that only someone else trapped working on Y4 could properly express for my situation.

"Thanks," I said and ran down the hall.

I made it into the locker room and dialed up Jake. He was tired when he answered but he still sounded like himself. "Hey, Sissy. You want me to move in today?"

"No-not yet-Jake-you need to stop selling that stuff. Right now."

I could hear him rearranging himself, fabric rustling in the background as he hunkered down wherever he was sleeping tonight, to talk more quietly to me.

"Is this about the cell phone? Because I realized I forgot the second I got on the bus-"

"It's not. It's not at all." I tried to think of things I could tell him that would warn him off. "There's been some Lobos Luna poisonings at the hospital. That stuff is cut with something, Jake."

"No way. I use it every day."

Internally, I groaned. "Are any of the people who used, or sold it with you, missing?"

Jake made a thoughtful noise. "Raymond's still gone. Maybe some other guys. It's hard to tell, though. It's winter out, Edie."

"I know, I know. Just promise me, Jake, you'll stop selling-and stop using it, too."

"No."

"Jake-"

"For the first time in my life, I'm G.o.dd.a.m.n successful at something. And you can't handle it, Edie. You can't control me, and you can't tell me what to do."

I pulled my phone away from my face and stared at it in anger for a moment. "Which is why you want to move in with me? Because you're so successful?"

"Edie, don't go there. It's late. I'm tired."

He hung up on me. Dismayed, I walked back onto the floor.

Gina and I worked quietly until dawn together, and then went our separate ways. I went to find my keys, and found Jake's vials of Luna Lobos in my purse. I snuck back onto the floor while day-shift nurses were getting report, and grabbed a lab sheet when I thought no one was looking.

"Unknown sample. Unknown source," I jotted down. It was the kind of sample that made the lab want to come down from wherever they were and kill us-they weren't keen on doing work that couldn't be billed to anyone later. But maybe the Consortium had a slush fund for these sorts of occasions. Only the fact that I could say it came from Y4 gave me hope. Surely there was someone on our team down in the lab. Surely.

I put the lab slip and bagged-up sample into the pneumatic tube system, punched in the code for the lab, and wished it well as it got lifted and sucked off to wherever the lab was.

I walked straight through the lobby and out to my car. When another car left the parking lot at the same time, I knew I was still being guarded, especially once they followed me home. I let myself into my apartment, marveled at my carpeting and my couch's newness again. I fed Minnie and walked back to my bedroom-to find someone who wasn't me sleeping in my bed. It was Sike, and she was under a fur sheet, or maybe it was a fur coat. I could see her bare feet sticking out from underneath it, and her long red hair streaked across half my bed.

"Sike?" I asked from the doorway. I didn't want to walk across the room and touch her, just in case she would be violent when she woke. "Sike?" I said, a little louder.

Her eyes opened, and she took a deep breath. Pushing herself up on her elbows, she focused on me. "You were gone half the night!"

"It's called work. You should try it sometime."

She sat up, stretched, and pulled her coat around herself. "I am working. You have no idea. Planning a Sanguine ascension ceremony is like planning a wedding, only all the guests could kill you."

I walked into my room. "So to what do I owe the honor?"

"House Grey. Who told you about them?"

"A frightened were." I sat down on the edge of my bed beside her to tell her Viktor's story, but made sure her strange furry coat didn't touch my leg. "About seven years ago, someone from House Grey visited his father and ruined this guy's life."

"That does sound like them. And makes everything infinitely more complicated for us."

"Who are they?"

"A guild of vampires dedicated to their own causes, whatever and wherever they may be. a.s.sa.s.sins, mostly."

"And they're part of the Rose Throne?"

"No. They're part of every Throne, whether that Throne knows it or not. The best a.s.sa.s.sin is the one you least expect. The Rose Throne is continually at war with them."

"Really?" I'd figured that since Y4 was in the business of caring for injured daytimers, if there was a war on, we would know. "Why haven't I met any of them before?"

Sike narrowed her eyes at me. "Because when their people get injured, they let them die. Or rather-they make sure they die. They never leave any witnesses." She snorted. "They don't keep lipless freaks around, at any rate."

Suddenly having released Gideon into her care didn't seem like that great an idea. "Is Gideon okay?"

She gathered her coat to herself and put her arms through its sleeves. "As well as he can be. We found out who hurt him. House Bathory. Bunch of ingrates, trying to show her up. I wouldn't be surprised if House Grey put them up to it, just to see how Anna would react." Sike looked around my bedroom. "Your knife is still safe, isn't it? Is it here?"

I inhaled to tell her, and then closed my mouth. I didn't really expect Sike to kill me, but-she laughed. "Look how fast you learn! Don't tell me. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it. Keep it safe."

"Why's the knife important to them?"

"It's not, and you're not-they're only interested in f.u.c.king Anna over without showing their hand. How they got weres to go along with them, I'll never know." She slid her feet into her cast-off heels. "Just two more nights. Anna's ascension is happening, if I have to make it happen myself."

"That coat is hideous." There were patches of skin on it that had no fur; the fur that was there was uneven in length.

"Thank you. It was made for me by an admirer." She stroked a hand along her side and stuck a hip out to model it briefly. "I brought it here for show-and-tell, in case your boyfriend was spending the night. It might have been a friend of his once upon a time."

I put two and two together, and thought I was going to be sick. "It's werewolf fur?"

"The trick is to keep them alive when you skin them, so their pelts don't go back. And also to not wear it on a full-moon night. They're very rare."

Bile rose up in my throat. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, Sike," I said as she walked out my bedroom door.

"Do what you like. See you two nights from now. Cheers!" she called from down the hall.

I waited until she was gone, locked my front door, took the comforter and anything else her coat might have touched off my bed, put it into my laundry basket, turned up my thermostat, and went to sleep.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO.

I woke up thinking I only had two more nights of chaos to go. I showered and got ready for work robotically, hit a grocery store, and drove in. The black import car followed me again.

When I reached Y4, the a.s.signment board had twice as many patients on it as usual-there were rooms A through H, holding John and Jane Decembers.

"They're all still here, huh?" I said, looking over the board.

"Yeah, once this guy goes home-I'm going home too." Charles pointed at his a.s.signment, the one lone daytimer. All the donors that needed blood had dried up, so to speak. "Rachel's coming in to help you guys."

"Great."

I got report from Lynn, who'd had rooms A through D during P.M. shift. "Have you ever seen anything like this?" I asked as we were co-signing charts together.

"No, and I've been here for fifteen years. They're creepy." She signed her name and clicked her pen shut. "Have a good night-I'm going to go home and try not to dream."

My first patient was female. She was a little cleaner than the rest, but she stood like Gideon had not long ago, with her back toward me, staring at a point on the wall.

"Do you know what's happening to you right now?" I came up beside her and pushed her gently to sit on the bed. "Has anyone talked to you about the choices you've made?" I kept trying. "Can you tell me your name?"

I saw movement outside the room and looked up-Gina was waiting for me by the door.

I pushed the woman back into the bed, then lifted up her feet, forcing her to lie down. I tucked her in and went to meet Gina outside.

"It's the same up and down the line. Depressing," Gina said.

"Is this normally how it goes?" I asked her. When Gina had infected herself for Brandon's sake, she'd seemed to manage fine. It certainly hadn't made her comatose.

"Not in the least. Usually weres are more full of life. Vibrant. Brash."

I wasn't sure those were the terms I'd have used to describe Lucas groping me last night. "Can we give them shots? Like the ones that cured you?"

"No. As the local pack, Deepest Snow a.s.sumed responsibility for them, as of this morning."

"So?"

"You need consent for shots. None of them can give it right now, seeing as they can't talk. And Deepest Snow won't agree. They asked on day shift and Helen said no. Said she'll integrate them somehow." Because that worked so well with Viktor. Gina saw my frown. "I don't like it any better than you do. Maybe they'll straighten out by the end of the night. Lock all their doors, okay?"

"Okay." I went to do it. I didn't like it, but the only thing that'd make me feel worse than locking them inside their rooms would be having them out here with me.

Taking care of people who only sat and stared and breathed began to wear at my soul. It felt like someone was performing a cruel psychological test, and I was the lab rat. I hooked all of my people up to their oxygen saturation monitors, not because I was afraid they'd stop breathing, but because it'd tell me if they moved. I went out to the main nursing station, where Charles was, and sat in front of the main monitor to watch all their oscillating blue lines. Meaty sat across from us, doing paperwork.

"I needed to get out of crazy corner," I explained to Charles.

"You shouldn't have let them sucker you into so much were-stuff in the first place."

"Gee, thanks." I made a sour face. "Who're you taking care of?"

"My one lone, lovely daytimer. He got a blood transfusion-vampire blood, half a cc-earlier today. He'll be healed by dawn. It's looking like I can take tomorrow night off." Charles kicked his chair and wheeled aside.

"Don't think I'm not jealous of you," I told him.

"Why? You have it off too. Almost everyone will. Those weres should get better, and it won't take a whole team to watch Winter die."

"I have some other stuff to take care of tomorrow night."

"I hope you have some fun, too. You've been serious lately, Spence. Too much work is taking the spirit out of you."

"Don't I know it." I charted each of my patient's oxygenations and heart rates for the hour. It was almost two. "How come you get to pick your a.s.signment?"

"Because I'm the oldest nurse on the floor. Meanest, too, if you count that time I beat Meaty arm wrestling."

Meaty snorted, but didn't stop printing off medication reconciliation forms.

A phone rang. Not one of our normal phones, but an old-fashioned ring, like you heard in the background on old TV shows. Meaty started up, but Charles was closer and dug behind a tangle of power cords for the monitors and computers to bring out a dusty red phone.

"That's the emergency phone, right?" I asked, guessing from the color, and Meaty nodded. I'd seen them on other floors-been in surgical ICU once on a float when they'd turned off the phones to work on them, but left that one on just in case. It looked like a child's plaything, for kids who didn't get to play with cell phones.