“Calm down,” I repeated, saying it for my benefit as well as hers.
“That’s easy for you to say,” she said. “You’re not marked. That woman didn’t dive through you!”
“We don’t know anything yet, so don’t panic,” I said. “When you went through D.E.A. orientation, didn’t they teach you that panic is for the norms?”
“What orientation?” she asked. “The day I started, they sent me to HR and they barely handed me my welcome kit before Director Wesker pulled me out of there and dragged me off to Tome, Sweet Tome to start cataloging the Black Stacks. I think the only real orientation I ever received was being instructed not to cry while working for Thaddeus Wesker.”
“A valuable lesson, mind you,” I pointed out.
Jane craned her head to look around into the mirror at herself. “That doesn’t really help me now, Simon.”
I grabbed Jane and eased her out into the hall so she couldn’t look at the tattoo anymore. “I know,” I said, guiding her down the hall toward the bedroom, “but we don’t really have an emergency room for something like this, you know? I don’t think anyone from the graveyard shift is up on this type of thing, but I think I know who might be able to tell us something in the morning.”
“You do?” Jane said, looking hopeful for the first time tonight.
“Yup,” I said, leading her over to her side of the bed. “Allorah Daniels.”
Jane’s face was a mask of skepticism. “Won’t she be busy Enchancelloring?”
“We’re all working hard to cover each other’s asses these days,” I said. “I’m sure she won’t mind taking a break from old men and paperwork to get in some lab time. Science was her first love, after all. But first, you need to rest tonight. If there’s no pain or symptoms from it, we’ll defer to her expertise in the morning first thing. I promise.”
Jane lay back against her pillow and slid underneath the sheets, leaving her towel lying in a pile on the floor right next to the bed. “I don’t see how I’m supposed to get any sleep,” she said, worry returning to her face.
I tucked her in, and then went over to the night table on my side of the bed.
“I have just the thing for that,” I said, fishing a small vial out from a jumble of miscellaneous junk in the drawer. I held it up. Down one side were the letters RVW.
“What is that?” she asked.
I held it out to her and dropped it in her hand. “Wow,” I said. “They really did rush you through your orientation. You have this in that welcome kit you still carry around as a purse. It’s a sleeping potion of sorts.”
“RVW,” she said, reading the side of it before twisting off its top. “Rip Van Winkle. Not very clever.”
“I’m pretty sure the Enchancellors came up with the name,” I said. “Leave it to the bureaucrats to lack any artistic finesse.”
She raised it to her lips.
“Careful,” I said. “Just a drop should do it. Otherwise, who knows when you might wake up.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, taking a tiny swallow from it. “If I slept for twenty years, I’m sure that this thing on my back would have killed me by then.”
“Comforting,” I said, and crawled into bed on my side.
“I thought so,” Jane said, already yawning. Her eyes slipped shut.
“Sweet dreams, my love,” I said, putting my hand on her forehead. I ran my fingers through her still-damp hair.
“Only if you visit. . .” she said with a sleepy smile and was out like a light. I took the vial from her hand and stared at her for a few moments, wondering about the mark. How was I going to get to sleep thinking about it?
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.”