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  “Stop that, please. My head is killing me.”

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t go around shaving poodles!” His voice actually cracked on “poodles.” He could get pretty shriekey when he wanted. And my head, my head, it was just pounding; I could have used about a thousand Advil right then. A million. A billion. This must have been what Zeus felt like right before his daughter Athena popped out of his brain.

  I take it back; it couldn’t have hurt more than this. My head really

  chapter seven

  hurt!

  Yesyes and the only cure

  is the hurt cure the only cure

  is to hurt back and George stupid George with his

  stupid tie his stupid stupid and who who’s holding their head now George who has a headache NOW?

  Ha! His head hurts

  like a bus

  The wheels on the bus

  The wheels

  And who needs Advil, anyway? Not me and not the geese! The geese are Advil free and so am I I I

  I I I the wheels on the geese

  go ’round and ’round

  and they didn’t

  you didn’t

  they didn’t hurt me NOBODY HURTS ME I do all the hurting I I I

  Ha! Screaming.

  Oh, yay.

  chapter eight

  The only thing worse than waking up in a holding cell is waking up handcuffed to a hospital gurney. (It’s dreadful that I know that. It’s worse that I’ve known that since I was fourteen.)

  My clothes were torn. My hair, when I reached up with my uncuffed hand and cautiously fluffed it, was sticky. Two of my right knuckles were starting to puff. And there was a terrible racket just on the other side of the curtain.

  “Godammit! She attacked me, you dumb shits! I’m the one who got tossed through a fucking window like fucking Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop! I’m Axel Foley and you assholes are Victor Maitland and his henchmen!”

  George paused, but only to take a breath. “Get these fucking cuffs off me and give me back my shoelaces and get me some coffee and get the hell out of my way and then kindly die screaming! And call my boss so she can fire my numb-fuck partner! Is anybody listening to me?”

  It really wasn’t funny. It was sort of horrible. I mean … poor George. Poor, poor George. First Shiro showed up to torment my cell mates, then Adrienne came out to … well, I don’t know what she did, but not only was it spectacular, it seems as though she’d managed to get George restrained, too.

  Which was not funny.

  Was not.

  I cracked up anyway. I guess I’m just weak that way.

  chapter nine

  Since George was still being forcibly restrained, and would be for a while judging by his enraged shrieks, I used the chance to clean myself up and then trot downstairs to donate platelets. I won’t deny I was seriously hoping Dr. Welch, the gentleman who ran the Red Cross sharing space with the hospital, hadn’t yet hired his replacement.

  Dr. Welch understood things that many other people wouldn’t. If the new guy was there and running the show, I’d have to deceive him or her all over again.

  Unlike my nutty-bar sister, Adrienne, I hate hate hated deceiving people. It made me break out in a clammy sweat and sometimes a rash. (Dear Gepetto: You should have made Pinocchio get a rash when he lied, because that would be much worse than a growing nose. Most sincerely, Special Agent Cadence Jones.)

  I whipped past the radiology department and the burn unit (oh my good golly goshit those poor poor people!), then cautiously eased through the double doors of the blood bank. I could only see familiar faces, to my relief.

  Joey, one of the nurses, spotted me at once (like a T. rex, her vision was based on movement) and called, “Hey, there, Adrienne, where you been all my life?”

  Okay, reason number one I must donate blood no matter what the consequences: Adrienne behaved herself here. Shiro never came, but Adrienne did, and often. And she was just as sweet as a spring lamb, devouring cookies and watching cartoons while our plasma was sucked out of our arm.

  So I suffered myself to respond to her name. It was annoying, but easier.

  Reason number two: my sisters and I were universal plasma donors … type AB positive. That meant anyone could use our stuff.

  Reason number three: my conscience. Only three people out of a hundred donate, which is disgraceful when you think that a lot more than three out of a hundred get hurt and need blood. Every two seconds someone needs blood! Almost nothing else happens every two seconds, except divorces and possibly tax audits. Supply and demand … except in this case, it was more like demand and demand and demand.

  And reason four, we/I didn’t just donate for others. We/I donated for ourselves. (Ugh. I’m getting a headache.) I needed my first plasma transfusion when I was eleven, after Adrienne decided she could fly and jumped off a fire escape in my body.

  And do not get me started on how often Shiro charges into a fight and sheds blood like a spring hound sheds fur. Really, who has the time—for the fighting, or the recitation? So we had an account at the blood bank.

  So there they were, all my clever calm reasons, lined up like ducklings. It was how I justified lying to health care professionals. But no matter! Here I was. Ready and willing, a favorite with the nurses, chock full of platelet-ey goodness, with a chart full of lies that, I hoped and hoped, were mitigated by my good deed.

  It … it makes sense if you give it a minute. Really!

  “Oh, now … look who it is.” Wolf, another nurse at the bank, straightened up from his paperwork and smiled at me. “And here it’s been so quiet around here. Y’know, Adrienne, you’re in the ER so often, they oughta start charging you rent.”

  “Shush! Don’t give Administration any new ideas. Or the billing department. You got a bed?”

  “For you, we have a suite. We have five suites. Okay, a cot. A sleeping bag?” Wolf, so called because of his prodigious body hair (it sprang in curly tufts from the V on his scrubs shirt and out of his sleeves, and God only knew what was going on in the places covered by clothes), extended his arm like a maître d’ showing a favorite customer the best table in the restaurant. “This way, cookie face.”

  I didn’t want to know how I’d earned that nickname; it was the first I’d ever heard it. I knew he wasn’t talking about me. He thought he was, and I couldn’t say otherwise. Not if I ever wanted to donate for Shiro or myself or a burn patient or a

  (goose)

  kid with a ruptured appendix ever again.

  “And hey,” Wolf said as I sat on an empty couch and rolled up my sleeve, “you can meet the new chief.”

  “That’s okay,” I said hastily. The horror! “I’m sure he—is it a he?—I’m sure he’s super busy. Catching up and all. Or she is.” Wow. I was really bad at this. “In case it’s not a he. Which I wasn’t assuming anyway.” To think, I was a government employee throwing “he” around! What century did I think this was? More PC classes for me, straightaway. Shame, shame.

  “Catching up?” Wolf snorted, taking my vitals. “From what? Welch left the place neat as only an extreme Type-A personality can leave it. Staggering, y’know? No old paperwork. No filing. No out-of-date charts. I think even the carpet’s immaculate in there. You knew the old bugger. Naw, the new guy, Dr. Gallo, is big-time distracted, but not for the reason you’d think.”

  “Reason I’d think?” I asked, intrigued in spite of myself. Wolf was right about Dr. Welch, of course, and I should have realized. Dr. Welch was old school, Dr. Welch was a type-A, and Dr. Welch would no more leave a mess than I’d run over a cat on purpose.

  (And, ugh.)

  “He transferred here for a reason. His nephew was murdered, and he’s out here now helping his sister’s family cope and all.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “More than you know, Adrienne. His nephew was beaten to death, and nobody has a clue who did it. His whole family—they’re not doing too well.”

  Beaten to death?


  “Beaten to death?”

  “Yeah. Pretty shitty, I know.”

  “Shitty” was one word for it. “Strange” was another, because despite the inherent violence in our society, “beaten to death” did not typically show up as a COD on a death certificate. How odd, and terrible.

  Wolf did the worst part of the procedure, the pinprick of blood from the tip of my right index finger to check my hemoglobin. How lame is it that I hate that worse than anything? They can jam bigger needles into the crook of both elbows and I could hum a tune in response, but that finger stick was the worst.

  “I moved here after New York, right?” He was deftly wiping my poor bloodied finger and sticking a Band-Aid over it. “Except for the seventeen-month winters, Minnesota rocks. There are alleys in New York that have a higher crime rate than the whole state put together. I guess it’s naïve to be surprised when something like that does happen around here.”

  “I don’t think it’s naïve. We’re really lucky with the crime rate.”

  “Sure, but then Gallo finds out his nephew got beaten to death in some kind of—” Wolf glanced over his shoulder, but no one was paying attention to us. “Some weird ritual thing, I guess.”

  “Ritual thing?” Wow, did that not sound good. At all.

  “Yeah, I guess he was beat up and dressed in clothes that weren’t his.”

  “Clothes that…” No. No chance.

  Really. No chance. What were the odds, for the love of Micah?

  “His nephew … he was a kid? A teenager?”

  “Yup. Sicko bastard … bad enough to beat anybody to death, but a kid? You believe that crap?”

  Yes. I did believe that crap. Odds or no odds, the truth was that I could have told Wolf exactly what had befallen the late nephew of his new chief. I could have told Wolf lots of things, things that would even murder the dreamless sleep of a nurse, which was a good trick given all the guts RNs waded through on a daily basis.

  “Is … is the new guy … is he white?” Aaggh! Through my tidal wave of stress I realized how that must have sounded. First I assumed the replacement was male. Then I asked if he was a Caucasian male. Very nice. I will have to double-up on those PC workshops. “Was his nephew white?”

  “Uh … yeah. Are you all right? You look—”

  “Was he fourteen?”

  “I don’t know. He was just a kid, I don’t know how old. A teenager, that’s what I heard.” Alarmed, Wolf had put his hands on my shoulders as I tried to surge up from the couch. His small black eyes were squinting in anxiety. “Adrienne, stay put. You look like you’re gonna stroke out.”

  “Let me up.” I heard a click, and saw that Joey had crossed the room and turned on Nickelodeon, in what I assumed was an attempt to calm me down. “Please let me up!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?” Wolf asked, growing more and more perplexed.

  “Can’t tell. That’s part of the problem, I can’t tell.” Confidentiality issues. A media blackout. Oaths that were not to be broken, ever.

  Worst of all: it was my case. And not only had I not been able to catch him/her despite the trail of bodies, I didn’t even have a suspect.

  Welch was gone, the new guy came because I was failing at my job, and dead fourteen-year-old boys kept popping up every summer. I wasn’t having a headache so much as a guilt-induced aneurysm. Whatever I wanted to call it, it still hurt like

  chapter ten

  Who lives

  I want a pineapple!

  Who lives in that pineapple? Under the sea, is it you you you

  Dead boys? Who lives with the dead boys

  Under the sea?

  Spongebob Squarepants!

  Who lives with the Wolfman

  Under the sea?

  he’s not a wolf he is a man he is

  A pineapple under the sea

  I

  don’t know what to

  I came out because her

  head hurts it hurts I’m here but

  Spongebob is, too! How can I hit

  if nautical nonsense be something you wish

  Then the wheels on the bus go

  ’round and ’round

  ’Round and

  ’round

  Who lives

  Who lives in the bus

  Going ’round and ’round

  ’Round and ’round

  The sponge on the bus

  Goes

  ’round and ’round

  And he’s friends with Squidward!

  O he’s so

  Oooooo Plankton I love love love love love love love love you!

  Silly he’s so

  Smack him with all those arms smack him with that Squidward

  ’round and ’round

  Underneath the sea

  The wolf

  and the vampires

  But the monsters are nice. These monsters aren’t geese. They don’t know about geese

  The wheels on the

  Lawn mower Daddy’s lawn mower and the blood makes the feathers sticky

  The vampires are happy to see me the vampires are always happy because

  ’Round and ’round

  They suck my blood

  Suck my blood

  And cookies, too!

  O Spongebob I love you

  ’Round and ’round

  (i’m so happy)

  chapter eleven

  I spat oatmeal crumbs out of my mouth. Faugh! I loathed oatmeal in all its wicked guises, even when surrounded by sugar, butter, and flour. Why? Why would anyone ruin a wonderful idea like a cookie by stuffing it with oats? Not even Cadence would do something so asinine.

  At first I assumed I had wakened in some sort of modern torture chamber. There were prone prisoners everywhere, tubes and machines pulling the very lifeblood from their arms (and some were pulling precious fluids out of one arm and putting them back in the other … fiends!), and several white-coated mysterious figures. And the vile oatmeal cookies, of course.

  Then one of the prisoners got off their bed and crossed the room seeming none the worse for wear, sporting a cheery sticker on their shirt: I GAVE BLOOD TODAY!

  Faugh again. Worse than a torture chamber … a blood bank. And I knew why I was there. Cadence would not tell a lie.

  Note I said “would not” as opposed to “could not.” One of her many useless affectations. Of course she could. But rather than face that, she disappeared. And so I was here in her stead.

  “I was wondering when you’d had enough,” commented a deeply amused male voice I did not know. I looked to my left and beheld an odd sight: a physician who would have looked more at home pushing meth on a street corner than hovering over a hospital bed.

  His eyes. I noticed those first. But several other impressions crowded my brain: the physician had the lean, muscular build of a champion swimmer. He was wearing a pale blue, baggy T-shirt and scrub pants so faded with multiple washings that they looked velvety soft yet fragile, as if they might shred if he moved too quickly.

  His hair was deep black and long—past his ears, but not to his shoulders; it was trying to curl but not quite getting there. His eyes were also black—it was difficult to tell where his irises left off and his pupils began. He blinked slowly, almost like an owl. That, coupled with the dense darkness of his eyes, gave him an almost sharklike air.

  Predatory but … what? Something else, something I could not quite identify. Because if you set his physical features aside, you were only left with his expression, which was oddly expectant, as if he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or the other brick. Right on and through the top of his head. How did the song go? Eyes glazed over in the thousand-yard stare.

  His hospital picture ID read MAX GALLO, M.D. He was scowling in the photo.

  In all, a startling-looking male in his midtwenties who had (at least in my perception) abruptly appeared, like a round out of a handgun.

  And … what had he said? �
��Beg pardon?”

  “The cookies.” His voice was deep; his tone, amused. His eyes smiled; his mouth did not. A trick I would have liked to learn, in all honesty. “I can’t believe I just sat here and watched you suck down eight of them. We appreciate your donations, but maybe you shouldn’t skip meals on platelet days?”

  Oh dear God. My stomach goinged noisily and I could taste and feel the wretched oats coating my throat. Adrienne, you demented wretch, I will make you pay and pay.

  With that vow still clanging like a furious bell in my mind, I leaned over the side of the bed and threw up on Dr. Gallo’s sneakers.

  chapter twelve

  This … this was not my day. Not any of our days. After Shiro finished barfing (I couldn’t remember the last time that happened, poor thing) I sat up. I opened my mouth to apologize, only to hear the doc start to laugh.

  I could tell he was really trying not to; he was visibly trying to get hold of himself, so I suppose I wasn’t as embarrassed as I could have been. It’s tough to stay super-upset on someone’s behalf if they are not super-upset themselves. So I let him chuckle while I slid off the bed and searched for something to clean up the mess. Not to whine overmuch, but it was another mess Adrienne started that Shiro made worse that I got stuck with cleaning.

  “I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” he said, taking the bundle of towels I’d snatched and thrust at him. “Don’t worry; I used to be an ER resident. If this is the worst I get on my shoes today, it’s gonna be a pretty great day.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I admitted, “but I’m sure sorry about your shoes.”

  “It’s the perfect end to a disastrous morning.” He was smiling at me, but it looked a little startling. His expression was tight-lipped but natural, like he wasn’t used to showing his teeth in grins.

  He was … kind of odd looking. I didn’t mean unattractive or off-putting. He was anything but off-putting. He was very on-putting. Really very yummy and on-putting. But the lean body gave him a sharper look, almost pinched, like he’d been hungry a lot and was used to it. And his eyes! Like something you could fall into. And drown in, or be saved … on his terms.