“You don’t have to do everything Ansley says, you know.”
“I know, but I like doing the notes.” Sitting up with a groan, Oliver steadied Felipe on his lap. “He may have ordered me to type them up, but he didn’t ask for two copies. If he wants his own, he can do it himself or take it to one of the archivists to copy. With any luck, it’ll be at least ten pages. That’ll teach him to ask me for favors.”
Felipe laughed. “I’m sure it will.”
Chapter Ten
Normalcy v. Novelty
Reaching for Felipe’sfamiliar warmth, Oliver found the other side of the bed empty. He opened his eyes and bolted upright at the light shining through the basement window. It was far too bright to be six-thirty. Instinctual panic ran through him as he grabbed the bedside clock to confirm it was nearly nine. He was so, so late, and he still wasn’t dressed or shaved yet. And where was Felipe? Focusing on the tether, Oliver felt Felipe’s heart steadily beating on the other end. A flutter of calm rang across it as if Felipe had smoothed a hand across Oliver’s back. Oliver released a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding and slumped back against the pillows. Felipe was fine. He had let him sleep in. As he set the clock back on the nightstand, he found a folded piece of notepaper with his name on it.
Oliver,
Don’t panic. You slept through your alarm, so I figured you needed the extra rest and that you might enjoy a quiet breakfast alone.Your usual breakfast is waiting on the bench in the lab. I’ll meet with Ansley and report back on our plans for the Green Daisy. As I was getting your food, Major Browning dropped off a bunch of evidence from the Lowell investigation to be analyzed. It’s in the locked box in the anteroom. I told him you wouldn’t be in until this afternoon, so take your time eating and getting ready. I love you.
Felipe.
Staring at Felipe’s cramped handwriting, a small smile crossed Oliver’s lips. In the past, he would have been mad that he overslept, but Felipe seemed to know when he needed it, even when he would have ignored it until his body gave out for fear of missing work. Felipe somehow always understood the unwritten rules of the society, and if he was willing to deal with Ansley’s tomfoolery while Oliver got a leisurely start, he wouldn’t squander it. A voice in the back of his mind urged him to get dressed and run up to the meeting rooms, lest he be a terrible partner, but Felipe didn’t do or say things he didn’t mean. In the laboratory, Oliver found a domed dish of eggs, bacon, and toast waiting where Felipe said it would be, and while not turned on, the coffee pot was ready for him to use. The tether tightened beneath his heart as he started the pot and sat down to eat.
Between bites, he skimmed the missives that had piled up beneath the pneumatic tube. There was one for Felipe from Teresa, which he set aside for when he returned. The rest were instructions on the Lowell case from Major Browning and confirmations from the remaining hospitals that Herman Judd had not been a patient there and that no bodies were missing from their morgues or anatomy classes. Oliver twirled a piece of bacon between his fingers thoughtfully. Even if Herman Judd had died of natural causes, the handling of his body was almost certainly done by someone with medical training. This wasn’t some Jack the Ripper mutilating a body or hacking bits off like a butcher, the y-shaped incision was a doctor’s mark. Some doctor or medical student in the city could have paid a body snatcher to get them a corpse for dissection, but Judd hadn’t been buried. He could have been killed for that purpose, but most body snatchers would suffocate or bludgeon a victim, not electrocute them.
It was more likely that if Judd died at the institute, one of the doctors might have autopsied him or tried to dispose of his body after a treatment went wrong. He couldn’t picture Dr. Yates doing it himself. He seemed like the type who stepped back to let others do the less than prestigious tasks, and autopsies were notoriously laborious and messy. That left Dr. Ambrose, the junior doctor, and Dr. Thorn, the physician who had recently left. Felipe had mentioned it was suspicious that Dr. Thorn had a disagreement and left around the time Judd turned up dead. Grabbing his notepad, Oliver added checking for Dr. Thorn’s medical license and current address to the list. Maybe if they could find him, they could speak to him without having to go through Ansley.
As Oliver shaved and dressed, his mind trailed back to his conversation with Felipe about his time at the Howard Hospital. Being a doctor had been his dream for so long, and in the span of a few months, the whole thing had come tumbling down. The worst part was that it was his fault. If he had been born a normal person, none of it would have happened. He wouldn’t have felt the pull of the tether, everything wouldn’t have come out wrong when he tried to defend himself, and he never would have misunderstood when— Oliver held his breath and shut his eyes until the surge of emotion bottled inside him and fell still. It had been years; he was over it, and there was no reason to pick at old wounds now. Throwing his white coat over his clothes, Oliver unlocked the little mailbox he used to collect samples when he wasn’t in the morgue and pulled out the jars, tubes, and envelopes of evidence Major Browning’s people had left for him. The werewolves certainly were thorough, even if they weren’t always the best about paperwork.
He was about to start gathering chemicals and preparing the slides when Oliver’s eye caught on the pneumatic tube. They probably weren’t going to the Green Daisy until after dark, and some of the tests he had to run would take several hours before the results were ready, which meant he couldn’t leave the society until well into the afternoon. Quickly writing out a lunch invitation, Oliver sent it up the library tube to Gwen. By the time he emerged from the closet with all the materials he needed for the first batch of tests, Gwen’s reply and lunch order were waiting for him. A small smile quirked his lips as he sent their order along with Felipe’s usual meal to the kitchen.
Basking in the normalcy, Oliver set to work weighing, mixing, and grinding the compounds he needed. The ritual of setting up his chemistry equipment and then staining slides of fur and blood centered him in a way that no amount of bedrest could. While autopsies made up the largest part of his job and were far more interesting, this sort of tedious work was a palate cleanser. In another life, he could have been a chemist or done research that relied on minutiae, but he treasured days like this in the laboratory where he could multitask and focus without stinking of offal. As Oliver confirmed the blood sample under the microscope was from a werewolf rather than from a dog or wolf, the laboratory door popped open.
“Did you not hear the food being dropped off?” Gwen asked as she levitated two trays and carried the other with her down the steps.
“The food came?”
“I’ll take that as a no. Where’s Felipe?”
Oliver made a note of where he left off and blinked at the clock on the far wall as his eyes cleared from staring into the microscope for so long. He hadn’t realized how long he had been working. “He went upstairs to meet with Ansley to plan the next steps of the case we’re working on.”
