As the young man started off down the hall, Felipe let his head fall back against the door. Of course, it had to do with the case nobody wanted. His luck had well and truly run out.
Chapter Three
Stronger Stuff
Felipe hesitated outside the laboratory door. Even from the hallway, he could smell the metallic tang of blood and organ meat beneath the punch of fresh coffee. He winced as his stomach painfully knotted and roiled. Pressing a trembling hand to his abdomen, Felipe drew in a long, slow breath until he could choke down the saliva pooling in his mouth. Throwing up in Oliver’s lab once was embarrassing enough; if he did it again in front of Gwen, he would never hear the end of it. When Oliver’s laugh rose above the gurgle of the coffee pot, Felipe’s lips drew into a faint smile as he straightened. It was probably drinking sherry on an empty stomach that made the smell of organ meat so much worse. Once he ate, he’d feel better. As he pushed open the laboratory door, Gwen and Oliver’s heads swiveled toward him.
Watching Oliver’s features brighten upon seeing him on the steps never got old. His lover’s grey gaze swept across his face for signs of fatigue, yet all Felipe could feel was the swirl of warmth that hoveredbeneath his heart where the tether connected them. Oliver’s black hair had been pomaded to the side to keep it out of his face during work, making his pale features all the more stark against his funerial clothing and drawing Felipe’s attention to the tempting pink of his lips.Later. As Felipe trotted down the steps, Oliver whisked the lid off his lunch tray and patted the empty stool at the bench beside him and Gwen. Felipe’s mouth watered and his stomach keened in anticipation at the sandwich stacked high with bloodied roast beef along with a wedge of cheese and a pile of runny eggs beside it.
“Is that the correct order?” Gwen asked dubiously.
“Yes, why?” Oliver replied as he kissed Felipe and grabbed the file from his hand on his way to the percolator.
“It’s a little… excessive for lunch, even for Felipe. No offense.”
“None taken. It was Oliver’s idea,” Felipe said, picking up the weighty sandwich. He needed to remember to eat slowly, even if his body protested; talking would help. “We’ve been keeping track of what I eat during the day and how awful I feel after. This combination is apparently what I need to eat to feel like a functional human being for as long as possible.”
Oliver placed a cup of coffee beside Felipe and beamed at Gwen as he added, “The experiment has been on-going for weeks, but I think we’ve finally nailed down what works best. If breakfast and lunch are both protein-heavy meals, Felipe seems to get on better than if lunch is an afterthought. If dinner is light on meat or dairy, that’s fine because he’ll sleep through the worst of it, but vegetables and fruit are a must.”
“You know, to counterbalance the excessive dairy and meat intake. Aren’t I lucky?” Felipe said to Gwen between bites, though there was a hint of a smile in his voice.
When Felipe had confessed to Oliver that being dead was changing him, he had expected Oliver to be worried, and he was, but not for the reasons Felipe had anticipated. Oliver didn’t seem to care that he needed more food than a normal person or that he could now see in the dark; he cared that Felipe didn’t feel well more often than he would care to admit. In the weeks after he told him, Oliver had takengetting to the bottom of his new dietary needs as seriously as he would an autopsy or ballistics test. There had been an observation period, several weeks of adding and removing things from his meals, and finally, the fine tuning of what his body required each day.
His hands still shook by lunch some days, but the hunger pangs and fatigue had greatly improved. Having less choices and having to remember to eat consistently chafed, especially on days when he wanted to work without stopping or having to think about what he should or shouldn’t eat. Oliver tried to make it easier for him by having lunch sent to wherever he was working or shoving hunks of cheese or strips of jerky into his hands if he let time escape him. He wasn’t even sure where the random bits of meat and cheese came from. They seemed to appear in the lab as if pulled from the aether. Despite the minor annoyances, Felipe was grateful.
“At least it seems to be helping,” Gwen replied, giving him a once over as she levitated the Fig Newton box down from the top shelf. “I wondered why you looked less ragged. I thought Oliver was letting you get more sleep.”
Felipe barked a laugh as Oliver blushed furiously and snatched the box of cakes from the air. As Oliver and Gwen good-naturedly bickered, Felipe polished off the second half of his sandwich and was about to move onto the pile of eggs when his gaze snagged on the ticking clock. He could smell Mrs. Ennis’s organs still laying out on the table behind him despite the open windows; better to tell Oliver now about the head inspector’s meeting than when he was done eating and mentally preparing to finish her autopsy.
“I ran into one of the pages on my way down. The head inspector wants to see us in his office after lunch.Allof us.”
“Gwen too?” Oliver asked.
When Felipe nodded around his food, Gwen gasped, leaping up from her seat and slapping her palms on the tabletop. “I bet it’s about vampires.”
Oliver gave her a long-suffering look as he held out the box of Fig Newtons. “I highly doubt it.There’s—”
“No such thing as vampires,” Gwen parroted, waving the box away. “But that’s where you’re wrong, Oliver Barlow, because there is, and it’s finally my time to shine.”
Felipe snorted a laugh when Gwen turned to him with narrowed eyes.
“Excuse me, but did I hear you snicker, Inspector Galvan?”
“No, ma’am,” Felipe replied, stuffing a hunk of cheese into his mouth.
“That’s what I thought. Really though, what else could it be? It has to be about vampires.”
“There are plenty of other options.” Oliver counted off on his fingers as he spoke. “The head inspector could be reprimanding us for eating lunch in the laboratory as it’s unsanitary. Or he could have decided we take too long for lunch despite being within the hour guideline if you allow for occasional dillydallying. Or he could have decided we need to be disciplined for the Jed Monroe incident after all. Or—”
“It’s probably about the New Jersey case no one wants. That’s what DeSanto said when I asked.” Stacking his empty plate on top of Oliver and Gwen’s, Felipe carried them and the trays into the hall. “What that has to do with you, Gwen, I have no idea, but I assume the head inspector is going to try to stick us with the case.”
“How do you want to handle it? I assume you don’t want to take it,” Oliver called over his shoulder.
Felipe sighed. When he decided to semi-retire, part of the deal was no more drawn out cases that would take him far from home. New Jersey wasn’t far by any means, but if the New Jersey Branch of the Paranormal Society had kicked the case to the larger branch to deal with, it probably wasn’t a simple one. Part of him still wanted to volunteer to keep the investigators who couldn’t self-heal out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do that and keep Oliver safe at the same time. Returning to the lab, Felipe watched Oliver thumb through Mrs. Ennis’s file with a quizzical frown. It wasn’t fair to put Oliver in harm’s way or make him stress about having to pretend they weren’t acouple while they traveled. Some old habits had to die.
“Let’s go to the meeting with an open mind. If it’s an interesting case that probably won’t end horrifically, we can think about it. If it sounds like it’s going to be a bloodbath, we’ll pass.”
“Does that happen often?” Gwen asked with a raised brow as she refilled her coffee cup.
