Thank you for taking care of her, Dearest. It’s a lot of work, keeping her as comfortable as possible.
It is, but she’s ours.He looked up.It’s more than that, though. She’s special.
She is. Go eat, dear boy.
If searching the rooms didn’t reveal the poisoner, Zander might have to consider partial refunds and ending the season.
Alternatively, he could send all Concilio members home, butdamnwould that create a worse firestorm than sending everyone away.
It would mean they wouldn’t hemorrhage quite so much money, though.
He’d make that decision later, if they couldn’t find the bad guy.
Or woman.
Chapter 31
Spence settled onto the bed beside Emmy, remote for the smart television in hand. He didn’t know how much longer she’d be awake, but she needed something to occupy her mind besides being sick.
She was in clothes now, shorts and a sleeveless tee, since her fever was still around six degrees higher than it should be, and the ice packs on her head — now held on with an ace bandage — made her look even more fragile than her horrible coloring and nearly black eyes.
“What do you want to watch?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
Emmy’s eyes were half-closed, exhaustion pulling at her even though she’d just woken from a nearly hour-long nap, her record for staying asleep so far. “Something we’ve both seen, so it’s okay if I fall asleep, and it won’t matter if I need to spend ten minutes in the bathroom.”
“Human? Supernatural? Adventure? Romance? Explosions?”
“Let’s go for supernatural adventure, bonus if it gets most of it wrong.”
Spence smiled, searched for Buffy, and Emmy said, “Oh, that’s perfect. I can use some Spike. I’m pretty sure I’d have to kill him myself if he was real, but on television he’s kind of deliciously evil, and even when he’s good, he’s still bad enough to love.”
“You like bad boys?” Spence asked.
“Mmmm. I like them on television, not so much in real life. I mean, they’re fun to fuck, but too much of a pain in the ass to keep around more than a few hours.”
“You want to start with season one, or the Spike season?”
“Let’s start at the beginning, I think.”
Emmy immediately relaxed against the pillows, and Spence checked her temperature again, which hadn’t changed, and noted it in the spreadsheet he’d set up at the beginning. Zander had access to it, so he could check it whenever he wanted, but he’d be pretty busy, handling whatever last-minute stuff for the hunt came up while making sure nothing about the planned searches leaked out.
She’d asked Spence to help her with another enema about two hours earlier, and she could hold down three half-spoonfuls of chicken broth at a time.
She hadn’t puked since the second enema, but she’d been back in the bathroom frequently for diarrhea.
The nurse they’d brought in said Kaopectate isn’t metabolized, it works by coating the stomach and intestines, so it would likely help with diarrhea, but not until after at least the first forty-eight hours, once all the poison was out of their digestive systems.
It was just a matter of getting her through it, at this point.
She fell asleep about twenty minutes into the show, so he let his mind wander, wishing he knew what was going on in the rest of the silo.
But his job was Emmy, so he’d find out what happened later.
He worried what the next step would be if this didn’t tell them anything, though. Zander didn’t have a Plan B, and that was disturbing.
Zander always had backup plans — and thenotherplans in case those went to shit.
A soft whimper pulled his attention back to Emmy. Her face had tightened with pain, and Spence rubbed the parts of her back he could get to, with her lying on her side.
