He tipped his head back, peering up at the vaulted ceiling. “The House asks for too much. That’s how it works. All new members are required to tithe. It’s small at first. A portion of your earnings. A few drops of blood.”
Disgusted, she trickled her hand over her stomach.Blood?
“Just a little,” he said. “No more or less than you’d donate at a blood drive.”
The thought horrified her beyond measure.What do they do with it? The blood?
“I don’t know. I don’t ask. All I know is, the higher you rise in the ranks, the bigger your offerings become. The bigger the offering, the greater the reward. I used to think I didn’t care. I didn’t have anything I wouldn’t give up to get ahead.”
And now?
“I don’t know.” He turned to face her, his expression wistful. “MaybeI’mhaving second thoughts.”
Rising to go, he rocked back on his heels, his hands in his pockets. Deliberating, she knew, how best to say goodbye. In the end, he settled for saying nothing at all, but then Vivienne supposed he’d already said all he needed to say.
It wasn’t like they were friends.
Their relationship, like all her relationships, had been transactional.
And now it was at an end.
He left her there alone in the dusky hush of the empty cathedral, a dying sparrow in her lap, the lifeless eyes of the saints staring down upon her without remorse.
The clock on the wall read seven fifteen. Eight hours since the pool house. Eight hours since Vivienne was taken right out from under him. Eight hours ofwasted fucking time.
Saint Mary’s Hospital was icebox cold and packed with people—so much so that, for much of the night, the lobby had been standing room only. Now, in the slowing trickle of an early morning, Thomas sat propped atop a hallway gurney, his patience torn to ribbons, Isaac Shaw’s recorder gripped tight in his fist.
He hadn’t listened to it yet.
Not here, among strangers.
Each time another nurse passed him by, he was met with a discreet but discernible sideways glance. He couldn’t blame them. He looked like he’d been in a back-alley brawl. His shirtfront was stiff with blood. His head was a belfry. It rang and rang. His left earlobe had swollen into a fat cauliflower shape and his left eye was pinched nearly all the way shut. He hardly noticed. His focus was trained on the clock on the wall. On the seconds and minutes and hours that ticked away without end.
He hadn’t wanted to come to the hospital at all, but he’d discovered that Hadley Appelbaum and Frances Lefevre could be almost as persistent as Vivienne when they wanted to be. They’d insisted he be seen, and at the time he’d had little energy to protest.
Eight hours and several stitches later, he was brimming with it. He wanted to hit something. He’d spent the entire night in triage, the panic in his chest slowly coalescing into anger, until he saw everything through a red, ugly haze.
Vivienne was gone. She wasgone, and he was sitting here doing nothing.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” A red-haired woman in a white lab coat drew a rolling cart to a stop directly in front of him. “I’m Dr. Rosen. Can you verify your name and date of birth for me?”
“Thomas Walsh,” he ground out, sick of repeating it. “July twenty-third.”
“Excellent, thank you.” She peered up at him over the rim of her reading glasses, her smile affable. “Looks like you’ve had quite the night.”
“I’ve had better.”
“Well, we’ll get you cleaned up.” She clicked through his electronic chart. “I’ve got an X-ray technician coming down any minute to wheel you to radiology.”
He’d required just enough X-rays during his lacrosse days to know he couldn’t afford to swallow the bill. He also knew he’d be waiting hours for results. He didn’thavehours.
“Do I need one?”
“I’d highly recommend it, yes,” said Dr. Rosen. “We have some concern that you may have fractured a rib. An X-ray will help us get a clearer look so we can determine treatment.”
“Can I refuse?”
“It’d be against medical advice to do so, but yes.”
