“Did you know, Mom?” I whisper and look up. The idea of Heaven is another thing I can’t wrap my head around, yet I tip my head to the sky whenever I think about my parents. It went against everything I worked for, but thinking they were up there gave me a bit of peace.
After my coffee, I get ready for the day and head to the health clinic. Misty rain starts to fall when I park, and I pull my leather jacket tighter around me to try and stay dry. Going out of my way, I cross the street and walk by Delirium to try and look inside.
The windows in the front are tinted, and I can’t see shit. Same goes for the door. Everything is shut tight, not letting a speck of sunlight filter in. I stand under the awning, holding my phone and acting like I’m texting as I look around. This place is so clean it’s telling.
I cross the street again, go down a few storefronts, and enter the free clinic. A few people are in the lobby, and a young, smiling nurse sits behind the front desk. At first glance, this place is totally normal. I hesitate, putting on the front of nerves, and take everything in before I go to the desk.
“Hi,” the young nurse says with the same broad smile. “How can I help you today?”
“My friend told me I could donate blood,” I start, tugging on the sleeves of my hoodie. It’s one of my favorites because it’s oversized and so comfortable. Tiffany says I look like a homeless drug dealer when I wear it, and that could work in my favor right now. “For cash.”
The nurse’s smile doesn’t falter. “We do have blood drives a few times a month, but there’s no payout for it. The blood is donated by volunteers. If you’ve used needles recently we cannot accept it, though.”
Yep. The drug dealer hoodie is working. “Oh, not a problem for me. When’s the next blood drive?”
She flips open a planner and runs her finger down the dates. I peer over the desk, seeing only notes for regular appointments and events, nothing obvious like “secret vampire blood pick-up,” but hey, a girl can dream, right?
“Two weeks from today. Would you like to set up an appointment time?”
“No, I’m not even sure what I have going on tomorrow, let alone two weeks from now.”
The nurse laughs. “I’m the same way. We do take walk-ins if you still want to donate, but know sometimes you could wait a bit to get a spot without an apointment.”
“Thanks. Do you have a bathroom I can use?”
“Yeah, it’s right down the hall. You’ll see the sign as soon as you turn the corner.”
I smile. “Thanks.”
There are a few exam rooms along the hall, and a locked door at the end that I’m guessing leads to the small lab and the nurses’ station. Two of the exam room doors are shut and I hurry down the hall, going right past the bathroom to the door at the end. It’s locked. Of course. The lights are off in the exam room next to me, which is odd only because every other room is lit up. Stealing a glance behind me at the front of the clinic, I step inside.
The room smells of bleach, which always strikes me as someone trying to cover something up, but thisisa medical clinic. Someone could have puked all over this place before I walked in. Nevertheless, I go into detective mode, going over the room as quickly and thoroughly as possible, and find little drops of blood on the tile floor next to the exam bed. Maybe this room was used last night for a vampire blood drive.
Positive I found anything and everything out of place, I go back out into the hall and almost run into a man coming into the hall from the locked door. He stops short, nostrils flaring.
“Sorry,” I say, and pull my hood up. He’s wearing scrubs and has a stethoscope around his neck. His nametag says he’s Shawn Welsh and a registered nurse. The hair on the back of my neck prickles and everything inside of me is telling me to run.
“Do you have an appointment?” he asks, voice raspy. He takes a step closer, looking at me so hard it’s uncomfortable. If I was wearing anything that remotely showed my figure, I’d think he was checking me out.
“No, I was looking for the bathroom.”
“It’s right there,” he says, and extends his hand to point. He leans in and inhales, eyes twitching. His cologne is so strong it chokes me.
“Yeah, I see that now. Thanks.”
“Great.” He forces a thin, closed-lip smile and breezes past me to the exam room next to us, knocking on the door before entering. The smell of his cologne lingers in the air, but so does something else.
The smell of sulfur.
22
Ipour the holy water in the bowl, arranging the stakes so they get saturated. It’s early afternoon, hours from sunset, and I’m more anxious than ever for the guys to wake up. There’s no way the nurse at the clinic was a vampire. It’s the middle of the day. There are other reasons someone can smell like sulfur. Old tap water can, for example. Maybe he washed his clothes in it?
Or maybe he’s not a vampire but spends a lot of time with them.
I roll my eyes at myself. He looked at me funny…he smelled like sulfur…and, most of all, I got a bad feeling around him. But it can’t be possible. Vampires sleep during the day, just like my gargoyles.
“Right, guys?” I ask, looking through the living room in their direction. I grab the grimoire and Jacques’s notes and sit at the kitchen table. The book doesn’t seem to be written in any order, with supernatural information and spells mixed in together. Jacques’s theory was the original sorcerer wrote things as he or she learned them, and the book had been copied in the same order.
