“Sit down,” I growl. “Both of you.”
They sit. Whether from shock or some lingering effect of Vyse’s influence, I neither know nor care. At least they’re not moving around and providing him with more entertainment.
Vyse, because he is constitutionally incapable of doing anything the easy way, rounds my desk and drops into my chair. He spins it lazily, trailing his fingers across papers and pens and the small obsidian paperweight I acquired in Constantinople in 1544.
He’s trying to get a rise out of me.
He won’t succeed.
“If you’re done harassing my students,” I say, “there’s an important matter we need to discuss.”
“Ah yes.” Vyse stops spinning, props his chin on one hand, and regards me with theatrical interest. “I was wondering when you’d be calling. I hear you’ve got a siphon under your protection.” His lip curls. “Howspecial.”
“You sound jealous, bro,” Sean mutters.
Vyse’s eyes narrow.
“What do you want, Elias?” He starts rearranging items on my desk, moving the paperweight three inches to the left for no apparent reason other than that he knows what I am and he knows how dragons feel about people touching our things. “You know I find the fact that I can’t read your mind boring, so let’s cut to the chase, shall we?”
“I need a cure.”
“A cure?” His laugh is sharp. “I thought we’d been over this. There is no cure for?—“
“Not for me.”
The words come out faster than I intended. I’m acutely aware of Micah and Sean watching, listening.
At least they seem to know when to shut up.
Vyse’s eyebrows rise. “Consider me intrigued. What is it, then? Vampiric blood curse? Fae wasting sickness? Succubus addiction?” He ticks the options off on his fingers. “Pixie pox? Goblin rot? Reverse mermaid?”
“That’s a thing?” Sean asks with a grimace. “How’s that work?” He makes a… fishy motion with his hands, somehow.
“I need a cure for a werewolf bite,” I say, ignoring him.
The room goes very still.
Sean’s remaining eye widens. Micah’s jaw tightens, and his eyes flash like his wolf is two seconds away from tearing out of his skin and into my throat.
“What the fuck, man?” Micah snarls. The gravel in his voice confirms my theory about his wolf. “You can’t just?—”
“Silence.”
I don’t look at him. My attention is fixed on Vyse, whose expression has gone uncharacteristically blank.
“A werewolf bite,” he repeats slowly, tapping his pointed nails on my desk. “You have my attention.”
“I thought that might pique your interest.”
“I’m quite piqued.” He leans forward, and for once there’s nothing performative about his intensity. “But you know as well as anyone there is no cure. Once the transformation begins?—”
“This isn’t a normal werewolf bite.” I move to stand by the window, putting distance between myself and the wolves. If they decide to do something stupid, I’d rather have room to maneuver. “The victim is a wolf shifter. And the werewolf was reanimated.”
Vyse goes silent.
“You’re lying.”
“What reason would I have to lie to the likes of you?”
