Dead Waters

12

The next morning we were up and out of the house like the devil was chasing us. For all we knew about that mark on Jane’s back, maybe he was. I reported the discovery of Mason Redfield’s killer to the Inspectre before dragging a worried Jane down to Allorah Daniels’s office/lab and calling her in. She was more than happy to get away from her Tuesday-morning breakfast meeting with the rest of the Enchancellors, most of whom looked like they might be asleep at the meeting table when I pulled her away.

Allorah guided Jane over to a bare, brushed-steel table that stood at the lab end of her office and had Jane lie down on it.

“Gah!” Jane cried out. “Cold!”

“Sorry,” Allorah said and set about examining the mark on Jane’s back by pulling up Jane’s plain black tank top until the writhing symbol was fully in sight.

I leaned over to look closer myself. “Don’t you have any of that giant tissue paper doctors use on their examination beds?” I asked.

Allorah turned her head and gave me a silencing look with cold eyes. “My apologies,” she said. “The creatures that I poke and prod at usually don’t complain.”

“Oh no?”

“No,” she said, turning back to her examination. “They’re usually dead or, at the very least, rotting.”

I was starting to think I had made a bad call bringing Jane to her. “Maybe we should take Jane to a regular doctor,” I said.

Allorah turned to me, standing up straight. “And say what exactly? That a mysterious woman dove through Agent Clayton-Forrester? I didn’t know that traditional medicine could cure that these days.”

“It’s okay,” Jane said, still facedown on the table. “Really. I just wasn’t ready. The cold of the table took me by surprise, that’s all.”

Allorah went back to examining the spot between Jane’s shoulder blades. She grabbed a digital camera off one of her nearby laboratory shelves and took several close-ups before setting the camera aside once again. She bent over Jane, so close she could have licked the spot.

“Strange,” she said.

“What is?” I asked, moving even closer to try to see what she was seeing.

Allorah reached inside her lab coat and pulled out a large circular necklace hiding within her own shirt. I was familiar with it. My psychometry had shown me Allorah in her younger days as a high school science teacher defending herself against Damaris, Brandon’s vampire consort. Just remembering the damage the circular blade had done sent a chill up my spine upon seeing it once again.

“Look at the designs in the mark on her back,” she said, showing me her necklace at the same time. “They remind me of the ones on my apotropaic eye. They look Greek in origin.”

“You sure about that?” I asked, studying the necklace against the symbol.

“Pretty sure,” Allorah said, twirling the necklace on its chain. “I got this in Greece.”

Jane propped herself up on her elbows. “I don’t care what it is,” she said. “I just want to know if you can get it off of me.”

Allorah looked down at her, meeting Jane’s eyes. “Like, cut it off? I could try.”

The color left Jane’s face and she put her head back down onto the surface of the table. I gave Allorah a look of disbelief. “You people skills still leave a lot to be desired, Ms. Daniels.”

Allorah’s face softened. “Don’t worry,” she said, putting a reassuring hand on Jane’s shoulder, smoothing her tank top back down. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Jane turned to her, glancing up with hope on her face. “You wouldn’t?”

“No,” Allorah said. “I don’t know how it’s bonded to you quite yet. We could try to remove it, but whatever may be protecting it might kill you in the process.”

Jane flinched at her words.

Allorah looked over at me. “What?” she said, defensive. “I’m much better at dissecting and dismembering.”

“Don’t we have—I don’t know—a witch doctor or something?” I asked.

Allorah looked pissed. She stormed off with her arms widespread, showing off the expanse of her extensive open office space. “Do you see what I’m working with here? High school classroom leftovers. . . I’m pretty resourceful, but I’m quite a bit short of being a medical MacGyver.”

Jane sat up, pulling her tank top back into place. “So, what do you suggest we do?” she asked. “I’m beginning to think I was safer when I was still temping for cultists.”

Allorah sighed. “For starters,” she said, “you can go home and relax.”

“That’s it?” I asked, exploding.

Allorah remained calm and cool. “That’s it.”

I looked at her in frustration, then walked off across the open loft toward her office area. “You’re as useful as going to the school nurse.”

“Simon,” Allorah said in a sharp tone. “Please understand. Jane’s been marked. Of that, there’s no doubt. The real question is: for what reason? She’s not in pain or visibly hurt. Until Jane exhibits some kind of symptom because of it—and she may not—there’s very little we can do.”

“Shouldn’t I be quarantined or something?” Jane asked, hopping down from the table. “I could barely pull myself out of the shower last night.”

Allorah smiled. “Maybe you just like showers,” she said. “There are some mornings I can’t get out of them, either. For now, you’re fine. I’ll research this. There’s no sign of anything wrong with you, other than the mark. Nothing viral, no wounds or sores . . .”

“I feel sore,” Jane said.

“You and me both,” I added.

Allorah put both her hands to her ears, covering them. “I don’t need to hear about your sexual exploits, I assure you.”

“It’s nothing like that,” I said, shaking my head at her. “We both just took a pretty brutal beating at the hand of that aqua-woman.”

“Hold on,” Allorah said, running over to her desk. She shuffled through several of the folders on it until she pulled one to the top, flipping through it. “Argyle told me about this. This is the same woman you dove off the roof after, yes? The one that tried to drown you?”

“One and the same,” I said.

“And you’re telling me you saw her again?” she asked. She flipped through the folder, and then stopped. “I don’t seem to have a report on that.”

“It just happened last night,” I said. “I haven’t had time to file anything yet. There were fire hydrants going off at us left and right using some form of water manipulation. I think it’s safe to assume she’s the one who drowned Mason Redfield from the inside out.”

Allorah closed the folder and came back over to the lab area. “Do you have a sample?”

I was about to say no, and then remembered my jacket, which was still damp. I went over to where it was hanging on the back of one of the chairs across the lab. It weighed a ton still. In my haste to get Jane to the Department for an exam early this morning, I hadn’t even thought to grab something dry.

I walked over to one of the lab tables covered with supplies and grabbed an empty glass container off of it. I lifted my coat up over it and twisted it until water trickled out of it.

Allorah set to work with different pieces of her chemistry set. “This is a pure sample?” she asked.

“Mostly,” I said. “We were fighting in the rain, after all.”

Allorah continued working in silence for several more minutes like Dr. Frankenstein in his secret lab, running tests and recording results. She was at one of her microscopes when she stood up from it and frowned.

“And you were where again?” she asked.

“Outside the high-rise where we found the professor,” I said, “way over on the East Side by the river.”

“Odd,” she said.

“What is?” Jane asked from the chair she had settled into.

“The water from all those exploding hydrants is still city water. It’s all processed and therefore should be drinkable. In theory, anyway.”

“So?” I asked. “It was raining. We weren’t all that thirsty.”

“That’s the thing,” Allorah said, pointing at the glass slide on the microscope. “You couldn’t have drunk this sample if you wanted to.”

Jane stood and wrapped her arms around my left one. “Why not?”

Allorah tapped at the slide. “Because this sample that this water woman attacked you with? It’s salt water. Seawater. . . as in, from the ocean.”

“But we weren’t even near seawater,” I said.

Allorah cocked her head, and then looked off toward a refrigerated glass case farther along the lab setup. “Hold on a second.” She walked over to the case and searched through it, pulling out three or four other slides. She slid one of them under the microscope.

“What are those?” Jane asked.

“The other water samples,” Allorah said. “These are all from what we found when they emptied the professor’s lungs. He was also drowned with seawater, so there’s confirmation of your killer.”

“I’m not sure what that means for the case,” Jane said.

“I am,” I said. “It means we need to expand our search area for this woman. The closest ocean water is much farther downtown, where the East River meets up with New York Harbor.” I was already heading for the door out of Allorah Daniels’s office. “Time to see the Inspectre for a boat.”