Eidolon stared at the DNA report as he spoke into the phone. This was crazy. Unreal. He’d had the test run twice to ensure accuracy and to confirm that no one had tampered with the report, even though in his heart he’d known since yesterday.
Sin sat on the bed in one of the patient rooms, feet swinging while she waited for him. Through the window to the room, she looked small and innocent as she stared at the anatomy posters on the wall. She’d come back as she’d said she would, though Eidolon had no doubt she wouldn’t stay once she got the autopsy report on the warg she’d killed. She had no new helpful information on Lore, except that she’d had a tense confrontation with Idess, and Eidolon was starting to worry.
Making matters worse, he’d had to suspend four staff members for fighting, three for dereliction of duty, a patient had died today when a nurse had accidentally injected a lethal dose of medicine, and now the family of the dead Mamu was threatening bodily harm against all staff members. To top it all off, tension still pulsed between him and his brothers, particularly Shade.
All this time, he’d taken pride in the hospital he and his brothers had built from the ground up, and yeah, UG was an amazing accomplishment. But now its heart—its denizens—were sick, and he couldn’t help but feel that it was his fault, that he’d neglected them somehow. And by suspending workers, he was treating individual symptoms instead of the underlying illness, but at this point, slapping on a bandage was his only option.
“E,” Shade said, his voice drowned out by the sound of the ambulance engine, “this is freaky. Hope dear old dad doesn’t have any more surprises in store for us. Half-goats, dog-boys…”
“I know.” Eidolon glanced at Tayla, who had just joined him. “Look, I gotta go. Runa’s waiting for you. Wraith will be here any second with an exorcist.”
He hoped that getting rid of the ghosts would end the problems plaguing the hospital’s staff, but even if it did, this was an example of his failure to consider all potential problems that might affect his workers. He should have been practicing preventive medicine instead of waiting until an emergency cropped up.
He should have seen this coming a long time ago, though he had to wonder why it was happening now.
“Good. I’ll be there in five.” Shade paused. “I’m bringing in another warg.”
Eidolon’s stomach slid to his feet. “Diseased?”
“Looks like. Same symptoms as the first two.”
The first two. Who were dead. Apparently, the one Sin had diseased had transmitted his mysterious ailment to another, who had come in just hours after the first warg. If Shade’s patient was sick with the same symptoms, they could be looking at a possible outbreak. Eidolon hadn’t told Sin about the second warg, but a few minutes ago he’d taken more blood from her to analyze.
“Tell Runa to go to my office,” Shade said. “I don’t want her and the boys anywhere near this patient.”
“You got it,” E said, but Shade had already hung up.
Eidolon snapped his phone shut, called the triage desk with the message for Runa, and then stared at the DNA report again. “This is so fucked up.”
Tayla stole a peek at the report. “What’s fucked up? The Smurfette?”
“The what?”
“Smurfette.” Tayla rolled her eyes. “You’ve never watched cartoons, have you?”
Wraith came around the corner, his leather duster flapping around his boots. He shot Tay a look drenched with sympathy. “E’s way too starched to watch cartoons. That’s so not happening to Stewie. He’s already digging The Simpsons.”
“He’s three weeks old!” Tayla gaped at Wraith in outrage.
“Almost four.”
Tayla huffed. “Good God. I can’t believe you are raising a child. Isn’t there some sort of demon equivalent of Child Protective Services?”
“Hey.” Wraith crossed his arms over his chest. “I have as much right to screw up a kid as anyone else. So what’s going on, anyway?”
Eidolon really had no idea, since he’d never seen The Simpsons, and Stewie, Wraith’s son, had been named after some hell child on another cartoon Eidolon hadn’t seen. Fortunately, the kid also had a proper demon name, but Wraith and his mate, Serena, seemed to think he needed time to grow into Talon, so for now, Stewie it was. In any case, this conversation was either way over Eidolon’s head, or way beneath him. He was going to go with the latter.
Tayla cursed under her breath. “I was just explaining to Eidolon that Sin is a Smurfette.”
Wraith swung his big body around to study Sin with blue eyes that were very different from Shade’s, E’s, and Lore’s. Sin’s, too. “Nah. Smurfette is way hotter.”
“What the fuck is a Smurfette?” Eidolon was seriously getting annoyed now.
“There’s this cartoon called The Smurfs,” Tayla explained, slowly, as though Eidolon were the child here. “They’re these little blue people, and they’re all male. But one day a female shows up. She shouldn’t exist, but she does.”
Eidolon considered that for a second. “How did she get there?”