“The guy was caught in the sacred library of the Shades. I’d say him being weird is an understatement.” I sniffed my hand. “My hand smells like dog drool. And so does my arm. In fact, my entire body smells like it has been licked thoroughly by a dog with poor dental hygiene.”
“Magnus insisted on administrating his own treatment for basilisk venom overdose. I tried to shoo him away, but your dog is relentless.”
“That’s him. What time is it?”
“It’s half past two.”
“At night?”
“Of course not. In the afternoon.”
“Oh.” I blinked as the timeline swam together in my mind. I was planning to tail Maximillian Fuchs, the dragon’s security chief, this evening. “Why the hell didn’t you wake me up sooner?”
Here’s what happens when you jump out of bed while recuperating from basilisk venom overdose: Your head explodes. Your feet buckle. Your body, half entangled in the bedsheets, falls sideways on the floor. You say, “Argh.” And you wish you were dead. At least, that was my experience.
“Because, honey, you almost killed yourself with your damn concoctions, and I wanted to give you time to recuperate,” Sinead said sweetly, looking down at me.
Magnus ran into the room and barked excitedly. Determining I was under attack from my bedsheet, he lunged at it heroically, tugging it with his teeth while growling ferociously. It ripped, and he stumbled backward, careening into the bed. He did three victory laps around me, his barks loud and sharp, painful to my tender brain. Then he quirked his head at me, confused by my lack of enthusiasm at his triumph, and licked my nose.
Sinead helped me get back in bed. “Honey, you’re staying in bed today. And probably tomorrow.”
“But Maximillian Fuchs—”
“I’ll tail Fuchs. We’re doing this together, Lou, you know that, right? You don’t need to do everything by yourself.”
“But you can’t. You need to get me that waitress job,” I said weakly.
“Already done.” She grinned at me proudly. “And I didn’t even have to leave the room.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. You remember Fred?”
“The guy you used to date? The one you dumped when you found out he has a mole on his—”
“Yes. So Fred has this cousin. It’s not a cousin, exactly… what do you call it if someone is married to your cousin?”
“I think it’s still a cousin.”
“Okay, so Fred has this cousin, who goes bowling every week in that place in Brookline. What’s it called? It’s on the tip of my tongue.”
“I honestly don’t care. Get to the point.”
“It’s going to drive me insane all day. It starts with a P. Anyway, one of the guys he bowls with—they’re really close, it’s like this tight-knit group of men. And one of them is… get this—in the Secret Service.”
“That’s… nice.”
“So Secret Service guy apparently knows a lot of important people, and he—Lucky Strike!”
“What?”
“The bowling place.”
“That doesn’t start with a P.”
“How is that relevant?”
“How is anything you just said relevant?”
“I’m getting to it, sheesh! So this guy—the Secret Service guy, knows the owner of the catering company that’s serving the dragon’s banquet. And Secret Service guy gave him your name after he got it from Fred’s cousin, who got it from Fred, who got it from me.”
“That’s amazing.”
“I already updated the rest of the crew. They were here earlier.”
“In here?” I asked, aghast. The thought of Kane and Harutaka seeing me unconscious in my bed was horrifying. I tried to imagine I was like Sleeping Beauty, lying pale in my bed, my hair and makeup looking perfect, just waiting for a prince to show up and kiss me awake. But I knew the truth. I snored slightly when I slept. My hair was always a mess. Sometimes I drooled.
“Relax! Do you really think I’d let them in your bedroom? We sat in your store. I told them they couldn’t come back here, because you were naked in bed.”
“Wonderful,” I said, somewhat sardonically.
“I used the word naked several times when talking about you. Kane seemed interested. You can thank me later.”
“Okay.” I pressed at the bridge of my nose with my fingertips. “So… what did you discuss?”
“Harutaka said he can definitely hack into the security server in the complex. Once inside he’ll be able to see everything that’s going on, and he’ll have access to the banquet’s guest list.”
“Oh, good.”
“But he needs someone to hook him up from the inside.”
I groaned.
“Which is totally fine, because you’ll be able to do it in a few days, right? The catering staff all need to show up the evening before the banquet, to help set things up. I figure that’s your opportunity.”
“And what do we do until then?”
“You rest and get better from your basilisk venom overdose. And I’ll tail Maximillian Fuchs, and figure out what’s his deal.”
“Just be careful.”
“Yes, mom, who overdosed on basilisk venom and nearly got eaten by creepy Shades. I’ll be careful.”
Chapter Sixteen
Recovering from the basilisk poison took me three days, which translates to seventy-two hours, and those seventy-two hours were actually four thousand, three hundred, and twenty minutes. Time crawls when all you can do is shuffle slowly to and from the bathroom.
Sinead and Isabel brought me food, and Isabel also took it upon herself to walk Magnus, who was confused by my dormant state. Kane called once to check how I felt, which gave me a warm fuzzy feeling that I found worrying. The fact that I was attracted to him was no big deal. The fact that I seemed to feel something for him could mean trouble. I knew from painful experience that falling for someone during a job could end very badly.
The leftover venom in my system gave me some strange dreams. One night I dreamed I was breaking into Ddraig Goch’s mansion, except it looked like school, and the dragon was my math teacher. He caught me sneaking in and incinerated my clothes with one fiery breath, leaving me nude in front of the entire class. In another dream I was in prison again, but Kane was my cellmate. I tried to dig us a tunnel so we could escape, but I only had a spoon, and Kane kept taking it away, insisting that he needed it to eat his pudding.
I used most of my endless hours awake in bed to practice on what Sinead called my “flamey hands problem.” I would shut my eyes and start breathing deeply, focusing on each body part in turn, relaxing it, directing my complete attention to those muscles. When Isabel dropped by, she’d coach me, her deep voice instructing me to concentrate on my feet, my ankles, my thighs, going all the way up to my head.
The problem was, I invariably lost concentration, my mind chasing any random detail it snagged upon.
“I can’t even concentrate in my bed,” I grumbled. “What will happen during the job? There’s no way I’ll be able to relax when the shit hits the fan. And you know it will. No plan survives contact with reality. And I can’t have my hands randomly going fwoosh.”
Isabel bit her flamingo-pink lip. “Maybe we’ve been going about this the wrong way,” she said. “We were trying to get you to relax.”