Greta froze, the by-now-familiar hot-cold shock of adrenaline flooding through her yet again, dropping a weight into her stomach. “Hurt how?” she demanded.
“Some maniac with a knife. She was on her way home from the clinic. She’s going to be all right, but she’ll need to spend tonight here, possibly tomorrow night as well.” The witch’s voice was still sharper than usual, acerbic with worry. “I can take the clinic tomorrow but the day after that I have to be in Edinburgh, so if you’re still out, either we’ll need to shut down or call in somebody else to help—Greta, are you still there?”
“Yes,” said Greta, tonelessly, staring at the far wall of the foyer without actually seeing it. Her fingertips on the phone were cold and numb. “I’m here. Forget the clinic coverage. Tell me about Anna.”
“Like I said, she had locked up and was walking to the bus stop. She says she’d felt kind of uneasy all day, and it got worse as soon as she got outside—like she was being watched, or even followed, but she couldn’t see anyone.”
Greta could picture it very clearly: a dark shape invisible at night, the only hint of its presence two small points of blue light, watching Anna set the alarm and lock the front door and set off on her way—and following. Slipping soundless from shadow to shadow, avoiding the pools of light from streetlamps, slowly gaining on her, the short ugly blade of the poisoned dagger hidden in its sleeve.
“And someone came out of nowhere, she says, came up behind her and just attacked her. He didn’t even try to steal her handbag. Just went after her with a knife. She has some pretty nasty lacerations.”
Greta could imagine that, too. “Did he say anything?”
“Actually yes,” Nadezhda said, after a moment. “She says he was reciting something, maybe saying some kind of prayer, but she couldn’t make out what it was. It makes no sense. I can’t see why anyone would want to stab Anna Volkov.”
Greta knew the exact reason, and it was none other than Greta Helsing, MD, FRCP. If Anna had not been standing in for her, helping out at the clinic, she would almost certainly not have been targeted by the Gladius Sancti.
She closed her eyes, covered them with her hand, sick and dizzy as she had been when this selfsame checkered floor tilted under her feet and tipped her into unconsciousness.
Everyone I know is in danger, because of me, and all I can do is sit here and wait until something happens. I cannot leave Halethorpe. I cannot go to be with my hurt friend in the hospital, hurt on my account, because there is no one else to take my place—and who knows what I might bring with me if I did go. I’m the target. They want to kill monsters and I’m getting in their way because I’m the one who repairs them …
“Greta?” Nadezhda was saying. “Greta, are you all right?”
“I’m just fine,” she said, not entirely steadily, pushing away the spiral of useless reflection. “I’m glad they called you, to be with her.”
“They tried you first, but the only number they had for you was the clinic landline, or something—whatever, they couldn’t get hold of you—but Anna was able to tell them to call me instead. I’m going to spend the night here.”
“She’s not in danger, right?”
“No. Lost a lot of blood, and the wounds are nasty but they’ve cleaned them out and done as neat a job of stitching as I’ve seen in years. There’s a lot of inflammation—they think there might have been something noxious on the knife—but that started to go down almost as soon as they began to irrigate and is continuing to resolve. She’s about as comfortable as you can be under the circumstances.”
“Did they find the knife?”
“No. Whoever attacked her must have thought she was dead, or dying, and run off again. I wondered if it could be the Ripper, but the Ripper murders have all been—well, completed, and there was no sign of that goddamn rosary anywhere. It’s a damn good thing she’s part rusalka,” Nadezhda said. “I think that may have made a difference.”
So did Greta, in the other direction. Ordinary humans did not have advanced healing powers, but then again they were also not directly vulnerable to the magical properties of the stuff smeared on the Gladius Sancti blades. She didn’t know what the white-magic cocktail would have done to a full-blood rusalka, and she didn’t want to know.
“Tell her I’m so fucking sorry this happened,” she said. “And that I’ll be there as soon as I can—which is not going to be tonight. If there was any way at all that I could get there tonight I’d already be halfway there by now.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” said Nadezhda, sounding faintly taken aback. “What’s going on?”
“I’m fine,” she said again, squashing a totally unfunny little laugh. “And—I’ll tell you once it’s over. I’m sorry I can’t do better than that right now, Dez, but it’s—this is complicated.”
“Okay,” said Nadezhda, simply, and Greta had rarely been more grateful to her for understanding. Dez was half-in, half-out of the ordinary world in a different way than she herself was, but the overlap was significant, and both of them knew that there were times like now when not asking questions was the kindest action one could take. “Do you want me to open for you tomorrow?”
“No,” said Greta. “I’m not having you put in danger as well. The clinic can close for a few days and the world will go on turning, I’m fairly convinced.” She hated the idea of closing, but she also—and more immediately—hated the idea of any more of her friends coming to harm. It was bad enough that the others were off facing God knew what horrors under the city, and Anna was in the hospital seriously wounded because of her.
“All right. But give me a call if you change your mind, okay?”
“I will,” she said. “Thank you. For a lot of things, Dez.”
“You’re welcome,” said Nadezhda. “Look, be careful, whatever it is you’re doing. Take care of yourself. I mean it.”
“I will,” she said again, not sure if she meant it. “Good-bye. Call me if there’s—if anything changes with Anna.”
“I promise.”
Greta hung up. Her ear felt suddenly cold where she’d had the phone pressed to it, and her throat was tight and aching with the threat of stupid, helpless tears.
Being stuck here, now, alone and useless, was probably the worst thing Greta had ever gone through other than her father’s death. Even then she had had the support of Ruthven and Fastitocalon and Nadezhda and the rest of them, and it had not been her fault; it had been terrible but it had been a thing that happened to her, and not a thing she had directly participated in causing.
(She wanted her father more than ever. If he were here he could be the one to stay with Halethorpe, safely out of the action, while she actually tried to do something useful.)