Johnny’s eyes were wide as too many emotions for one small boy fought to take precedence. Nodding, he spit in his hand and held it out. Surprised, Daniel spit in his own, and they shook, Johnny’s hand feeling tiny in his. Orchid had to get in on it, dropping down to spit on both their hands and dust a bright silver to seal the deal.
Smiling, Daniel leaned in. “You tell your mother that the sickness is in tomatoes. You can tell everyone you want. Don’t eat tomatoes. Even ketchup. No tomato soup, no pizza, nothing. Even out of a can. Understand?”
“Okay,” he said softly.
Daniel stood, feeling tall beside him. “I have to go to the police and get a lady there who knows how to make the tomatoes safe again so no one gets sick. Can you get home all right?”
Johnny looked at the top of the alley. “I live real close.”
“Great, so you be good and tell your mom that Dr. Plank said no tomatoes.”
“I will,” he said, walking backward to the street, his eyes on Orchid as if he would never see her again. He probably wouldn’t.
“Go on,” Orchid prompted. “And don’t get caught by the big bad wolf.”
Grinning, Johnny waved at them. Upon reaching the street, he turned and ran. Daniel listened to the sound of his feet go distant. Tired, he wiped the spit off his hand and rubbed his fingers into his temple. “I sure hope that works.”
“Me too,” Orchid said as she tucked back into his pocket.
31
Trisk stared at the ceiling, her thoughts on Quen as she pulled her necklace back and forth along the gold chain. Her still-damp hair pressed into her arm behind her head as she lay on the couch of a man who was probably dead. It was nearing midnight, and her box of takeout sat in the trash bin, making the room smell like sweet-and-sour chicken. She’d fallen out of a human’s sleep schedule the past couple of days, and after a hot shower thanks to Officer Tex standing guard at the station’s facilities, the urge to take a four-hour nap was hard upon her. Hand protectively on her middle, she turned toward the slow scuffing in the hall; Captain Pelhan’s footsteps, by the sound of them.
But he continued on, and she winced at the pictures on the file cabinet behind the desk. A nice-looking man in a suit posed with a woman with big hair and a baby. The man and woman were smiling, but the baby stared blankly at something off camera. Sighing, she wondered if any of them were still alive. The baby, probably. Who feeds their toddler tomatoes?
The urge to leave to find Daniel fought with her need to stay and speak to Sa’han Ulbrine. Tired, she sat up and swung her feet to the floor to slip her shoes back on. Her stomach hurt, and she tried to imagine herself with a child and how she was going to keep it a secret. There was so much genetic tweaking going on that elves’ genomes were almost public information. Six months after her baby’s first prenatal checkup, the elven community would know he or she was heir to the Kalamacks’ failing bloodline. Corroborating it was the fact that she’d only been in contact with three elves in the last year, and one of them was Sa’han Ulbrine.
Who is out in the hall talking to Pelhan, she suddenly wondered as she recognized the small man’s slow drawl.
Finally, she thought as she stood, brushing at her travel-weary sweater coat before taking it off and leaving it on the couch. Breathless, she tucked the stray strands of hair that escaped her braid behind an ear. She couldn’t make herself any more presentable, and still feeling grungy, she opened the office door and peeked out into the hall.
It was Ulbrine, looking tired in his trim black suit and tie, a leather briefcase on the floor beside his shiny dress shoes and a dusty overcoat over his arm. The coat was burned about the hem, and her thoughts went to Detroit, wiped off the map. They’d blame the deaths on the plague, no doubt.
Ulbrine’s voice was even in conversation, and being unnoticed, she opened her second sight to look at his aura. If he had indeed been a part of the annihilation, there’d be evidence.
Her brow furrowed and she bit her bottom lip. Ulbrine’s aura was as ragged as the hem of his coat, the purple haze singed about the edges and thin, held tighter to his body than normal as he tried to heal the damage of channeling too much ley line energy into destruction. She’d seen her classmates with similar auras after finals, but never this thin or . . . fatigued, perhaps.
She must have made a noise because Ulbrine turned. “Trisk,” he said, smiling as he and Pelhan shifted to make room for her. “One of the people I wanted to see.”