“And I’m family,” Quen said, not a hint of his lie showing.
With a tired wave, the woman sat back down. She was flushed, and Trisk looked at the people in the waiting room more closely. With a few notable exceptions, they were all showing the symptoms of Daniel’s virus. Or the common cold, she thought, trying to clamp down on her panic.
“I’ll wait in the hall,” Quen said, and Trisk frowned, annoyed at his paranoia.
“My God,” she whispered, wondering if the guy getting a soda from the machine was ill or if drugged-out hippie was simply his look. “I didn’t know you were that paranoid. Even if it is Daniel’s virus, it can’t hurt you. It doesn’t affect most Inderlanders. Elves, not at all.” Unless . . . she mused suddenly, he isn’t 100 percent elf. Until recently, there hadn’t been a lot of options when a lethal fragment showed in their decaying code other than outsourcing to their nearest genetic relative. It muddied their ability to do magic somewhat, but that vanished by the second generation. Almost everyone had some human in them, and almost everyone pretended they didn’t.
Quen flushed. “Great-great-grandfather,” he said, lips tight when he saw her knowing expression. “My great-great-grandmother couldn’t bring a child to full term. It was worth the genetic taint to try to save what we could of our line.”
Trisk touched his arm to tell him she thought nothing less of him. “I’m glad they did.”
He flashed a quick, grateful smile at her. “I don’t mind being six percent human, but it makes me nervous.”
“Well, you’d never know it now,” she said, brow furrowing at the man slumped on a chair in the hall, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
“Thanks,” Quen said sheepishly, and she pulled him to a stop.
“Daniel?” she whispered, and the man she was watching pulled his head up. It was Daniel, and she froze, not wanting him to see Quen but needing to know why he was sitting outside Angie’s door.
“Trisk.” Daniel stood, looking haggard in the same weary slacks and white shirt he’d had on earlier. “How did you find out?”
Shit. Cold slipped into her, born from a hundred almost-thoughts. “What happened?” she asked as she hastened forward. “Is Angie okay?”
“She’s dead,” Daniel said bluntly, head down. “I . . .”
“No!” Trisk took his hands, shock making her breathless. “I just talked to her boyfriend half an hour ago. I told him to get her to the emergency room. He didn’t say it was this bad!”
“I gotta sit down,” Daniel said as he sank back into the chair. Trisk crouched beside him, not letting go of his hands. She watched his eyes, felt his aura, but he seemed okay, if a little in shock. Quen drifted away to make sure they wouldn’t be disturbed, but she was sure he’d stay close enough to hear everything. “I don’t know how, but it got out,” Daniel said, his eyes haunted as he looked across the hall to the empty room. “Somehow it got out. This is my fault. I did this.”
He was talking about his virus, and she squeezed his hands to get him to look at her. “No, you didn’t,” she said, voice hushed. “We made it perfect. It might put someone in the hospital who’s immune-depressed, but Angie was healthy. It was something else. Something new.”
Daniel pulled out of her grip, his anger obvious. “I saw her, Trisk,” he said bitterly, eyes on the empty room. “Blisters on her face and back. Out-of-control fever. Respiratory distress. Her body just shut down. They couldn’t stop it.” He swallowed hard. “They wouldn’t let me in, but I heard it all.”
“It can’t happen!” Trisk protested, and his eyes came back to her.
“I think it found a carrier,” he whispered. “It’s gotten to your tomatoes, too.”
Trisk’s lip curled as she remembered the slimy mess under her seat. But they had made Daniel’s virus perfect. None of this made sense. Unless . . . Shit, what if it was her tomato that was the carrier?
Fear stabbed through Trisk, and she rose. Daniel looked up at her, and she almost panicked. She wanted to run, but she didn’t know what to run to, or away from. “Stay here,” she said, hands motioning for him not to move as if he were a horse or a dog. “I’m going to get you a coffee, okay? This is not your fault,” she reassured him, knowing it to her core even if everything around her said otherwise. “We’re going to wait and talk to the doctor, and see what really happened. She might have a heart condition or something we didn’t know about.”
Daniel nodded, his head dropping as his own thoughts took over.
“Ah . . .” she added when Quen arched his eyebrows questioningly at her. “This is my brother, Quen. I’ll be right back.”
Daniel smiled thinly. “Dr. Daniel Plank. Nice to meet you. Trisk never mentioned she had a brother.”
“She doesn’t talk about me much.” Quen hesitated, a wry expression on his face. “I don’t know why.”