I woke up shortly after noon. It was Wednesday, the one day off I was guaranteed by contract. Not that a contract would mean anything if yet another disaster struck Empire General. For now, though, I was off-duty, and I intended to luxuriate in a little quiet time.
Lying in bed, I replayed everything that had happened the night before. I knew I should feel bad about letting things go as far as they had with Nick, but I couldn’t summon any remorse.
In fact, I started to argue that he wasn’t actually my patient; Dr. Hart was in charge of his case. And I was pretty sure Nick wasn’t a babe in the woods when it came to relationships. If that kiss was any indication, he was an awful lot more experienced than I was, my first time with Caden “Speedy” Park notwithstanding.
In any case, Nick would be discharged tonight, as soon as he’d fed from a qualified Source. After that first meal, there’d be no reason—physical or mental—to keep him on the vampire ward.
Of course, all that justification didn’t solve my other problems. I was fresh out of ideas for how to jumpstart my magical abilities. I’d tried spells. I’d tried using a wand and runes. I’d tried a potion.
I was terrified to pick up any grimoire, for fear the book would be destroyed by my touch. I couldn’t raid my stash of witchy implements, lest I ruin my most precious arcana. I didn’t dare reach out to any other Washington Coven witch, because I might spread my predicament.
I was absolutely, one hundred percent alone. Well, except for Musker and Becs. But if either of them had known a cure, they would have told me days earlier.
As the sun slanted through my curtains, my mind twisted around on itself—back to Nick and that kiss—That! Kiss!—and his imminent release from the hospital and the pending inspection and my missing powers, and, and, and…
I needed to break the cycle.
I dug out a running bra and an old Georgetown T-shirt. I found shorts at the back of the armoire. I got down on my hands and knees, scrambling halfway beneath my bed before I located both of my running shoes. Clean socks, a high ponytail, five minutes of stretches, and I was ready to hit the trail.
I’d never win any prizes for speed—after jogging the first mile, I slowed to a determined walk. Nevertheless, I had the endurance of a pack mule. I climbed Capitol Hill, conscious of every step pulling on my tight hamstrings. I took to the National Mall like an indefatigable tourist. I passed the architectural blight of the World War II Memorial and skirted the raw black wound of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The sun swept across the sky to the west. Exhausted tourist families shuffled to subway stations, hot and dusty after long days of sightseeing. Commuters filled the roads and bridges, streaming toward their homes.
I’d always liked Memorial Bridge, with its pedestrian sidewalks and its view of Arlington Cemetery. Now, my odyssey took me over those grassy hills. I chided myself when my mind tried to circle back on my dilemmas at the hospital. I sought distraction by counting row after row of gravestones, marker after white marble marker.
Each step erased a little tension from my body, smoothing over a protest in my mind. I was quiet. I was empty. I was clear.
Finally, I stood on the portico of Arlington House, in the heart of the national cemetery. My legs trembled a little, finally complaining about the distance I’d traveled. I noted the spasms with the dispassion of a clinician, just as I would have recorded my respiration rate and pulse on a hospital chart.
At my feet, close by the right toe of my running shoes, spread a dandelion, its sharp-toothed leaves as broad as my thumb. A stalk rose up with a tight-furled flower, barely hinting at yellow across the top.
I could open that flower with magic. I could expose it to the soft evening air.
I didn’t allow myself to think. I didn’t draw on formal words, on any spell I’d ever mastered while sitting in a classroom or reading from a book. I didn’t even make a formal offering of my thoughts, my voice, and my heart; instead, I just opened myself to Hecate, to her terrible love and understanding.
Grow, I thought toward the bud.
I poured all my concentration into the single syllable. I imagined the green husk opening, the damp yellow spikes unfurling in the dusk.
Grow, I thought again.
The stalk would bend just a little, curving with the weight of the new flower. Somewhere in the dirt below, the roots might shift, maybe a hundredth of an inch.
Grow! I pleaded.
But the tight-wrapped bud didn’t waver.
Suddenly I saw myself, sweaty and exhausted, hunched over a weed in the middle of a field of gravestones. I’d lost it. I’d well and truly lost it.
How had I ever thought this would work, anyway? No one at the magicarium had ever suggested that physical exhaustion was a path to magical enlightenment. No one had ever taught us about emptying our minds. What made me think I knew more than all the magisters who had conducted my training?
My mother was right. I never should have wasted my time and effort and energy with medical school, especially not with the intention of treating imperials. I didn’t know enough to complete a one-word working. I could never be suited to run Empire General.
Blinking back tears, I stared out at the horizon. DC was swaddled in twilight—the ghostly white marble of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument and the purple-toned water of the Reflecting Pool. The National Mall’s grass looked black in the darkness, setting off the Capitol’s titanium glow. The moon was rising, one night past full.
I couldn’t see Empire General from here; it was hidden behind the dark green of the Library of Congress’s dome. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there—offering medical care to assorted imperials, providing jobs to hardworking staff, and serving as my home, at least for another three weeks. After that, after we failed the inspection, everyone would be turned out. No over-arching medical care. No paycheck signed by the Eastern Empire. And definitely no bedroom in the attic.
I had nowhere else to go.
I thought about calling an Uber. I could even hail one of DC’s ubiquitous taxis. But I took grim comfort in the ache of my body—it was real and it would last, even after I lost everything else I valued.
The bells on some church tolled nine as I pushed my way through the iron gate on Empire General’s front lawn. I took care to close the latch behind me, tugging it twice, even though anyone could reach through the bars and grant themselves easy access. I took my time walking up the path, studying the grass growing between the flagstones. A tiny dandelion nestled beside the walk, its yellow flower bleached by moonlight.
If I hadn’t been staring at the flower, I probably would have seen the shadow detach itself from the porch. I would have noted the broad shoulders, the lean height. I would have seen the face, still bristled but flushed with new blood.
As it was, I shrieked like a terrified mouse when Nick called my name.
“Sorry,” he said, his lips curling in a wry smile. “I thought you knew I was here.”
I shook my head. “I was…thinking about something else.”
“So I gathered.”
I stepped back to get a better look at him. “You fed.”
“From a qualified Source. Just like the handbook says.”
“And?”
His fingers folded into fists, squeezed, and released. “I feel good. Strong. Like none of this ever happened, and I’m a regular guy again.”
“Post-prandial euphoria. It’s a documented effect.”
“Thanks, Doc. I read about that.” His eyes glinted in the moonlight, softening his mocking tone. “You look like you could use a feeding yourself.”
I wasn’t hungry until he said the words. But suddenly, my mouth watered. My belly twisted, offering an embarrassing growl.
He laughed. “Come on,” he said, offering me his hand as I climbed up the steps.
I didn’t think I’d need the assistance, but my quads said otherwise. Shivering in the hospital’s dim lobby, I followed Nick back to the kitchen.
“Hey,” I protested half-heartedly. “Patients aren’t allowed back here.”
“I’m not a patient,” he said. “I signed myself out after I fed.”
“Then why were you—”
“I was waiting for you. All those book smarts, Doc, and you couldn’t figure that out?”
I stared as he tugged open the walk-in refrigerator’s heavy door. He studied the shelves with an appraising eye before he collected a flat of eggs and a side of bacon, butter and cream and a full loaf of bread. Back in the kitchen, he plucked a skillet from the pot rack, and he rummaged for a whisk.
“You cook?” I asked, even as my stomach urged me to crunch through half a dozen raw eggs.
“No one else feeds me. Not with the crazy hours I keep.”
Fed. Kept. But I didn’t correct him. I was too busy watching the tattoos ripple on his forearms as he cracked three eggs into a bowl, tapping each against the countertop to maximize efficiency.
In minutes, I was sitting down to a late-night feast—eggs and bacon and toast, all washed down with cream-spiked coffee. I ate every bite, mopping the plate clean with my last bite of toast. I should have been self-conscious with Nick watching me, his eyes following every bite I raised to my lips. But I was too hungry to care. I needed to feed my body, needed to replenish the energy I’d wasted on my marathon walk.
I only spoke when Nick refilled my mug. “I can’t,” I said. “I’ll never get to sleep if I drink that.”
His eyes met mine over the cup. “Actually, that was my plan.”
His tone left no doubt as to how he thought I should fill my insomniac hours. “Nick—”
“Stop,” he ordered, setting down the carafe to emphasize his command. “You never were my doctor. And I’m not a patient anymore.”
“I— I’m not interested.”
“The hell you aren’t.” He planted his hands on the table. “I’m a vampire, Ashley. I’ve got superior eyesight and hearing and I can smell—”
Now it was my turn to say, “Stop!”
But I was a doctor. I knew that everything he said was true. And indelicate as his words might be, my entire body was casting a quite enthusiastic vote in this unexpected election.
Even that wasn’t true. Nothing about this encounter was unexpected. I’d been drawn to Nick from the moment he rampaged through my ER. He’d made no secret that he felt the same.
I put my napkin on the table. I pushed back my chair. I took three steps, four, until I stood directly in front of the most attractive vampire—the most attractive man—I’d ever met in my life.
I felt the heat of his recent feeding through my fingers on his shoulders, through my palm on his chest after he stood. His arms still broadcast residual heat as they folded around me, as he pulled me close in an iron-clad embrace.
I wanted this. I needed this. I leaned my head back, purposely exposing the length of my neck. I felt him grow hard against me.
“Ashley,” he growled, but I kissed him to stop him from saying anything more. His fangs sprang into action; I felt them slide against my lips.
He froze for nearly a minute, startled or longing or something else. He mastered his transformed body, though, controlling his vampire instincts. He absorbed his fangs and traced the tip of his tongue along the sensitive path from my ear to my carotid.
Then I was the one who said his name. And I was the one who took his hand. And I was the one who led the way upstairs, down the hall, into my narrow bedroom with its tiny bed shoved beneath the window.
My doctor-brain reminded me we didn’t need to scare up condoms. He couldn’t make me pregnant, and his vampire body was impervious to disease.
Instead, we could focus on more important problems. Nick pulled my mattress onto the floor. I showed some ingenuity in stripping off fabric—the top-sheet that formed an unnecessary tangle, his clothes, mine.
And then we worked together, hard work, work that left us laughing and breathless and begging for more. A whole lot more.
Three times more before dawn, in fact.