Everafter Series 2 - Nevermore by Nell Stark, Trinity Tam

presence, and I wanted to see where she had gone.
    The door to the stairwell swung open at a touch and I found myself on a landing with two choices: ascent or descent. Closing my eyes, I listened for the beeping of the monitors. It was a little louder now, and seemed to be coming from below me, though I couldn’t be sure as echoes bounced off the concrete walls. Down first, then I could always go up later, if I was mistaken.
    I wasn’t. The stairwell opened into an antechamber that seemed to be some kind of observation facility. Several chairs were lined up to face a large window cut into the far wall overlooking a larger room in which at least a dozen beds had been arranged in dormitory-style rows. Half of them were curtained off, the other half empty. As I watched, the woman in the lab coat picked a file out of a cabinet against one wall and drew back the curtain on the closest bed. I had the briefest glimpse of the patient’s face—covered in heavy stubble and shining with sweat—before the woman’s body obscured my vision.
    I cursed, eyeing the scanner next to the sliding door that separated me from the room. I doubted this one would accept my palm.
    Too late, I heard the snick of a lock catching behind me. I whirled to find Harold Clavier, dressed in deep red scrubs, stepping away from a small door next to the staircase that I had overlooked in my eagerness to discover what was going on in the makeshift hospital. A stream of cold air wafted past my face. In the midst of struggling to gather my thoughts, I absurdly wondered whether he had stepped out of a refrigerator. And then I realized that he had. A morgue. Gwendolyn’s body was probably back there.
    “You have no business here, Valentine.” Clavier’s voice was devoid of inflection. I wondered if the mannerism was studied, or if he really felt nothing.
    “Yes, I do.” The surge of adrenaline at being caught made me sound a little shaky. “A woman died tonight, displaying the same symptoms as the man at Luna a week ago and the woman in Tribeca a few days back.” I searched his eyes for any sign of sympathy, of empathy. Had the parasite stolen every human impulse from him? “Something is killing shifters. Alexa is coming home soon. I need her to be safe.”
    “We are already investigating these incidents,” he said, using the same tone of voice that a father might use for his recalcitrant child. “I can’t tell you anything further.”
    “Let me help , damn it!” I couldn’t keep from raising my voice. “I have skills you can use. My training is excellent. Put me to work. Please.”
    Clavier tilted his head to look at me over the tops of his glasses. “You can stop your snooping and allow me and my staff to do our jobs. We have this under control.” He walked to the sliding doors, pressed his hand to the scanner, and stepped over the threshold. He was taunting me. Mocking me. As the doors hissed shut behind him, I clenched my fists hard enough to break the skin of my own palms.
    “No,” I said to the glass that separated me from the truth. “I don’t think you do.”

Chapter Seven
     
    The rough stone of the balustrade chafed my palms as I leaned forward in search of clean air. Across the boulevard, the walls of the library burned, even the stone catching flame in the impossible heat of the conflagration. Hoarse screams rose from the streets below as smoke reached down my throat to claw at my lungs. I was going to die. We all were. I could feel the lives being extinguished around me like so many flickering candles. How had I not seen this coming?
    Breathing shallowly, I tugged hard at the rope I had knotted around one of the balusters. It would not extend to the ground. I could only pray that it would reach close enough. I didn’t have much time—the floor was growing warmer. Soon, the four walls of this chamber would also be wreathed in flame.
    One of us had to survive. If the clan line did not persist, the Order of Mithras itself would