Bad Hair Day (15 page)

I wasn’t looking forward to telling Rocky that her boyfriend had contracted a bad case of werebots. Probably the best thing I could do was get it over with quick. I dug my cell out of the pocket of my hoodie and called her, but it went straight to voice mail. Either she was on the hospital floor or at school; neither of those places was cell compatible.

I sat up, ignoring the thunder in my head, and loosened the brace from around my neck. Now was not the time to be chilling in the ED. I had to hunt down Sebastian and find out exactly what these nanobots did and how to stop them. I wasn’t going to wait for the doctors to put me through about six hundred X-rays to tell me what I already knew: I didn’t have a neck injury. No numbness, no loss of sensation, and no loss of motor control. At worst, I had an isolated skull fracture.

I also had a werewolf to catch.

I swept the privacy curtain open and found myself staring at a nose. Said nose was attached to a guy in a white coat. I recognized him immediately; I had made him cry the last time I was here, after the zombie attack went down.

“Oh.” The white-coated intern heaved a huge, melodramatic sigh. “It’s you.”

“I know.” I started to walk around him. “Excuse me.”

“Does this mean that you’re refusing treatment?”

I nodded, and the guy actually clapped, he was so happy.

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day! Let me get you the paperwork to sign and you’ll be on your way.”

I would have berated him for his lack of professionalism, but I didn’t have time. Besides, my head felt like it might fall off if I moved it too much, and then someone would mistake me for a zombie. I knew what happened to zombies. Firsthand, even.

“Get me some painkillers while you’re at it,” I called after him.

“Sure! I’m happy to help!” He skipped down the hallway. Apparently, I’d miraculously turned into one of those people who spread sunshine wherever they go. If I figured out who had made me like this, I’d hunt them down and punch them.

He returned quickly, holding a pair of paper cups, with a piece of paper tucked under one arm. The pills went straight into my mouth, but I didn’t bother with the water. There are few skills that come with being an epileptic med-head, so I liked to employ them when I could.

Of course, once I dry-swallowed the pills, I realized I was
really thirsty. I drank the water anyway. And felt more than a little stupid.

The intern waved the treatment refusal in front of my face and practically begged me to sign. I wrote my name in my best unreadable physician scrawl and pushed past him.

I had too many things to do. I needed to hunt down Bryan and keep him from throwing people into walls. I needed to find Sebastian and learn about the nanobots. What I
really
needed was about a dozen clones—one to chase down Sebastian, one to find Bryan, one to take my bio test, and a bunch to obsess over Aaron. Unfortunately, all I had was an elf-obsessed little brother with a hero complex, a best friend who never answered her phone, and a boyfriend who might or might not have broken up with me. As far as posses went, it left room for improvement.

S
ince I had no idea where Bryan had gone and even less of an idea of what to do when I found him, I decided to hunt down Sebastian first. Dr. Burr probably had his home address, but if I went down to the morgue he’d also probably start asking uncomfortable questions like “Why aren’t you in school?” and “You didn’t steal your brother’s car to get here, did you?” Maybe I could worm the address out of the people at Sebastian’s other job. Heck, maybe he’d be there.

I passed Nanotech Industries all the time; it was housed in this funky glass building with a slanted roof right down the street from Legs and Eggs. I’d always wanted to go in there, but they didn’t do tours. That was too bad, because I thought nanobots were freaking sweet. There was something sublimely awesome about robots so minuscule I couldn’t see them without a
microscope. I had read a huge article in the paper a couple of weeks before about these bots developed at Nanotech to increase things like muscle strength, response time, and recovery. They were only using them in animals, and human applications were probably years away, but I hoped the research would progress quickly enough that I got to use nanobots in my medical practice someday. In the meantime, the article hung on my wall with a big heart drawn around it.

Suddenly, I realized I was a huge, unobservant idiot. Nanotech Industries stood right across the empty lot where Bryan had been attacked. Sebastian had access to the nanobots through his internship. He knew Dr. Burr and probably had access to his swipe card. He’d recognized Holly.

Sebastian was the link between all the victims. I had a hard time picturing that concave-chested wimp as a murderous werewolf, but I had to admit that all the evidence was pointing in that direction.

Given that little revelation, it seemed very stupid to rush off to Nanotech without some kind of protection. If Sebastian was there and I said something to tick him off, he could wolf out at any second.

I’d been thinking through all of this as I hunched over the sink in the hospital bathroom, trying in vain to wash the drywall dust off. It just kept smearing around, leaving blue-tinged swirls on my skin. I’d sudsed up my arms for the fourth time when my phone started vibrating. It took some Cirque du Soleil–level
contortion to get it out of my pocket without soaking my pants, but I managed.

“Yeah?” I set the phone on the countertop and continued to scrub. It looked like I might be doomed to a life of blue.

“Please tell me you have my car and are skipping class to hunt werewolves.” It was Jonah. “Because if you don’t, I think somebody stole it.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”

“Oh good.” He paused. “Although I’m going to kill you for scaring me like that. And then Mom and Dad are going to resurrect you and kill you again for driving without a license.”

“Let me make it up to you,” I said. “Can you think of an excuse and get out of class? Because I’d feel a lot better about werewolf hunting if I had backup.”

“Really?” he squeaked. “I’ll get out of Earth Sciences if I have to tunnel my way out with a spork. Meet you by the side doors in five?”

I looked critically at myself. Grains of blue powder stuck to the hairs on my arm; all I was doing was moving them around.

“Make it ten,” I said. “Right now, I look like an X-Men reject, and I need a little time to remedy that.”

“Today just keeps getting better and better,” he said happily, and then he hung up.

One thing I’d discovered about convertibles—they’re really drafty even when the top’s up. The temperature was plummeting,
and I shivered as I waited in the parking lot for Jonah to make his escape. The weather report came on the radio, and I wasn’t too pleased to hear the meteorologist predicting an ice storm later that night. The last thing I needed was a lupine Ice Capades on my hands. Especially since I couldn’t skate.

Jonah opened the school doors and dashed out, hunched against the wind. It took him a minute to see me; I’d parked behind Kiki’s Escalade because I figured I’d be less obvious that way.

“Man, it’s cold.” Jonah sat down in the passenger seat and rubbed his hands together.

“You’re very observant.” I pulled out of the parking lot, trying to drive casually. Which is harder than it sounds.

My brother finally looked at my face and recoiled so hard that he smacked his head on the headrest. “Holy crap, Kate! What the hell happened to you?”

“Bryan wolfed out and threw me into a wall.” I glanced at my face in the rearview mirror and immediately wished I hadn’t. I looked like I’d given myself a Brillo pad facial. Contusions ran along the length of my cheek, which was a nice rosy purple. A huge knot decorated the right side of my forehead. I was growing horns. Or one horn, anyway. I sighed. “So you were right after all. Come on; I know you’re dying to rub it in.”

Instead of whipping a smart-ass crack back at me, he turned the heater up to max and directed the blowers right at me. I looked that bad.

“Here,” he said. “So you don’t freeze.”

“Thanks.”

“Any chance you’ll let me drive?”

“Just give me one more minute behind the wheel before my eyes swell shut, okay? You can drive us back.”

I expected him to argue, but he only shrugged. “No biggie. Gives me a chance to arm myself.”

“I don’t think pseudoswords will do much against werewolves, Jonah. You have no idea how strong they are.”

“I’m not talking about swords.” He reached into the minuscule storage space behind the seats and retrieved a plastic bag from Country Market. Its contents clanked and clattered.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Silverware. I didn’t have time to melt it into bullets, but I figured we could pelt the fiend with it if we had to.”

“Jonah,” I said, “I don’t understand how you can say things like that and still have loads of girls following you around.”

“Honestly?” He produced a butter knife and tested the edge with his thumb. “Me either.”

I’d turned into a nervous wreck by the time we reached Nanotech Industries. Because really, what was I going to do? Stalk in and publicly accuse Sebastian of stealing a nanomachine that makes people hairy, magnetic, and highly violent? I had a wackjob reputation already; I didn’t need to make it worse.

The front doors were covered in that silver reflective stuff that makes it impossible to see inside. I stared at myself in the reflection, Jonah hovering protectively at my elbow.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Just a case of nerves.” I shrugged as if I could physically shake off the feeling. Which only made me feel stupider.

As my younger brother, Jonah had every right to make fun of me for that, but he didn’t. All he said was, “I’ve got your back.”

We’d faced down zombies and lived to tell the tale. Repeatedly. To various news agencies. So I felt reassured by his presence. I didn’t say that out loud, though, because this wasn’t a Hallmark movie. Thank god.

He followed me inside, and we made it about five steps in before stopping to gape. The reception area looked like something out of a sci-fi movie; everything was silver, white, and uncomfortable-looking. Flat screens ringed the walls, showing a series of constantly morphing pictures: rain forest to frog, frog to human, human to wolf, wolf to rock, rock to car, and so on. As I watched, a test tube full of blood morphed into a silver and red magnet. Probably a coincidence.

I didn’t believe that, of course. Especially when I realized that maybe this wasn’t Sebastian running off half-cocked on his own. Maybe the people at Nanotech had nanobotted him on purpose. I didn’t like that thought one bit.

“Nanotech Industries, how can I help you?” a seemingly genderless person sitting behind a desk-shaped piece of glass asked us in a monotone.

“We’re here to see Sebastian Black, please,” I said, trying not to sound as freaked out as I was. “He’s one of your interns? It’s important.”

“Your name?” It arched a brow at me. It was plumpish, short-haired, and smooth-faced—probably a clone. I knew I’d better not make it angry, or machine guns would pop out of its arms and we’d all be toast. Bullet-riddled toast.

“Kate Grable.”

It came out calmly, like freaky clone-type people were nothing to run shrieking from. And it must have worked, because the clone pushed a few buttons on its keyboard, muttered to itself, and said, “Just a minute. You can wait over there.”

It gestured to a bank of unsteady-looking stools. They were so narrow that I couldn’t imagine sitting on one, but I walked toward them because I figured throwing them might make for a handy distraction in the event that things went bad. Jonah sat on one, or tried to, anyway. It tipped every time he tried to take his feet off the floor.

“This place gives me the creeps,” he muttered.

“Join the club.”

A guy who looked remarkably normal approached us. He was balding and portly, with horn-rimmed glasses and a lab coat. Total stereotypical lab geek. He was probably an automaton.

“I’m Terry,” he said in a totally unexpected Vaderish bass. He took one look at my face and then flicked his eyes away like if he looked too long, the bruises might be catching. “How can I help you?”

“Actually, we’re waiting for Sebastian. Sebastian Black?”

“Sebastian isn’t in today. Can I help you with something?”

“Um …” I thought fast. “I work with him at the ME’s office. I just needed to talk to him about some work-related stuff. There’s a report my boss wanted, and I can’t finish it without Sebastian’s help.”

“Sorry, miss. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Damn it.” Now that I’d started, the lies just rolled off my tongue. “My boss is going to sentence me to an eternity cleaning out the cold room. Do you know where I could find him? The ME really wants that report right away.”

If this whole doctor thing didn’t work out, I probably had a future in acting. I wasn’t a doctor; I just played one in my imagination.

“I wish I did, honey,” he said. “He was supposed to be here this afternoon, but he hasn’t shown up in two days. I called his house and left messages, but no luck. If you manage to hunt him down, could you have him call me? I’m in pretty much the same boat you are; management is going to have my head on a platter if I don’t get in touch with him.”