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Maybe even bad news. Anything to take my mind offhim. Valen’s touch. God, I let himbiteme. I both cringe and thrill at the memory.

“Come on, Wy,” I mutter under my breath.

Still nothing.

I’m nibbling on a piece of toast slathered with pear jam that Gene magicked up from somewhere when Gretchen rolls over to me, her voice low. “Georgia, I think I might have something.”

My eyes probably bug out of my head, but I force my face into a mask of no-big-deal. Does she know what Evie and I are up to? Did Wyatt send her data before anyone else? I’m about to crawl out of my skin. “Sure, I can take a look.” I try to say it with nonchalance as I take another bite of the toast—then choke on it and start coughing hard enough for her to smack me on the back.

“You good?” she asks.

“Perfect,” I say, my voice strangled.

“Okay.” She doesn’t seem reassured as she rolls back to her desk. I follow and cough into my elbow a few more times to stop the itch in my throat. Sitting beside her, I offer her the last few bites of toast. “Probably best if I give up.”

She shakes her head, her fingers tangling together in her lap. “I ordered some protein samples from Atlanta. They came yesterday with the shipment of inert virus.”

“Right.” Relief flows through me. This isn’t about my blood. There’s something else she’s found. What could it be? I keep myself calm as she taps a few keys and pulls up an image.

“One of the samples I requested was factor from hemophiliac patients.”

I swallow hard, my mind making several large leaps to a multitude of interesting conclusions. “But hemophilia is genetic, not pathogenic, and we’ve already tried anti-coagulant.”

“Yes, but stay with me.” Her fingers tangle even more, her voice trembling slightly. “When combined with the virus, of course, the factor does nothing except reduce the subject’s ability to staunch bleeding while also being infected. Die from blood loss or plague, but dead either way. Nothing new there.” She clicks onto a slide image showing what she just described.

“Okay.”

“But if you take the factor and try different proteins, the cell reacts in other ways.”

My eyes widen. “How? What did?—”

She holds a hand up, slowing me down. “Some proteins attempt to penetrate the cell, others work to form a barrier around it.”

“That’s not enough.” I frown. “The alien cells are too powerful. They survive no matter what.”

“Right.” She rubs the bridge of her nose. “But the interaction. The cells are strong, but with the right elements ...” She sighs. “It’s like it’s right here, but I can’t quite work out the next steps. I think I have something, but then it falls apart. I’m at a brick wall. So, maybe I was wrong about this whole thing. I don’t?—”

“Holy shit!” An answer hits me right in the face.

Gretchen jumps.

“Signalosomes combined with the hemophiliac factor.” I can see it in my mind, the proteins working against the vampiric cell. If we find the right signalosome proteins, they can break through the outer wall, then the hemophiliac factor could get to work and destroy the entire thing from the inside out.

“That ...” Gretchen scrunches her nose, her eyes going distant as she thinks. “I didn’t think of that.”

I feel a hum in my veins, an electrical pulse. This could work. This couldfucking work. The factor she’s using isn’t something I investigated, not when I was looking for a cure. Gretchen, though, isn’t working on saving humans from the plague. She’s been reverse-engineering a way to unleash a plague on the vampires.

“Signalosomes!” I feel like crawling out of my skin, doing a barbaric yawp, anything to release the pressure that’s rising in my mind, my chest. “I should’ve thought of it. We have to try thisnow.”

“Aye aye, cap’n.” She gestures over her shoulder toward the containment lab. “Let’s go.”

I scramble from my chair and race to the HCL. Every second I waste struggling with the protective gear is like a lifetime. By the time I get into the containment part, I’m sweating.

“I’m pulling it up on the screen out here.” Gretchen’s voice comes through the intercom.

I set up the microscope with a slide of vampire cells. Sweat trickles down my forehead, and I wipe it away against the inside of the suit.

“The tray of factor is in the front storage cooler,” she calls. “I’m not sure which one?—”