Page 4 of Inked & Bloodbound

She fixes me with a stern look. “It’s been, what? Twenty years since she died? I think you should make the time. Not just for her, but for yourself. I say, go and chill out for a few weeks. Doctor’s orders.”

I wipe my tears with the back of my hand. “I guess. But this doesn’t feel like stress, Kate. It feels bigger. Scarier.”

I stare down at my hands, not sure if I should say the next part out loud. It feels insane even thinking about it, let alone telling someone else.

She alternates between rubbing and patting my back, as if she’s trying to burp secrets out of me. “What aren’t you telling me, Lil? This is the third time you’ve had me look at these scans. I’m starting to get worried.”

“I’ve just…” I pause. “I’ve heard things here and there.”

“Okay,” she says, pulling back to look at me. “What do you mean by ‘heard things‘?”

“Voices. Not all the time,” I add quickly, “and it’s not super clear. It sounds more like an echo than anything. Or a TV playing in another room. It’s probably nothing. Like earlier with that poor guy who came off his motorcycle, the one who passed? I could swear I heard him saying he was sorry over and over, but he was flatlining.”

She holds a neutral face—the same one she’s honed through years of delivering bad news. “Uh-huh. Okay. Anything else?”

I suck in a deep breath. “I’ve seen things too. Outlines of people, shadows.” I lift my eyes to study her face, which is getting steadily more serious.

“Hm.”

“It’s fine,” I babble. “I’ll be fine.”

I stare down at my feet as a deep silence descends across the tinyreading room. Kate’s thinking loudly. Too loudly. I can hear the gears turning, and I already know she’s getting ready to give me a dose of tough love.

“Right. Here’s what we’re going to do,” she says finally, her posh accent getting more pronounced the way it does when she’s in full doctor mode. “You’re going to see a specialist. I’m going to ask around and get a recommendation. Make sure you only get the best, no quacks.”

“Kate, I really don’t think?—”

“Lily, I know you want to minimize this, but I think it’s time we tried something new.” She stands up and smooths a nonexistent wrinkle from her immaculate white coat. “In the meantime, will you promise me you’ll take a few days off? Just to see if there’s any improvement?”

Before I can argue against a vacation, her beeper buzzes, and she exclaims, “Bollocks!”

For the first time in my life, I’m grateful for a pager interruption. I get up too, but before I can leave, Kate catches my arm.

“Lilian Ivy Vervain. Look me in the eye and promise me you’ll take a bloody break.”

Shit. She invoked the magic word. She knows my policy on promises.

I sigh. “Fine. I promise.”

Room 7 is chaos.The girl on the gurney can’t be more than nineteen, but she looks like she’s been dead for weeks. Her skin has this awful grayish pallor that makes me think of pulped newspaper, and it hangs awkwardly off her bones. My heart breaks a little as I move a strand of her stringy, sweat-soaked hair from her face.

“What’s her story?” I ask Dr. Chen as I check her vitals.

“Brought in by friends about an hour ago. Said she collapsed at some party in East Austin. Blood work shows severe anemia—her iron levels are practically nonexistent. Hemoglobin’s down to 8.2.”

I frown, looking at the girl’s arms. Track marks, standard, but alsoa load of mystery marks. Tiny puncture wounds along her inner thighs, faded but still visible. They’re perfectly round, too clean to be from needles. They look almost like…bite marks.

But it’s something else that makes my blood run cold. There, on her left shoulder blade, partially hidden by the hospital gown—a small tattoo of a stylized “6” with gothic flourishes around the edges. The same mark my mother had in the exact same spot. The one I’d only seen a handful of times when she was getting dressed, back when I was little.

I lean closer, my hands trembling as I gently move the fabric aside to get a better look. It’s identical. Down to the ornate curves and the way the number seems to twist into itself. What are the odds?

“Any idea what she was using?” I ask, finding her pulse fluttering beneath her skin, trying to keep my voice steady.

“My gut says fent, but we’re still waiting for the tox screen. Whatever cocktail she was on, it’s nasty stuff. You see these weird marks?—”

“I see them,” I say as I start another IV, and the girl’s eyes flicker open. They’re almost black, pupils so wide they fill her eyes completely. An endless pit of darkness pooling behind her lids.

She looks so empty it’s terrifying.