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T he sample is only a slight upgrade from the last. We’ve been working on it for a week, making no headway on anything except more questions. Questions—we’ve generated plenty of those. Why are the red blood cells deformed? Where are the white blood cells? Why does the sheer amount of fibrin eclipse anything we’ve ever seen? And what can this blood do to help with the cure?

Wyatt, his eyes bloodshot and his face wan, plops down beside me as I work on my laptop. “When your sister cut her arm, you were right there, right?”

“Yeah.” I stretch and spin on my seat to look at him. “Why?”

“You’re certain you saw what we all saw?”

“Yeah.” I cock my head to the side. “Where are you going with this?”

He shrugs. “Nowhere. That’s the problem with these samples. There’s nothing in them that could create those results. There’s a lot of fibrin, sure. But it’s not like it interacts with anything outside itself. The math is not mathing, and the math isn’t going to math with what we’re being given.”

Aang leans over the other side of the lab table, his black hair sticking up every which way. “This guy—the superhuman—he comes to your apartment every night?”

“For like, two seconds. Just to ask me why I haven’t found the cure yet.” I’m just as frustrated as everyone else here, maybe more so. Valen has only given me a few terse sentences ever since the night he found Gage in my apartment. No messages, nothing to offer Gage.

“So, if we all jumped him …” Aang hands his head and groans. “I abhor violence, but we could like, take him down and just get a small sample?”

“Hippocratic Oath, anyone?” Evie sidles up, a coffee cup cradled in her palms. “You know we can’t do that.”

“I’m not technically a doctor.” Gretchen calls from her spot at her microscope. “I mean, a Ph.D. doctor three times over, yeah, but not an M.D.”

“That’s right.” Aang pops his head up. “We could hold him down, and you could just do a quick poke. We’d be all set.”

I shake my head. “Have you seen Valen?”

“Yeah, on TV.” Aang shrugs.

“He’s huge. Like, massive. But not bulky. Wiry. And he moves fast, too fast for any of us to beat him at anything other than Scrabble.” I rub the bridge of my nose. “We aren’t getting anything from him unless he freely gives it.”

Evie makes a hmmmm noise as a peal of thunder sounds outside. A storm front rolled in this morning, and it’s been pounding the capital for at least an hour.

“What are you thinking?” Wyatt’s hair is falling into his eyes now, and he’s gotten a habit of shaking his head frat-boy-style to clear his vision—which is cute but also very golden retriever when he does it.

“Why not the honeypot?” Evie taps her fingernail on her cup.

Without a word, Wyatt hurries off to his record collection.

“The what?” Aang asks. “Honey?”

“The honeypot.” She gives him a ‘come on, you know what I mean’ look. “Read a book, why don’t you. A fiction book,” she amends. “The honeypot is what spies call it when they use sex to get secrets.”

My cheeks begin to go warm. “No. Absolutely not. Not on the table.”

Aang snorts a laugh. “All due respect to Georgia—” It’s quite clear he means zero respect is coming my way. “—but look at her. She dresses like a ragamuffin, keeps her hair in a tangled bun, and some days, well, I think we all know that some days she smells.”

“What? I don’t smell!” I fight the urge to sniff my pits.

Gretchen rolls closer, her eyes apologetic. “We all smell sometimes. Keeping late hours in here and not taking time to do self-care, is what he means.”

“I don’t smell.” Aang huffs.

“Your hair looks like you stuck your finger in a socket,” Evie points out.

“Well, your roots are showing,” he claps back.

“Fair.” She shrugs.

“So, I guess we’ve all decided I’m the most attractive?” Gretchen grins.

“Standing right here,” Wyatt chimes in wryly and spins a record with a song about someone being too sexy for this and that.

I laugh and so does everyone else. The temperature in the room seems to settle a few degrees, whatever disastrous argument we were heading toward artfully avoided thanks to Gretchen and Wyatt.

Aang shrugs. “But let’s be real. She’s not going to be able to honey anything out of anyone in this state. She’d need?—”

The lab door opens, and Gene pokes his head in. “Lunch.”

“Thank god.” Gretchen rolls past. I couldn’t agree more. There’s no way I’m going to listen to Aang’s rundown of everything wrong with me.

“I’m serious, though.” Evie takes my arm so we trail behind the others. “The honeypot. If you’re down for it, that might be the way to get what we need.”

“That’s the problem.” I sigh. “Aang may have a point.” I glance down at my holey Green Day t-shirt and too-big sweatpants. “I don’t think I’m down for it, and he definitely isn’t.”

“Gay?” she asks.

“No, at least, I don’t think so. I mean, maybe? Hmm.” Then I remember how he acted when Gage was in my apartment. He was—and I’ve been wrestling with this ever since—jealous. That had to be why he went so damn psycho. But why would he think he has any claim to me whatsoever? At best, we’re deeply reluctant business partners. Nothing more. “Valen’s just… He’s just … rude. And cold. And arrogant. And, and …” I have a lot of things I call Valen in my mind, none of them pleasant.

She tsks. “That doesn’t mean anything. He’s a man, right?”

“No. He’s not. He’s something else, but we’re no closer to figuring out what.”

“Let me rephrase. He’s a male?”

“Definitely.” I think about the way he prowls around my apartment, the feral intensity of him. There’s no softness in him. He’s stark—a black and white painting of a slaughterhouse. But he’s also beautiful. Even I can admit that. The lines of his face, the power in his body. He may be painted in harsh strokes, but he’s art, nonetheless.

“Is he into you at all?”

“No,” I answer quickly.

Her eyebrows rise in clear suspicion. “Are you certain about that?”

“I honestly have no idea. I don’t understand him at all.”

“Sounds like he is into you. Then you can get to him. You can get him on our side and pillow talk him into giving a live sample. For the cause. I mean, if you’re comfortable with doing that, of course. I’m not trying to, you know?—”

“Pimp me out?” I supply.

“I was going to say ‘push you’, but if the purple platform fits…” She smiles then squeezes my arm. “Just think about it. I could be reading way too much into the situation, or maybe I’ve read too many spy novels. But what if it works? What if you give him a little something-somethin, and then he gives you everything?”

My face is tomato-red at this point. Hot as the surface of the sun.

She shrugs. “If you don’t want to, we’ll find another way. Come on, let’s eat.”

* * *

I’m still thinking about the honeypot gambit when the familiar sound of the elevator opening pulls me from my musings. He’s late. It’s been hours since sundown.

“I haven’t found the cure. Feel free to leave,” I call out. I’m not in the mood to see him, especially not when my thoughts are consumed with ridiculous ideas of how to entice him into my honeypot. Inward groan .

“Seriously, there’s nothing.” I close my book, not that I was paying any real attention. I’ve read the same paragraph on mitochondrial myopathy three times over and still have no idea what it says. “Just go. I’m not in the mood for your glaring contest tonight.”

Valen stumbles into my living room, blood soaking through his gray shirt.

“Holy shit!” I scramble up. “What happened?”

He grips the back of the sofa, his knuckles white. “It’ll heal.”

“Sit!” I rush past him and grab supplies from what’s left of my moving boxes. When I get back to the living room, he’s sitting on the floor, his head tilted back as he rests against the sofa.

“I just need a moment.” He bats at my hands as I yank his shirt free of his pants and lift it.

Deep red cuts run along his chest, and there’s a vicious stab wound in his side just south of his ribs. “This …” I can’t form words, only action. With a yank, I lift his shirt the rest of the way up. “Arms up,” I command.

He lifts them slowly, a bemused look on his pale face. Blood is splattered across his cheek and temple.

I toss the ruined shirt aside and pull on gloves. “What did this?” I decide the puncture wound needs care first. The other slashes are deep, but not internal-organ deep.

He groans as I prod gently at the wound.

“It’s not bleeding too badly, but there may be blood inside. Lie back.” I take his forearm and help him to the floor. “God, if this has pierced your kidney …” I wipe at his bloody flesh with alcohol and gauze to get a better look.

“Went straight through. Better that way. Heals faster.” He has the nerve to put his hands behind his head and look down at me with half-lidded eyes.

“This wound is fatal.” I keep wiping the gore away.

“Not for me.” He tenses as I feel around his side to see if there’s an exit wound like he says. There is. A narrow gash mars the flesh on his lower back.

“You could have severed intestines. Sepsis.” I’m out of my depth. “There could be a foreign body still in there. I can’t see well enough without imaging.”

He takes my gloved hand. “I just need time. Save your doctoring for the weak humans.”

I pull my hand away and go back to treating his injuries, cleaning the cuts in his skin. There’s no venom in these like last time. The wounds are clean, probably made by a blade. “Are you going to tell me what happened?” I can’t stop thinking about his kidney, about internal bleeding. He says he’ll heal. He has before. But what if he’s lying? Shit! I should work on the things I actually can heal.

Distant gunshots puncture the quiet as I work. “So, that’s a no then? No explanation?”

“You think humans are the only ones at war?” he asks.

“We aren’t at war.”

“You truly believe that?” His voice is mocking.

“I believe we’re surviving. Despite the plague, despite our divisions, we’re surviving.”

He gives me a pitying look. “Most aren’t.”

“They will. We’re going to find the answer. Right here in this lab.”

“So certain?”

“Mock me all you want.”

“I don’t need permission for that, but thank you all the same.”

I swallow down the desire to punch him right in one of his wounds. Instead, I tape some bandages across his chest a bit more roughly than I intended. “What I was going to say is, this virus isn’t the end. We’ll find a way.”

“The virus might not be the end of humanity, no.” He somehow manages to disagree while also agreeing.

“Stop trying to distract me. Why do you show up here injured half the time? Tell me the truth for once.”

“Like I said, my people are at war.”

“Over what?” I eye his bloody shirt and wonder if I can somehow sneak it away from him.

“Everything,” he says simply.

“Thanks for clearing that up.” I roll my eyes.

“You haven’t been sleeping. You look pale.” His gaze holds mine as I finish taping the last puncture.

“My usual spray tan lady is on vacation.” I sit back on my heels.

“Droll, as always.” He smirks.

“Dickish, as always.” It just slips out.

“If you’ve finished groping me, I’d best be on my way.”

I sputter. “ Groping you?”

“I think you rather enjoy touching me, Doctor. Far beyond any sort of clinical curiosity.” He snatches my hand and presses it to his chest.

“Hey!” I’m leaning over him now, bracing myself with my free hand to keep from falling onto him.

“How about this?” His eyes bore into me as I feel his heartbeat. It’s strong. Slow. Almost too slow. “Does this scratch your curious itch?”

Why is he so warm?

“What are you?” I stare down at him, searching his blood-stained face for some sort of answer.

“Would you care to keep inspecting me?” He glances down. “Perhaps take the full tour for once?”

I try to pull my hand free, but he holds me still effortlessly. “Let go.”

“Why should I?” He sits up, his body suddenly far too close to mine.

I scramble back, but he maintains his grip on my wrist, my palm pressed flat against his chest.

“Your heart is racing, Doctor.”

“Because you’re scaring me.”

“Liar.” His gaze darts to my mouth.

Something in the way he says it, like his tongue is caressing the word, sends a jolt of heat through me. Some swirl of euphoria low in my belly where it doesn’t belong.

“Let go.” My request is breathless.

He leans closer, his mouth so close to mine I feel the whisper of his breath. “All right.” With that, he releases his grip, and I scramble back then clamber to my feet.

He gets up easily, as if he weren’t mortally wounded, and swipes all the bloody gauze from the floor. Then he snags his shirt, his muscles bunching beneath his smooth skin. I look away and remind myself this is all clinical. Me doing my job. Helping people. Even him.

“You can’t do things like that. You have to … This is professional.”

He smirks down at me. “Is that so?”

“Yes.” I say with as much force as I can despite the weakness in my knees.

“In that case, you’ll be pleased that I managed to keep this intact.” He hands me a vial, the contents already beginning to congeal.

“‘Intact’ is stretching it.” I sigh at the state of the sample. “Why can’t you give me what I need?”

One of his dark eyebrows rises, his lips twitching, the implication in the air between us.

I cough, my cheeks heating as I look away. “Never mind. Just try not to arrive shredded again.” Nope, I’m definitely not engaging the honeypot tactic. Evie will have to come up with some new espionage plan.

“I’m beginning to suspect you care about what happens to me.” He grabs his jacket from the floor.

“Just doing my job. Professional. That’s all.” I take the vial to the kitchen island and wait for him to do his disappearing act. He doesn’t disappoint, the soft whir of the elevator telling me he’s gone.

My nerves wrecked, my insides still twisting and warm, I stare at the vial and wonder where it came from. Who it came from. And will this finally be what we’ve been looking for?