Chapter 42
TRAGEDY
Bronte
“I’m fine, Bronte.” Poppy sighs in my ear as I suture the throat of a woman who swallowed swords for a living and slid her last one down the wrong hole. “For the thousandth time, there’s no need to worry.”
For days, she’s been recovering from an infection in her healing wound.
Her fever broke this morning, but my mind won’t stop replaying the night she was stabbed.
I should be with her, not working yet another graveyard weekend that was dumped onto me at the last minute when my colleague called off sick.
“Just take it easy, Petit Diable.”
“Sooo, don’t fuck myself while you’re not here?”
A burst of irrational envy blasts through me. “You are what?”
“Mm, anger. Would it help to know it’s you I’m thinking of?”
“Poppy,” I growl, seconds from crushing my phone. “Your body needs rest.”
“I’m tired of resting.”
“Don’t be a brat.”
“Ugh, fuck you. I’m not a brat.”
“Lie.”
“Just for that, I’m grabbing my enormous, scaly, purple dragon dildo hidden in the coffee table you’ve used a thousand times without opening. Au revoir!”
“Wait, wha—”
Click.
I sigh down at the corpse. “Are you tired of resting?”
The cadaver remains peacefully still.
“My point exactly.”
After stashing her back into the case, I tend to the stack of reports at my desk. Trying not to think about what is currently happening in that fucking bed without me.
Fuck that.
I tap into my text thread with Poppy.
Snoring yet?
No, but I just came.
Twice.
Going on #3.
I shift in my seat with a self-admonishing curse. Being turned on in a room full of dead bodies will make me no better than the necrophiliac intern I had three summers ago.
You should be sleeping.
You should be working.
Not with the thought of a cock that isn't mine buried in your pussy.
It’s not in my pussy…
“Angels, I’d sell my fucking soul for that sight.”
You’re going to regret this if you don't stop, Petit Diable.
Is that a threat or a promise?
My fingers are flying over the screen when the door to the morgue whips open.
Quinn barrels in with an armful of reports, head down and focus on her work as she says, “Hey, Tyler? I have the toxicology results from the poison case that you and your intern have been working on. I think your theory is right. The wife totally killed the husband for cheating.”
Shit. I didn’t think to check her schedule before covering this shift. She must not have heard about the switch.
“Sounds like the poor bastard deserved it.”
Quinn’s gaze snaps up, eyes wide. “Bronte? What are you doing here?”
“Covering for Tyler.”
“Oh, I uh—sorry. I’ll just drop these off in his office mailbox and be on my way, then.”
Clearing her throat awkwardly, she turns to leave. But a lonely, shriveled part of me doesn’t want her to go. Not again and not like this.
“Ma chérie. Wait, s’il te pla?t.”
Quinn stops mid-step. She doesn’t turn around, but her millisecond of hesitation is invitation enough.
“When I came to this city, you were my first friend,” I say, struggling to keep my voice even. “You treated me like a person and not just some creepy coroner. You believed in my Etsy shop when no one else did. You were my first patron. Did you know that?”
Slowly, she nods. “The Vampyre by John Polidori. An original copy from Lord Byron’s contest in the early eighteen-hundreds.
You brought it back from the dead when every other book conservator I spoke to told me it was better off locked in a glass case in a dark room where no one would ever see it again. ”
“A tragedy that would’ve been, don’t you think? If you had listened to them and given up when it truly was worth salvaging in the end?”
Slowly, like a gargoyle entering its first throes of life, she pivots to face me. Unshed tears rim her long lashes. “I never would’ve forgiven myself.”
“Nor I. I’ll be damned if I let it happen now.”
Quinn doesn’t show affection often. So when she rushes over to me and embraces me as tightly as she can, I’m too shocked to return it with anything other than a surprised oof.
“I’m sorry.” She sniffles into my shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry.”
My arms close around her. Every unspoken truth radiates between us. I should’ve confided in her what was happening between Poppy and I. She should’ve told me about Leviathan and Scull.
There will always be secrets between us. Some, though, are better left unshared.
After a long minute, she pulls away, wiping at her eyes. “Can I interest you in some pizza? My treat.”
“I’ll buy if you call.”
The smile that dawns her freckled features patches the wound in my chest with her name on it. “Pepperoni?”
“Meatlover’s. I’m fucking famished.”
“Coming right up,” she chirps, dialing the number.
Too much time has passed since everything feels as it should. I know it won’t last, but I bask in it for as long as I can.