"I'm sorry?"
But unfortunately, my question left my mouth open and gave him the opportunity to stick a cotton swab into it. Man, he was really rooting around for cheek cells. He took it out and sniffed at the swab.
"Just as I suspected. It's your saliva that smells unpleasant when your fangs are down. Have you noticed a difference when their fangs are retracted, Mrs. Jameson-Nightengale?"
Jane shook her head. "No, not in general. Then again, I don't go around sniffing their mouths, because that's an invasion on several levels."
"Would you be comfortable allowing a human subject to smell their mouths?"
"Not until their bloodlust is under control, no."
Dr. Hudson gave Jane a look that clearly meant she had failed him, then turned back to me. "Well, I would theorize that since vampires frequently find smells that are delicious to humans to be disgusting, a human would enjoy the smell of your breath. So when you speak, a human will smell that enticing aroma and be drawn closer. It will take some more tests, of course, but I suspect that there are pheromones involved. It could be an adaptation, to draw in potential prey, and the reaction is about the preference of your intended victim. It would be fascinating to see how it works on humans."
With no small amount of guilt, I thought back to last night in the dorm recovery room, when Ben couldn't seem to stay away from me, even when he realized he was alone with a newborn vampire. Was that the influence of my flower breath? Did I lure him into certain bite-y death?
My insides twisted with guilt as Jane told Dr. Hudson, "Which will not be happening for quite some time, because it's not safe to let them around humans."
"Right, right." Dr. Hudson waved away her concerns, while jotting some notes on his clipboard.
Unfortunately, Dr. Hudson's uncomfortable oral fixation was only the beginning of his personal-space invasions. He whistled, summoning the rest of his science squad, who poured into the parlor in a flurry of white coats. The science vamps said very little as they took samples of my blood and made me spit in a test tube and took even more cheek swabs. I drew the line at letting them scrape off cells from my fangs. Jane agreed that the potential damage to my fangs-which were apparently the only body part that vampires didn't grow back-was too risky. Dr. Gennaro had to content himself with dental molds and X-rays of our heads made with a portable scanning machine.
We didn't have pulses. We didn't have blood pressure. We did have to answer a stream of increasingly embarrassing questions about our turning, our prevampire diets, and our health histories. I didn't like the way Dr. Hudson's eyes gleamed with each new development. His gaze was greedy, like he was trying to figure out a way to smuggle us out of the house under his lab coat. Suddenly, I understood Jane's plans to have us examined at her home, where she could keep an eye on Ben.
The exam went on for hours, until Jane finally stepped in, told Dr. Hudson that we'd been through enough for one evening, and invited his team to leave River Oaks. Like, now.
///
Dr. Hudson protested loudly, even as the other vampires packed up their equipment. They seemed to understand that Jane was in charge, while Dr. Hudson had science on the brain.
"Are you certain we couldn't just pop them over to the lab and run some daytime tests?" he whined. "Just some sleep monitoring, noninvasive. Mostly."
"Mostly?" Ben asked.
Jane shook her head emphatically. "No."
"Just a quick sleepover," Dr. Hudson pleaded. "There's so much left for us to learn from them."
"Don't make me tell you no twice, Dr. Hudson. Take your equipment out of my house, and get me the results."
"Well, at least let me leave some sample-taking kits so you can measure their daily data."
Jane stared at him in a way that made me feel grateful that, so far, I'd only seen her mildly annoyed with me. Dr. Hudson slumped out of the room. Jane followed him out and closed the parlor door. We heard the scientists packing their gear into the vans parked in front of the house. We heard Jane explaining to Dr. Hudson that he had no right to use her two wards as guinea pigs and that if she caught him doing anything creepy with our tissue samples, she would see him get the "upsetting, scientist version of The Gauntlet."
"And I want my sock back!" I yelled through the parlor door. The door opened, and Jane's hand appeared, tossing the little plastic bag into the room with us. "Thank you!"
Ben and I sat in stunned silence, staring at my discarded sock. It looked so sad and gross, crime-scene evidence thrown into the middle of Jane's cozy, comfortable parlor, that I started giggling. My hysterical guffaws became full-on belly laughs. And pretty soon I was doubled over, with tears streaming down my cheeks. Ben, I noticed, was not laughing.