Doc Jane chimed in, “I think it’s a good idea. Second opinions are always good when things aren’t clear.”
“Work me up,” Wrath said, giving Beth’s hand a quick kiss before releasing it.
“My lord, would you be so kind as to remove your glasses?”
Havers was quick with the spearing-light-in-the-eyeball routine; then he moved around for an ear check, followed by a heart check. A nurse came in with blood-drawing shit, but Doc Jane did the pierce-and-pull on his vein.
When it was all done, Havers double-pocketed his hands again and sported another one of those doctor frowns. “Everything seems normal. Well, normal for you. Your pupils are nonresponsive, for all intents and purposes, but that’s a protective mechanism because your retinas are so photophobic to begin with.”
“So what’s the bottom line?” Wrath asked.
Doc Jane shrugged. “Keep a diary of the headaches. And if the blindness happens again, we’re all coming back here immediately. Maybe a CAT scan while it’s occurring will help us pinpoint the issue.”
Havers threw another bow to Doc Jane. “I’ll let your physician know about the blood tests.”
“Good deal.” Wrath looked up at his shellan, prepared to go, but Beth was focused on the doctors.
“Neither of you seem very happy about this,” she said.
Doc Jane spoke slowly and carefully, as if she were choosing her words with precision. “Anytime there’s an impairment in function that we can’t explain, I get twitchy. I’m not saying this is a dire situation. But I’m not convinced we’re out of the woods yet just because the CAT scan was okay.”
Wrath slid off the examination table and took his black leather jacket out of Beth’s hold. It felt fan-fucking-tastic to pull the thing on and ditch the patient role his bitch-ass eyes had forced him into.
“I won’t screw around with this,” he told the coats. “But I’m going to keep working.”
There was a chorus of you-need-to-chill-for-a-couple-of-days, which he blew off by leaving the examination room. The thing was, as he and Beth strode off down the corridor, an odd sense of urgency gripped him.
He had this unshakable sense that he had to act fast, because he didn’t have a lot of time left.
John took his good goddamn time getting to ZeroSum. After he left Xhex’s, he strolled over to Tenth Street and walked in the flurries down to the Tex/Mex place. Inside, he took a table next to a fire exit and, through pointing at pictures on the laminated menu, bought himself two plates of baby backs, a side of mashed, and a side of slaw.
The waitress who took his order and delivered the chow was wearing a skirt short enough to be considered underwear, and she seemed ready to serve him in more than just a dinner kind of way. He actually considered it. She had blond hair and not too much makeup and her legs were nice. But she smelled like barbecue, and he didn’t appreciate the way she talked real slow around him, as if she thought he was dumb.
John paid cash, left a good tip, and hustled along before she could try to give him her number. Out in the cold, he took the long way down Trade. Which was to say he made a detour into each alley he came to.
No lessers. No humans doing bad shit, either.
Finally, he went into ZeroSum. As he walked through the steel-and-glass doors and caught a barrage of lights and music and shady people dressed up slick, his tough-man makeover slipped a little. Xhex would be here-
Yeah. So. Was he such a fucking nancy that he couldn’t be in the same club with her?
Not anymore. John got his balls right and strode over to the velvet rope, past the stares of the bouncers, and up into the VIP lounge. In the back, at the Brotherhood’s table, Qhuinn and Blay were sitting like a pair of quarterbacks stuck on a bench while their team was choking it out on the field: They were antsy and drumming their fingers, playing with the napkins that had come with their bottles of Corona.
As he walked over, they both looked up and stopped all movement, like someone had just freeze-framed their DVDs.
“Hey,” Qhuinn said.
John sat down next to his buddy and signed, Hey.
“How you doing?” Qhuinn asked as the waitress came over with perfect timing. “Another three Coronas-”
John cut the guy off. I want something different. Tell her…I want a lowboy of Jack Daniel’s on ice.
Qhuinn’s eyebrows popped, but he put in the order and watched as the woman trotted over to the bar. “High-test, huh.”
John shrugged and eyed a blonde two booths down. The second she caught him staring she went into full preen mode, sweeping her thick, shiny hair over onto her back and shoving her breasts out until they strained against her barely there LBD.