Chapter 9 – Needles

Sol

Professor Whitaker ties a blue rubber strap around my arm and tells me to make a fist.

“Not that tight, Solomon. You’re not punching anybody.”

“Sorry. Force of habit.”

I closed Fang & Sons at four, slept in my jeans, and showed up at two on the dot with my hair still wet. She noticed all of it and didn’t say a word. Everybody else on campus has spent the week staring at me like I’m a murder suspect, so her keeping quiet makes me like her even more.

She taps the inside of my elbow with two fingers, hunting for a vein, then swipes it with an alcohol pad. My jacket’s hanging off the back of her chair, with Marcus’s pen in one pocket and Laz’s donor form in the other. That jacket is carrying almost as much baggage as I am.

“Some people prefer to look away,” she says.

“I’ve paid a guy at a strip-mall piercing place to stab holes in my face seven times. He had worse breath than you, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t wash his hands. I’ll be fine.”

She laughs, and the needle goes in while she’s still smiling. It’s a pinch, and then it’s over.

My blood runs down a skinny tube into a glass vial with a purple cap, and it’s darker than I thought it would be, almost black. I’m not squeamish, but I’ve never watched this much of it leave me unless something had gone really, really wrong with a spell.

She swaps the full vial for an empty one with one hand, without even looking. She’s obviously done this a lot, which is good, because I’d hate to be some kind of practice run.

“Can I ask what it’s actually for?”

“You can ask me anything.”

She writes my initials on the first one in tiny neat letters.

“I’m trying to figure out why our blood does what it does to vampires. One taste of a warlock, and a perfectly nice young man turns into somebody who’d sell his own grandmother for another one.”

She snaps a cap onto the next vial.

“If I can find out what it is in us that they crave, maybe somebody can work out how to switch it off.”

That’s what I guessed, at two in the morning with a bar rag over my shoulder, and I’m so pleased with myself I nearly forget there’s a needle in my arm.

If she cracks it, no more addicts or murdered warlocks. I’m part of something important for once in my life.

And I get paid to help her do it. I’m not going to apologize for liking that part, because my landlord doesn’t take good intentions in lieu of rent.

She pulls the strap off, presses a cotton ball into the crook of my elbow and tapes it down. She hands me a juice box and a little pack of Nutter Butters.

“Drink that before you stand up. Professor’s orders.”

It’s the apple kind with the tiny straw glued to the side. Mom used to put these exact ones in my lunch box. I miss her so much right then that I drink the whole thing without stopping, so I don’t have to talk for a minute.

“One more thing,” she says. “Keep the grant between us, would you? If word gets around, I’ll have every grad student in the department in here with their sleeves rolled up, and I can’t pay all of them. And of course I’d run the risk of break-ins to get the blood.”

That makes sense. It’s her money, not the university’s, and if I had a limited grant to fund my study, I wouldn’t want a line out the door either. Or the worry of finding my office ransacked by junkies.

“I won’t tell anybody,” I promise.

Whitaker asks for my bank details and taps away on her phone like she’s ordering takeout. Mine buzzes in my lap.

For the first time in my life, my bank account’s got a number in it that has more than three digits.

I pay my rent right there in her chair, with my arm still taped up. I hope my landlord chokes on his fucking caps lock.

Mom died broke. I was fifteen, and I watched the final notices stack up on our kitchen counter until she stopped opening them. I’m not dying broke too, especially not if all it takes is a needle in my arm now and then.

* * *

Kat’s sitting on the railing outside the building, swinging her boots, with her phone out.

“Solomon Hallowell,” she says. “I’ve been texting you to no avail since ten a.m., and your location’s been sitting in this building for half an hour.”

“I was asleep, and then I was busy.”

“Doing what?” She hops down, leans in and sniffs me. Her nose wrinkles. “And explain why you reek of rubbing alcohol and Band-Aids.”

Kat’s parents could pay my rent with the change down the back of their couch. If I told her, she’d offer to cover it. I’d say no, she’d push, and we’d end up screaming at each other over a rent check. I’d rather keep my mouth shut and keep my best friend.

“Flu shot. They’re free at the health center.”

She grabs my right arm and shoves the sleeve up before I can stop her. There’s the cotton ball, taped right where the needle went.

“Babe. Flu shots go in your shoulder.”

“I guess it’s a new guy who didn’t know. I’m sure it’ll still work.”

She looks at me, and I can see her deciding whether to make me tell her the truth.

She pulls my sleeve back down herself. “Okay. Keep your secret, then.”

Kat Moreno, who narrates strangers’ breakups for fun, doesn’t ask me a single other question. I love her a little more for not digging.

“Anyway,” she says. “Forget your mystery shot. Have you seen the video yet?”

“What video?”

She shoves her phone in my face and drops into her true-crime podcast voice.

“Half past two on the Bite Strip. One dumpster, one very expensive car, and one question that still haunts this town. Who was he waiting for?”

It’s the Bugatti outside my bar. I don’t need the replay, because I was there for every second of that interminable song.

“He wasn’t waiting for anybody,” I tell her. “He was being a creepy asshole.”

“It’s everywhere,” Kat says. “Some of the comments say he went there to buy Sugar. Most of them have decided he was there for you.”

“Me? What would he want with me?”

“To buy you, technically. Somebody made a poll.” She scrolls. “My favorite comment says the vape guy has more rizz than both of you put together.”

“Great. I’m losing to a guy who sells drugs out of his car.”

“He’s a small business owner, Sol. Respect the hustle.”

She flicks to a second video. It’s Laz climbing out of the Bugatti at last call and heading for the club’s door.

I should be thinking about how this looks. The board’s going to see it. So is Fisk, and the dean of students definitely will, because werewolves are nosy as hell.

Instead, I’m avidly watching the way Laz pushes the door open with two fingers, like the handle might give him a disease.

He has to duck his head under the frame. His platinum hair swings forward, and he shoves it back with the same long-fingered hand he grabbed my wrist with.

He doesn’t even look around before he walks into the least respectable place he’s ever set foot in.

What the fuck is wrong with me? He was there to prove to me everyone will think he’s innocent and I’m guilty, and I’m standing on the steps getting turned on by how he opens a door.

I tear into the Nutter Butters and read the ingredients on the back of the packet, every single line.

“Oh my God,” Kat says. “You smell like the inside of a scented candle store.”

“I’m reading.”

“You’re reading the back of a cookie packet.” She takes her phone back and watches the clip again. “His walk’s a ten. I’m not even taking a point off for the obnoxious suit.”

“He sat out there for ten minutes, Kat. The whole campus thinks he went in there to score off me.”

“Not everybody. A lot of the comments are just people asking if you’re single.”

She holds the phone up again. Right under the clip, somebody’s written fang & sons bartender is def dealing lol. It’s got two hundred likes.

Oh, fuck me. All of a sudden I’m scared shitless. The board already sat there and looked at me like I killed Marcus. Now there’s a video of a Kron visiting my bar at two-thirty in the morning, and a couple hundred strangers agree I’m selling.

Kat points at me with her phone.

“Eat something real. You look like an extra from Oliver Twist who just got told there’s no more gruel.”

I flip her off with a Nutter Butter. She heads off toward the law building, and I stay on the steps, scratching at the tape under my sleeve.

I’ve lied to Kat twice in five minutes. She knew both times and let me get away with it, and I know her far too well to expect that to last.