Page 66 of Hunt the Dusk
Chapter 22
Monday at the office felt totally anticlimactic until Padma and Edwin dragged me into the interrogation room and locked the door.
“You have potent blood,” Padma blurted.
They both stared at me, waiting for a response.
“Um…thanks?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. Orina, there’s latent power in it. Harriet said so. We went over there for the books, and she was all…” She waved her hands around her face. “Messed up in the face.”
“She’s tainted, too,” Edwin said. “By something ancient.”
“And she said you were more than human,” Padma continued, “and your blood was helping her.”
I knew there was something more to the crazy doctor, but… “I think I’d know if I was more than human. The Order would have told me. They keep tabs on genealogy.”
“What if they hid it from you?” Edwin said.
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But your blood is more than human, and they must know about it, and they haven’t told you, so…something is off.”
There was another possibility they weren’t considering. “Or…Harriet is lying, and there is nothing special about my blood.”
“Then why request more of it?” Padma pointed out.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. But the only way to find out the truth is for me to ask the Order point-blank.”
“No!” they both said in unison, panic etched on their faces.
“They must know,” Padma said. “Orina, they would have your blood on file, everything about you, and they never told you, and that’s a huge red flag.”
“Because thereisn’tanything to tell. Harriet is a crazy bitch who’s tainted by some ancient curse.”
“Then humor us,” Edwin said. “Let’s get a second opinion.”
“What about your friend?” Padma said. “That mageri, Lorenzo?”
“Yes!” Edwin agreed. “You can send him some of your blood.”
I wanted to brush this off because I would know if I was different. If I wasn’t pure human. I’d feel it, surely. An icy hand gripped my nape, reminding me of the darkness that lived inside me and the way that Ezekiel craved my blood. He’d used the word potent to describe it too. Maybe investigating this wasn’t such a bad idea.
“Fine, I’ll call him and arrange it.” The two of them visibly relaxed. “Then we have a whole day of canvasing.”
Edwin groaned. “I really hope someone recognizes our missing people.”
The sketches Padma had commissioned of our missing people had arrived this morning, so we were all set to go door to door. Lomax and Diago had gone missing in the same area, and there was no way that was a coincidence.
While the others got ready to leave for Brimswood, I shut myself in the interrogation room and called Lorenzo.
It rang for ages, and I was about to cut the call when he answered.
“Orina? Is everything all right?”
“Fine. I’m fine. You?”
“I’m doing well.”
