Dr. Adams ruled that it was an allowable use of the serum.
Dr. Booth arrived ten minutes later in a pair of burgundy scrubs, the Bullstow rose stitched upon his breast, a black case in his hands. The chairwoman bucked and screamed while Shaw and Dr. Adams held her, all so Dr. Booth could slide a needle underneath her skin and inject the dark red liquid into her veins. As she flopped in the chair, her arms shot back and nearly ripped the seatback away.
“I think something might be interacting with the serum,” Dr. Booth said, gripping the chairwoman’s shoulders. “I checked her medical files, but there might be something missing.”
“Lots is. Had to take stuff for the baby,” the chairwoman slurred. “Shouldn’t be here. Did nothing hardly at all.” Her head flopped forward at last, and several locks of hair slipped loose from her bun.
Dr. Booth gently pulled out the pins in her hair so that she wouldn’t injure herself. This time, she didn’t look like a squirrel. She looked like a ghost tied to the world by gravity and iron chains, tied so she would not drift away.
The doctor slipped a blood-pressure cuff over her f
rail arm and recorded a few numbers on his palm. “She’s stable for now. I suggest you get his over with quickly, though.”
Dr. Adams nodded. “Tell us your story, madam.”
“Hired a doctor, is all. Patrick’s little friend found him for me.”
“What doctor?”
“Doctor Asshole.” The chairwoman frowned, laying her head upon the table. She sighed heavily and closed her eyes against the light. “Docs in Saxony promised me a girl for ages, but the eggs never took. Found another in La Verde said he could do better. Said I’d be pregnant with a new prime inside of three months. A girl if he gave me the right drugs beforehand. You don’t know what it’s like. He promised me. He gave me his word.”
“What did you give him?”
The matron rubbed at her eyes, kohl smearing. “A third of the family’s capital. Millions. All that money for a miracle, but he just took the money. Closed his office and ran away to Burgundy.”
Lila added it to her list, just something else her family had caused.
The chairwoman rolled her forehead on the table, hiding her face from the blackcoats. “I messed up. I messed up so bad.”
“What did you do?” Dr. Adams patted her hand, then slipped her several tissues from a small packet.
“Had to make up the loss somehow, didn’t I? His little friend found another doctor. German. Too expensive, though. Didn’t have enough left to hire him, so Patrick’s friend found a business opportunity with a Burgundy company. Promised we’d make it all back and more.”
The chairwoman rocked back and forth. “I knew I’d get caught, but I had to try. Family’s counting on me. Five hundred and twenty-eight souls. You don’t know what it’s like. They look at you like the dairy cow that’s come to feed them, always ready for slaughter if you can’t produce. They pick and they pick and they pick. Never grateful, either. Never grateful for anything that you do.”
She smacked herself in the chest. “I won’t be carved up for dinner. I’m the butcher. I make the rules. Me. You better do what I say, and let me out of here, or I’m going to have you both at my next party. In costumes next to Peter. You’ll serve us drinks. The family will think I’m the cow again, a golden cow to be adored.”
She looked around, lost suddenly, and grabbed Dr. Adams’s jacket sleeve. “Can you get me a baby? Please, I need another daughter. I had three once, but now they’re all gone. My poor Madeline and Lisette trapped under the ground and my little Alexandra, always falling behind.”
Lila wrinkled her nose as tears spilled over the chairwoman’s cheeks. She pulled off her headset and turned away from the window.
Patrick and his mother had both been led by Zephyr. If they’d used the hacker for business advice, other highborn might have used him, too. How many had listened to his whispers? How many had spread his false information to their matrons? How many did whatever he suggested? How many had been caught in his traps, bribed, or coerced?
Would she be next?
Her palm vibrated in her pocket.
Zephyr had just broken through Prolix’s last layer. If the hacker had any sense, then he’d just figured out that her identity was a fake. If he didn’t, then he’d figure it out very soon.
The clock had wound down.
Zephyr would be looking for her now.
Chapter 24
Lila handed her last bit of cash to the taxi driver and disembarked from the cab, several blocks away from Tristan’s shop. Since she was supposed to be fighting for her life in Randolph General, she wrapped her scarf around her mouth and nose and threaded through the crowded streets, hands in her pockets, holding her nose against the stench of rotting trash in the dumpsters. Her stomach couldn’t handle the smell with gagging, and her head did not fare much better. It throbbed against her skull in time to her footsteps.
Luckily, no one looked her in the face, not that they could see much of it.