Lila breathed out in relief.
“You should be fine too. I’m guessing you’ll sleep very well tonight. Go to bed as soon as you get home so that you don’t fall. My mother would kill me if anything happened to you.”
Lila nodded. With her sore fingers, she tapped out a message to Tristan, hoping he had already made it back to East New Bristol and the shop.
Doc’s here, he wrote back immediately. I’ll let him know.
Rosemary took the palm away and stuck it in Lila’s coat pocket. “We had an agreement. I’d do a rush analysis on the ring, and you’d go to the emergency room. My payment’s past due, chief.”
Lila glanced at her hands. The bleeding had slowed considerably, but her fingers and palms had begun to hurt more and more. Dozens of glass shards still peeked out of her skin, a few of them larger than the reservoir on Reaper’s ring. But now that she knew Dixon would be okay and that she didn’t have poison creeping throughout her body, Lila’s mind had filled with Reaper’s article. It still lingered online, waiting to expose her.
She didn’t have time to fuss about with a doctor.
She had to get home and find the article, and she had to do it drugged.
“I don’t think it’s serious. I’ll fish out the glass when I get home.”
“If you yank those out the wrong way, you could lose the use of your fingers.” Rosemary popped up the sides of Lila’s collar and snatched up a scarf on her lab table. She wound it around the bottom half of Lila’s face, hiding her identity and the shallow cut in her neck from Reaper’s blade.
Lila followed Rosemary down three flights of stairs and through a locked staff door. It was as though they were sneaking around the Randolph estate as children again, hiding from Rosemary’s brother and Jewel in a game of hide-n-seek.
At last, the pair emerged in the back of the emergency room. They slipped into a dark, empty patient room, barely avoiding the watchful eyes of Lieutenant Nathanial Randolph.
“I’m going to get chewed out for this.” Rosemary sighed.
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Want to go to a party at the Masson vineyard? If you can get me out of here and back home without being seen, I’ll even buy you a fancy dress and shoes.”
Rosemary’s face brightened. “You’re serious? A highborn party? New clothes?” She clapped her hands like a child.
“I thought the vineyard would be the exciting part of that invitation. You do realize that highborn parties aren’t like the fun ones you’ve dragged me to before?”
“No, I don’t, but I will,” she said, rocking back on her heels. “Okay, I’ll get Dr. Daniels if I can. She’s discreet.”
Moments later, Dr. Daniels slipped into the room with Rosemary trailing behind. A few strands of gray dotted the doctor’s red bob. Lila was surprised a woman in her profession had not succumbed and dyed it early, but supposed that working at one of the top hospitals in the country made her hair color a moot point.
“Rosemary, this is highly irreg—” The doctor’s gaze stopped on Lila, who sat in a plastic chair in the back of the room.
Lila smiled innocently. “I cut my hands.”
Dr. Daniels toed a stool toward her and slipped on a pair of latex gloves before sitting down. “The magnifying lamp,” she said to Rosemary.
The young woman tugged it over.
Dr. Daniels fussed with lamp for several moments, then gingerly turned Lila’s hands this way and that for a better look. “How did this happen?”
“Dropped a glass figurine. Tried to sweep it up with my fingers.”
“Really?” Dr. Daniels raised an eyebrow. “Next time, use a broom.”
“What’s a broom?”
Rosemary’s lips twisted, and she turned her head away.
The doctor peered into Lila’s face. “You’d be surprised by how many highborns come in saying similar nonsense, chief. The only difference is that I believe them. I don’t believe you.”