Winter scribbled away on spare sheets of paper. She wrote down what procedures and measurements and chemical names she could remember, frantically trying to save them before they were gone from her memory. She still had the ingredients. She still had nearly three weeks of experience. She still had—
“They found him dead in his office!” Phoebe exclaimed. She was reading from a newspaper she’d picked up on her lunch break, the front page of which advertised the sudden death of a certain factory owner. “There really is a killer on the loose.”
“It was plagues.” Winter tapped her pen against the desk. What the hell was the stuff in that dark red bottle called? Whatever it was, it was ten ounces of that per…half liter of base? Or full?
“There has to be more to it than that.” Phoebe folded up the paper. “Maybe I should call Winter and ask her what she knows about the guard investigation.”
Was she waiting for permission? “She’ll be on a shift right now.”
“Well, no, I wasn’t going to call now,” Phoebe mumbled.
This wasn’t going to be enough. Maybe it was the panic blanking Winter’s mind, but she couldn’t remember any of the full recipes the Saint had written down, despite how many times she’d made them. She had to steal back the Plague Bible. And get her hands on his white plague cure, which was hopefully somewhere in Marcus’s coded notes.
She turned to study Phoebe, who’d returned to sifting through an open drawer of files. “Do you have any plans tonight, Phoebe?”
“Uh, besides school?” Phoebe asked. “I’ve got evening classes until nine.”
“What about your family?”
Phoebe shot Winter a confused look. “I think they’re all just going to be at home.”
Winter would have to lure them out. Still tapping her pen against the desk, she sighed.
“What are you writing?” Phoebe asked. “You seem…stressed.”
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Winter rose to her feet, overwhelmed by the sensation to move. To do something. Anything. Now was a good time to start afternoon rounds, anyway. She gathered up the scraps of paper, folded them up, and shoved them in her bag.
She managed her rounds as best she could without the Bible. The lab had enough medicine stocked to handle most of the patients for a few more days. But if River didn’t get whatever the hell treated white plague soon…
Back in the office, time dragged by until Winter could finally justify leaving. She said a quick goodbye to Phoebe, who was finishing up her last report before heading out herself.
Before Winter could make it out of the building, a nurse caught her attention.
“Plague Saint!” he waved his hand as he caught up to her. “My apologies, I know you’re on your way out, but we’re having some issues with a red plague patient.”
Winter’s heart skipped a beat. “In the tower? What floor?”
“Second.”
Not River, then. Thank God. Winter nodded. “Lead the way. What kind of issues?”
“The medicine schedule we started a few days ago was working really well. Then a few hours ago, the patient’s symptoms suddenly got worse, and the dose we just added to the IV line isn’t doing anything.”
Just like River. All the more reason to find the cure for white plague.
Winter and the nurse entered the patient’s room. A man laid unconscious in the hospital bed, and a woman sat at his side. On the table next to her was a newspaper, a few lit candles, and an untouched sandwich that smelled like it had been sitting there for hours.
“His wife,” the nurse explained quietly, nodding to the woman.
Winter walked to the man and looked him over, studied his vitals, read his chart. As if there were anything she could do. Some bit of good news she could give his wife.
“Well, this isn’t the first case of this happening,” Winter finally said. “I suspect that there’s—” She couldn’t be honest. Announcing the existence of a new plague would cause panic. “There’s a new strain of red plague that’s more resistant to the medicine. For now, I’m increasing doses.” Great thing to do with supplies running out, genius. “But I’m also working on a more effective treatment.”
Winter handed the file over to the nurse. “In the meantime, we’ll do our best to keep him comfortable.” Before moving toward the door, she glanced at the bedside table. At the candles.
She had an idea. A terrible idea, probably, but it was the best she had.
“You use a lighter, or matches?” Winter asked.
The woman’s brow furrowed. “What?”
Winter gestured to the candles.
“Oh, uh, matches,” the woman stammered. “Is that all right?”
“Perfectly fine. Do you have a few you could spare?”
The woman reached into her bag, pulled out the matchbox, and held it out. Winter selected a few and slid them into her pocket. “Thank you.” Before leaving, she paused and added, “I’m going to do everything I can for your husband.”
By the time she left the hospital, changed into black clothes, hid her hair under a knit cap, and made her way to Phoebe’s apartment building, it was nearly seven. Her parents would start to wonder where she was soon, but she could come up with some excuse when she got home. Besides, this wouldn’t take long.
Hopefully.
Winter crept around the side of the building, back pressed against the wall to keep herself out of view of the windows above. Phoebe had been on the first floor, west side…
Winter recognized the curtains in the dining room window. She scanned the wall next to it, estimating the length of the hallway within, how much space the bathroom took up, and recalling what she could of the layout from her brief time in Marcus’s room.
There. That window had to be his. His curtains were drawn. Winter continued moving toward the dining room and inched away from the wall until she could just make out movement inside. One, two, three figures. If Phoebe was at school, then both her parents and Marcus were home.
The windows weren’t out of reach, but the incline of the alley did put them higher than Winter had expected. Climbing up to Marcus’s room would be doable with a running start, but it would be difficult to avoid being seen.
First, she had to get the Blackburns out of the apartment.
The hallway outside their home would be a good place to start, Winter decided. She circled to the back of the building, found the fire escape, and climbed up from the back alley level to the first floor of apartments.
Like she’d seen during her visit with Phoebe, there was a window at the end of the main interior hallway, and it led out onto the fire escape platform. Winter, after some struggling, was able to shimmy the window open. As she’d suspected from the building’s shabby appearance, the windows weren’t exactly secure.
She fished around in her bag until she found a washcloth she’d taken from the lab. It didn’t appear dirty, but God knew what traces of chemicals lingered on it. The bottle she’d shoved the cloth in was also from the lab. Winter pulled off the cap.
Still leaning in through the window, clutching the bottle and cloth in one hand, Winter pulled out a match. Just a small fire. Something that could be put out quickly once it was discovered.
She swiped the match across the brick wall. The flame that came to life danced in front of her. For a moment, all she could focus on was the tiny beacon of warmth in the otherwise freezing alley. She could barely feel it, and she couldn’t help but think how nice it would be to be in front of a roaring fireplace right now.
Winter lowered the flame into the bottle, touching it to the towel. Her eyes scanned the hallway and found the Blackburns’ door. Faint voices drifted from other doorways, and a chorus of laughter told her someone was about to come around the corner at the other end of the hall.
She chucked the burning bottle and screamed, “Fire! Evacuate!”
The laughter stopped, replaced by confused chatter and racing footsteps. Winter ducked out of sight. There were shouts of alarm, and then doors opening and closing and slamming up and down the hall. Perfect. She scrambled down the fire escape and ran back around to the side of the building.
Winter sprinted at the wall beneath Marcus’s room and jumped. Her hands found his windowsill. She pulled herself up enough to peer inside. Empty. A door slammed somewhere beyond the room. The front door, maybe?
Grunting with the effort, Winter quickly moved a hand from the ledge to the side of the window and pulled. It jerked open a centimeter. She lost her grip, slipped, and crashed to the ground.
Ignoring the various aches she’d acquired from the fall, Winter ran and jumped up to the window again. This time, she pulled it open enough to get a hand inside, barely saving herself from falling again. She inched the window open farther, until it was just wide enough for her to squeeze through. She collapsed face first onto the floor with a thud. Fear froze her in place, and she listened for voices. Or footsteps.
Nothing but distant shouts from the hallway outside the apartment.
Winter jumped to her feet and moved to the nightstand. When she pulled the drawer open, she was greeted with empty space. Damn it. She spun around, searching for somewhere else the notebooks could be hiding. They had to still be here. Please. Please they have to be somewhere—
There. The edge of a black bag poked out from under the bed, just like the one Winter had taken from the Saint’s office after she’d thought she killed him. She grabbed the bag, slid it out, and yanked it open.
God, there was a lot. She couldn’t take all of this. Piles of notebooks—some she recognized and some she didn’t—were mixed in with empty vials and folded papers and envelopes.
She dug through the bag until she found the notebook she’d started to decode. With her free hand, she kept searching, but there was no sign of the Plague Bible. She grabbed a red journal she recognized instead. It didn’t have most of the information in the Bible, but it did have medicine recipes. As she shoved it into her own bag, her gaze swept across the rest of the contents. If she took only a few things, maybe Marcus wouldn’t notice the theft right away.
She picked up one of the envelopes. It was addressed to Marcus Blackburn, from Mayor Atherton. It had already been opened. She added it to her bag.
A shout rang out nearby, and while Winter couldn’t make out what was said—nor did she recognize the voice—it sounded alarmingly close. She closed the bag and shoved it back under the bed, into as close to its original position as she could manage.
She was halfway out the window when the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway reached her. She grabbed the window and yanked it shut, wincing at the sound. Without a spare second to prepare for the fall, she slid off the windowsill.
It wasn’t a far drop, but the landing was awkward and sent pain shooting through her right leg. It was enough to make her limp to the back of the alleyway.
Winter followed the rear alley past two more buildings before she reached a dead end and was forced to return to the main street. A new chorus of voices reached her ears as she approached. Familiar voices. City guard voices, deepened and magnified by the modifiers in their helmets.
She had the good sense to set the bag down while she investigated, leaving it hidden underneath a dumpster, along with her hat.
But stupidly, she kept going, moving to check out the commotion instead of hiding. And before she could process what was happening, she was surrounded.