Roccia Nera County General was never a pleasant place to be.  

The squat complex of buildings and lots resided on the west bank's southern approach, about a dozen or so blocks from Nera Court and the waterfront. It was an older structure, one that had survived the Riots, though not without nominal scarring across its face. The marks had been sealed and patched with rivets and bolts in a grim visage Frankenstein. 

Roccia Nera was littered with smaller clinics capable of healing humans, but County General was the only facility able to in the supernatural, which meant it was always crawling with people and creatures, no matter the hour. The line spilled from the emergency entrance and wound around the building's side like a lizard's unfurled tongue. Telavar and I waited in the watery red light dripping from the neon emergency sign, watching those who came and went. 

One magi was so covered in mushrooms he needed to be transported via stretcher. Bulbous shrooms the size of my fist were sprouting from the poor guy's nostrils.

In time, the vampire and I came into the hospital proper and could break from the main crowd, jumping into the shorter, more manageable line meant for humans. Telavar was given a few nasty looks, but the auburn vamp ignored the attention and kept his eyes straight ahead and his hand on my elbow. I tried not to lean on him too heavily, but my injured leg was beginning to throb.

The lazy-eyed woman behind the desk glanced up when we came to the front of the line, then pointed a chewed pen toward the cluster of crowded plastic chairs. "Find a seat and a doctor will be with you shortly."

"No," I protested, easing out of Telavar's grip. I think his fingers were leaving bruises on my elbow, but I didn't mention it. What was the guy so anxious about? "My private physician is Doctor Cabel, and I would like to see her." 

"We don't assign private physicians here. Please have a seat—."

"If you contact her—," I said, interrupting the woman mid-order. "—she'll wish to see me. She is my private doctor. Please." 

The woman glowered. I thought she may refuse me, but then her sluggish gaze roved over the growing crowd behind us and she decided phoning the doctor would be simpler. She picked up the clunky phone hidden under the desk's clutter, and—as she dialed the doctor's extension and held the receiver to her ear—gave me an aggravated look. 

"Hello, Dr. Cabel? This is Emergency's reception desk. We have a...."

"Grae Winters." 

"A Grae Winters here requesting you?" The nurse smirked, expecting a refusal, but her lips slowly thinned to nothing as she listened to the doctor speak. She finally hung up without another word and jabbed a thumb toward the adjoining hallway. "Wait in examination room three."

"Thank you so much," I drawled, easing my arm around Telavar's again. The vamp assisted me down the white hall and into the quiet, sterile examination room. Inside there was the expected exam table, medical posters peeling at the edges, and two chairs, a padded swivel stool meant for the doctor, and a straight-backed wood seat that looked like it belonged in a prison. Gritting my teeth, I stumped over to the stool and eased myself onto it.

Telavar sat as well, taking the wooden chair by the door so he could perch at its edge and fold his hands over his knee. Wincing, I studied his placid face, the relaxed set of his shoulders, and the casual way he observed the examination room as if he'd never been in one before. We'd barely shared a word, but the silence didn't seem to bother him at all.

"Um," I said, uncertain. The vampire's genial disposition could be unnerving when I considered how I'd helped Alfie almost decapitate him. I expected resentment or a flash of anger, but Telavar simply didn't seem to care. "Thanks for your help, and for driving me here. I appreciate it."

"You are welcome." 

"I'm sorry about what happened," I rushed on before I could lose my nerve. "Out at the house, with Alf—the Were." 

He shrugged. "Okay."

Well, that was enlightening. "You're not...upset?"

Telavar blinked, then shook his head and brushed back his messy hair. "No. It was not my intent to startle you. Master Aurel expressed your distrust of vampires and I was attempting to placate you. I know now a simpler approach would have sufficed."

I didn't tell him I would've preferred for him to have not approached me at all. The best approach was no approach. "You must respect him a great deal if you keep referring to him by title when he's not present."

Telavar's mouth quirked. "I do respect him. He's my father."

What? "Not his actual son, right? Vampires can't have children." Being his actual son would mean Telavar had been born while Havik was yet human and was nearly as old as the master vampire. I hated to think I had so epically misjudged his age, as I was usually better at guessing.

"No." Telavar shifted and glanced at his watch, the action subtle but telling. "Both Theda and I are his night-children, though he treats us as if we were related by blood."

It was difficult for me to picture Havik as a paternal figure, though Telavar clearly viewed him as such. Some masters, like Emial, used their vampire creation ability to sire a force of underlings who operated as dependable assistants and employees. Their relationship was a professional one, a means to an end. Some vampires created nuclear families, the master siring his or her mate, their children, and their extended relations. Those cadres were usually smaller and less influential.

I didn't know what kind of relationship I'd expected Havik to have with his night children. I found it strange he'd wanted to sire some. He wasn't the kind of guy who inspired those types of warm emotions, but I'd only ever considered Aurel as an adversary, a predator, and a threat to my survival. It was shortsighted to forget he was also a man and a cadre master under all that malignance.

Glancing at the shut door, I questioned what was keeping Dr. Cabel.

"I'm sorry about Theda," I muttered as I cleared my throat. "It must be difficult to have her missing."

"It is." His answer was soft, his head inclining toward the floor as if a physical weight were pushing it down. The vamp's hands came together, fingers folding around one another in a tight, white-knuckled embrace. I wondered what his relationship was like with the missing woman. "I hope you will find her. We have not had any luck so far."

I lifted my gaze to the water-stained ceiling, my thoughts heavy and undefined. Honestly, I couldn't relate to what Telavar or Havik must have been feeling. I didn't have siblings—as far as I knew—nor did I have parents. I'd been fostered by the Nash family in Amondale for seven years, and though Sam and Janice had always been good to me, they had children of their own. I was the...add-on. The peculiarity, the one who didn't fit in. We still kept in touch, but they only sent cursory invitations for Thanksgiving dinner or the occasional birthday card.

Trying to empathize wasn't the same as understanding the vamp's plight. I decided that if Sibbie or Alfie went missing I'd be distraught, and they weren't my sister or my brother. Telavar must have been frantic beneath his calm demeanor. 

The door's knob twisted, and in walked a tall, severe woman in a white coat. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me. 

Dr. Kayla Cabel and I were not friends. If fact, I think the animosity between us was greater than the animosity between Havik and me. The woman loathed me and loathed my infrequent visits to County General. She stood in the doorway, stethoscope draped around her neck, her lip curling with distaste as her hawkish stare darkened.

Some time ago, Kayla and her counterparts were forced by the hospital administration to take a workshop on preternatural biology. Of course, as the only person even remotely qualified in the entire county to teach such a workshop, I'd been the one to run the seminar along with a lesser accredited preternatural expert named Efra Patel.

I think Dr. Cabel had resented having to learn from a much younger and less professional individual. To be frank, she was a royal bitch for the duration of the workshop, and Efra flat out refused to deal with her. She'd pushed and pulled and pried at my curriculum and had questioned my credentials so thoroughly the university started to direct some very pointed inquiries in my direction.

Frustrated, I'd confronted the woman to get her to knock it off, and she'd grabbed my sleeve, revealing the fluorescent scars underneath. I'd seen the delighted gleam in her eyes and had known the woman would've loved to blackmail me—but, unfortunately for Dr. Cabel, I knew her dirty little secret and had been content to keep quiet about it, up until she threatened my freedom and my life. After all, turnabout is fair play. She'd been so desperate to keep quiet about it, she'd agreed to hold her silence about my identity and to see to any of my medical emergencies.

Dr. Kayla Cabel was a magi in hiding.

"Hello, Dr. Cabel," I said, plastering a passive smile on my face. I stretched out my leg, and her gaze flickered toward the open wound, then the vampire.

"Winters," she acknowledged, tossing her clipboard and stethoscope onto the examination bed. "I have real patients to see. Remove your pants so I can look at the wound and get you out of here." Kayla looked at Telavar again, then stepped back from the door. "If you'd please leave, vampire. This is a human-only ward."

Tentative, Telavar rose and I nodded in encouragement. "I will wait in the car, Ms. Winters," he said, bowing his head. "If you'll excuse me."

He left, and Kayla slammed the door, muttering something uncomplimentary about my character under her breath. She squared her shoulders and, with a heated exhalation, turned to face me. "He better not know about me, Winters."

Snorting, I stood. "Such faith in me, Kayla."

"I've no faith in you whatsoever."

I tugged my pants down to my knees and hopped onto the examination table, feeling awkward as the wax paper crinkled under my rear. It wasn't often that I showed so much skin, even to a doctor.

Kayla leaned over the wound for closer observation. I noticed that her eyes also traced the curve of the scars winding over my inner thighs and around my knees, her scholarly curiosity too much to suppress. All the scars were bright cyan after my tussle with Domenic, giving off an impossible heat.

"Looks like it hurts," she commented, prodding the bite with more force than was needed for clinical curiosity. I snapped my teeth together and tensed, listening to her quiet, mean chuckling. "Strange place for a bite, though. Hold still."

She stripped off a latex glove and held the bare hand an inch or so above my thigh. The inner pillar of her magic ignited, sloppy from disuse, though no less powerful. Magi magic felt like fire when I reached my soul out to touch it. Its energy vibrated at a higher frequency than any other magic I knew of, thus it felt like it was burning despite having no actual heat. Magi could use bigger, flashier, and more destructive spells than witches, vampires, and a decent portion of the Fae, but they also tired and burnt out at a much quicker rate.

A magi's magic was also more difficult for them to control. Keeping it bound and in line wasn't innate for them and took many years of study in their apprenticeships. There was a lot of inner-species conflict with the various magi circles and a fair amount of master to apprentice abuse. These struggles meant a high percentage of magi tried to pass themselves off as humans to avoid their brethren, and they liked to come to Roccia Nera, where the thick density of the declared magi population meant their own peculiarities were often overlooked.

I looked into Kayla's face as her magic began to speed the healing process in my leg. I didn't know her story, why she'd come to Roccia Nera and why she pretended to be human, and I never would. I guessed it had something to do with her chosen profession. According to law, the preternatural weren't allowed to practice medicine upon humans, simply because it made humans uneasy. Kayla probably used her magic in secret, healing wounds in unconscious patients, earning accolades she wouldn't have gotten had she been practicing on magi or witches. Again, I would never know.

She sealed the wound, leaving behind a series of crimson scabs and a mottled bruise. The spell drained me of energy, so I slumped and didn't protest when Kayla found a wad of bandages and began to wind them around my thigh.

"It's closed, not healed," she explained as she worked. "You'll feel tired for a few hours, and you're going to want to keep off your leg, if you can. If it reopens or gets infected, return." Her sharp eyes snapped to mine. "Though I'd prefer if you didn't."

"Of course." I hopped upright and tugged my pants up.

Kayla straightened as she threw the stethoscope around her neck and picked up her clipboard. "Your bill will be in the mail."

I grumbled, wincing when my jeans tugged on the bandages. Naturally.

When we left the hospital, Telavar drove me home in that pricey silver car I'd seen him and Havik take at the Fae's alley. When I made a joke about Telavar trying not to scratch Havik's car, he again reiterated that it wasn't Havik's, then softly muttered that it was his, and that Havik couldn't drive. I don't know why that surprised me, but it did.

Telavar parked in one of my complex's spaces and took the keys from the ignition. I lifted a brow in question, having thought he was just going to drop me off—but the auburn vamp turned his head to the east, and peeking through the rough, uneven buildings was a somber sky tinged pink by the coming morning. It was almost dawn.

"Oh, crap," I said, alarmed. "Are you going to be able to make it home?"

"Perhaps," Telavar replied with no small measure of uncertainty. "But I won't risk it. I will simply sleep in the trunk of the car."

Having been the recent passenger of a car trunk, I didn't envy the poor guy. In fact, I felt terrible, seeing as he had remained at the hospital for so long simply for my benefit. I recalled how he had checked his watch several times while we'd stood in the line and while we'd chatted in the examination room. He must have been aware of how swiftly the night was dwindling, but hadn't complained.

"You could sleep in my closet," I told him, flinching when I caught sight of the Human Only Residence sign lit up against its post. "It'd be safer and more comfortable than the trunk."

Telavar stared, a frown deepening the fine lines on his youthful face. "Are you certain?" he asked. The gravity with which he spoke was disconcerting. Had I asked something strange? Was it a momentous occasion for someone to ask a vampire into their home? I knew the myth about having to invite them before they could enter was utter nonsense, but maybe there was some long-forgotten truth hidden in the myth.

"Yeah, sure," I said with a small wave, feigning nonchalance as I found my keys in my pocket. "But, could you, ah, avoid being seen?"

My eyes flicked toward the sign again and Telavar followed the gesture, tipping his head into a brief nod. When we got out of his car, I felt the vampire's languorous magic twist itself into something new. Telavar looked as he always did in my eyes, but I could sense his magic thrumming against my skin when I stood near him, drawn like a feathery veil between him and the world. He'd pulled a shade, which must have been exhausting so close to dawn.

We went up the stairs, keeping our steps quiet and light to not disturb any of my sleeping neighbors. As I stuck my keys into the lock and opened my door, a thin, breathy laugh escaped my mouth and I tried to disguise it as a cough. I'd never had someone aside from Sibbie in my apartment before, especially not a man. I decided not to tell Telavar that. How embarrassing.

"Ignore the mess," I told him as I quickly ushered him from the cluttered living room to the bedroom. I set about chucking my tennis shoes and boots from the closet floor, and—when my task was complete—Telavar didn't hesitate to drop into the allotted space and shut the sliding door.

Moments later, the sky outside my window bloomed yellow and baby-blue, and the light of the sun danced upon the aqueduct waters. I stood and watched the dawn overcome the city of shadows and neon, sighing as the horrors of the night became paler in the radiance of a new morning. All creatures of the dark, even monsters like Ishcer Emial, were dead to the world.

My hand lingered on the cord of the blinds, then pulled, drawing them shut, drowning the room in shadows. I eyed the closet, quiet and unobtrusive as it was, and knew I had yet another strange day ahead of me.

I'd better rest while I could.