Page 123 of Flickerstate

Finally, Agent Fletcher walks me through the laws and protocols governing my behavior due to my “new” bite. I nod and nod, pretending I’ve never had reason to look up bite protocols before and certainly don’t know them backward and forward.

When she finishes, she says that the Nav Department doesn’t need anything else from me, for now, and she hopes I feel better soon. She leaves quietly.

A middle-aged nurse with brittle bleached hair brings me a single-serve cardboard box of cereal and a carton of milk, watches me eat, and orders me to rest.

About five seconds after she’s gone, I find my phone in the drawer of my flimsy bedside table and call Jo.

She picks up on the first ring, breathing raggedly into the receiver. “Is it true?”

“Uh,” I say. “Which part? A lot of things—”

“Don’t mess with me. There was a massive beast swarm at the Academy; it’s all over the news. They called Mom last night, they said you were in the hospital, they said you werebitten. She called Grandma Marino to watch Kev and Irene, and she’s driving to come get you. Because they won’t let youflyanymore. Norah, is ittrue?”

Oh, shit. Jo’s freaking out. Distraught. And if Mom peeled out of the driveway before she could find a better, more with-it babysitter than Grandma Marino, she’s freaking out and distraught too. I need to head this off. Damage control.

“I found the cure,” I say.

A pause on Jo’s end. “So… Youwerebitten? But you…cured yourself?”

I wince. “Not yet?”

A steely silence. “Explain.”

I do explain, as fast as I can: what Candace, Vik, and I discoveredabout leaguing, Bree’s disappearance, our frantic second invasion of the Archive.

“What the hell, Norah,” Jo says when I’m done. “Why are you like this? Who wanders down a secret murder tunnel? You would not survive a horror movie.”

“I did survive a horror movie,” I point out.

Jo blows through her lips, a disgustedphhhbt.

“Now I have to go cure my bite before Mom arrives,” I say, “or she’s going to kill me. Love you. Bye!”

I hang up on Jo’s outraged squeal and text Candace.As a newly minted 18-yr-old, I plan to use my adult rights to check myself out of the hospital against medical advice. Come get me?

I sign the discharge paperwork; change out of my hospital gown into yesterday’s clothes, which the disapproving nurse hands me in a plastic bag; and slink through fluorescent corridors to the hospital’s front roundabout, where a bright December morning greets me. Snow lies in a thin, rumpled blanket on the roadsides, but it’s already melted from the asphalt.

Minutes later, a Camry with a glowing pink Lyft sign on the dash pulls into the roundabout. The back passenger door swings open. Candace steps out, followed by Vik and Mirabel.

They look good. Surprisingly good, considering. But Candace’s face has closed on itself. I remember what Agent Fletcher said about Griffin blaming Dr. Langmore’s interference. I wonder what Candace believes. I wonder what sort of conversations she’s had with her mom. Whatever’s going on in her head, it must hurt.

We huddle near the hospital’s front door while the Camrytrundles away.

“Um, hi, everyone,” I say. “Have you seen Bree yet?”

“No,” Candace says. “They wouldn’t let me go with her in the ambulance. We were already coming to visit you both when I got your text. Want to try to see her now?”

At the front desk, the receptionist, a bored guy with a septum piercing, tells us the limit is two visitors per patient. Vik and Mirabel wait in the lobby while Candace and I follow the receptionist’s directions to Bree’s room.

When Candace knocks on the door, Bree calls, “Come in!”

Her hospital room looks like mine did: mint walls, flimsy side table, beeping machines. She’s sitting up in bed, blond curls wild, beaming. I lurk awkwardly near the door while Candace walks straight over and takes Bree’s hospital-braceleted hand.

“Really late the night of the formal, Griffin told me Dr. Langmore wanted to talk to me,” Bree tells Candace. “Andshetold me they needed help with a special project in the Archive. And you know, we’d talked a bunch about my research, I thought—but she’d kept asking about my family too, about my sister’s problems and the money we didn’t have. Like she was looking for vulnerabilities. I don’t know why it didn’t ping me as weird; the whole thing was obviously shady…”

“Interference,” Candace says quietly.

Queasiness overtakes Bree’s face. “Was Dr. Langmore interfering with Griffin too, or…”