Mez shot me a worried look. “Everything okay?” He came forward to take the tube from me. He showed me the label on the side. I’d almost dropped a tube filled with nitroglycerin. I felt myself pale. Damn, I really need to get my head in the game.
“All right,” I said finally, “here’s the deal: I’m starting to think that the chances of the docs finding a cure for Danny are zilch. Plus, now that you’ve told me the ASAC is thinking of pulling the team out, the hope of catching Bane and forcing him to give us the antipotion is nil.”
He chewed on his bottom lip. “You don’t know that.”
I shot him a frank look that had him glancing down, almost as an apology for insulting my intelligence with platitudes. “So it comes down to finding the antipotion some other way.”
Mez licked his front teeth and nodded. “So you figured you’d what—cook up an antipotion here?”
I shook my head. “Not exactly. It’s been ten years since I cooked. But I figured”—I let it hang there for a second—“maybe you’d be able to help?” I cringed, bracing myself for rejection.
He sighed. “Look, Kate, I like you, but you’re asking too much. First of all, I’m not allowed to use MEA resources for potions not directly related to an active case. But even if I was willing to bend that rule, if Gardner ever found out I was cooking dirty potions, she’d kick my ass out of the agency so fast my dreads would straighten out.” He leaned back until I was forced to look up at him. “Why can’t you do it?”
I raised my hands in a futile gesture. “I don’t have a lab, for one thing, and it would take too much time and a lot more money than I can access to get one set up. Second, I haven’t cooked in so long that I’m not even sure I’d be able to do any good.”
He scoffed. “Magic is like sex. You really never forget.”
“Regardless, it’s not an option here.”
“Isn’t there someone else you can ask? Family or an old friend, maybe?”
That was precisely the problem. Not that I’d tell Mez about John’s offer. “Not exactly.”
He placed a hand on my arm. “Look, it’s probably for the best. The only way to reverse a dirty potion like that is with something even dirtier. I know you’re worried about Danny, but you’re talking about breaking, like, ten federal statutes here. If Gardner or Eldritch found out you cooked dirty—even to help your brother—you’d be out of a job and probably thrown in Crowley. And then who would look after Danny?”
By the time he finished listing all the reasons it was a bad idea, I felt like a drowning woman with cinder blocks tied to every limb. “I can’t just stand by while he dies, Mez,” I whispered. He came forward to give me a hug. The scent of ozone and burnt cedar from the sticks he used to light the burners clung to his lab coat and dreads. The combo was oddly comforting.
“Stay strong, sister,” he said. “All of us are pulling for you and the kid. Morales and Shadi are out pretty much twenty-four/seven trying to find Bane.” He pulled back and made me look at him. “We will find him. Then we’ll do whatever it takes to get the formula from Bane.”
I snorted through the tears that sprung to my eyes. “Good luck with that.”
“Are you kidding? Applying the thumbscrews is Morales’s specialty. His old squad called him the Bull.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m so stubborn I always win.”
I turned toward the doorway to the lab. “Shit, Morales. We didn’t hear you come in.”
“I did,” Mez said. I shot him a look.
“What you doing here, Cupcake?” His tone was casual, as was his posture, but I sensed a leashed energy inside.
“I came by to see how things are going.”
“Could have just called,” he said. Then he snapped his fingers as if he’d forgotten something. “Oh wait. I get it, you prefer to call people ‘Asshole’ to their faces.”
My shoulders drooped. It’s not that I didn’t feel bad for hanging up on him the other day, but I wasn’t really up for adding groveling to my to-do list that day. Before I could, though, Mez cleared his throat. “I, uh, guess I’ll go … do something somewhere else.” He shot me a weighted look, a reminder to heed his advice about the potion stuff and walked off.
When he was gone, Morales crossed his arms and shot me a challenging look.
I sighed because it was easier than cussing. “Look, I’m sorry I called you an asshole.”
“And for hanging up on me?”
I nodded. “Yes, for that, too. I know you’re doing your job, it’s just”—I cleared the pride clogging my throat—“it’s been torture to sit around and not be able to help you guys get Bane.”
A speculative gleam lit up his brown eyes. “Who said you couldn’t help us?”
I paused. “Gardner—”
“Said you couldn’t go after Bane yourself. She didn’t say anything about not helping us with the investigation.”
A weight lifted off my shoulders. It hadn’t occurred to me that while I was sitting around that hospital room I could be going over files or something, anything to help make progress. “What did you have in mind?”
He licked his bottom lip and squinted at me. “Remember when that snitch told you the potion was being sold out of that absinthe bar?”
“The Green Faerie—yeah?”
“We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as leads go. Any chance he’s got a bead on Bane’s location?”
I tilted my head and regarded him with mock doubt. “I don’t know, Morales. Introducing you to my favorite snitch is a pretty big step.”
“Like it or not, Cupcake, if we’re able to nab Bane we’ll be stuck together for a good long time.”
“Hmm.” I grimaced as if the prospect wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping for since I met Gardner in Eldritch’s office. “All right. But keep your trap shut, okay? As it is I’m going to have to do some fast talking so he doesn’t shut down the minute I bring a stranger onto his turf.”
“I can live with that.”
“Okay, let’s go,” I said. “Oh, and one thing?”
He raised his brows.
“Don’t say anything about the diaper.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine