With a junkie's rush, Jane pictured the inside of the patient, saw his heart in her hand, felt the organ in her grip as she saved his life. "He could present a fascinating clinical opportunity. God, I would love to study him. Or at least participate in studying him."

The soft beeping of the monitoring equipment seemed to swell in the silence between them until moments later some kind of awareness tickled the back of her neck. She glanced up. Manello was staring at her, his face grave, his thick jaw set, his brows down low.

"Manello?" She frowned. "Are you okay?"

"Don't go."

To avoid his eyes she looked down at the bedsheet that was folded once and tucked under her patient's arm. Idly she smoothed the white expanse-until it reminded her of something her mother had always done.

She stilled her hand. "You can get another surg-"

"Fuck the department. I don't want you to go because…" Manello pushed a hand through his thick dark hair. "Christ, Jane. I don't want you to go because I'd miss you like hell, and because I… shit, I need you, okay? I need you here. With me."

Jane blinked like an idiot. In the last four years there'd never been any suggestion that the man was attracted to her. Sure, they were tight and all. And she was the only one who could calm him down when he lost his temper. And okay, yeah, they talked about the inner workings of the hospital all the time, even after hours. And they ate together every night when they were on duty and… he'd told her about his family and she'd told him about hers…

Crap.

Yeah, but the man was the hottest property on hospital grounds. And she was about as feminine as… well, an operating table.

Certainly had as many curves as one.

"Come on, Jane, how clueless can you be? If you gave me a thin inch, I'd be inside your scrubs in the next heartbeat."

"Are you insane?" she breathed.

"No." His eyes grew heavy-lidded. "I'm very, very lucid."

In the face of that summer-night sultry expression, Jane's brain took a vacation. Just flew right out of her skull. "It wouldn't look right," she blurted.

"We'd be discreet."

"We fight." What the hell was coming out of her mouth?

"I know." He smiled, his full lips curving. "I like that. No one stands up to me but you."

She stared across the patient at him, still so dumbfounded she didn't know what to say. God, it had been so long since she'd had a man in her life. In her bed. In her head. So damned long. It had been years of coming home to her condo and showering alone and falling into bed alone and waking up alone and going to work alone. With both her parents gone she had no family, and with the hours she pulled at the hospital, she had no outside circle of friends. The only person she really talked to was… well, Manello.

As she looked at him now, it occurred to her that he truly was the reason she was leaving, though not just because he was standing in her way in the department. On some level she'd known this heart-to-heart was coming, and she'd wanted to run before it hit.

"Silence," Manello murmured, "is not a good thing right now. Unless you're trying to frame something like, 'Manny, I've loved you for years, let's go back to your place and spend the next four days horizontal.' "

"You're on tomorrow," she said automatically.

"I'd call in sick. Say I've got that flu. And as your chairman, I would order you to do the same." He leaned forward over the patient. "Don't go to Columbia tomorrow. Don't leave. Let's see how far we can take this."

Jane looked down and realized she was staring at Manny's hands… his strong, broad hands that had fixed so many hips and shoulders and knees, saving the careers and the happiness of so many athletes, professional and amateur alike. And he didn't just operate on the young and in shape. He had preserved the mobility of the elderly and the injured and the cancer-stricken as well, helping so many to continue to function with arms and legs.

She tried to imagine those hands on her skin.

"Manny…" she whispered. "This is crazy."

Across town, in the alley outside of ZeroSum, Phury rose from the motionless body of a ghost-white lesser. With his black dagger he'd opened up a yawning slice in the thing's neck, and glossy black blood was pumping out onto the slush-covered asphalt. His instinct was to stab the thing in the heart and poof it back to the Omega, but that was the old way. The new way was better.

Although it cost Butch. Dearly.

"This one's ready for you," Phury said, and stepped back.

Butch came forward, his boots crunching through icy puddles. His face was grim, his fangs elongated, his scent now carrying the baby-powder sweetness of their enemies. He had finished with the slayer he had fought with, done his special business, and now he would do it again.

The cop looked both motivated and in pain as he sank to his knees, planted his hands on either side of the lesser's pasty face, and leaned down. Opening his mouth, he positioned himself above the slayer's lips and began a long, slow inhale.

The lesser's eyes flared as a black mist rose out of its body and was sucked into Butch's lungs. There was no break in the inhale, no pause in the draw, just a steady stream of evil passing out of one vessel and into another. In the end, their enemy became nothing but gray ash, its body collapsing, then fragmenting into a fine dust that was carried away by the cold wind.

Butch sagged, then gave out altogether, falling to his side onto the alley's slushy road. Phury went over and reached his hand-

"Don't touch me." Butch's voice was a mere wheeze. "I'll make you sick."

"Let me-"

"No!" Butch shoved at the ground, pushing himself up. "Just gimme a minute."

Phury stood over the cop, guarding him and keeping an eye on the alley in case more came. "You want to go home? I'll go look for V."

"Fuck, no." The cop's hazel eyes lifted. "He's mine. I'm going to find him."

"Are you sure?"

Butch got up onto his feet, and though his body waved like a flag, he was nothing but green light. "Let's go."

As Phury fell into step with the guy and the two of them went down Trade Street, he didn't like the look on Butch's face. The cop had the loose-goose expression of someone whose blender was on frappé, but it didn't seem like he was going to quit unless he fell over.

And as the two of them scoured the urban armpit of Caldwell and came up with jack shit, the no-V situation clearly made Butch even sicker.

They were on the very fringes of downtown, all the way out by Redd Avenue, when Phury stopped. "We should turn back. I doubt he'd come out this far."

Butch stopped. Looked around. In a dull voice he said, "Hey, check it. This is Beth's old apartment building."

"We need to double back."

The cop shook his head and rubbed his chest. "We've got to keep going."

"Not saying we stop looking. But why would he be this far out? We're on the edge of residential land. Too many eyes for a fight, so he wouldn't come here looking for one."

"Phury, man, what if he got jacked? We haven't seen another lesser out tonight. What if something big went down, like they bagged him?"

"If he was conscious, that would be highly unlikely, given that hand of his. Helluva weapon, even if he got stripped of his daggers."

"What if he was knocked out?"

Before Phury could respond, the Channel Six News-Leader van tore by at a dead run. Two streets down its brakelights flared and the thing hung a louie.

All Phury could think was, Shit. News vans didn't show up in a rush like that because some old lady's cat was in a tree. Still, maybe it was just human shit, like a gang-related lead shower.

Trouble was, some horrible, crushing prescience told Phury that wasn't the case, so when Butch started walking in that direction, he went along. No words were spoken, which meant the cop was probably thinking exactly what he was: Please, God, let it be someone else's tragedy, not ours.