Time Without End: Cora's Bond Vampire Series #2 by V. M. Black

Author:V. M. Black [Black, V. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Swift River Media Group
Published: 2014-10-21T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

“Good afternoon to you, too,” Dorian said.

I gave him one more squeeze before reluctantly letting go. I felt peculiarly light, as if a weight I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying had been lifted off me.

“I wasn’t sure whether you’d be here when I arrived,” I said. “At home, I mean.”

“It’s been five days for me, as well, Cora,” he said quietly. “But I’ve been at home most of this week, anyway. The laboratory has kept me busy and occupied.”

I sensed a quickening of emotion under those words, something quite different from the usual feeling of infinite, quiet, patient depths.

“What’s happened?” I asked. Then I remembered what he’d said the previous week. “The breakthrough?”

“It’s too soon to tell,” he said. “Not for sure. A few more days of testing…but this looks like a real advance. Hattie was acting on little more than a hunch, to examine mitochondrial compatibility directly, and this approach seems capable of eliminating half the candidates the current protocol identifies, perhaps more. In another week, we’ll know for certain.” He paused. “Would you like to go down to the labs? The staff is all there—it’s not quite gone five.”

I grinned at him. “Your invitation has nothing at all to do with your own impatience to get back to work, huh?”

“That transparent, am I? Come with me,” he urged.

I looked back down the stairs where I had left my backpack, but it had already disappeared, along with the butler. I supposed that Rojek must have ordered it to be taken it to my room.

“All right, then,” I said. “Let’s go. I want to meet everybody else, anyway, if I’m going to be helping them out.”

Dorian led the way down the stairs, across the ballroom, and down another flight into the basement level of the house.

“Try your fingerprint,” he said at the door.

I pushed my thumb against the pad as he had done before, and I was rewarded by the thunk of the lock bolts drawing back.

“After you,” he said.

I opened the door.

The lab was buzzing with activity, a dozen people in the main outer room, each bent over their work along the black-topped lab tables. I stopped just inside the door, nervousness coming over me as I realized how I must look to them—an outsider with no qualifications except for my relationship with their boss, coming into their space and demanding that room be made for me.

But then a side door opened, and Hattie Buchanan’s friendly, familiar face appeared.

“Cora!” she cried warmly. “I’m so glad you’re back. How much have you learned so far?”

I smiled with relief. “I really don’t know how much help I can be right now,” I said honestly. “I can work the confocal microscope, and that’s pretty much it at the moment. Majoring in economics hasn’t given me much background for this kind of stuff, but I’m fine with washing test tubes or petri dishes or whatever until I learn enough to be of more help.”

Hattie chuckled. “If you spend a month doing nothing

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