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surgery-grade halogens to stick a few needles in my neck?
    The doctor entered the ER, removing a pair of chromoglasses from his coat pocket and sliding them on. Chromoglasses allowed trichromats or even dichromats to see ghostlight, albeit in a weakened form. Constructed from the donated eyes of a tetrachromat, the lenses resembled jeweler’s glasses and cost a small fortune.
    “I’m Dr. Harding,” the man said, snapping a latex glove on before saluting. “How are you feeling, Miss Helsing?”
    “Fine,” I said, tearing half-moons into the gurney’s paper cover with my fingernails.
    He chuckled, checking my eyes with a penlight. “Your father never says it hurts, either, and I’ve stitched him back together a time or twelve.”
    In the periphery of my vision, I watched the nurse prepare the H-three antinecrotic syringes. I’d had the injections once before, on the night Mom died. She’d bitten me, broken the skin, and left two smiling marks on my right trapezius muscle. I’d screamed through the first injection, the antinecrotic blasting the infection out of my bloodstream. Ryder held me until the fire stopped burning in my brain.
    “Your eyes look good,” Harding said. I chewed on a hangnail, barely hearing him, staring at the ceiling. “No visible ghostlight, so we’ve caught it in the first hour. What were you hunting?”
    “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said.
    “Try me.”
    Suit yourself . “A ghost.”
    He frowned. “A ghost can’t infect you with necrosis, as you know.” Harding glanced at the cut on my arm. “You contracted something from a necrotic creature without noticing, I’m sure.” He looked up at the nurse. “Clean and bandage her wrist, will you, Amelia?”
    I bit back a barb, thinking it wasn’t smart to piss off the people with the painkillers, not with the H-threes about to go all Texas Chainsaw Massacre in my veins. The antinecrotics obliterated the bacteria that turned people into monsters, and were 100 percent effective if administered within an hour of infection. They saved lives, made reaping a more desirable career and the world a safer place to be.
    Oh, and they hurt like hell.
    The doctor accepted a syringe from the nurse. I gripped the gurney’s sides, steeling myself, but I didn’t close my eyes. I wanted fair warning.
    “Do you need a chest restraint, hon?” the nurse asked, prying my injured hand off the gurney.
    “No.” But I nearly said ohgodyes.
    The nurse gave Harding a pointed look. He shook his head, flicking the syringe. I gritted my teeth. Restraint enough.
    “Take a deep breath,” Harding said. The needle pinched my jugular. Pain rushed my veins and scraped my heart, brain, and lungs like I’d been shot full of bleach. I fisted my hands so tight my thumb knuckles popped.
    This first inoculation staved off paranecrotic damage to the nervous system and brain caused by a mutated strain of the Yersinia pestis bacteria, better known as the Black Death. The first paranecrotic creatures emerged from the plague graves in the fifteenth century. Records and diaries show the Van Helsing family established a loose-knit cabal in Holland around that time, with the sole purpose of exterminating the “demons” crawling out of their graves.
    Helsing classified necros by the color of their ghostlight auras. Paranecrotics emitted fire-hydrant-red or tangerine glows; these slow-moving, longer wavelengths of light indicated a lack of spiritual energy, of humanity and intelligence. Hence, paranecrotic zombies glowed like stoplights and moved about as fast as bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Bay Bridge, driven by dull instinct. They didn’t set traps for reapers or exhibit pack behavior, and they “hunted” by sight alone.
    Harding flicked the second syringe. I peeled off a piece of the gurney’s paper skin. “If you knew what scratched you, miss, I’d only give you one of the H-threes,” he said. Screw you , I hadn’t been “scratched” by