1 Blood Price by Tanya Huff

better in the slimepit this city is becoming and if it’s all the same to you, I think I’d rather be bitter.” She didn’t quite slam the door on the way out.

    “What’s the matter, darling, you don’t look happy?”
    “It hasn’t been a great day, Mrs. Kopolous.”
    The older woman clicked her tongue and shook her head at the family size bag of cheese balls Vicki had laid on the counter. “So I see, so I see. You should eat real food, darling, if you want to feel better. This stuff is no good for you. And it makes your fingers orange.”
    Vicki scooped up her change and dropped it into the depths of her purse. Soon she’d have to deal with the small fortune jangling around down there. “Some moods, Mrs. Kopolous, only junk food can handle.”
    The phone was ringing when she reached her apartment.
    “Yeah, what?”
    “There’s something about the sound of your dulcet tones that makes this whole wretched day worthwhile.”
    “Stuff a sock in it, Celluci.” Phone balanced under her chin, Vicki struggled out of her coat. “Whadda you want?”
    “My, my, sounds like someone’s wearing the bishop’s shoes.”
    Against every inclination, Vicki grinned. His use of that particular punch line in conversation always did it to her. He knew it, too. “No, I did not get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” she told him, hooking her office chair over and throwing herself down into it. “As you very well know. But I did just get back from a visit to the ophthalmologist.”
    “Ah.” She could picture him leaning back, his feet up on the desk. Every superior he’d ever had had tried to break him of the habit with no noticeable success. “The eye doctor of doom. Is it any better?”
    If he’d sounded sympathetic, she’d have thrown the phone across the room but he only sounded interested. “It doesn’t get any better, Celluci.”
    “Oh, I don’t know; I read this article that said large doses of vitamin A and E can improve the visual field and enhance dark adaptation.” He was obviously quoting.
    Vicki couldn’t decide whether to be touched or furious that he’d been reading up. Given her mood. . . . “Do something more useful with your time, Celluci, only abetalipoproteninaemia RP includes biochemical defects,” he hadn’t been the only one reading up, “and that isn’t what I’ve got.”
    “Abetalipo protein aemia,” he corrected her pronunciation, “and excuse me for caring. I also found out that a number of people lead completely normal lives with what you’ve got.” He paused and she heard him take a drink of what was undoubtedly cold coffee. “Not,” he continued, his voice picking up an edge, “that you ever lived what could be called a normal life.”
    She ignored the last comment, picked up a black marker and began venting frustrations with it on the back of her credit card bill. “I’m living a completely normal life,” she snapped.
    “Running away and hiding?” The tone missed sarcasm but not by very much. “You could’ve stayed on the force. . . . ”
    “I knew you’d start again.” She spat the words from between clenched teeth, but Mike Celluci’s angry voice overrode the diatribe she was about to begin and the bitterness in it shut her up.
    “. . . but oh no, you couldn’t stand the thought that you wouldn’t be the hot-shit investigator anymore, the fair-haired girl with all the answers, that you’d just be a part of the team. You quit because you couldn’t stand not being on the top of the pile and if you weren’t on top, if you couldn’t be on top, you weren’t going to play! So you ran away. You took your pail and your shovel and you fucking quit! You walked out on me, Nelson, not just the job!”
    Through all the fights—after the diagnosis and after her resignation— that was what he’d wanted to say. It summed up the hours of arguing, the screaming matches, the slammed doors. Vicki knew it, knew it the way she knew when she found the key,