Tooth and Nail

by Jennifer Safrey

  “You might not even need to see him,” Svein added. “You could see one of his assistants. Just get in there and get a good look around, and see if you can figure out what he’s up to. It’s a longshot that it would be obvious, but I’m hoping you can get a few clues, at least.”

  “Here’s one clue,” I said. “Denise told me the new guy was renovating big-time.”

  “Denise?”

  “The hygienist. She’s worked for Dr. Gold for years. She’s got nothing to do with Doc Clayton.”

  “You wanted to know about the threat, Gemma. This is it. Get in there as soon as you can. I’ve been watching him from way over here almost every single day. I’ve followed him home. But I can’t confront him. I can’t go near him. I know he’s messing with teeth, messing with us, but I can’t –“ He cut himself off and tightened his jaw, looking across the street again.

  I thought, not for the first time, how incapable he must feel, how frustrated to not be able to finish the job he started.

  “Wouldn’t you know,” I said, poking my tongue around my mouth and talking around it, “I think I’m getting a toothache.” I prodded a back bottom molar with the tip of my tongue. “Ow. Yup, no doubt about it.”

  The corners of Svein’s lips quirked up.

  “I’m going to have to make an appointment,” I said, “and get this thing examined. Yup, this cavity’s getting deeper by the second. It feels like the Grand Canyon in there. Hey,” I said, leaning into him. “Yell into my mouth, see if you hear an echo.” I opened wide.

  He chuckled and shoved me gently away. “All right, already.”

  “I’ll let you know when my appointment is,” I said. “I want you as backup out here.”

  He nodded and looked at the building again. The door opened and a woman stepped out, holding the hand of a little girl. The child skipped as they walked down the street, swinging a plastic goody bag.

  “You got it,” Svein said. His jaw relaxed.

  So, I was going to face an evil dentist with power drills, scalpels and possibly a hell minion.

  But, I realized, the kiss still hot in my memory and on my lips, I also was in another kind of danger, the kind that was right in front of me, leaning on a lamppost.

  CHAPTER 12

  "Gemma Cross,” I told the receptionist. “I have an appointment with”—gulp—“Dr. Clayton.”

  “Are you a patient of Dr. Clayton’s?” she asked. She was new. I wasn’t sure where Brenda, Dr. Gold’s longtime receptionist, was. Probably retired when he did. Brenda always had a sugar-free candy at the ready and a piece of celebrity gossip she was willing to dissect with anyone interested. I always pretended I was, because she made me laugh and I would have hated to disappoint her by telling her I had no idea who she was talking about.

  “I was Dr. Gold’s patient,” I told the new woman behind the desk. “I called yesterday, about a toothache?”

  “That’s right,” she said, but her tone indicated she didn’t remember at all, and she flipped through pages. Pages, I noticed, that were crammed full of appointments. Clayton certainly wasn’t hurting for business, having likely brought all his patients across town with him and gaining Dr. Gold’s as well.

  “You can have a seat,” the receptionist told me. “The doctor will be with you in a moment.”

  I sat, and realized I was shaking a little bit. The air conditioner was humming, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t affecting me nearly as much as the prospect of getting into the chair and opening my vulnerable mouth for the supposedly evil Dr. Clayton to peer into, or wrench all my teeth from. At least with my mouth open, I wouldn’t say anything stupid to give myself away.

  Svein was only across the street, sitting in the picture window of a coffee shop. I’d suggested the more low-key surveillance, surprised that no one had noticed him before this. Life in the big city, I supposed, but I still insisted we be more subtle. I touched my zippered jacket pocket where I’d stuffed my Fae Phone, knowing I could summon him in an emergency one-button speed dial. I reminded myself I was going to be okay, for the time being anyway. The office was full of people. Even Dr. Clayton would probably agree that opening up a hellmouth at high noon wouldn’t be a smart way to do business.

  Remembering I was here to uncover clues, I looked around. The waiting room didn’t have much in the way of renovations, not the kind of renovations I’d heard going on in the back when I was last here. Obviously, I’d have to investigate back there, but I was five minutes late to this appointment thanks to the Metro, and I didn’t want to risk having the doctor call my name as I was snooping around.

  I refocused my attention on my immediate surroundings. Again, there were no actual structural changes here, but the atmosphere was distinctly different from my last visit. It had been transformed into a children’s playroom. The chairs were upholstered in various circus colors with fat cushions. The rug was long and shaggy, an invitation to sit. Blocks and Legos were stacked in one corner, a dollhouse in another. Picture books were piled on all the end tables, without a Time magazine or newspaper in sight. It was a waiting room designed for children, and it would have been perfect, but for one thing.

  It was perfect. And by that, I mean immaculate.

  The books should have been scattered, the blocks should have been plowed through, the Legos snapped together to form a half-something. The miniature dolls should have been in their tiny beds, or lounging in the shrunken living room. But everything was in its place, and it shouldn’t have been because I was sharing the waiting room with three children.

  Three children, all younger than seven, who sat calmly, hands folded in laps, their facial features arranged in far-too-mature serene expressions.

  Surrounded with toys and books beckoning them to play and make a joyful ruckus, they merely sat without the slightest fidget. One mother had one boy and girl on either side of her, and the other mother had her daughter in her lap, and neither of them seemed to notice their kids’ lack of normal enthusiasm. It was probably because they needed a respite from their parental weariness, and this seemed like what they needed, and so in their relief they didn’t notice what I did.

  It was very, very creepy.

  These kids should have been jumping, crawling, laughing, whining, and generally disregarding all good manners. Acting like kids.

  Instead, these three were acting like weird, stunted little adults.

  “Mindy?” the receptionist called. The mother slid her child off her knees and onto the ground, and held her hand as she obediently ambled behind. They both disappeared around the corner.

  A man’s voice reached my ears. “Mindy,” he said, “you’re even prettier than last time I saw you. Tell me, how do you like my toothpaste?”

  I imagined Mindy nodding, and her mother said, “She loves it. She never misses a night brushing her teeth. I can’t believe it. I don’t know what you put in it, but it’s great.”

  “Go on in,” he responded. “Denise will be with you in a moment.”

  A man and his son emerged from the examining room area, and I immediately noticed the little boy. He bounced with exuberance, and said, “You said pizza. Dad, you said pizza.”

  “I did say pizza if you were good, Brian,” his father answered, “and you were good, so we’re on our way.”

  Brian balled up his fists tightly with barely contained joy, and hopped up and down. His father pulled a checkbook out of the pocket of his denim jacket and leaned over the desk to settle the bill. Brian wandered into the waiting room, surveyed the landscape, and made a beeline for the Legos. He sat, pulled out some bricks and snapped them together, studying them before adding a few more. He looked up at me. I smiled at him, but he turned his attention to the other boy in the room, who appeared to be about his age. Then Brian looked down, snapped on another piece and looked up again, trying hard to get the attention of a potential new friend.

  Not only did the creepy little adult-child not acknowledge Brian, he never even glanced his way. He wasn’t
being rude. He just had no interest whatsoever.

  I heard the father make an appointment for Brian’s sister next Wednesday at 3:30. “Come on, Brian,” he called. “You can play some more when we bring Jamie in next week.” Brian hopped up, breaking up the perfection of the room by tossing aside two handfuls of Legos. His dad zipped him into a similar denim jacket and they turned to go, but were stopped by a “Wait!”

  A man in a white coat strode into the room, but I saw only his back as he opened a deep drawer in a file cabinet and rifled through it. “Brian,” he said, “you can’t go without your special goody bag.” He withdrew a plastic bag filled with the usual dentist treats of a toothbrush and floss, no doubt. “There’s some very special toothpaste in here that I want you to try, and when you come back with your sister next week, I want you to tell me what you think.”

  He closed the drawer, turned around, and for the first time, I saw Dr. Riley Clayton.

  He was a beautiful man. I guessed he was around my mother’s age, but his youth had remained prominent, like a heartthrob movie actor you last saw onscreen years ago and now, in a prime-time guest appearance, you knew him instantly, because he’d aged just the way he should have. His bright blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled at his young patient, and his own teeth were white and straight. Brian grabbed for his goody bag and Dr. Clayton said, “Do you remember what we talked about?”

  “Brush morning and night,” Brian recited.

  “And then?”

  “My teeth won’t fall out.”

  “They won’t fall out before they’re supposed to,” Clayton corrected. “Have a great day,” he said, winking at Brian’s father, and picked up a file folder as the man and his son left. I turned my head so I was facing away from Clayton, but I kept my sidelong gaze on him. He flipped through a couple of papers, one bearing a drawing of an open mouth with some penned-in remarks. He abruptly shut the folder and called, “Gemma?”

  Tentative, I approached the desk, then, to cover up my nervousness, gestured to the waiting mother and her two Children of the Corn and said, “They were here before me.”

  “They’re waiting for the hygienist,” he said, holding out his hand for me to shake. I did, almost surprised to find his palm didn’t burn mine. “Don’t worry,” he said, reading my expression. “I get lots of fearful patients, but I promise to be as gentle as a man can possibly be.”

  I squinted slightly at him. His smile held as his face brightened, and I watched as silver shot around his irises and gleamed from under long, blond eyelashes. Glamour.

  Well, he could glamour me from now until the sun went down, and it wasn’t going to have the slightest effect. A human would have been affected—affected to the point of cloud-floating to the dentist’s chair and agreeing enthusiastically to a root canal.

  And if I didn’t do the same, he’d get the big hint that I was no human.

  I blinked once to feign disbelief, then batted my eyelashes several times. Unaccustomed to stupid flirtatious tactics, I immediately felt dizzy, but it worked to make me seem disoriented by desire. “I’m not afraid,” I told him, and ran my tongue over my bottom lip.

  “That’s my girl,” he said, and led me into an exam room. It was standard—a desk, a rolling stool, two backlit wall units to view X-rays. And the dentist’s chair, leather with a plastic protector at the bottom and around the headrest. My teeth did start to ache then. I didn’t like this ordeal on a good day. I certainly didn’t like the idea of Dr. Clayton approaching my face with a metal clamp in one hand and a gas mask in another.

  I did notice, however, that this room looked mostly as it did when Dr. Gold was here. Which meant all those renovations went on elsewhere—further back down the hall.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “With your teeth,” he said. “I assume that’s why you’re here. Most people don’t visit the dentist for fun.”

  He’d dropped the glamour, likely so he could do his job. I imagined it would be hard to get close enough to treat a patient when she was likely to pull you in for a long, slow kiss.

  “I took a good crack to the jaw,” I said. I touched the left side of my face. “I’m a boxer. This tends to happen.”

  “Your chart says you were just here for your cleaning,” he said. “Too bad you had to come back so soon. Let’s have a look.”

  I opened my mouth and he eased my shoulder into the chair. He didn’t know what I was, I was sure. He rolled his stool over to me and poked and pressed a few metal things into my gums. I almost wished I didn’t know he was fae so I could test out my own ability to sniff out my own. But perhaps my prior knowledge was screwing up my radar, because I got nothing.

  Tightening my grip on the armrests, I prepared to scream if he made one wrong move, but with dentists, it was hard to tell what a wrong move was, since it all felt invasive and sore.

  “You’re good on the bottom,” he said. “Open a little wider and I’ll check the top.”

  “Dr. Clayton?” I heard. I was unable to turn, but I knew it was Denise by her nasally Boston accent. “Could you come in and take a look at Mindy for a second?”

  Clayton dropped his instruments on the paper-towel covered tray over my knees. “Bear with me,” he said, and rose.

  I didn’t have more than a moment to contemplate a next move before he returned. “I’m going to take a couple of X-rays, so I can check below the gumline and make sure nothing’s going on under there.”

  He angled the X-ray machine in front of my face, had me bite down on a couple of nasty little slides, and said, “I’m going to go have a look at these. I’ll be a few minutes.”

  “No problem.”

  As soon as I heard his footsteps fade, I slid off the chair, my sneakers noiselessly hit the floor. I tiptoed out of the exam room and moved in the other direction, down the back hallway. Just trying to find the bathroom, I lied to myself.

  With my fingertips, I pushed open the first door I came to. Bathroom.

  I crept ahead quickly to the next and last door, straight ahead. This door was shut tight, but when I turned the knob, it clicked open. No lights were on, but the afternoon sun beamed straight in, illuminating everything in front of me.

  A laboratory.

  In my heart, I supposed I should have expected this. A villain always has a secret lab. By the papers and test tubes and little flat Petri dishes covering one of the counters, and water droplets still clinging to the sides of the metal sink, it was easy to surmise someone had worked in here recently.

  No kids in cages, so that was a positive start. And, I noticed, no teeth. There was a powerful microscope, far beyond anything I remembered from high school biology, and there was an emergency eye wash box on the wall. No teeth.

  Padding silently into the room, I slipped two fingers into my folded-up sweatshirt cuff and pulled out a spider. Ick. Just didn’t matter that they weren’t real and breathing—they were still disgusting to look at and touch. I reached around behind the open door and pressed it onto the freshly painted wall. As if with a mind of its own, it skittered toward the ceiling and nestled into the corner crack. Ew. Upon giving me the bug earlier this morning, Reese and Svein had informed me it wasn’t the usual essence-sniffer. This one was more state of the art, with a teeny, tiny video surveillance camera. They couldn’t control this spider’s movements—it followed heat and motion—so they just had to kind of hope it would capture something, but at least in a room like this, the chances were pretty good.

  I saw two cylindrical machines against the wall whose function I couldn’t identify. They looked like big mixing vats and thermometers protruded from each. All the wall cabinets were shut but had glass doors, and by stepping into the room a little further, I could read some of the labels on the containers inside: hydrated silica, glycerin, sodium lauryl sulfate, peppermint oil, p-hydrozybenzoate.

  I tried to memorize the alphabet soup of chemical names so I could investigate on the Internet la
ter. I turned my attention to the worktables, and realized what I’d thought was a rack of test tubes wasn’t actually holding test tubes. They were plastic, triangular tubes. The empty tubes were lined up cap down, their top ends gaping open. There were about a half-dozen filled racks, and beside them on the table was a sealed, finished tube. I picked it up.

  Toothpaste.

  He was making toothpaste.

  My mind reeled to put all the pieces together. Robot children. Lab-created toothpaste in goody bags. Dead teeth.

  I thrust the tube into the front waistband of my jeans, feeling it squash against my stomach, and ran to the door. I pushed it open and doubled back toward the exam room I’d vacated—as Dr. Clayton rounded the corner. And made eye contact with me. And raised an eyebrow.

  “Um, bathroom,” I mumbled, and ducked into the bathroom. I closed the door and pressed my back against it, holding my breath. Shit.

  Thoughts were shoving each other around in my brain, and I couldn’t catch any one of them and hold it long enough to make sense of it. Toothpaste lab. Kids sucked of innocence. Wings must stay in. I dropped my face into my hands and raked my fingers hard through my hair. Reaching over to flush the toilet to at least maintain very shaky appearances, I got a look at myself in the clean, clear mirror over the sink. My eyes had the hollowed, haunted look of an insomniac. My jaw was set hard in the look of a criminal. My mouth was a taut straight line, the look of someone who facing a grim, no-way-out situation.

  If I were Clayton—hell, if I were anyone but me—I might keep a distance from someone like me. Because he didn’t know what I was. He didn’t. To him, I was probably no more than a crazy, sleep-deprived trespasser.

  Of course, my wings could still give me away. I had gotten the information I needed. Now I just had to get out.