“Spit.”
She does, and bloody salt water hits the metal sink basin. “That stings so badly,” she breathes, clutching the edge of the sink.
“It’s happening again,” I warn her. “Stick your tongue out.”
Luna winces already. “Right now?” She wipes her forehead with her arm, her cheeks beet-red. I need to take her temperature.
Maximoff glares. “You plan on going somewhere, Luna? What else are we doing?”
“Jane promised a movie night, and we could always watch the movie, then come back.” She shimmies her shoulders awkwardly. “Yeah?” She gives me a thumbs-up.
“Stick your tongue out,” I say.
Luna frowns. “Moffy is supposed to be the hardass.”
I roll my eyes. “I was a hardass first, and then he copied me.”
Maximoff interjects, “Sounds like fan fiction.”
“Man, I was born before your parents even officially started dating.” I give him a look. “Five years older, ten times smarter.”
He shoots me a middle finger.
I smile and focus on his sister. “Luna.”
She reluctantly extends her tongue. Red streaks run from the silver ball to the tip of her tongue, a little swollen. At least she bought an actual barbell. I leave the jewelry in place to avoid an infection closing inside the wound.
Luna leans slightly over the sink, and I use the syringe to wash near the piercing, places that just swishing wouldn’t reach. When I finish, she spits into the sink again.
“Done?” she asks.
“Not yet.” I dunk a cotton ball in saline solution. “Hold this against your tongue.” She looks ashen, and her forehead glistens with a sheen of sweat. While I stick an ear thermometer in her right ear, I go over shit that I know.
“No kissing or oral sex until the infection is clear.”
She nods, but her brother cuts in, “Have you been kissed before?” No one said Maximoff Hale isn’t just as blunt as me.
Luna says, “Uh-huh.”
“What?” His jaw lowers. “By who?”
She takes the cotton ball out of her mouth. “Guy at school. You don’t know him. He bought me a sandwich afterwards.” She starts laughing at Maximoff’s furrowed brows and hard confusion.
“You’re totally fucking with me.” He pauses. “Right?”
I can’t tell what’s real or fiction with Luna Hale anymore than he can.
Luna just laughs again, followed by a wince. She touches her mouth.
“Luna.” His edged voice deepens, more serious. “Why’d you even choose your tongue? You could’ve pierced your ear—”
“I already have pierced ears.” She rubs her arm across her sweaty forehead. “I just like how tongue piercings look, and I thought it’d be easy to do myself.” She glances between us. “Anyway, I heard it doesn’t do much for pleasure.”
“It doesn’t do a lot,” Maximoff confirms, admitting to being sucked off by someone with a tongue piercing.
I look at him. “They have to be good at using the piercing for you to feel something.”
He licks his lips. “Experience or are you just bullshitting?”
“My last ex-boyfriend had a tongue piercing.” The thermometer beeps, filling a sudden dead silence. I take the thermometer out of her ear and read the temp: 101 Fahrenheit. Shit.
“You have an ex?” Maximoff’s voice is tight.
I raise my brows at him and reach for my phone in my pocket. “Four exes. Long gone.” I scroll through my list of contacts.
Luna rests her elbows on the sink. “Moffy’s never dated anyone.” The world knows that he doesn’t publicly date, but I wasn’t sure if he’d found a way to date privately in the past.
“You’ve never dated anyone?” I ask, pausing on my phone.
“No.”
I can’t help but smile. “Your purity is showing.” I return to my phone.
“Pretty sure I’ve had more sex than you.”
Luna seems unsurprised that he’s had sex at all, and since he trusts his family, I’m sure he’s less guarded around them.
“That’s something neither of us knows for sure, wolf scout.” I find the contact in my phone. “And secondly, you don’t win a prize for fucking around. Just like I don’t win one for being in relationships. Thirdly, you’re still pure.”
He groans.
I almost smile again, but I need to call someone that I’m not thrilled to call. Before Maximoff asks, I explain what I’m doing. “Luna needs antibiotics. I can give her over-the-counter medication to combat the fever, but to get rid of the infection, she’s going to need a prescription.”
He eyes my phone and the contact screen that says DAD. His gaze lifts to mine. “You’re a doctor. Can’t you just prescribe the meds yourself?”
“I never did my year internship, so I’m not medically licensed.” I may have an MD beside my name, but it’s practically useless without finishing my internship and taking a board.
“Now you tell me.”
I roll my eyes again. “I know everything that a doctor does, I just can’t do shit without being sued.”
Luna mumbles, “I’m gonna go lie down.”
Maximoff concentrates on his sister. “Stay with Janie just in case you need anything.”
Luna nods and puts the soaked cotton ball back on her tongue. Right when she leaves, Maximoff jumps to the floor and then takes my phone out of my hand.
“It’ll be faster if I call your dad,” he says.
It reminds me that everyone—the entire security team and all of the families—know that I’m on the worst terms with my father. He accepted every single tattoo, every piercing, every means of self-expression, but the day that I quit medicine, he looked right at me in front of these famous families, in front of the giant security team on a hot Labor Day vacation, and he said loudly and clearly, “You’re a disappointment.”
If I call him right now about medicine, there’s a chance he may hang up on me.
I nod to Maximoff and let him talk to my father. I stay during the conversation, but it lasts maybe three minutes, prescription ordered, and he hands back my phone.
“You’re in for the night?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” My ticket out of his townhouse has always been the information Price wanted. About the Camp-Away event. I feel like my time is up, and I have to board a train to an undesirable destination. I’d rather stay here, but duty calls. “I just need to know your plans for December’s Charity Camp-Away.”
Maximoff crosses his arms over his bare chest. “You can tell the security team that the plans are the same except for the entry process.”
I shift my weight. “What do you mean?”
“There won’t be hellishly expensive tickets to purchase in October. Instead, there’ll be a raffle.”
“A raffle,” I repeat flatly.
“My team projected we’d earn fifty million with the Camp-Away with either entry process—and I recognize the higher security risk with a raffle—but I want to give people who can’t afford the tickets an opportunity to experience the event.” He explains, “So for every one dollar donated, a person enters their name to the raffle. One week before the event in December, we’ll randomly pick the attendees out of the pool.”