Kelly took the photo, examining it closely. “Sweaters do this sometimes, so it’s hard to be sure what’s under there. You think it’s a gun?”
“It’s not a hip,” I said, “unless she has very weird hips.”
“Sensitivity training,” said Diana, and I suppressed another smile. Diana Lucas was the only other person on the team who ever joined in my jokes. Not only would killing her be physically hard—she was former military and as tough as a brick—but I’d regret it afterward. We weren’t friends, per se, but we got along, united in our shared annoyance with Nathan, if nothing else. Nathan always told her they had to stick together, as the only black people on the team, and I think that annoyed her more than anything else. She’d even punched him once. I sincerely hoped I never had to kill Diana.
I looked back at Kelly. “Compare that photo to this one,” I said, sliding another image across the table. “This is an older shot, from a few weeks ago, so she’s wearing different clothes and we’re seeing it from a different angle. The bulge is still there. It’s too consistent to be a random fold in a sweater.”
“Maybe,” said Kelly. She pulled out magnifying glass—a real live magnifying glass, like an old-timey detective. It was one of Kelly’s quirks. I kept waiting for her to pull out a pipe and a Sherlock Holmes hat. “Could be a gun,” she said, studying the photo intently. “Do we have any other shots of that side?”
“What’s the big deal about a gun?” asked Nathan, watching as I sifted through the photos. “She’s some kind of supernatural monster anyway, right? Seems like a gun should be the least of our problems.”
“Sensitivity training,” I said.
“Oh, come on, what now?” asked Nathan, his voice even more frustrated than before. “We’re not allowed to call the monsters monsters anymore? Are we worried about offending them?”
“I was actually warning myself that time,” I said, finding another photo and passing it over to Kelly. “I’m about to call you an idiot, and I was saving everyone else the trouble of pointing it out.”
“Hey—” said Nathan, but I cut him off.
“You’re an idiot,” I said. “But to be fair you’re also new, so maybe you haven’t done all the reading yet.”
“I’ve done more reading than anyone in this building,” said Nathan. “Or did you forget that I’m literally a doctor of library science?”
Diana rolled her eyes—we couldn’t forget Nathan’s credentials because he shoved them in our faces every chance he got.
“I’ll let you know if any science libraries start bleeding,” I said. “Between now and then, apply your research with a little common sense. I assume you read the report on my second contact with a Withered?”
“Of course I did,” said Nathan. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. If this woman can turn her hands into claws or whatever, a gun seems like the least of our worries.”
I nodded. “So if she has supernatural weapons that make a gun redundant, why does she carry a gun?”
“Not every Withered has claws,” said Diana, explaining the line of reasoning more patiently than I was. “Some of them—like the second one John ran into, named Clark Forman—have no apparent means of defense at all, and no superhuman powers beyond whatever basic … whatever … that makes them a Withered in the first place. Forman carried a gun specifically because he didn’t have any claws. If our information is correct, Mary Gardner drains the health of others to keep herself healthy, which is why she works as a nurse. Nothing about that profile suggests that she has a form of supernatural defense, and if she carries a gun, that only serves to support this analysis.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” said Nathan. “I’d never thought of it that way.”
I nodded. “That’s because you’re an idiot.”
“Seriously,” said Nathan, slapping the table, “why do we even put up with this kid? What are you, sixteen?”
“Seventeen.”