Poison

by Molly Cochran

  Actually, the sparks were in my head as my injured thumb crashed against the floor.

  “Ow!” I yelled, tears springing to my eyes.

  The dog came to me, smiling and wagging his tail so hard that his whole rear end swung from side to side. I set down the laptop and gritted my teeth as the throbbing in my thumb subsided. The dog grabbed the sleeve of my jacket in his mouth and pulled me toward the door.

  I sighed. There was nothing to be done, I supposed, except to pop into the store, give my regards, return the dog, and leave. As I was zipping up my jacket, I noticed two matching mud blossoms on my sweater. “Cretin,” I said. The dog grinned from ear to ear and then sneezed on my hand.

  • • •

  The emporium’s front door was ajar. The dog nosed it open, sauntered in, and immediately transformed into Morgan, shaking out her dark waist-length hair. She was wearing a red cashmere sweater and leather pants.

  “Are you kidding me?” I shouted. “It was you all along? Why didn’t you just come over like a normal person?”

  She shrugged. “I wanted you to come,” she said. “You might have said no.”

  “I would have said no! I have a chemistry midterm tomorrow morning!”

  “Blah, blah,” she said, uncorking a bottle. “Champagne?”

  “God, no. And . . . and why aren’t you naked?”

  She made a face. “What?”

  “Whenever I see shape-shifters in movies or on TV, they come back naked.”

  “Yeah, I never understood that. I mean, they don’t come back bald, or minus their fingernails, do they? If you’re a bird, you don’t come back without feathers. If you’re a rhinoceros—”

  “Okay, okay.”

  She poured herself a glassful and tasted it. “Ah. A good year,” she said. “The point is, you go the way you are, and you come back the way you are. Easy.” She gestured toward me with her chin. “So what’d you do to your hand?”

  “Kitchen accident. No biggie.”

  “Ugh. Why do you have to cook? It’s dangerous. And it makes you smelly.”

  I sighed. “Okay, I’m leaving.”

  “I didn’t mean you were smelly now,” Morgan amended, as if that made everything all right.

  “Good to know. But I still have to go.”

  “No, you don’t. It’s hours till your midterm.”

  “That’s right, hours. To learn months of material.”

  She waved me away. “Don’t give me that, Katy. You’re crazy smart.” Actually, that was only half-true. My being in the store proved that I was indeed crazy, and not even a little bit smart. “Besides, there’s something I want to show you.” She crooked a finger at me as she sauntered to the back of the store.

  “Where have you been, by the way?” I asked.

  “Turkey. My aunt bought some artifacts that turned out to have been stolen from a museum in Ankara. I had to bribe twenty officials to get her out of jail.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That sounds horrible.”

  “You have no idea,” she said. “She was too grossed out to come back. She’s at a spa in Switzerland now. But she gave me something as a reward for my help.” Morgan stood back, pointing to a painting.

  I supposed it was my ignorance about art, but it didn’t look like a very interesting painting to me. It was a landscape, with lots of grass and trees, and not much else. There may have been a lake in the background, but it didn’t show up as more than a sliver along the upper border. Worst of all, the painting appeared to be covered with dust and grit and other unsavory-looking crud.

  “Er . . . nice,” I said, resisting the urge to wipe it off with a tissue.

  “You don’t recognize it?” Morgan asked.

  “Recognize? You mean the scene?”

  “The type of painting. It’s a versimka.”

  “Oh,” I said, my mind a perfect blank. “Was he Turkish?”

  “Who?”

  “The artist. Ver . . . ” I’d already forgotten the rest.

  She laughed. “Versimka isn’t an artist,” she said. “It’s a kind of magic, made especially for object-empaths like you.” She smiled brightly.

  “Object-empaths?”

  “People who can enter objects at will,” she said. “The Mistress of Real Things, remember?”

  “Oh, that. Sure. I’ve been practicing.”

  “Awesome. See this grainy stuff at the bottom?” She ran her hand over the surface.

  “I thought it was dirt,” I said.

  “It is. It’s earth and crushed rock from the area that the painting depicts. Likewise with the green of the grass and the blue of the sky.”

  I blinked. “How did the grass stay green?” I asked. “And the sky?”

  “I told you, it’s magic,” Morgan said. “Go ahead. Walk into it.”

  “Uh, I don’t know,” I said, waffling. “The last time—”

  “This will be different. Your whole body goes through, not just your spirit.”

  I swallowed. “You mean I could die there?”

  “You could die the other way too,” she said matter-of-factly. “Anyway, trust me, it’ll be easier.”

  “I can’t, Morgan. My midterm—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” She sighed, exasperated. “Do you know how much trouble I went through to get this through customs, with the dirt and agricultural products and what all on it? Jeez. I thought you’d be excited.”

  “It’s not that. I just don’t have a lot of time.”

  “But it’ll only take a minute!” she shouted. “You’ve already used up more time arguing with me than it would have taken for you to go and come back.”

  We stood there staring at each other for a few seconds, until finally she set the painting down. “Fine,” she said. “It’s not important, I guess. Not to you, anyway.”

  I blew air out my nose. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see what was on the other side of the ver-whatsis, or that I was ungrateful to Morgan for thinking of me. I touched the rough surface of the painting. My ring, which I’d never taken off, suddenly glowed brightly for the first time since the night I’d gone into the tankard. Morgan was back in the main part of the store, with her back to me. I knew I’d let her down. And she had gone to a lot of trouble. . . .

  “Okay, I’ll go,” I said glumly.

  “You will?” She spun around, her face radiant. “That’s wonderful. You’re amazing,” she said, downing her glass of wine. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear what’s inside the versimka!”

  That surprised me. “Don’t you know?”

  “How would I? You’re the psycho-whatsis.”

  “Psychometrist,” I corrected. “But where is this place I’m going?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I studied the painting. “I guess not. Not if I’m just popping in and out again.”

  “That’s all it’ll be. Are you ready?”

  I sighed. “I guess so.”

  “Don’t knock yourself out with enthusiasm,” she said.

  “Look, I said I’d go.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said placatingly. “Would you like some vino?” she asked, waving her empty glass.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “Well, you’ll need something.” She set down her glass and ran to the back.

  “I’m not thirsty,” I called after her. “Besides, I’m only going to be gone for a minute—”

  As usual, she paid no attention to me and sprinted back with a glass of pink liquid. “Lemonade,” she said breathlessly as she handed it to me. “You never know.”

  “Never know what?” I almost choked on the drink. “I can get back, can’t I?”

  “Of course. This is even easier than the other way. Your whole body goes through. It’s not virtual anything. That’s what makes it magic.”

  I took a deep breath. “Well, okay. If you’re sure it’s safe.”

  “Trust me,” Morgan said.

  I got myself ready by concentrating on the glowing blue ring on my finger
. Morgan had said that there was nothing supernatural about the ring, but I had to disagree. The question, though, was whether it glowed because the stone itself was magic or because it was responding to something I was generating—conjuring—inside myself. That was the thing about magic. It was hard to tell exactly where it came from.

  Wherever the point of origin was, I began to feel the tingling sensation that I always got before I entered a solid object, and I knew it was time to stop thinking and go with it.

  “Bon voyage,” I heard Morgan say as I vaulted into the canvas.

  I looked back. It was only for the most fleeting moment, but I saw her watching me. To my surprise her face looked inexplicably sad.

  “Morgan . . .,” I began, but she was lost to me.

  CHAPTER

  •

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was beautiful. That was all I could think of when I found myself standing in the meadow where the painting had taken me. Wildflowers blossomed all around me. The sky was cloudless, and the sun cast a golden light over the distant green hills. . . .

  Those hills.

  They were oddly familiar. I looked around. Everything here was familiar to me.

  Suddenly it came to me—my vision. When I’d held the pieces of plastic in my hand, I’d seen this same scene. Into it had walked a young girl with her magician father. She had changed daisies into butterflies, and then cried when he’d left her.

  Why had I seen this? What was the connection?

  “Hello?” I called. “Anybody here?” But my only answer was the faint, low hum of insects in the grass, droning in the warm sun.

  “Oh,” I said as I caught myself staggering. The sun was so warm. Sun, yes . . . It had been night when I’d left—night and winter. Had I really left, then, or was my body still back at the Emporium of Remarkable Goods? I took a deliberate step to see if my foot left an imprint. It did. The insects droned louder, as if in complaint for disturbing them.

  I reached behind me, and could feel the faint thickness of the air where I’d crossed into this . . . what? Place? Dimension? Time? I had no idea where I was or what I should be doing here, and with every passing second, it seemed, my mind grew foggier. I must have had some purpose in coming here, but frankly, I was becoming too tired to care.

  That was it. I was tired. I needed to rest. It had been a long day . . . Or was it night back where I’d come from? Which was . . . where, exactly? All I knew was that I had to lie down here, in this fragrant meadow, right now. Just for a minute.

  A voice in the back of my mind was shrieking. The drink. The drink! Morgan had given me a lemonade. But of course it hadn’t been lemonade; it had only looked like lemonade, the way those horrible moldy gingersnaps had looked like delicious cookies.

  But why would Morgan do that? I was her friend. The Mistress of Real Things. Why would she poison me?

  Poison.

  Oh, God. She’d poisoned me! Blindly I reached out for the barrier, but I could no longer feel it. My fingers felt like bananas, no longer connected to my body, as I swiped at empty air.

  My knees buckled beneath me. I fell into a thick patch of blossoming clover. It smelled wonderful. Paradise, I thought. While part of my mind was panicking and struggling to make my spaghetti legs stand upright again, the other part was breathing in the scent of the clover and longing to stretch out in the warm sun. If I could only rest for a few minutes, I was sure I’d be able to think more clearly.

  I remained there on all fours for what seemed like a very long time, nodding off but fighting it, trying to keep my eyes open while drool spilled out of my mouth.

  Poison, I thought. But why? What had I done? Through the fog of my drugged vision I saw the blue ring on my finger. It was glowing brightly. It’s laughing, I thought. It’s happy.

  The insects around me grew louder. They crawled up my arms and inside my jeans. Into my ears. Into the corners of my eyes. I shook my head like a cow trying to rid itself of flies, but the movement was slow and pointless. Then they started to bite.

  I gasped, sucking in some of the creatures that were gathered around my mouth. Choking, I tried to crawl away. Where was the barrier? I could no longer remember. I swatted at the bugs, which were now swarming around me in clouds so dense that I could barely see through them to the vague shapes that were rising up from the grass.

  They were like wraiths, these beings that floated just out of reach, ghouls with the faces of ancient women, dressed in rags that swirled around them like smoke.

  Needing desperately to come out of my stupor, I pinched myself and tried to stand up, but I was so uncoordinated that I fell over. That was when I saw the birds. They were vultures, huge beasts that were heading toward me from the opposite direction as the wraiths, their wings so wide that they made shadows on the ground.

  “Wait a minute,” I said thickly. Shadows on the ground. Vultures.

  I remembered. The little girl in my vision had been running from vultures. In this same place. And they had caught her.

  As I watched, horrified, the giant birds turned into women—the same sort of ragged women that had risen out of the ground around me, their spectral garments waving in the wind, their faces twisted with malice as they surrounded me. One of them spoke:

  “Poison.”

  I blinked hard. How did they know I’d been poisoned? I’d only figured it out myself a minute ago.

  They came closer, reaching out for me with gnarled, clawlike fingers. I remembered how the little girl in my vision had screamed with fear and hopelessness when they’d descended on her, predators clutching at their prey. What had they done with her? Killed her, probably. Torn her apart like confetti while she cried out for help . . .

  Well, that wasn’t going to happen again. Not to me. Poisoned or not, I had no intention of making anything easy for these hags. If they were going to murder me, it was going to cost them.

  Summoning more strength than I’d thought I possessed, I grabbed two handfuls of dirt and threw them in the direction of the ghouls. They backed away. I lunged for the bony hands that had been taunting me, and they withdrew with a shriek.

  They don’t want me to touch them, I realized. Oh, my God. Could it be? They were actually afraid of me. With a scream worthy of the coeds in the Freddy Krueger movies, I forced myself to stagger upright. The women—if that was what they were—flew out of my reach.

  With my foot I felt for the barrier. Even with my adrenaline pumping, I still felt as if I were walking through molasses, but I thought I detected a slight change in pressure. As the hags regrouped, I backed toward what I hoped was the two-by-three-foot rectangle of space that would take me back to Morgan’s store.

  A tiny worm of worry intruded into my thoughts. What if Morgan is waiting for me on the other side? If she’d tried to poison me with the lemonade, what would she do to me if I showed up again? But I wasn’t going to think about that now. The creatures—they couldn’t really be called human—were pressed together in a tight mass and were moving forward again, their eyes glinting, their breath fouling the air. Together they raised their arms toward me.

  As I felt desperately for the opening, I shielded my face with my hands. Suddenly the ring, with no help from me, flashed with a blue light so intense, it was as if the sun had fallen out of the sky.

  The wraiths who had been directly in the path of the light fell to the ground, their rags floating behind them, while the others flew away. At that moment I leaped backward into the barrier.

  The next thing I knew, I was crawling over the wooden frame of the painting, just me in the darkness, gasping for air.

  CHAPTER

  •

  TWENTY-THREE

  I think I may have fallen asleep right there on the floor, without even knowing exactly where I was. It wasn’t for very long, though, because when I woke up, there were still bugs in my shoes. Smacking my lips with residual sleep, I lumbered to my feet and looked around.

  I was back in the store, but all the lights wer
e out, and Morgan was nowhere in sight. Also, the painting had been moved to the back of the store, behind the curtain that separated the clean, inviting retail area that the customers saw from the squalid back room that housed all the broken stuff as well as new shipments and excess inventory.

  Well, of course Morgan would have moved the painting over here, I thought. She’d probably assumed that I wouldn’t be coming back, since she’d obviously sent me to die on the other side of her magic painting.

  Some friend, I thought with a shiver of anger and, well, to be truthful, shame. I should have known that someone as cool as Morgan wouldn’t have considered having me as a friend. I hadn’t been anything more to her than a tool for her use. She must have sensed how pathetic I was, and had decided that I’d make a perfect dupe. Way to go, Katy.

  I toyed seriously with the idea of stomping upstairs and punching her in the nose, but I knew that wouldn’t do much good. Even if I managed to do it—and I probably couldn’t, since she was a much stronger witch than I was—it would still take more time than I was willing to spare. At least she hadn’t been waiting for me with a dagger to stab into my heart.

  I could see that, outside, the sky was pitch-black. I checked my cell phone. Three forty-five a.m. My body was still shaking all over from the fear that had flooded through me. Still, that fear had probably saved my life. But now I was so tired, I was afraid to lean against anything because I knew I’d be out cold again within a minute. And the chemistry exam still loomed over me like a mushroom cloud. With a sigh I tried to shake myself awake. Time and Krebs cycle waited for no one. I stood there for a moment, waiting to work up enough strength to make it to the door.