by Anita Oh
It was hard to explain. It was different from when he’d been blocking me. Then, there had been a trail for me to follow, a trail toward him, but when I’d got to the end of the trail, I hadn’t been able to find him. But this was as if there was no trail at all, as if there never had been.
Althea nodded. “What else?” she asked, pulling her phone out of her pocket and swiping the screen. “Any pain? Strange sensations?”
I thought about it. “My arm feels strange. That stuff, the poison, it spilled on me?”
Althea nodded. “You don’t remember anything that happened after that?” she asked, making more notes on her phone.
I tried to think, but there was nothing between that and waking up in the dungeon. “What happened?”
“You had some sort of fit,” Althea said. “That stuff got all over your arms — I managed to get a small sample of it to test, but most of it just vanished into your skin. As soon as it vanished, you started… Well, it wasn’t pretty. Tennyson and Sam were both totally useless, but Nikolai’s had some basic first aid training, so he managed to restrain you enough for us to get you back here, but you really fought us.” She glanced up from her phone. “You probably don’t want a lot of the details, to be honest, but we didn’t just shackle you for fun. You couldn’t stand anything touching you or any light or sound. I was actually going to call Mother if you weren’t better when I checked on you this time.”
I tried to take it all in, but my brain wouldn’t process anything.
“But Tennyson, he’s okay? He didn’t drink any of that stuff? None of it got on him?”
She shook her head. “He actually got off much more lightly than the rest of us. The liquid didn’t touch any of us, but you did get awfully violent. You seemed to actually try to pull out Nikolai’s lungs through his ribcage at one point.”
“I thought you were going to spare me the details,” I said.
She shrugged. “Do you think if I unshackle you, you’ll be okay?” she asked, putting her phone back in her pocket.
“I think so,” I told her.
I felt normal enough, but then, as she approached me, everything started to go fuzzy. Without really knowing what I was doing, I thrashed against my chains, trying to get at her. Nothing existed but my instinct, and that instinct was to kill, to maim.
Then, just as quickly as the impulse had come over me, it ended. I blinked, staring around the room. Althea stared back at me, her face pale. Nikolai was standing beside her, his body angled slightly so that he was between the two of us.
“What?” I asked. “Did I…?” I gulped. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
Althea shook her head.
I breathed out a long breath.
“I am so, so sorry,” I said. “To both of you.”
Nikolai shrugged. “No hard feelings. It’s not like you meant to hurt us.”
I gave him a small smile. He’d been surprisingly thoughtful the past few days, and it was starting to change my opinion of him. Maybe it was because we were pack now.
“I should go check on my tests,” Althea said, still looking unsettled. “There wasn’t a lot of the liquid left, so I don’t want to mess up what I have.”
She left quickly. I couldn’t blame her, though I hoped I hadn’t completely messed up our friendship.
“She’ll be fine,” Nikolai said. “She’s just not good with this kind of thing. You know, people trying to disembowel her.”
He reached up to unlock my chains. His fingers seemed to burn hot against my frigid skin.
“I don’t think you should do that,” I told him. “Did you not just see me thirty seconds ago?”
He shrugged and unbolted the heavy shackles. “If you try anything, I’m reasonably confident that I can take you.” He undid the rest of my chains, and I still didn’t go crazy, which seemed like a good sign. “Now, come over here and drink your tea and tell me how you knew there was something in that cup.”
I told him all about Olivia, and he listened with his lips growing thin and pale. I’d never seen him really angry before, I realized.
“You think she’s working for your father?” he asked when I finished explaining what she’d said.
“It seems likely. He was going to poison Tennyson, and then she put poison in his tea. It seems fairly conclusive.”
Nikolai nodded, but his brow was furrowed. He looked as if he was about to say something when the door opened again and Tennyson poked his head in.
“You are awake,” he said, sounding confused.
I stared at him for a moment. “You’re alive,” I said. I really hadn’t believed it. Even with him right in front of me, I still couldn’t feel him. There was still that cold fear in place of where our bond should be.
What’s happening? I asked him. Why can’t I feel you?
There was no response.
“Well,” said Nikolai, getting to his feet. “As interesting as it is to watch the two of you stare at each other, I have an evil wench to interrogate.”
Tennyson stepped out of his way as he walked out the door, and for one weird moment, I didn’t want him to leave.
“What’s happening?” I asked Tennyson. “Why aren’t you answering me?”
He hovered in the doorway. “You don’t feel it either?” he asked.
“Do you think that’s what it was? That poison or whatever it was? Do you think my father made it to sever the bond?”
He didn’t answer me. He just stood there in the doorway, a halo around him from the hall light behind him. My heart pounded. I’d never seen him like this, so uncertain. I couldn’t read him at all.
“Tennyson?” I asked. My voice was so small, and I wasn’t quite sure what I was asking him.
He backed out of the doorway and closed the door. I didn’t follow.
I wasn’t sure how much later it was when the door opened again. Nikolai had Olivia by the arm, and he shoved her into the room, then locked the door behind him.
“Is this her?” Nikolai asked.
I nodded.
Her hair was a mess and she had mascara tracks running down her cheeks, but I couldn’t feel any sympathy for her. She’d tried to hurt Tennyson. She’d severed our bond. She was in league with my father, and as far as I was concerned, she was just as evil as he was.
“Should I chain her up?” Nikolai asked. “They’re iron shackles, and she might be…” He wiggled his fingers to show he meant magic.
I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“Please don’t,” she said, sniffling.
I glanced at Nikolai. I didn’t know a lot about methods of interrogation, but I figured it was better to have something to threaten her with.
“Fine,” I said. “Sit in the chair, but we’ll chain you up if you don’t answer our questions.”
She sniffled again and sat in the chair opposite me.
I got up to stand by Nikolai. Already, I felt so much stronger than I had earlier. Maybe the liquid was wearing off. Maybe the bond would come back once the liquid was out of my system. Or maybe it had served its purpose by severing the bond completely. Either way, I had to get answers out of this girl.
“You didn’t hurt her, did you?” As much as I didn’t like Olivia, it seemed kind of wrong for someone to use their superpowers against someone who didn’t have any.
Nikolai shook his head. “I mean, I grabbed her arm a little roughly when she wouldn’t come with me, but I think she just scares easily.”
“Guilty conscience,” I said.
He nodded.
“This will probably work better if I’m the bad cop and you’re the good cop,” I told him. “She already doesn’t like me.”
“Fine, but for the record, I’m actually the sexy cop.”
I groaned and turned back to Olivia.
I banged my fist down on the table, making the empty mug rattle. She flinched away. Good. I wanted her to be scared. As scared as I’d been when Tennyson had picked up that cup.
“What was the poiso
n that you gave Tennyson?” I yelled at her. “Who gave it to you? Who are you working for?”
“What?”
“Don’t try to play dumb with me!” I shouted, leaning over the table to get right up in her face. A nasty part of me, deep within that cold fear, kind of enjoyed being the one on the other side of the bullying for a change. “You tried to kill Tennyson Wilde. Did you think you’d get away with it? You know we’re only the first wave of retribution you’ll have to face, don’t you? There’s a world of hurt coming your way, so you may as well make it easy on yourself and come clean now.”
“Now, now,” said Nikolai, pulling me back from her. “Give the girl a break. I’m sure she was just following orders, right? You were just doing what you were told? You never meant to hurt anyone. We know that. If you tell us everything you know, we can help you.”
I stepped back and watched him work. It was strange, Nikolai was normally such a d-bag, but when he tried, he really could turn on the charm. He sat down opposite her, took her hand up in his and leaned in close to her.
“We just want to know the truth,” he said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I was just playing a prank on Lucy. I wanted her to look like an idiot. I wanted her to look stupid in front of Tennyson, and then I’d win him away from her.” She broke down, sobbing. “I’d never try to hurt him! I love him.”
Nikolai glanced back at me. “She’s telling the truth,” he said. “Her pulse rate didn’t change.”
I nodded. I believed her too. But that put us right back to square one.
Chapter 8
I still felt weird the next day, so I stayed in the dungeon rather than risk going to class and gutting people like fishes. I messaged Katie to explain what had happened and to ask if she had any information about it, because I was stumped. It still seemed strange to me that the moment Olivia had given me that warning, Tennyson had picked up the cup with the poison in it, but Olivia definitely seemed innocent. Nikolai said he’d get someone to keep an eye on her, but I thought he felt a bit bad about our interrogation when she’d actually been innocent. I felt a bit bad too, but not very bad, because even if she wasn’t guilty of trying to murder Tennyson, she was still guilty of being a jerk.
As the day wore on, I began to feel more and more off. Sort of fuzzy, but not like when I’d attacked Althea; more as if I was fading away. I tried to concentrate on my homework, but the feeling made it hard to see the screen properly. Everything sort of blurred together. I wondered if it was one of the effects of the poison. I’d thought it was working its way out of my system, but maybe it was only getting started.
Before I lost my vision completely, there was something I had to do. I hated to do it, but I had no other leads. I scrolled through my phone contacts until I got to EVIL DAD.
“What did you poison Tennyson with?” I typed. “Because you actually poisoned me instead. Congrats. Your evil plan failed, and now you’re one kid down. I’m dying.”
I looked at the message, my finger hovering over the “send” button. What were the chances of him actually telling me anything about the poison? A quick calculation said around zero. It was far more likely that he’d adapt his evil plan to fit the new information. At least this way, he thought Tennyson was the one who’d been poisoned, so we were at a slight advantage. I deleted the message and went back to dying.
I wasn’t entirely sure I was dying, but I’d really started to feel like it. I got too weak to sit up, so I curled up in a ball on the chair, shivering. Even if I was dying, at least I’d managed to save Tennyson. Not that he was at all grateful. I hadn’t even seen him since he’d run away from me. Maybe I could leave a request for him to speak at my funeral. He could read a poem. Or maybe sing! Something super embarrassing. That would teach him a lesson. Oh, man, it sucked that I’d be too dead to see it. If I could see it, I’d make him tap dance too.
The dungeon door burst open, and the four of them piled in.
“Why are you so pathetic?” Nikolai asked, slinging himself into the chair beside me.
I rested my chin on the arm of the chair to glare at him.
“When I die, will you make Tennyson tap dance at my funeral? And film it and travel back in time so I can see?”
“Sure,” he said. “Cupcake?”
I wrinkled my nose. Normally, I liked cupcakes the most, but I had no appetite.
I was trying to ignore the way Tennyson was hanging about near the doorway, as if he was waiting for a chance to flee.
“Are you feeling okay?” Sam asked, crouching down at my side. “I know you said you were a bit off this morning, but you don’t look so good, and it’s not like you to reject cakes.”
“I’m dying,” I told him. “Of poison. The poison that I bravely took on Tennyson’s behalf and received only scorn as a thank you.”
I glanced over to see if he looked contrite, but he wasn’t even listening.
“It may not be melodramatic enough for your current mood, but if you want to come upstairs, my tests should be about done,” Althea said, leaning over the back of the chair to look down at me. “If your feeble body can make it that far.”
“I take it that you no longer fear my psychotic rampage?” I asked her.
She smiled down at me. “I don’t think you could rampage on a kitten right now.”
I actually felt well enough to stand on my own. Maybe it was something to do with being around my pack members, but I definitely felt stronger when we were together, more solid and less as if I was fading away. As soon as I got to my feet, Tennyson vanished back through the doorway. I stumbled a little, and Sam caught me by the arm. He and Nikolai helped me upstairs.
“Okay, so you’re not dying,” Althea said, looking over her test results. She had a bunch of stuff set up on the big desk in the main room, and it all looked as if it would be really interesting if I had the energy to care.
“Am I dwindling?” I asked her. “I definitely feel as if I’m dwindling.”
She looked through a few more of her results. I couldn’t really see what she was doing because the sofa was too comfortable and making me curl up on the cushions.
“Oh!” she said suddenly.
I dragged myself upright. “What do you mean, ‘oh’?”
She looked over at me, biting her bottom lip. “You’re not dwindling,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
Tennyson was standing over by the mantle, facing away from us. Sam was sitting at the other end of the sofa, and Nikolai was playing a game on his phone and ignoring us.
“Well, this test of obviously rudimentary, so I can’t tell any of the details, but I’ve isolated the ingredients of the liquid. According to every source we possess, there’s only one result when these particular ingredients are combined.”
She took a long pause, which I was sure was only for dramatic effect. Tennyson didn’t turn around, but his shoulders were tense. Even Nikolai looked up from his phone.
“It was a love potion.”
I blinked at her. “What?”
“A love potion,” she repeated.
I shook my head. “There must be a mistake,” I told her.
“There’s no mistake,” she said. “Rose, ginseng, ylang ylang, turtle bile... A bunch of other stuff that you probably don’t want to know about… They’re all classic love potion ingredients. Without the bile and… other stuff… it might be a fairly effective skin tonic, or if you added mugwort and it had been brewed under the right conditions, there’s various theories about an effective psychic enhancer, but these specific ingredients, in these quantities? Sorry, there’s no mistake.”
My cheeks heated up, and I slid down on the sofa so I couldn’t see over the back to where Tennyson was standing.
“This is fantastic!” said Nikolai, grinning from ear to ear. “So, if the potion was meant for Tennyson, does that mean she loves him, or does she love whoever he was supposed to fall in love w
ith? Oh, we have to find whoever slipped him the potion and bring them here! For science!”
Althea shook her head. “We don’t even know if the potion is acting as it was supposed to. It was meant to be ingested, but it was spilled on Lucy and absorbed through her skin. That may make the reaction different from what was intended.”
“That explains why she was trying to kill us all instead of snuggle us, I guess,” said Nikolai. Just one time, I wished this kind of thing would happen to him instead of me so I could be the one in the corner chuckling like an evil overlord.
She tapped a finger against her chin. “We need some of your blood,” she said to me. “If I can test that, I’ll have more of an idea how your body has reacted to these ingredients.”
I thought about what she was saying. “Do you think that’s why…” I took a deep breath. It was hard to get the words out. Obviously, that was part of the effects of the potion; it wasn’t as if I cared so much. “Is that why my bond with Tennyson is gone?”
Althea started in surprise, and Sam reached out for my hand. I’d thought Tennyson would’ve told them, but maybe he just didn’t care enough. He was probably pleased.
“I’m not sure,” Althea said.
“You can have blood if you think that will help,” I said, moving to get up.
I stood by her desk, watching as she cut my finger and collected some of the blood. She only got a few drops before the wound healed.
“Is that enough?” I asked.
“For a start,” she said. “I’ll be able to see if there’s anything strange.”
I raised my eyebrows, and she shrugged.
“I mean, if there’s any unusual reaction to the potion.”
I just wanted to go back to my room and sleep, but I didn’t think I could make it that far. I felt more normal than I had since it had happened, so I was confident I wouldn’t try to kill everyone in the Red House if I went back.
Sam stood up and moved to my side. “I’ll help you back,” he said.
Sam didn’t talk all the way back to Red House, and it took all of my energy just to put one foot in front of the other. Why was magic always so draining?
