Love on the Vine

by Roxanne Smith

  She’d tell Brendan so the next time she saw him, too. In fact, her stomach was starting to feel oily and weird. A headache sprouted at the back of her neck, and she blinked through a small wave of dizziness. “That’ll teach me to skip lunch.”

  She wouldn’t get any more work done today. Besides, the place was a ghost town. Either everyone had their heads bent to their desks, or Seraphina had cut them loose for the day. Whatever. Kay had left her in charge, so she couldn’t rightly complain. She grabbed her things and headed for the elevator. She’d never noticed before, how the buttons were tiny silver balls. She smiled and ran a curious finger over every single one of them. The smile left when she realized she’d been waiting a long time for the car to meet her floor. She shook her head, trying to clear away cobwebs of exhaustion.

  Even her usual bus ride made her feel funny. She was basically riding a big metal boat, floating over an asphalt ocean. Strangers kept coming and going. Every time someone left the boat, she wanted to stop them, to warn them. They couldn’t swim in asphalt. Nothing good would come of it. Nor was floating possible.

  She laughed softly to herself. She was losing her mind. Obviously, they wouldn’t float along without help. She had to propel them with her feet. Her feet made a gentle tap, tap, tap on the floor as Kay pedaled dutifully, keeping them adrift and pushing them forward. She hummed while she propelled them on the familiar route. Weren’t the other passengers lucky she knew the way?

  The way home from the bus stop seemed fraught with unspoken warnings. Her instinct told her not to travel her usual route, but to chance a path she’d never taken before. Concern filled her, even as she turned away from the road she knew so well. She didn’t know how far she’d have to go, or what to expect.

  If the trip took too long, she’d starve. Two blueberry scones weren’t going to cut it for days of traveling. It made sense to go straight home, pack a respectable amount of food like the intelligent person she was, then come back and try the journey again, better prepared. In front of her house, she paused and smiled, soaking in the grand presence, the sad history. Built by slaves, all of it. The whole South, and everything worthwhile in it, built by slaves.

  A disgrace. She glared at the house. It was a testament to the worst of humanity. Built on blood and hate. Even the narrow concrete path wanted nothing to do with this house. It had split itself in two trying to escape. And there...the tree roots, trying to wrangle the path back to where it belonged. An overwhelming sadness settled on Kay like a heavy woolen cloak. She walked slowly to the tree, feeling its sorrow, how desperately it clung to the concrete path. She wrapped her arms around the massive trunk.

  A car horn blasted into the air. A shout through an open car window rattled Kay into coherence. She gasped and stepped away. What...what was she doing? Hugging her tree? Why...

  Her mind whirled. She ran inside and slammed the door behind her, breathless. She dropped her bag to the floor, and she pushed the hair back from her forehead.

  Hot. She was hot. Hot and starving. She laughed. No wonder she felt awful! She should eat. Blueberry scones sounded like the best thing in the world. They were the best thing in the world, because a boy she had her heart set on have given them to her. Because she was special, and pretty, and hungry, and had the most astute taste in scones.

  She dug inside the bag and pulled out the salad in its container. Her gag reflex kicked in and she tossed it like a Frisbee down the long hallway, grinning and retching. The Devil was in the salad. She didn’t know how she knew, but the idea was ironclad in her mind. She withdrew the deli bag and then the scones, breathing in the sweet scent. She inhaled them both, hardly stopping to chew. A polite cough made her look up.

  Oliver stood in front of her.

  “Funhouse Oliver,” she murmured through a mouthful, grinning. Boy, he looked funny today. His head was like a balloon, batting around in a light breeze. “Whatcha doing here? If you’ve come to help with the wallpaper, I believe it’s covered.”

  And indeed it was. Strips of the wallpaper were working themselves from the wall. Kay sighed blissfully and worked the final lump of food down her throat. “I always wanted to be in a Disney movie. Animals that clean your house, dishes that talk and are always nice and understanding. Teapots could teach people a thing or two, ya know. If we weren’t too proud to listen,” she admonished.

  Oliver’s balloon head nodded agreeably. “You have to go into the greenhouse, Kay,” he warbled. His voice sounded like cheerful cardboard.

  Kay smiled through her confusion. “But I’m pretty sure I don’t want to.”

  “I know, babe. But you have to. I can’t find you on the other side if you don’t go in. It’s the only way.”

  Kay’s heart started to drum in her chest. Oliver had to find her. But she couldn’t go in there alone. In the distance, a dark black shape shimmered like asphalt on a scorching day. “Oliver, please,” she whispered. “Come with me, at least.”

  “Can’t.” His head bobbled in the breeze, but the look on his face was so full of sorrow, it broke her heart.

  “Okay,” she breathed, inhaling great gulps of air. “Okay. But you promise you’ll be on the other side?”

  He held up three fingers and grinned in a way that made her heart skip a beat for a whole different reason. “Scout’s honor.”

  Kay closed her eyes, then opened them. She’d made it to the greenhouse. The door was awful and foreboding; paint peeled from unforgiving iron. Brittle glass panes were fogged with age and grime. A vine with spiny leaves twisted around the door and the latch. Kay grabbed the handle and shoved. The door made a terrible screeching noise as she pushed it open. She sagged with relief. Neve was inside, crouched atop a growing bed. “What are you doing, Neve?”

  Neve didn’t answer, but swiveled her head in short, jerky motions to stare at Kay. One hand was stuffed with bunches of the flowers from Greenhouse Five. Neve shoved the handful of toxic flowers in her mouth, glaring at Kay all the while.

  “Neve...you shouldn’t. Those are bad, okay?”

  Neve responded with glowing red eyes and another fistful of poisonous plants.

  Before Kay could say another word, a loud wailing began, like the tornado warning drills the city ran every few weeks but right up close. She covered her ears and looked to the sky. Jagged edges of glass rimmed a hole punched through the ceiling of the greenhouse, and a stone tower loomed overhead.

  Seraphina stood on a portico at the top of the tower. Gray clouds gathered and swirled, wind picked up and rushed through the greenhouse, baying like dogs on the trail of their prey. Seraphina’s hands were a visor over her eyes as she searched for something...

  With a lurch in her chest, Kay realized it was her. She dived onto the floor and skidded beneath one of the tables like a baseball player sliding across home base. Fear snaked through her limbs.

  Seraphina’s voice boomed overhead. “You’ll answer for your crimes, Kay! You won’t leave here before you meet justice.”

  Kay’s heart thumped wildly. Escape. The word repeated on a loop in her mind. Escape. Escape. Escape. She closed her eyes and fought for calm. Oliver...Oliver had promised to find her, but first, she had to get through the greenhouse. She peered around the leg of the table she’d ducked under. The door on the other side of the greenhouse seemed miles away.

  She fixed an image of Oliver in her mind and held tight—then she rolled from under the table, gained her feet, and ran for her life. The door loomed suddenly, and Kay had no time to stop. She crashed into door, and the crack of splintering wood filled her head, and she pitched forward into an endless fall.

  Falling, falling, falling...and screaming. Kay screamed until the tinge of blood coated her tongue. And then she was floating. Still falling, but softly, a gently rocking from side to side. Arms, warm and solid, came around her, holding her like a baby.

  She sank into the embrace. “Oliver?”

  “I promised I’d find you.”

&nb
sp; Chapter 12

  Oliver ran his hand through his hair and paced. He could explain himself a thousand ways, and Kay’s overprotective friends would never understand. Still, he had to try before they blew everything. “She’s going to be fine,” he pressed.

  Neve’s glare could break glass, and Seraphina’s disapproval was like a fourth person in the room.

  “I swear. Trust me. She’s going to have a murderous headache, and she’ll need to spend the next several days in bed, but she’s okay. We can’t call 911 unless you want whoever did this to get away with it.” He crossed his arms and waited for the inevitable rebuttal.

  Kay was unconscious in her bed, curled up under a mound of blankets. Sweat beaded on her face, even as she trembled with chills. They were the symptoms of coming down, and since Kay could’ve only ingested the super shrooms sometime that afternoon, it meant her dose had been next to nothing. A nibble at best. For average magic mushrooms, anything a gram and under was considered a light dose.

  But these weren’t average, and Kay’s symptoms were only considered mild when compared to the users who’d taken several grams and ended up in the emergency rooms days later, still tripping their faces off. If she’d eaten more than a gram, she’d still be in the throes of wild hallucinations. Like the one she’d been experiencing when he’d arrived shortly after dinner. He kept that to himself. By the time he’d called Cappy Don, found Kay’s cell phone and dialed her friends, Kay had become coherent enough to say his name before passing out. Her vitals were steady and she murmured when anyone shook her, a good sign. The captain had been the one to stop Oliver from dialing emergency services.

  Neve sat on the corner of the bed and watched Kay through worried eyes. “Explain it again, Olaf.”

  She’d been calling him every name but his actual name since she’d shown up. He figured the obstinacy was intentional and ignored it.

  “It looks like she hardly ate any of the salad, so she probably ingested less than a gram. She also ate two blueberry scones, which would’ve slowed the absorption, lessening the effects.” He’d found the salad container on the floor at the end of the hall, flung wide and far, as if Kay had hurled it like a football. Apparently, her subconscious had picked up on the foul nature of the contents.

  A muscle twitched in Seraphina’s jaw. “The science isn’t what concerns us. I’m fairly certain Neve wants to know why your investigation calls for denying Kay proper care. She should be in the ER right now.”

  Oliver rubbed his face. “The amount in that salad—” He stopped and swallowed. “Whoever did this probably expected her to eat the whole thing. Let’s just say if she had, she’d be singing the Spongebob theme song in her underwear on Main Street for two days before her conscious mind kicked back on and she wound up in the hospital.” Or worse. The dose could’ve killed someone her size. “If she’s out of her mind, she can’t tell us where she got the salad, right? So it makes sense that if our culprit finds out she only ate enough of the mushrooms to give her an interesting night and a hangover, he’ll run. We don’t want that. We want to lure the douchebag who did this into a false sense of security. We’re going to set him up. Look, my team is on the way. We’ve got med staff coming. I promise, Kay’s going to be okay.”

  The wait for Oliver’s team was long and laden with dirty glances and unhappy sighs from Kay’s two best friends. The three of them together would make a hell of a team, Oliver decided. They could fight crime with sheer intimidation.

  Finally, a boom echoed through the old house from downstairs. Cappy Don didn’t wait for anyone to answer but let the team inside swiftly.

  Oliver left Neve and Seraphina to tend to Kay and ran down the stairs. “What the hell took you guys so long?”

  Molly answered with a dirty look, and the captain spoke while directing men and women with his hands. Point and click. “Wanted to wait for cover of darkness. Whole plan goes kaput if the baddies are watching Kay’s place to see what she does. We parked the van a few blocks away and all took a different route. The nurse is coming in the back. Where’s the evidence?”

  Oliver led Molly and Cappy Don to the end of the foyer and pointed at the scattered remains of the salad. “She must’ve lobbed the container down the hallway. I found her just a few feet past the front door. I noted a few garden-variety mushrooms. But I believe the ones we’re looking for are the shriveled greenish-brown bits. They smell sour.”

  “Holy shit,” Molly gushed, dropping into a crouch and snapping blue medical gloves onto her hands. From a pack at her waist she withdrew a small plastic bag and large metal tweezers. “Oli, you know what this means? We’ve got a sample. We can run a full DNA profile.”

  Oliver couldn’t bring himself to return her giddy smile. The cost had almost been Kay’s life. The thought made him feel cold all over. “Let’s hope we can do something with the information.”

  Cappy Don scoffed. “You kidding? We can trace the mushrooms to their source. We’ll know which plants are being spliced and diced, and we’ll have means for a search warrant. Together with the e-mail Kay provided from Pattie concerning their special greenhouse, we might just be able to get in there legally.”

  “What’s the plan here, Cap?” Oliver rubbed his hands together. He felt antsy. Something wriggled in the back of his mind, a nugget of information or the bud of a new idea unfurling, but he couldn’t quite grasp it yet. He needed to cool down, rest, take some time to stew over events.

  Cappy Don hitched one of his out of control eyebrows. “Kay was dropped in front of an Italian place after our meeting. When she’s awake, we’ll work out any kinks in the story, but the way I see it, she had some questionable puttanesca. Food poisoning. As for the salad, never touched it. We’ll let our would-be executioner think his plan simply failed.”

  Oliver nodded. It was what he expected. From a room he hadn’t explored yet, two men appeared. They wore navy carpenter pants and collared shirts, and carried small black duffle bags. Oliver breathed a sigh of relief and pointed them toward the stairs. “Medical. Finally. She’s up there.” Wordlessly, the duo made for the stairs.

  He watched Molly carefully pluck mushrooms from the pile of lettuce and random ingredients. After several minutes, she sat back on her haunches, and whistled at the pile she’d gathered. “That’s a little over two grams, says my eyeballs. I’ll have the lab confirm, of course. You know the guys who were in that article you keep shoving under Kay’s nose? This is about the dose they claimed to have taken. And they were big guys. Athletes. Muscled and in top shape. If Kay had—”

  “I know.” Oliver pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d pieced it together already. Teeny-tiny Kay wouldn’t stand a chance against two grams, potentially more, of the super shrooms. “This was attempted murder.”

  The atmosphere turned oppressively grim as Oliver, the captain, and Molly all exchanged heavy glances, defined by a sharp edge of fear.

  The slap of sandals sounded on the stairs. Oliver turned to find Neve glaring at him at the bottom of the steps. “Kay’s awake. Well, kind of awake. In and out. She’s calling for you.”

  Oliver didn’t hesitate. He bounded up the stairs two at a time and slung himself into Kay’s room. Seraphina stood by the doorway and gave him a wry glance as he breezed past.

  “I’ll give you some space.” She left and closed the door behind her.

  He hardly noticed. He sat on the edge of the bed and twisted toward Kay, gathering her hands in his. “Hey,” he said, low and gentle. “Anybody home in there?”

  Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. “Oliver.” Her voice was quiet, barely audible.

  “I’m here.” He pitched his voice louder. If she’d just open her eyes. “Kay, I’m right here.”

  A smile ghosted over her face. “You promised. Can’t leave.”

  “Okay. Then I guess I won’t.” He slid off his shoes, came around the other side of the bed, and crawled in behind her. He stayed on top of the blankets in case Nev
e and Seraphina got the wrong idea. He wrapped his body snug against hers and tucked his arm around her, pulling her close. Her body relaxed against him. She murmured his name once again. A minute later, her soft snores were the only sounded the room.

  Oliver blinked away the memory of Kay’s terrified face and squeezed his eyes shut. He focused on the feel of her body in his arms, on keeping his own breathing steady. Eventually, he fell into a fitful sleep.

  The next morning, Oliver left Kay sleeping and clambered down the stairs in yesterday’s clothes, only to have a fresh set of pressed slacks and a dress shirt ungraciously slapped against his chest by Molly the minute he entered the kitchen. “Get dressed. You’re going to work.”

  He gripped the clothes and frowned. “Work? I need to stay—”

  “With Kay? I’ve got it covered.” Neve’s brittle voice gave away her bad mood. She stepped away from the coffee maker with two mugs, pressing one into Oliver’s hand. “You have to go if we’re keeping cover intact. Kay called both you and Seraphina last night about the bad puttanesca. You’ll collaborate one another’s stories. Anyone asks, Kay instructed you to take her calls today and bring any paperwork by her place tonight.”

  Molly had crossed her arms and regarded Neve. “We’re not hiring, doll.”

  Neve’s slow head turn was almost a threat all by itself. Her glare was twin daggers. “I typically disembowel people who piss me off before my first cup of coffee. You get a pass on account of you being one of the good guys, but if you ever call me doll again, I’ll decorate this place with your entrails.”

  Molly’s face registered shock. Oliver realized his own mouth was hanging open.

  He closed it, swallowed, and tried to pretend he hadn’t heard. “You’re telling me I’m supposed to sit around the office all day?”

  Molly gave him a scathing look before walking away. What the hell had he done? They’d both read Neve’s file.

  Neve cast a sigh of relief at Molly’s back, then smiled wanly at Oliver. “I can’t stand that woman. Listen, Obadiah, no one knows you and Seraphina have any connection. If you both claim to have talked to Kay this morning—which makes sense, because who else would she call if not her assistant and the designer working on her precious spa—no one will think to question it. Seraphina left a half hour ago. You come in and echo what she’s already told the crew, blah, blah, whatever. Goddamn this weak, shitty coffee. What the hell is this stuff?” She grimaced and walked away.