“How much did you drink?”
Ivy peered at Oakley from the corner of her eye. He was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, though she hadn’t heard him come in. Looking a little queasy himself, he reached over her to flush the toilet.
Ivy leaned back, her head resting against the side of the vanity. “Nothing.” She raised a limp arm and made grabbing hands until Oakley finally understood and passed her some toilet paper—just two sad pieces until she glared back so that he would unravel a ridiculous mound and press it into her hands. “Well, actually I guess I had half a glass of wine.” She wiped off her mouth and neck. “But that’s it.” It had been her first in a very long time.
“Really?” He wrinkled his nose and fished around in his pocket for his phone, sending off a message. Then he pulled a towel down from a shelf and offered it to her.
Ivy was surprised at how heavy the towel was, her arms shaking under its weight, and she dropped it against her chest. “You’re supposed to feel better after you throw up, right?”
Oakley shrugged, patting his own gut. “Steel stomach.”
Ivy closed her eyes to stop the room from spinning. “Sorry I ruined your date,” she whispered.
“Eh, Allyson was kinda boring.”
“Boring?” She popped an eye open. “I don’t believe that.”
“I dunno, she seemed so interested in, like, the most mundane stuff.” He looked back down at his phone. “Well, Saf says she feels fine, and nobody else has mentioned to her they’re sick, but she’s checking with them.”
“You texted Safiya?” Ivy felt a little warmth in her chest. “For me?”
“Yeah, first time she’s texted back more than one word too!” He shook his phone. “I bet it’s food poisoning. Like some moldy old tomato sauce or something.”
Ivy flung herself over the toilet bowl, another wave punching her in the gut.
“I’ll get more towels!” Oakley dashed off down the hall.
Everything was murky and dark even when Ivy tried to open her eyes. She heaved again, but this time it was dry. And then again. And a final time, her body spasming as something caught in her throat, chunky, but not like vomit. For a moment she thought she would choke, grabbing at her neck—why Oakley had chosen that moment to run off, she didn’t know, but she did know if this was how she died, she was going to haunt his ass forever—and then with one more heave it dislodged and splattered onto the seat of the toilet.
Ivy stared at the wet piece of paper for a long moment. She blinked. She looked around the bathroom. She looked back at it. Yup, still there. It had, indeed, come out of her mouth—the wetness and staining confirmed that—but she certainly didn’t remember swallowing a strip of paper, and as she unfolded its wet layers, she was sure she would have remembered something like this.
Holding it up between two fingers, she read the old, typewriter font: By now you must be feeling quite unwell. Wouldn’t want to go the way of Rufus, would you? Don’t worry, you won’t—this time. You keep my secret, and I’ll keep yours, Ivy Sylvan. Cheers.
When she heard Oakley call from the hall that he was coming, she balled up the strip and stuffed it into her purse still slung across her body. Her heart pounding, but finding a new sense of vigor, she tried to get to her feet. It was poisoning, but not food.
Ivy crumpled against the sink, and Oakley dove into the room, grabbing her arm. He tried to hold her steady and convince her to sit back down, but she was panicked. She had to find an antidote, she had to let someone know, she had to do something, but the room around her was spinning and going dark. Oakley’s voice buzzed in the back of her brain while a hundred other thoughts hammered at her skull.
Poison.
Blue box.
Magic.
Enrico’s.
Cheers.
Ivy’s breath went short, and the room went dark.
Chapter 21
Ivy groaned, rolling onto her side. Everything hurt: her stomach, her head, even her tongue. As she blinked open aching, blurry eyes, she realized she wasn’t dead, but she sort of wished she were. Vision distorted and wavy, her stomach turned over.
“Drink,” a voice demanded.
Ivy jerked away from the glass of water hovering before her face.
“You have to hydrate a little before you pass back out.”
Discombobulated, Ivy tried to push herself up onto an elbow but winced. That hurt too. “What? Pass back out?”
“Oh!” Safiya scooted to the edge of her chair. “Hey, are you actually awake?”
Ivy blinked a few times. She was in her own room, technically, and she was in bed, wearing pajamas. And her hair was wet. “What are you doing here?”
“Oakley called me all in a panic because you went unconscious. I almost had to call the Proctors.”
Ivy said a silent thank you to whichever of their gods didn’t allow that to happen. “But, my clothes?”
Safiya twirled her fingers around in front of her face. “I spent my fair share of time at university, I had to learn a couple clean up spells.”
Ivy wasn’t sure if she meant it was part of the curriculum or because of extracurriculars, but she didn’t get a chance to ask as Safiya was calling for her brother.
Oakley came thundering into the room. His hair was standing up like he’d been tugging on it, and his eyes were bleary. “Sis?”
“Yeah.” She offered him a meager wave. “Hi.”
“Shit.” He slapped his forehead. “That was scary. You were like all floppy and your eyes…” He shivered.
She cracked half a smile even though her face ached. Then, she glared at him. “Don’t like being on the other side of that, huh?”
Oakley collapsed against the doorway. “Just don’t do that again.”
Ivy fell down onto her back and took a deep breath, hands on her stomach. She had no urge to regurgitate anything—food or otherwise—but she had a feeling she might have earned visible abs from that workout.
“Ivy got unlucky.” Safiya pushed the glass of water into her face, and she took it. “Nobody else got food poisoning but her, poor thing.”
Poisoning. Ivy sat up fast, sloshing the water, then looked to her brother. “Thanks, Oakley, you can go.”
“But I—”
“Thanks, Oakley.” He pouted before grinning one last time at Safiya and leaving. “That wasn’t food poisoning,” she hissed at the witch when they were alone. “It was on purpose. Someone did that to me.”
“What?” Her face blanched. “Who? How? Why?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, and why do you think?”
She drummed her fingers on her knees. “Because of Rufus?”
Ivy nodded, her eyes searching the room. “Where’s my purse? There’s a piece of paper in there that you need to read.”
Safiya hurried into the corner, grabbing the bag. “In here?” When Ivy confirmed, she reached in and found the strip. She placed the purse back down as her eyes followed the text on the paper. Dazed, Safiya made her way back to the chair, bumping into the bed aimlessly, then stood behind it like she didn’t know what to do. Ivy knew then that she hadn’t hallucinated the words.
“I puked that up last night.”
Safiya eyed her, then dropped the strip. “Ew.”
“Yeah, I know, sorry, but seriously.” Ivy grabbed the paper from where it landed on the bed. “Someone poisoned me because I’ve been asking questions about Rufus.”
“Gods.” Safiya’s hand came up over her mouth, and she grabbed the back of the chair for support. “That’s…fucked.”
“I know!” Ivy threw her hands up, the effort exhausting her, and the water sloshed again.
“Drink,” said Safiya offhandedly, her eyes searching the floor in distress.
Ivy took a big gulp of the water. It burned going down. “I don’t know how it happened. I thought I was being really sneaky too, but I guess not.” She took another drink, her throat sore from the bile, then sat the glass on the nightstand. “Also,
what the hell? I tried really hard to be nice to everybody. I mean, if you want to threaten a person, you can just sneak a note in their car or something! You don’t have to poison them!”
“Well…” Safiya scratched her head. “You are accusing whoever did this of murder.”
“Yeah, because they did a whole ass murder!” There was no longer a question in Ivy’s mind—there was a killer in Avalon Estates, and they clearly weren’t afraid of striking again.
Safiya returned to the chair and took the paper from Ivy. She was frowning deeply, her brow knit. “This is serious,” she said as if Ivy hadn’t realized until just then. “Did anybody mess with your food last night?”
She thought back, then gasped. “Calla gave me a glass of wine.”
“Right. But she gave everyone a glass. And herself.”
“But she winked when she gave me mine.” Ivy realized how stupid that sounded a moment too late. “Oh, and Mrs. Jiang filled my water glass with some abracadabra bullshit.”
“She does that a lot.” Safiya chewed on a nail.
“Actually, I went to the bathroom at one point, so anybody could have messed with my food. Hell, even Pauline with that special cookie. What the hell was I thinking eating that?”
“This isn’t your fault.” Safiya pointed at her, her eyes bulbous behind her glasses. “There was no reason to think anybody would try to poison you. I certainly wouldn’t have organized a damn dinner if I thought so. But,”—she bit her lip—“I wouldn’t, ya know, accept any more cookies or anything.”
Ivy closed her eyes, a sadness coming over her she wasn’t expecting. Those cookies were so good.
Safiya’s voice shook a little. “In fact, I wouldn’t ask any more questions either.”
Ivy sat up again, looking at her.
“I just…this is too much. When I thought someone killed Rufus, I was mad, but now it’s, like, scary. I don’t want you or anybody else to get hurt.”
Ivy managed to sit all the way up and folded her hands in her lap. “No.”
“No?”
“No. There’s no way we stop now. This is confirmation.” She pointed at the paper in Safiya’s hands. “A man was murdered, and whoever did it isn’t afraid of doing it again. Think about the kind of power they already have—what if they end up president? And that orb thing? That shouldn’t be in the hands of someone willing to do this.”
“You’re right,” Safiya muttered. “I just don’t know what to do from here. It’s not like we can call Ogden Bluff’s finest in to investigate.”
“What about those magi-whatsit guys? The wizard cops?”
The witch groaned. “The magistratus? They can be a lot more trouble than they’re worth, and they don’t have the best track record with…our kind.”
“Aren’t they for your kind?”
Safiya gathered her hair in her hands and twisted it around. “Yes and no. I mean, they do exist to regulate our world and bring justice—that’s what they say anyway—but it’s not always…even.” She worried the ends of her hair, and Ivy watched, quiet. “I may not have been super clear about some things when I first told you about everything.”
Ivy thought back on the frantic corralling of the chickens coupled with the weirdest information she’d ever received as if it were a distant memory. Yeah, magic exists, but there was also a murder investigation to unravel. And sod to be ordered.
Safiya took a deep breath, her eyes fixed on the paisley duvet. “There are things in this world, magical things, that most humans can’t even fathom. Really wonderful, lovely things like dryads and unicorns, and scary, dark things like the abyssals and banshees, but they’re all charmed, born with the spark. They come out the way they’re supposed to.”
As she spoke, her hands continued to work at the ends of her hair, but her face went a bit slack, the words coming low and quiet. “And then there are things that are a little off. Things that used to be human or that have had their spark corrupted. That’s us. The hexed.”
“Unhexed,” Ivy said quietly under her breath. “Evan said something about segregated communities? I didn’t know what he was talking about.”
Safiya nodded, her eyes still cast down. “We’re not welcome everywhere. It’s not legal really, the magistratus are actually supposed to protect us, but they spend so much time culling the hexed who do go off the rails that we automatically become the bad guys in most situations.”
“And the Sylvan Society?”
“They’re been working on integration forever. They’re big fans of the hexed turning things around. Everybody likes a redemption arc, right?” A brief smile passed over her lips. “So they sort of sponsor our attempt at being good. The community gets the society’s seal of approval and the magistratus leave us alone. Charmed folk who aren’t even considered hexed move in too, like the dwarves. We’ve even got a dryad, Mr. Parks, over on Banyan Way.”
Ivy’s mind hopped from one image to another, all things she hadn’t seen but imagined. Nothing was very clear, but everything had teeth. Pointy ones. She swallowed, the words coming out strangely. “So the charmed think that if you used to be human then you’re bad?”
“They think it’s a corruption. An inappropriate use of magic. You’re either born with the spark, or you’re not, they believe, but if a vampire can bite a human, or if a siren is reborn through drowning, that throws everything off. And, to be fair, losing humanity usually comes with a price.”
Calla did have a lot of blood in her refrigerator. “So you used to…to be human?”
“Oh, no.” Safiya’s eyes focused back on Ivy for a moment, then she looked away again. “Witches and warlocks actually make up the majority of charmed creatures. They’re pretty much in charge. But some of us are born—well, into families who weren’t expecting us.” She looked down at her hand, flipping it over in her lap. “I had some trouble with my powers in the past, troubles that required a lot of cleaning up. It’s hard to come back from that.”
Ivy didn’t want to know what kind of troubles someone who could manipulate fire got into.
“Anyway, it’s not just that.” Safiya shook her head, lifting her eyes up to Ivy and releasing the coil of hair from around her finger. “If the magistratus come and investigate, they’re going to find out about you, and then we’ll all be in a heap of trouble. I mean, it already sounds to me like the killer knows you’re human, and that’s bad enough.”
Ivy grunted in agreement. “That reminds me: we have another problem. Oakley is, uh, sowing his seeds with the locals.” She wished she could take it back the moment she said it.
“Excuse me?” From the sound of Safiya’s voice it was likely she wished Ivy would take it back even more.
“He’s had two different girls over in less than a week on,”—she held up her fingers and made air quotes—“dates.”
“Oh.” Safiya sat up a little straighter. “Who said that’s a problem? He can do whatever he wants.”
She’d been a bit loud, and Ivy rubbed her temple at the dull ache there. “Yeah, I know, but it seems pretty inevitable they’re going to find out he’s human. I mean, he’s an idiot, but they’re not.” She scrunched up her face. “Then again they’re willing to hang out with him, so—”
“I didn’t know he was a human,” Safiya interrupted through grit teeth.
“Yeah, well you didn’t have your tongue down his throat.” She felt a little queasy just saying it. “I’m just worried about him. And me.”
“Well,” Safiya said quietly with a nod, “I guess that just means we need to figure out this thing as fast as possible. That is, if you’re still willing?”
Ivy gripped the paper that had been in her throat, nearly killing her. “I think I have to be.”
Chapter 22
The election was just two and a half weeks away, and Ivy was walking from mailbox to mailbox stuffing a list of candidates and voting information into each one. Her mind was reeling with the conversations she’d been having with Safiya and the plans they
’d come up with and ditched over the last few days while organizing the clubhouse, overseeing street lamp repair, and one incredibly monotonous budget session.
There must be a truth serum, Ivy had insisted, in their world of magic potions and creepy creatures, but Safiya told her while something like that existed, it was terribly difficult to make and not particularly reliable. Not to mention something the magistratus and the Sylvan Society frowned upon. What about just searching for the orb, dowsing like Hunter had done in the forest for the cockatrice? Well, didn’t she think Safiya had tried that already? The gist of her search had told her it was, indeed, somewhere in Avalon Estates, but she could get no more specifics. A fragment of the netherlight wasn’t supposed to be easy to find, after all.
“You said he’s buried here, right?” Ivy finally had asked.
“In the cemetery, yes.”
“Well, why don’t we just go ask Rufus’s ghost who killed him?”
Safiya had stared at Ivy for a long time until she finally broke down into nearly uncontrollable laughter. “Ask his ghost?” She was crying and had to take off her glasses to wipe her eyes. “Oh, geez, thank you, I needed that.”
“I’m serious.” Ivy said through grit teeth.
Safiya had straightened back up, holding her stomach. “Stop it! Ghosts aren’t real! I mean, they’re a little real, but not like real real. Can you imagine how easy solving, like, everything would be if that were the case?”
Ivy blushed a little at the memory, folding up another paper and slipping it through a slot on the wall of mailboxes at one of the blocks of condos. They had finally come up with some semblance of a plan after Safiya had gotten a hold of herself.
“Listen,” Ivy had said, “I really don’t think it’s Hunter. He wasn’t at the dinner, so he couldn’t have poisoned me, and I just…I don’t think so. But I do know that whatever is in that box in his house is important. I need to find a way to get into it.”
A jinx was a weird thing, Safiya told her, as if everything going on wasn’t its own fun brand of weird already. They were like personalized, mini curses, but meant for minor inconveniences and inanimate objects. In this case, it was both. But they weren’t particularly complex, and they were breakable if you could figure out what you were dealing with. And Safiya happened to be a pretty good jinx breaker, if she did say so herself, which she did. “It was a necessity growing up,” she admitted without wanting to elaborate.
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