Potions Are for Pushovers

by Tamara Berry

  “Oh, good,” he says as my head bobs to an upright position. “You’re awake. I was afraid I might have killed you.”

  “Afraid not,” I croak, my mouth dry. “Witches are like cats. Our lives tend to keep cropping up.”

  Moving my jaw causes some of the dried blood encrusted to the side of my face to loosen and break off.

  “Here. Drink this.” He holds out a water bottle and, as if just now remembering that my hands are tied and wedged awkwardly behind my back, he swerves the car over to the side of the road. It’s a strangely considerate gesture, pulling over to hold a water bottle to my lips, which naturally causes me to recoil. I’m not ingesting anything this man has to offer until I figure out where he’s taking me—and why.

  “Go on,” he urges. “You need your fluids. You bled an awful lot. Why did you bleed so much?”

  I’m guessing it’s because he reopened a head wound with the blunt edge of his fist, but I refrain from saying so. Mostly because he still has the water bottle pressed against my mouth, and opening it will allow him to pour the contents down my throat.

  “Suit yourself,” he says and withdraws the offer. He also pulls the car back onto the road, allowing me a moment to appraise my surroundings. We’re in the teal car—a thing I know not just from the glint of color out the window, but also because there’s an alarming rattle coming from the undercarriage.

  From the nearness of the sun to the horizon, I’m guessing it will be dark within the next half hour or so, which means it’s another four hours until my midnight appointment with the lunar goddess and anyone will think to come looking for me. I almost—almost—regret sending Nicholas off to take care of Lenora and Rachel, since he’d come in handy right about now.

  But I definitely don’t want those girls mixed up in this. Not now. Not considering the lengths Richard appears to have gone to kill his relatives. I can only imagine what he’ll do to someone who doesn’t share his genes.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask when it becomes apparent that we haven’t strayed too far from the village. Given how much time has passed, we should be well out of town by now, heading toward London or the coast or wherever it is people go when they want to hide a body. But I recognize a few farmhouses off to the right, and I can see the tip of the church tower standing off in the distance in the sideview mirror. If I had to take a guess, it looks an awful lot like he’s been circling around until I woke up.

  To interrogate me? To torture me? I don’t like my odds either way.

  “You know what?” I say, my panic rising. “If you still want me to get that book from Inspector Piper, I might have thought of a way to get in—”

  He cuts me off with a short laugh. “We’re not going anywhere near that place. How much did you tell the inspector anyway?”

  “About the blackmail scheme?” I think fast, wondering how best to play my cards.

  It’s difficult, since I don’t know which ones I’m holding. Richard King was obviously involved in his aunt’s blackmailing and the records kept in the Book of Shadows, but the extent to which he played a role is unclear. Nor am I perfectly sure why he had to resort to murdering his aunt and brother. It’s possible that he wanted Sarah’s insurance money and lied to me about it being given to the Tennis Foundation, but he has to know that two family members dead of poisoning and his name listed as beneficiary is what they call an open-and-shut case.

  I never liked Richard for this crime, and sitting here in his car, whizzing toward an unknown destination with my hands tied behind my back, I’m forced to remember why. It’s the same reason I had a hard time believing it of Lewis. Neither of them are what I’d call good men, the one caught up in his own fame and the other his financial schemes, but general male selfishness isn’t the same as guilt. It usually takes something more—some push, some threat—to cross the line over into murder.

  Then again, I am tied up and bleeding. It’s possible that I’m wrong.

  “He knows as much as I do,” I say. “That your aunt kept a log of everyone in the village. That she hid their true identities behind the symbols she assigned them. That she used their secrets to extort money from them to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.”

  He takes his glance from the road long enough to stare sharply at me. “That’s all?”

  Even with my whirling, bleeding head, I know what he’s really asking.

  “He also knows that she’s been giving the money to you all these years,” I say. “And that Lewis didn’t know about it until he found the Book of Shadows in your aunt’s papers. He confronted you about it, didn’t he? Is that why you poisoned him, too?”

  I don’t realize that I’m not wearing a seat belt until I start flying. With my arms bound behind my back, there’s no way to protect my head except to curl myself into a ball and hope my body takes the brunt of the impact. It does, but my forehead still thumps against the glove box, adding to the already whirling cacophony of sound and sensation inside my skull.

  I have no way of knowing how long I stay there, huddled against the dashboard, nausea warring with my desire to get as far away from this car as I can. The latter wins when Richard emits a low groan. Like me, he wasn’t wearing any restraints when he slammed on the brakes and brought us to a tearing halt, which means he has yet to regain full faculty over his senses. I’m not sure how his head is faring, but his chest appears to have hit the steering wheel, temporarily robbing him of his ability to talk.

  That doesn’t stop him from trying, however. “Not . . . me . . . ,” he pants. “Only . . . wanted . . .”

  I don’t bother waiting around to find out what Richard King wanted. Money, obviously, and enough of it to force his aunt to sell her cute stone house on the hill. And then, when that wasn’t enough, he made her turn to blackmail to keep the tap running. I can’t help but feel a pang for poor Lewis, who’d obviously stumbled onto this scheme out of the blue.

  He came to me because he thought he was being cursed. Because of the book he’d found, because of what his aunt had done to the village. Because, even then, his brother was poisoning him, making sure that he, like Sarah, would never be able to tell the truth of his misdeeds.

  And me. I have to get out of here or Richard will try to silence me as well.

  My hands are still bound behind my back, so I have to turn to face my captor as I fumble with the door handle. The position makes it possible for me to shove the door open and stumble out, but not before I get a good look at Richard’s face. In this position, with my adrenaline throwing everything into highlight, he looks even older than before. His face is pale underneath the makeup, the roots of his touched-up hair showing a line of gray.

  “Please . . .” he says.

  I don’t let my sympathy hold me back. On legs that wobble at every joint, I turn and flee.

  * * *

  By the time I make it to the farmhouses we’d passed by earlier, dusk has come and gone, leaving me plunged into twilight. The moon will be full and luminous by the time midnight rolls around, but for now, it’s nowhere to be seen. This means I have to pick my way over the terrain much more carefully than I’d like, my steps slow enough that I don’t accidentally stumble over rocks. Without my hands to catch me, a fall like that could be devastating.

  Now that I’m closer to the gently rising hills, I recognize them as the ones from when I walked Lenora home—those strange, swelling lands that hold her house in the palm of a hand.

  “I’ve never been so happy to see a MacDougal in my life,” I say as I scamper down the nearest rise. I can hardly be blamed for it. After a day like mine, I’m feeling oddly nostalgic for a familiar face.

  Their house isn’t lit as I approach, no signs of life bustling in or around the yard. Even in the dark, however, I can tell that the back is just as pristinely kept as the front, an immaculate green lawn hedged all around with prickly rosebushes. In fact, the only signs that a family actually lives here is a pair of bicycles leaning against the brick and a freestand
ing greenhouse surrounded by empty pots and upturned bags of soil. Both of those things make sense: the bikes for the children, the greenhouse for the parents. Lenora had mentioned that her parents were keen on gardening, even if her brother did cut all the heads off their flowers.

  “Hello?” I call, bypassing the greenhouse to kick at the back door to the house with all the strength I have left in my legs. “Is anyone home? Mr. MacDougal? Dr. MacDougal? George?”

  No one answers. I kick harder, but that only results in a sore toe added to the rest of my injuries. I turn my back to the door and try the handle, but am unsurprised to find it locked. However safe this village is in the normal way of things, when there are murderers at large, you remember to lock the doors.

  I cast a nervous glance back the way I came, wishing my head didn’t hurt quite so much. My vision is slightly blurred, my ability to make out shapes in the night somewhat diminished. I don’t think Richard has followed me here, but it’s not something I’m willing to risk.

  Partly because the idea of taking shelter to catch my breath and my bearings is one that appeals strongly to me, and partly because I’m hoping I’ll find a pair of gardening shears that will get this rope off my wrists, I head in the direction of that greenhouse.

  As I’d hoped, this building remains unlocked. I turn my back to the door and snick the handle, slipping inside the crack without anyone noticing.

  My sigh of relief is loud even to my own ears. My whole body shakes from a combination of adrenaline and exhaustion, and I want nothing more than to sink to the ground and close my eyes for a few minutes. I know better than to give in to that urge. The second I stop moving, I’m going to have a very difficult time getting going again. The last thing I need is for Richard to catch up to me napping on the floor of a greenhouse less than a kilometer from where I escaped his clutches.

  It’s darker in the greenhouse than it was outside, so I have to squint to make out the greenhouse’s contents. It’s not a well-organized space, as far from Oona’s neat clinic as you can get, with scattered piles of soil, seedlings knocked on their sides in their tiny pots, and various gardening tools littered throughout. I find the shears fairly easily, however, as they’re hanging from a hook near the back window.

  “Thank goodness for little boys,” I say as I beeline that direction. George probably used the shears to remove all the flower heads and, hoping not to get caught, neatly hung them back up. It takes some careful maneuvering before I’m able to get the rope pressed against one of the blades, even more awkward up-and-down shifting as I saw against it, but I manage to get my hands free after a few minutes.

  The joints that have been pulled and tugged into position scream in agony at their release, but I force myself to get the blood flowing again. Richard had the foresight to dispose of my cell before he shoved me in his car, but I should be able to break into a window to get to the MacDougal’s phone and call for help.

  I’m so elated at this new turn of events that I don’t quite understand when help turns around and calls for me.

  “Eleanor! Oh, Eleanor!”

  “Madame Eleanor, please come out. This isn’t fun anymore.”

  “We’re awfully close to the house. I don’t think she can have come this far.”

  I recognize one of the voices as belonging to Lenora and another to her stepmother, which strikes me as strange for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Nicholas is supposed to have both Lenora and Rachel hidden away in the safety of Castle Hartford. Too relieved at being rescued to question this anomaly further, I open my mouth to call out for them to rescue me.

  . . . And stop myself before I make the mistake of issuing a sound.

  I’m not sure what causes me to cast a look toward the lowest ledge of the potting shelves, unless it’s that brief purple-blue flash of the flowers growing there. At first glance, it looks a little like the flax flowers I’ve taken to planting at the evergreen crossroads, which is the only reason I give a double take. There have been far too many coincidences with those crossroads for me to leave anything up to chance.

  But as my gaze fixes on the flowers, I realize that flax would be a far more welcome sight.

  “What the devil—” My words are a whisper, but my body is a scream as I fall into a crouch and draw closer. I keep my hands fixed firmly at my sides, all of my concentration on not accidentally falling on top of or touching those flowers. “Oh, Oona. No.”

  There’s no denying what I’m looking at. Purple buds. That hooded floral shape. It’s the uprooted wolfsbane, and with nary a precaution put in place around it. There’s literally nothing stopping Lenora or George from rampaging in here and handling the plant—touching it, putting their fingers in their mouths, an accidental poisoning a mere inquisitive exploration away.

  “Madame Eleanor!” Lenora calls again. Her call sounds fainter this time, as if she’s drawing away, but the other voice—Oona’s voice—sounds perilously near.

  “Stay where you are, Lenora. I’m just going to check the—”

  I make a quick survey of my weapon choices, of which there are several. If I don’t like the idea of holding the wolfsbane out in front of me like a talisman to ward off evil, I can opt for George’s flower-lopping shears, a heavy potted plant, or what looks like a hoe in the back corner. I’m debating between the last two when Oona’s voice draws away again.

  “What’s that?” she asks, sounding irritated. “Lenora, honestly, I don’t know what you expect me to do—”

  Neither do I, but I heave a sigh of relief as Oona’s voice fades away. I wasn’t looking forward to hitting her over the head with a hoe. Then again, being left alone with my thoughts isn’t particularly pleasant, either. They’re far too busy dwelling on all the signs that have been staring me in the face since this investigation started. Not Richard King and his confession of blackmail, but this evidence of more.

  So much more.

  One: Oona and Ian, the disgraced lovers, two more in a long line of villagers being blackmailed by Sarah Blackthorne.

  Two: Oona’s outrage at seeing Lenora and Rachel with the Book of Shadows, not to mention her immediate confiscation of said book.

  Three: Oona’s extensive medical knowledge of poisons and her regular contact with Sarah Blackthorne, both as her doctor and as she administered first aid the night of the attack.

  Four: Oona’s love of gardening and this village, in no particular order. The gardening gave her ample opportunity to tend to the wolfsbane, as the evidence in this greenhouse suggests. The village gave her motive—and lots of it. Nicholas said as much this afternoon. She spent so many years struggling to carve her path here, underwent so many fights to earn acceptance. I understand better than anyone how hard that must have been for her. To have it threatened by a greedy woman and her greedier nephew must have been an agony.

  I knew the murderer had to be a villager. I knew I couldn’t be that wrong.

  But victory, such as it were, has never felt so hollow. Oona MacDougal has never been my favorite person around these parts, but I thought we were reaching an understanding. It felt almost as though we were approaching that promising land where friendship, not wolfsbane, blooms. Friendship isn’t a thing I offer or accept easily, and to be so catastrophically wrong is a thing that doesn’t sit well with me.

  Unless . . .

  “She’s not here, love. Let’s go.”

  I hesitate, wondering whether it would be better to go after them and put Lenora under my protection or to let them leave and head straight for Inspector Piper with what I know, but there’s no need. The decision is made for me.

  “I’m just going to peek in the greenhouse first. I want to grab something.”

  There’s nothing for it after that but to equip myself with the hoe. Gripping it tightly, I muster all the energy I have left in me and hold it over my head. As much as it pains me to physically hurt a human being this way, it has to be done.

  I know now what I have to do.

&n
bsp; Chapter 20

  “You should have seen the way she took Oona down.” Lenora stands in the center of a circle of villagers, all of them hanging on her every breathless word. “One second she was standing there, getting ready to attack, and then . . . thwap.”

  Not unsurprisingly, several members of her audience give a startled jump.

  “She knocked her right over the head. And saved my life, I bet. Oona was going to grab the poison for me next.”

  I don’t bother correcting her. Lenora was nowhere near her stepmother when the fateful blow was struck, but I can forgive her exuberant exaggeration. Everyone shares in the sentiment—and I mean literally everyone. All of the faces gathered outside the police station are familiar ones, the villagers out in droves to witness the ending to this story.

  I doubt this is the way they expected it to go after all the excitement of their evening. Apparently, Mrs. Brennigan took one look at that box of abandoned candles and scattered notebooks in her library and assumed the worst—especially when there was a substantial amount of my blood spattered over the top of them. As a criminal, Richard King could use some training, but I forgive him for his shortcomings. After all, he doesn’t have much experience. His aunt did the dirty work for him, merely handing over the cash whenever he stopped by to make his demands.

  Once it was discovered that I was missing, Annis started the phone tree up again. This time, however, it wasn’t to invite the villagers to my moonlit ceremony. It was to set up a search party and track me down. In absence of the naked dancing, I imagine my dead body turning up in a ditch somewhere was the next best thing.

  That we’re all gathered now, with only an hour until midnight, is an irony that isn’t lost on me.

  I scan the crowd, looking for one face in particular, disappointed when it doesn’t appear. “Lenora—promise me you’ll stay with Mrs. Brennigan until I come to get you,” I say. “Under no circumstances will you go home with anyone else. Is that understood?”