by Ami Diane
She paced back and forth until the feather started singeing at the edges, then she stoppered the vapor in a vial. Once the rest of the base ingredients were bubbling softly in the round-bottom flask, becoming vapor, she placed the vapor from the feathers at the joint above (after first greasing the glass joint) so that all of the base ingredients, once in vapor form, would have to mingle.
Once they mixed, they passed through a piece of long, narrow glassware that was one cylinder inside another. This, she’d learned after looking it up, was the water jacket condenser. It used water flowing from one end to the other in the space between the cylinders to condense the vapor in the inside cylinder to a liquid once again.
Now, all of her base ingredients were mixed and in liquid form, cooling at the other end. After that, adding the middle and top layers of ingredients went much faster.
After pulling the last ingredient—cactus from New Mexico—from the fridge in the corner, she checked with a thermometer to be sure it was precisely sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit.
Please work, please work, please work… she repeated in her head like a mantra.
The moment she added the julienned strips of spongy Echinocactus texensis, also known as Horse Crippler, to the potion, the lavender color turned a rich plum.
She held her breath, waiting for the potion to explode. To bubble. To scream at her.
Purple smoke rose from the top of the flask like a campfire. It smelled of lilac and warm breezes.
Had she done it?
After turning off the low flame at that end, she waited for it to cool. The description box on the recipe said to drink it between seventy and eighty degrees. So, basically room temperature.
According to Arlene’s elegant script, the potion had a shelf life of three months and a decay time of an hour. If this worked, she’d have a whole hour to question Orchid. Well, first she’d have to find the darn cat and make a second batch using the feline’s fur.
She closed her eyes, not for the first time, thinking how crazy this all was. Talking to animals was something done in movies and cartoons. Not real life.
But that’s where she was at emotionally. That’s how far she’d go to find the person who had taken so much from her, had snuffed out her mother’s life too soon. She was willing to teeter on the edge of insanity if it meant catching the bad guy.
The thermometer hit seventy-eight degrees, and she pumped her fist in the air. Time to test this bad boy out.
She resisted the urge to chug the potion because it should only take a few sips for the effect to work but also because she had no idea what would happen.
If she sprouted wings… well, then she’d have to cross that bridge if she came to it.
Her heart thrumming in her ears, Libby grabbed a clean tincture bottle from one of the shelves. As she poured the liquid into the bottle, it emitted an ethereal glow and caught the yellow glow of the bulbs overhead, turning iridescent at just the right angles.
She filled the eyedropper with the liquid, muttered, “bottom’s up,” and squeezed the potion into her mouth. Her face scrunched in an anticipated grimace, but she found the flavor surprisingly not bad. Not something she’d order at a restaurant or go out of her way to drink, mind you, but certainly tolerable.
A warm, tingling sensation traveled down her esophagus and spread, like drinking hot chocolate on a cold, wintery day. The warmth radiated to her extremities, becoming hotter. When it got to the point it was nearly unbearable, it faded.
Racing up the ladder, she sprinted across the lawn, hearing Ivy scrape the cover back into place in the distance.
“Ms. Slade? Everything alright?”
She slid to a stop. Of all the times.
Turning, she pasted a smile on her face and blinked at the deputy. “Please, call me Libby.” She glanced back at the house, struggling to keep her irritation from showing. “What can I do for you, Deputy?”
He was wearing his khaki-colored uniform, boots shining and reflecting the cloud-dappled sky. “I just stopped by to remove the rest of the tape.”
“Oh, cool beans.” An awkward silence fell, and she clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth. “Welp, I best be off. Lots of unpacking still to do. Have fun with…” She waved her hand at the tall, unkempt wilds beyond the fence. “…the whole tape thing.”
His eyebrows lowered, and he regarded her with a look that said he wondered if she didn’t have a screw loose.
Normally, that look would’ve flustered her. But not today. Today, a handsome man in uniform could think she was a unicorn that flew over rainbows and farted glitter for all she cared.
As casually as possible, she approached her house, stealing a glance over her shoulder just in time to see Jackson round the side of the greenhouse.
She sprinted the last couple of yards, her shoes slapping across her patio. Her bounding into the library caused Jasper to take flight, feathers flying, and he landed on the very top shelf of the bookcase.
They stared at each other a moment, her chest heaving, his coal-black beady eyes on her.
“Hello? Can you understand me?” Her voice sounded small. What if the potion only worked one way?
“Jasper? Please answer me.”
The raven blinked and flapped his wings, but otherwise remained mute.
Glancing at her watch, she saw that she had forty-five minutes left before the potion metabolized enough to lose potency. Sinking to a wingback chair, she sang out, “I got all day, buddy.” It was a lie, of course, but she doubted the bird knew that.
I pooped on that chair once, you know.
“Well, that’s just gross—” Libby shot up. “You understand me? I mean, I understand you!”
I always understand you, human.
She jumped up and down, letting out a whoop. She’d done it!
Strange creature, that.
“You’re one to talk, Nevermore,” she retorted without thinking. Holy Dr. Doolittle, she was talking to an animal and understanding it.
Don’t quote that dreadful poem.
When the raven spoke, she could hear the same cawing as before, only the words popped into her mind as if she had a brain translator chip in her head like the devices in most science fiction novels.
“Hey, I love that poem.” She couldn’t believe she was discussing Edgar Allan Poe’s work with a bird.
The other one read it aloud to me all the time. Thought it was so… what’s that word you humans use that sounds like metal?
“Ironic?”
He bobbed up and down in that rhythmic way birds do, which was probably as close to nodding his head as he could get.
“Do you miss her?”
Jasper’s head tilted, and he blinked. Of course. My human gave me treats and would spend time here. Unlike that brute of a new human.
“That’s me. I’m your new human.”
I know.
Her lips pressed into a thin line. Were all birds this sassy or was it just Jasper?
My human was feeding me, then my human became no more.
Libby resisted the urge to slip in another reference that included “nevermore” from Poe’s The Raven. “I’m so sorry. That must’ve been awful. At least it was sudden, and she didn’t suffer.” She wasn’t sure if that was entirely true, but it seemed the most comforting thing to say.
The other one wouldn’t give me treats either. The other did not help my human.
Libby craned her neck up at him. “Help your human when she died?” Did he mean the paramedics?
Yes. I desire more of that ghastly creature’s food you keep in the kitchen.
“First of all, that’s Orchid, and you’re going to have to learn to get along with her. Secondly, that’s her food.”
Tastes much better than mine.
Libby couldn’t really attest to that fact. “Focus, Jasper. You said there was ‘another one’ here when your human died. Did you mean another human?”
Jasper bobbed again.
“Was this other pers
on in the room with Arlene when she died?”
The raven flapped his wings irritably. You do not hear well. He paced, bobbing and weaving like a boxer in a ring, clearly agitated.
Libby held out a hand and made soothing noises. “Jasper, did this other human hurt your human?”
Jasper bobbed.
CHAPTER 13
LIBBY STOOD ROOTED to the spot, her mind reeling with this new revelation.
“Jasper, I need to know what happened?” She checked her watch. Ten minutes left on the potion. “Were the two humans arguing?”
Another bob and weave. No, they made none of that racket. My human did not see. The other sneaked up. It attacked my human like that wretched fur creature that harasses me and sleeps in my house.
“Again, that’s Orchid. What did this other human look like?” With this halting, largely one-sided discourse, she didn’t have high hopes of getting a description of the assailant.
Jasper tilted his head. Look like? Are not all humans the same?
“No, we’re not all the same. Ravens all look the same.”
The bird puffed out his feathered chest and cawed at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “That was mean of me.” Even if it was true. “What was the other human wearing? T-shirt? Jeans? Sweatshirt?” She indicated each clothing item on herself as she said them, hoping the bird could differentiate between them enough to tell her something.
Nest head.
“Nest head?” Libby stuck her fingers in her ears and wiggled them before pulling them out. “Did you say ‘nest head’?”
Jasper cawed, flapping his wings. Yes. I grow tired of this discourse. Be a treat and open the window, will you?
“In a minute. Was this human male or female?”
The bird pecked at his food, ignoring her. She ran a hand through her hair in frustration. If he thought all humans looked the same, then he probably couldn’t tell the difference in gender.
She pointed at her chest. “Did the human have these or not? Come on, featherbrains. Surely, you can make out three dimensions.” Couldn’t he?
Her hands fell to her sides. “Jasper? Hello? I’m sorry I called you featherbrains.” She glanced at her watch. Drat. Her time communicating with the bird had run out.
Libby spent the rest of the evening pacing, trying to decide what to do with this new information. After broiling a frozen salmon fillet she found in the freezer with lemon juice, garlic, and dill, she opened the window in the library like she’d told Jasper she would. With a great flap of his wings and what she considered a rather condescending look her way, he fluttered out the open window into a blood-red sky for his usual evening flying. She resumed pacing around the library, pausing for bites of salmon.
Her first instinct was to run next door to the deputy’s—if he was even home—and tell him. She could just imagine how that conversation would go.
“Arlene was murdered.”
“How do you know that?”
“A bird told me.”
Then, he’d laugh and slam the door in her face. Well, maybe not slam the door, but he’d certainly laugh at her.
Perhaps Marge could help her come up with a strategy to relay the information to the police.
Libby stopped in her tracks. Marge. She would have to tell the apothecary that, from the sound of it, her best friend had been murdered. The potionist had insinuated she held doubts about Arlene’s heart attack, and now Libby could confirm that hunch.
Speaking of heart attack, why had the medics and coroner ruled it that way if she’d been killed?
A few poisonous plants capable of inducing a heart attack sprang to mind which could exacerbate a preexisting condition, but Marge had said Arlene had been given a clean bill of health from her cardiologist not too long prior.
Also, none of these plants required the killer to be there in person to induce a heart attack. Slipping something into Arlene’s tea or coffee would’ve done the trick.
Unless… the killer couldn’t for some reason. Perhaps they’d forced her to ingest poison.
Taking into account both Arlene’s and John’s murders, the only commonality between them was that they had occurred on the property. That couldn’t be a coincidence. The two incidents had to be related in some fashion; she just had to connect the dots.
Libby resumed pacing and kept at it, sure to wear a path in the floorboards. When she finally looked at her phone to check the time, she discovered that it had died. She plugged it into the charger in the kitchen, glancing at the clock above the table. It was nearing eleven.
Sighing, she opened the back door and called for both Orchid and Jasper. A couple of minutes of hollering and a few mild threats later, the raven dropped out of the sky like a shadow against the stars, swooping past her and into the kitchen.
She lingered in the doorway, shivering against the salty wind, before finally giving up on the cat. After making sure the pet door was unlocked, she set Orchid’s litter box outside in case the cat had gotten lost in her new surroundings. Even back in Oregon, the Norwegian Forest cat liked to stay out for long periods of time, so Libby wasn’t too worried. Yet.
However, after locking both the sliding door and the front door, she climbed the steps to her bedroom with heavy feet. It wouldn’t be such a bad idea to transition Orchid into an indoor only cat.
When she was finally cocooned between the cool sheets on her bed, it was a long while, filled with tossing and turning, before she fell asleep.
Libby awoke with a start, struggling through a sleep-induced fog to figure out what had awakened her. Black feathers tickled her face. The blinds over her windows were still dimly lit by moonlight, their vacant eyes watching.
“Jasper, just because we had a conversation, doesn’t mean we’re best buds. Let me sleep, and I’ll feed you some snails in the morning.”
Jasper cawed, stretching his wings to their full, four-foot wingspan, beating them across her comforter insistently. He hopped up and down her, digging his tiny bird feet into her skin.
She let out a frustrated growl and sat up. “You ever hear the rhyme of twenty blackbirds getting baked into a pie? Because that’s your future, mister, if you keep this up.”
He got in her face and squawked.
She opened her mouth to retort, but the words froze in her throat. A shuffling noise came from downstairs.
She held her breath, straining her ears to listen, hoping that it was Orchid returning home. The noise resolved into footfalls—human footfalls.
Someone was in her house.
Dropping to the floor on her bare feet, she groped the nightstand for her phone, then she hissed out a curse when she realized she’d left it downstairs on the kitchen counter.
After a frantic search around the moonlit room, she settled on an antique vase as a weapon. Under her breath, she begged Jasper to be quiet, then she tiptoed to the top of the stairs with the raven on her shoulder. She waited with bated breath, trying to home in on the intruder’s location.
Whoever it was, was in her kitchen.
Padding across the cold floor in her bare feet, she slipped across the second-floor hallway towards the main staircase. The last floorboard creaked, and she stopped abruptly.
The shuffling downstairs stopped too. Her throat constricted. Had they heard her?
When it felt like her heart would burst out of her chest, the faint rustling of steps resumed. Her trembling hands clutched the banister as she stole down the steps.
A tinkling crash came from the kitchen, rending the tense silence with the familiar sound of the crystal chandelier shattering. A heavy thud preceded several sputtering curse words.
Libby seized the opportunity of the intruder’s distracted state and leaped for the front door. She crashed into the frame, wrenched the deadbolt, then flew out onto the porch.
The gravel drive bit into her feet as she tore towards the tree line. Jasper took flight, circling above like a shadowy sentry.
By the time she rea
ched the forest, she was panting from adrenaline. The dark canopy of branches above blotted out the moonlight and stars. She teetered at the edge.
Behind her was an unknown assailant, very possibly the one who’d killed both Arlene and John. But ahead, lay critters and darkness that would make navigation difficult in her naked feet.
She plunged into the forest, holding aloft the vase still in her grip. Let it never be said she wasn’t brave—or stupid.
Jasper, the selfish raven, had abandoned her. Even he didn’t want to go into the creepy forest.
Without knowing precisely where she was going, she picked a path in the general direction Deputy Jackson had indicated he lived and set to trekking.
Her heels stepped on rocks, leaves, and damp moss. She kept a steady pace in case the intruder was foolish enough to try to follow. Soon, a porch light winked between the towering trunks of fir and spruce.
Stepping into a clearing, she found herself in front of a white cottage, making her feel every bit like a character taken from the pages of a nursery rhyme.
Now that she could see the ground, she sprinted across the clearing and pounded on the cottage door with her free hand. She only hoped he was home and not on duty.
“Deputy! Are you in there?”
Her knuckles turned white as much from clenching her fist as from rapping them on the wood.
The door burst in, and a pajama-clad, bleary-eyed law officer stared back at her.
“Ms. Slade—Libby? What in the world?” He rubbed his eyes as if to be sure she was really there. His black hair stood at odd angles.
“There’s someone in my house.” She realized she still held the vase in her left hand and raised it to show him as if that was proof enough.
“What? Someone broke into your house?”
“Yes! Just now. I think they’re still there.”
All grogginess fled his expression. He yanked open the door. “Get in.”
A string of questions followed.
“Did you get a look at them? How many? Where are they now?” While he fired these out, he disappeared down a hallway. She wasn’t sure if she was meant to follow, so she lingered in his living room, answering as best she could.