by Amy Boyles
“But you’ve never seen the flower?” I said.
He shook his head. “No. I, my dear, am an inventor, and out of all my little tinkerings, this pad is the only one that has never been made proof positive. But I know it will be once you get ahold of it.”
I glanced at Roman. “He’s certainly got some confidence in me, doesn’t he?”
Roman winked at me. “For good reason.”
My face heated as a blush rose to my cheeks. I shot Roman a warm smile, and he slid his thumb over my cheek. “You ready to try it?”
I nodded. “Okay. So there’s no harm in this, right?” I said to Alistair. “Nothing bad’s going to happen, like a miniature octopus isn’t going to show up if I use the pad. Or a legion of monkeys isn’t going to attack me, right?”
Alistair shook his head. “No. This pad works specifically on plant frequency.”
“Plant frequency,” I said slowly, unsure which one of them was crazier—Grandma or Alistair. Right now Grandma was still in the lead, but only by half a head.
“Plant frequency,” Alistair repeated, “is a fine point on the sound scale. I know it works because I’ve seen daffodils bend and trees sway when I’ve used it. But like I said, I’ve just never been able to get the dewdrop buttercup to respond.”
“You must not have a pure heart,” I joked.
Really, I was joking.
The warmth in Alistair’s eyes faded, souring to a dark mask. “Yes,” he said coldly. “That must be it.”
I grimaced, feeling like a total bonehead for being so rude. “Okay, anyway,” I said cheerfully, trying to recover. “Let’s get on with this whole dewdrop thing and see if I can get this little flower to appear.”
Grandma squeezed my shoulders and kissed my cheek. “Good luck. If the flower tries to eat you, just know that I’ll protect you.”
“I really hope that’s a joke.”
The toothy grin on Grandma’s face told me it might be a joke and it also might not be. “So there’s a fifty-fifty chance?” I said.
Roman slid a hand down my arm until his was holding mine. “The stories about Celestial Island go that not only did pirates bury their treasure here, they also searched for the mystical flower. Some to the point of madness.”
“Yes,” Alistair said. “Legend went that one incredibly successful pirate named Black John actually found the flower, but it ended up devouring him like a Venus flytrap.”
I gulped. Hard. “Why am I looking for this flower again?” I started to back up. “I mean, do we really need it?”
“You’re the one who wants to know who wrote the note,” Grandma said. “Buck up, Dylan. All of these are only legends. Do you think I’d actually put you in harm’s way?”
I nodded. “Yes, I do.”
Grandma clicked her tongue in thought. “Well, you might be right about that, but this is only a legend. The chances that the man-eating story is true are unlikely.”
I frowned. “Does the flower even exist?”
Alistair and Grandma glanced at each other. “I believe so,” Alistair said.
“And I’ve seen magic worked by a witch who claimed to have the flower. It was back during the Great Witch War. The North was winning, and we Southerners had to do whatever we could to win. One of our witches claimed to have gotten ahold of the dewdrop. She saw an assassination attempt on your own grandmother, Milly.”
“What?” I said.
Grandma nodded. “That witch saved your grandmother’s life. You might know her—Queen Esmerelda saved Milly with the help of the dewdrop flower. And she also turned the tide of the war, the darkest of times during my life as a witch.”
She took a deep breath. “Now. What do you want to do? Do you want to look straight into the eye of the most powerful seeing plant in the world? Or do you want to cower like a baby and go back to doing baby things?”
I nibbled my fingers in thought.
Grandma jabbed the air. “Snoozers lose, Dylan. Does a granddaughter of mine really want to be a snoozer?”
No, I didn’t want to be a snoozer. Wow. Talk about peer pressure. Sheesh.
I gripped the pencil and pad. I closed my eyes and felt the stirrings of power in my gut. I concentrated on why we needed the plant, why it would help Maria. My thoughts wavered—Maria, who as far as I knew was still hiding away on the ship with her daughter. I wondered if she was okay. If Captain Byrd was feeding her well.
I mentally slapped myself.
Focus, Dylan. Keep it together. Do not get eaten by a flower on my honeymoon. That was my new goal.
Magic coiled in my core as I directed my thoughts back to the flower. I didn’t want the nectar for me. I needed it for another, one whose innocence had to be proved. My thoughts drifted again. As far as I knew, the detectives were still searching for Maria, though I hadn’t seen any sweeps on our deck since that first night that the crystal was found.
Focus, Dylan. Gosh, was I becoming my Grandma? Like, I couldn’t keep one single line of thought for more than about two seconds.
Reeling in, my thoughts pinpointed into one blinding focus. I wrote down my thought on the pad and watched as a vine slowly peeked out from the dense foliage. It snaked and twisted, climbing into the air until it was about four feet above ground.
Grandma gasped. Alistair’s teeth clattered.
The bud opened, revealing lemon-colored petals that framed a golden pitcher.
Alistair stepped up beside me. “That, my dear, is the magical dewdrop buttercup. Time to take your nectar.”
EIGHTEEN
I stared at the plant. Light flares of magic dripped from the petals, sparking down to the dense cover below. The bloom glowed with a golden halo. My breath caught in my throat from the sheer beauty of it.
“Wow,” I whispered.
“No kidding,” Roman said.
I glanced up at him, seeing more chin than eye. “Wow. Even you’re impressed?”
Roman slanted his head down. “You impress me all the time.”
“I thought I annoyed you.”
“That, too. It’s called love.”
A laugh bubbled in the back of my throat. My gaze slid over to Alistair, whose fingers were twitching. “So what do we do now?”
Alistair paced from side to side as if getting a good solid view of the plant. “You have to harvest the nectar. But only you. If anyone else touches the flower, it will wither and die. Oh, tally ho, Dylan! You’ve done a stupendous job this far. I know you can do it. All you have to do is retrieve one drop.”
I grimaced. “I didn’t exactly bring my drop collector with me.”
Alistair winked, and in a flourish of hands and ascot, he magicked a slender hourglass-shaped vial. “Get as many drops as you can. The flower may release more than one.”
“But I only need one.”
“The others are for study,” Alistair said.
I furrowed my brow until I felt it pinch. “What about the whole ‘pure heart’ thing?”
Alistair grinned so tightly he looked like the Joker, or a woman who’s had way too much plastic surgery. “Yes, well, that must be kept in mind, too.”
He slipped the vial in my palm, and I waded into the forest. The flower sparked as if magic nourished it. It didn’t need soil or sunshine, only some sort of well of power.
I held my breath when I reached the flower. I was pretty much winging this whole thing and hoping that I didn’t screw up.
I placed the mouth of the vial beneath the flower’s pitcher and ran a finger over the buttery petals. I applied light pressure. The flower dipped easily, giving way to me. One golden drop clung to the pitcher before releasing. It slid down the side of the glass before bubbling at the bottom.
I started to pull the vial away, but another drop slipped from the pitcher. I bit my lip. Two drops.
My fingers trembled as I steadied my hand. The single tear of nectar hung for a brief moment before falling into the glass and joining its mate at the bottom.
I held my bre
ath, waiting to see if one more drop would come out.
The dewdrop buttercup clamped up. The petals snapped closed, and in a flurry of magical sparks, the flower wound its way back into the ground.
I felt the earth tremble as it swallowed the flower once more. I paused, catching my breath and taking a moment to register exactly what I had seen. A flutter filled my chest as I realized I’d witnessed what only a few people had ever witnessed in their lives.
“You got it,” Alistair exclaimed. “Come, Dylan. Come back.”
I waded back through the growth until I reached them. Alistair capped the vial and licked his lips. He raised the glass to the light.
“Pure dewdrop buttercup nectar. Never before has someone gained not one, but two drops. Magnificent! Truly nature’s wonder. How amazing.”
Alistair glanced from side to side nervously. “We must leave this place quickly before someone finds us. This nectar is highly sought after, regarded with the utmost jealously. A person would pay millions to have this. Millions. A king’s ransom.”
He tucked the vial into his coat jacket and started down the trail. “We must return to the ship quickly, before anyone suspects we have it.”
Alistair took off, leaving Grandma scrambling to catch him. Roman stepped up beside me. “He’s certainly in a hurry.”
“Sure is,” I said. “If we don’t keep up, he might leave us in the dirt.”
Roman nodded. “Yep. Let’s go.”
We followed Alistair back through the island until we reached the ship. We boarded, and Alistair started to head off to his room. I quickly stepped up to him.
“Don’t forget, I need that vial.”
He patted my hand. “Of course. Of course. We’ll take it to my stateroom where you can have all the privacy you need to work the spell. Of course. I wouldn’t think of taking it—stealing it from you.”
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I didn’t say you would.”
He tapped my chin with his fist. “And you’d be right.”
Alistair walked on, leaving me standing. Roman kissed my head. “I’m going to work out. Do you need me for anything?”
I distractedly flattened my hand to his chest. “No. I’m fine. I’ll catch up with you later.” I grazed my lips over his cheek and followed Grandma and Alistair to his stateroom.
My gut wrenched and twisted. The light glimmering in Alistair’s eyes set me off. It was weird, y’all. Like he’d turned into an evil munchkin or something in the blink of an eye. Like now he had what he wanted and he was going to use it to become the evil supervillian he’d always wanted to be.
I was seriously waiting for a maniacal laugh to bubble from his throat while the world crumbled around him.
Okay, so maybe I was being dramatic, but I couldn’t help it. Have you met my grandma? If I’m dramatic, I come by it honestly, as the saying goes.
We reached the cabin, and Alistair whisked us inside. He clutched the vial with both hands as if it was the most precious substance on the planet before setting it on a table.
“Ready to work some magic?” Grandma said.
“All you need is one drop, Hazel,” he said, his tone sharp.
Grandma nodded feebly. “I wasn’t going to use any more, Alistair. I know the spell.”
His chin dipped in a curt nod.
Well, looked like Alistair had a nibble of a temper on him. My heart twisted as I thought of Grandma and him. I hoped everything would be okay between them. I gritted my teeth and pushed forward a bright smile.
“Grandma, what do I need to do?”
She steepled her fingers and brought them to her nose. “Where’s the letter?”
I pulled it from my pocket. “Here.”
Grandma unfolded it and flicked it a few times with her fingers. “Good. Now, what you’ll need to do is swallow one drop of the nectar and hold the letter. Very simple.”
“I’ll dole out the liquid,” Alistair said.
I took the letter from Grandma and smoothed it against my chest. “And do I focus on what I want?”
“That’s generally a good idea,” she said. “Focus on that and let the magic of the nectar flow into you.”
“Okay.”
Alistair uncorked the vial. I opened my mouth as the two drops slithered down the glass. I pushed out my tongue.
“Very carefully,” he whispered. “We only want the one drop. Not the second.” He tipped the container more gently. A single drop danced on the edge. It dangled above my mouth before releasing from the lip of the glass.
It hit my tongue, and a shock wave washed through me. The magic was stronger than I’d expected. In that single moment I felt like if I’d wanted to know the secrets of the universe, they would’ve been mine to behold.
If I’d longed to know the darkest of magic, that of bringing back the dead, it would have been mine. All I had to do was ask. Nothing was beyond my reach.
But all I wanted to know was who had written a single letter to Griselda? Who was the secret baby that Griselda had been hiding her entire life and why?
A pulse of power buoyed out of me, sending a shimmering light floating out across the room. It faded in a wave that seemed to melt as it drizzled into nothing.
I gasped as if I’d been holding my breath to burning underwater. Oxygen flooded into me, and the magical power of the dewdrop buttercup subsided. It wasted away until the magic was nothing more than a sparkle in my eye.
Grandma took my hand. “Well? Do you know?”
I nodded slowly, letting the information filter into me. “I do. I know who wrote this letter.”
Shouts and screams erupted from outside the door. My head snapped in that direction. I broke free of the remnants of the nectar’s trance and sprinted for the door.
I opened it to find Maria being dragged away by Detective Downey. “But I didn’t do it,” she said. “It wasn’t me.”
She caught my gaze, and the look in her eyes said it all. You promised to keep me safe.
I crumbled into a ball as the detective dragged her away.
NINETEEN
I wanted to run ahead, grab Detective Downey and tell him that Maria was innocent, but there was no way he was going to listen to me. I had no right, none to interfere. The only thing I had a right to do was talk to the person who wrote the blackmail letter and find out as much as I could.
As the detective took Maria away, Grandma grabbed my arm. “Do you know something that will help her?”
I tugged my ear. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
A few minutes later I was standing outside the unmarked cabin door. I stared at it, knowing full well what I had to do, but my nerves were making me sweat drops the size of pimples.
“Aren’t you going to knock?” Grandma said.
“Yes, I’m going to knock,” I snapped. “Just working up the courage to do it.”
“Well, don’t work too hard; your courage might get up and run in the other direction.”
“Ha-ha. I’m sure I’ll still have my courage.”
She raised an eyebrow in a look that basically said she doubted it. I sighed and gave the door a good, hard rap.
“Yes?” came the answer when the door opened.
I raised the letter and said, “I know you wrote this. Care to talk about it?”
Captain Byrd glanced left and right. “Come in.”
I slinked inside, making sure no one had followed us. Captain Byrd wore a crushed velvet robe. The patch rested over his eye, and his curly black hair hung wet around his shoulders.
“Maria was found out,” he said, sinking onto the bed.
“What about Lillian?” I said.
He rubbed a hand over his tired, worn face. “She’s still here. Hiding out, but she wants to go with her mother.”
I touched his shoulder. “How’d they find her?”
Byrd shook his head. When he spoke, his jolly voice was thick, sad. “She went out. Said she needed air. They’d already done the sweep of this floo
r. And of course they didn’t check my room, even though they should have. Every room should’ve been checked—no matter who it belonged to.
“Someone saw her and reported the incident. They snatched her up. I have to stay out of it, and Maria won’t drag my name into it, but she didn’t do it. I know she didn’t.”
I sat in a free chair, getting eye level with him. “We want to help. We know she didn’t do it, but I also know you wrote this letter and had been blackmailing Griselda.”
“How’d you figure out it was me?”
Grandma sniffed proudly. “My granddaughter tamed the dewdrop buttercup. She saw it from afar, grabbed her magic lasso and brought the beast down with harsh words and cussing.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s not exactly how it happened.”
For the first time since we’d entered, Byrd’s eyes flared with interest. “That’s impressive. I’ve never known anyone to capture a drop of the nectar.”
I shrugged. “I got lucky. Anyway, that’s how I found out. Care to spill your secrets? I know that Maria is innocent, but someone killed Griselda and you know Maria well enough to have slipped into her booth and planted the crystal ball there after the murder.”
The look of shock on Byrd’s face appeared genuine. He shook his head. “No. Griselda was my birth mother; that much is true. In the beginning all I wanted was for her to acknowledge me. Let the world know who I was, but she wouldn’t. The woman didn’t want to have anything to do with me.
“Then I ended up needing money. Not for me, for someone I care about deeply. At first I asked Griselda for it, but when she wouldn’t help, I became angry, I won’t lie. That woman had millions. My entire life I’d never asked her for anything except to be recognized for who I was. So I had no choice. I started writing the letters, and I wasn’t ashamed to say that if she didn’t help, I’d tell the world that she’d had me, which of course would mean she lost every ounce of her riches.”
He paused, poured himself a finger of whiskey from a crystal decanter. He took a long swig and smacked his lips. “God forbid the woman lose a dime. So Griselda was happy to pay. More than happy. It was a simple arrangement. She gave me money, I stayed quiet and my daughter received the medical treatment she needed.”