“Exactly. She was greedy for love. The love of an extremely dangerous plant. That’s what killed her.”
My eyes started rolling around out of control.
“Help... me,” I gasped.
“I’m trying,” he said, focused on the work before him. “I have to be careful, because removing the heart is a bit like defusing a bomb. There’s an order to cutting the supply lines, and if I get it wrong, the whole thing could blow up in my face.”
I held still and waited, because I was now paralyzed and could do nothing else. I caught a glimpse of Boa, who was still there, wandering around the greenhouse. The poor thing had no idea she’d been brought there to be sacrificed to a carnivorous plant. Mind you, neither did I.
“Done!” Rhys stood up and proudly held the thing in one hand, like a prize fish—if a prize fish looked like a dark-green beating heart. “Isn’t it a thing of beauty?”
It was a thing, all right. But not one of beauty.
Boa came running to his side. She swatted playfully at the pulsing heart’s trailing green tendrils.
“This is goodbye for now,” Rhys said. He gazed up at me, catching the moonlight on his face. The lantern on the ground next to him flickered like a guttering candle flame.
I croaked out gibberish and flopped my head from side to side. It was all I could do. Nothing worked. Not my telekinesis. Not my defensive fireballs. Not even my mouth. A wacky refrain kept circling inside my head. This one wasn’t a tune from Little Shop of Horrors but a line from the Shel Silverstein nursery rhyme about being eaten by a boa constrictor. The narrator sings oh fiddle and oh heck as the boa constrictor swallows up to her middle and then up to her neck. The popular children’s rhyme played in its entirety in my head, where such things were not prevented by modern song copyright laws.
My upper body felt different. Warmer. Wetter.
Oh heck. My captor had swallowed me up to my neck.
I flopped my head once more and tried to make eye contact with my father. Why couldn’t he chop the stem like I asked and release me? Was this all a big joke to him? I gurgled what I hoped would be a convincing plea.
He tucked the pulsating heart into a grocery store tote bag that I recognized as having come from my kitchen. My bag! The nice blue one from the organic place! Then he picked up the lantern in his other hand and headed for the door.
“Zara, don’t hate me,” he said.
I spluttered out an approximation of, “Too late.”
“You’ll be fine. Maybe better than ever. They say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
I tried to tell him off but only made an undignified raspberry noise.
“Trust me, Zara. This outcome is for the best.” He paused, as though about to explain more, but then he opened the door and left.
I was alone.
Alone in the moonlit greenhouse, trapped in the maw of a carnivorous plant. Up to my neck.
Boa meowed.
Scratch that. I wasn’t alone. At least I had my cat.
Boa meowed again as she scratched at the stem of the plant.
My face felt funny. Was I smiling? No. It was the mouth of the plant, slurping its way up my jaw and over my mouth. I breathed rapidly through my nostrils only.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. My father had promised the plant would fade without its heart. It was supposed to be drooping down and releasing me. Instead, it was continuing to digest me. I could barely keep my nose from being covered by its sickly green flesh. At the current rate, I’d be cut off from my oxygen in just a few minutes. Then six minutes until brain damage and death. Ah, if only I’d thought to bring my rented scuba diving gear and oxygen tanks with me. Cue the hysterical laughter.
Boa, my fluffy little white knight, was still scratching away at the stem like a champion. You go, kitty! Chop this nasty ol’ tree down like a lumberjack cat!
She kept scratching and meowing in earnest, louder and louder.
Just as I thought she might be doing real damage to the plant, a second pointed tip emerged from the ground next to the stem. I hadn’t seen the Droserakops blossom open when it had snatched me up, but now I could do nothing but watch.
It was a thing of beauty, even in the dim light of the moon. The giant petals were green and tough on the exterior, but shades of red, orange, and pink on the inside. The flower rose up to where I was being held and then dove down. In one smooth motion, it scooped up Boa in its maw. The cat didn’t even see it coming. I swear I heard the plant go GULP.
The door to the greenhouse opened once more.
Dad! He came back!
But it wasn’t my father.
“Auntie Z, I swear I heard meowing in here. It sounded like Boa.”
“How can that be? She’s at the house with Rhys. It’s probably just a stray.”
“I’m going to check in this greenhouse again anyway.”
Dimly, through drowsy eyelids, I saw two redheaded women enter the greenhouse.
One let out a blast of blue lighting bolts.
Yay! My hero!
And then she was immediately swallowed head first by the same blossom that had gobbled Boa as an appetizer.
Zoey flung her flashlight at the flower and screamed.
A third flower emerged from the ground next to her feet. In the blink of an eye, she was gone as well. Snapped up by the third blossom of the three-headed Droserakops.
No wonder it hadn’t succumbed to injuries after my father removed its heart. It had two more pulsing at its base.
In a fit of motherly fury, I summoned great forces and burst the plant surrounding me to smithereens. Yes, yes, that’s it, I thought dreamily. And then I cast the blade spell flawlessly and chopped the other stems to pieces. It was all going so easily. So perfectly. As though in a dream. And then, after, we hosed ourselves off and went for ice cream, laughing over our sundaes over that time we were nearly eaten by a carnivorous plant. This is heaven, I said as I dug into my enormous ice cream sundae. I’ve died, and this is heaven.
Those are the sorts of happy hallucinations a person might have when paralyzed by a neurotoxin and deprived of oxygen.
Chapter 37
With the bravery and heroism of the highest-paid action movie star, I saved all three of us plus the cat from the Droserakops. I saved us a whole bunch of times, which didn’t even strike me as odd at the time. First, I eviscerated the leafy thing like a green smoothie in a blender. The scene started over, and I burned it down like a blowtorch on gnarly weeds between pavers. Then I used a new kale-to-dessert spell to magically transform the plant into soft, fluffy, harmless pink cotton candy.
Except I didn’t do any of these things. Each heroic rescue was a hallucination, a dream within a dream, a byproduct of the panicked synaptic flashings of my oxygen-deprived brain.
One vision, however, seemed more real than the others.
This was what really happened that night in the greenhouse, as witnessed through one of my eyes.
The third and smallest blossom shuddered and shook, and then something emerged near the bottom of the bulb. Teeth flashes. Sharp teeth. A creature was biting its way through the green membrane. More teeth flashing, and an elongated muzzle emerged. Then the whole head, with triangular ears. As it emerged, the face dripped in primordial goo. The plant’s thick stem bent as though bowing. Front paws came out next. The flower split at the base like an embryonic sac, and it birthed a four-pawed creature.
A red fox.
The fox whipped its fluffy tail and shook the green goo from its fur.
Snarling, the fox attacked the second-largest flower stalk with its teeth.
Sparks of blue flashed from its teeth, for this was no ordinary fox.
The fox bit out a smaller version of the green, pulsating heart my father had left with.
The second stem bowed graciously. The fox bit into the blossom base, sharp teeth flashing with blue sparks, and helped birth a pair of creatures. A redheaded female in a flowered vest and a white cat.
Zinnia got to her feet. She and the fox came for me.
But I was no princess in a castle who needed rescuing! Not me! I burst out with magic and tore free of my prison, tossing bits of plant like boiled spinach. Except I didn’t do that, because I couldn’t control anything except one eye, and only barely.
The plant shifted, and I lost the visual of my rescuers.
Was my daughter really a fox? Were she and Zinnia about to rescue me? Or was it just another hallucination?
The darkness in my spine overtook me. I slipped down inside the plant and went limp inside the whirlpool of digestive juices.
Zinnia and Zoey had approached the greenhouse to investigate the meowing sound.
My aunt expected to find nothing but a malfunctioning sprinkler hose as the source of the sound.
What they actually found was a huge plant with two stalks and two flower buds. There was a cat-sized bulge in the smaller flower bud, and a Zara-sized bulge in the larger one. The Droserakops held perfectly still, doing its best impression of an innocent corn stalk, only instead of corn silk sticking out of the top, there was a hank of my red hair and half of my face.
My aunt, being a skilled witch, wasted no time in jolting the plant with her defensive magic. But the Droserakops had much more mass than a typical foe. Its root system ran for miles underground. It felt no more than a tickle from her strongest blast.
The plant was no slouch in the intelligence department—at least when it came to self-preservation. Its counter-move came without warning. The smaller bulb with the cat-sized bulge elongated itself and lunged, snapping up Zinnia in one bite. Rather than attacking her from underneath, like I had been ambushed, the plant had gained the wisdom to swallow troublesome witches headfirst.
Zinnia was plunged face-first into a pool of digestive, sticky plant goo. She will, however, tell anyone who asks that she was ready to bust out some high-level magic on the creature, and she would have, if Zoey hadn’t rescued her first.
Ah, Zoey.
My sweet-and-sour moody teenager with the heart of gold and the fox-shifter DNA.
It turned out the only thing standing between her and magic was the right kind of stress.
The blossom hadn’t fully closed around her when she shifted into fox form. There were two major benefits to doing so. First, the thick red fur was perfect for keeping snow and rain from reaching fox’s skin, and equally effective at keeping the plant’s numbing juices from touching Zoey’s skin. Second, Zoey’s fox form had much sharper teeth than her human form. It wasn’t easy for her to bite her way out of the blossom, but her survival instincts had kicked in, and she’d managed to do what I had not.
Once she got Zinnia free, it was simple enough for them to use a combination of Zoey’s teeth and Zinnia’s magic to get me free.
However, there was the small issue of me being nearly dead. Not all the way dead, or I might have witnessed these events clearly from above, but very nearly dead.
They cleared my airway and treated me for drowning, rolling me onto my side and administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
I began breathing, albeit raggedly, but the larger issue was my heart. I was in tachycardia. The poison in my body was battling my own healing abilities, and the poison was winning. My heart was racing wildly fast.
“Foxglove,” my aunt said. “We need foxglove.” But there was panic in my aunt’s voice. Even with her skills, she didn’t have the time to synthesize the medication I needed to get my heart under control. She barked at my daughter to call for an ambulance.
My daughter barked back. Literally. She made yip-yip fox noises. She had no phone, no pockets to hold a phone, and on top of that, no fingers with which to make a call.
And that was when the cavalry arrived.
An armor-wearing team of DWM agents crashed in through the side of the greenhouse. They busted in like a team of superheroes who took special glee in destroying private property.
At the front of the team was Charlize. While armored members circled the limp green wreckage that was the Droserakops, Charlize and the medics knelt over me. They called over the leader of the medical team, Dr. Ankh. The lavender-eyed woman was assisted by her intern, Ubaid. They made the assessment to transfer me to the DWM for treatment there.
Charlize, however, had a different idea. She pushed my aunt and daughter away from my body and straddled me. I was barely conscious, but I saw her face above me. She looked calm and serene. I knew in that instant that everything was going to be okay.
Then she put both of her hands on my chest and turned my heart to stone.
That got my attention. My lungs had also turned to stone, so I couldn’t even gasp.
My eyes flew open, and suddenly I was dragged away from my happy hallucinations. The weight I felt was the weight of the world, a mountain atop me. I was granite on the inside, fused with flesh, and if you think that sounds painful, you’re not wrong.
Charlize tilted her head. A single tear dropped from her eye onto my cheek.
Don’t be sad, I thought. And then there was only pain. Everything went white.
After I lost consciousness, she turned my heart back to flesh.
Dr. Ankh threw a fit, grabbing Charlize by the arm and throwing her through the only intact greenhouse wall.
But the gambit had worked. Being turned to granite and then back to flesh was an unusual treatment for tachycardia, but it had worked.
What happened next was a frenzy of activity.
The DWM took my daughter into custody, mistaking the red fox for her grandfather. If someone had used their good sense to ask questions or peek under the fox’s tail, they might have saved my aunt from having to pull out her fightin’ words.
“Turn back into yourself, Zoey,” my aunt said. “Shift back.”
But Zoey didn’t have any practice at turning back into human form, plus she was frightened.
The armored men tossed her in a cage and took her away, despite threats from my aunt. The medical crew jabbed her with something to keep her from following through on her promises.
When Zoey did finally shift back, she was in a cage in the back of a van, halfway to the DWM headquarters. On the plus side, at least she was greeted by a familiar face. Chet was driving the van. He let her out of the cage, and she rode the rest of the way in the passenger seat. Days later, she reported back to me that she and Chet had bonded over their shifting experiences, and he’d really stepped up. “Just like a father,” she’d said, which hurt my heart in a way the granite hadn’t.
Dr. Ankh, Ubaid, and the rest of the medical staff took good care of me during my overnight stay. Or so I’ve been told. I drifted in and out of consciousness while recovering from the plant’s poison.
I kept hearing people talking about some other patient they were concerned about. Who was the other patient? Zoey and Zinnia had been shaken but able to walk and talk or bark.
In the morning, I found out from a nurse that the other patient everyone had been fussing over was the gosh-darned plant, the murderous Droserakops.
As soon as the nurse left my room, I jumped out of the hospital bed and bolted for the door. As grateful as I was to be alive, I didn’t want to be underground with any part of that thing.
My daughter and my aunt, who’d been waiting in the hallway, ran after me.
Zoey cried out, “Mom, your butt’s hanging out of your gown!”
Zinnia said, “Zara, slow down. We ought to make sure you’re properly discharged.”
I ran for the exit. There would be no more slowing down for me.
“Mom! At least try to cover yourself! Ugh. Are you wearing underwear covered in happy faces? You’re so embarrassing.”
Chapter 38
Wednesday morning, two hours after making my escape from the DWM, I walked to the Wisteria Public Library as though nothing had happened the night before.
I’d considered calling in sick, but I wasn’t sick. There was a lot on my mind, including stuff I had to emotionally process, bu
t physically, I was just fine. Thanks to my witch powers, I’d survived yet another near-death experience.
As for Tansy Wick’s spirit, she didn’t come with me to work.
Earlier that morning, when I was in my bathroom, brushing the plant-goo off my teeth, she’d made an appearance. You know how in horror movies, ghosts love to appear behind people while they’re looking in bathroom mirrors? She did that to me. Cheeky ghost.
I whipped around, spraying toothpaste foam from my mouth like a rabid dog. She looked serene, dressed in green, with her long gray hair in two braids, as she stood next to my antique claw-foot tub. It struck me later that the bathroom was the logical place for a ghost to appear. People die in bathrooms all the time. When you’re not feeling well, where do you go? The bathroom. To splash cold water on your face, take a bath, or get something from the medicine cabinet. The previous owner of my house had passed away in my tub.
“Hello,” I said.
Tansy nodded. Her loyal pets, Jasper and Coco, flanked her.
“You tried to kill my father,” I said. “I know about everything.”
She pointed at me.
“Good point. He left me to die, which means he’s not the World’s Greatest Father, but in his defense, he thought I’d be fine.”
She said nothing.
“What you did was intentional,” I said. “And you put that murder potion on your dogs, making them accomplices. As a new pet owner myself, I condemn that.”
She made a grim expression and bowed her head.
“But then your monster plant ate the dogs and you, too, so I guess it all balances out.”
She looked more faded than she’d been at her house, maybe fifty percent visibility.
“Tansy, do you know you’re dead?”
She gave me a sad look, blew me a kiss, and then turned and walked straight out through an exterior wall with the dogs right behind her.
Case closed.
For me, anyway.
The DWM had her bones, as well as the shredded remainder of her final botany experiment. My father remained a “person of interest” they wanted to interview. Good luck with that.
Watchful Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries Book 4) Page 28