He chuckled, and together we went inside.
Lights flickered on, illuminating dusty furniture. The front section of the lab held the living quarters: kitchen, bedroom, and a small walled-off washroom. Low humming emanated from the laboratory in the back, where the machine produced the poison that had twice put Janan to sleep.
Slowly, others filed inside and made themselves comfortable on the bed, sofa, and the floor. Soon, I’d have to tell them exactly what this place was, though some could probably guess its purpose.
And would I tell them that the machine was making poison right now? Sam had only told me the other night, before the earthquake.
“Now what?” Sam asked me as we finished helping bring in supplies. The others would stay here only a few days, just long enough to recover from their injuries.
“Now we hope the sylph come.” I’d been certain they would be here waiting for me. They’d found me at Purple Rose Cottage, and then followed me here when I decided I needed to study what my father had done to them.
As Sam and I helped the temporary residents of Menehem’s lab clean the area and prepare an evening meal, I kept an eye on the forest outside. The sylph had to come. I needed to know what they wanted from me, and if they could help me stop Janan.
But when darkness fell, only natural shadows filled the woods.
8
POISON
MORNING DAWNED COLD and still, only a few flakes of snow spiraling down. But the vehicles were dusted with white, and the mountains looked like upside-down icicles. The frozen world made Heart and all our troubles seem far away, like a fading memory.
There were still no sylph, but I reminded myself they’d taken a while to come before. And Cris . . .
I gripped the windowsill and closed my eyes, suddenly back inside the skeleton chamber with Cris lying on the stone table, next to Janan’s body. The walls glowed red, and the silver knife flashed as he plunged it into his own chest. White and wind filled the chamber, and it seemed the world had been ripped open. Now he was cursed. A shadow of himself. Incorporeal.
Soft, peaceful snoring brought me shivering back into the present, and I picked my way between the sleepers and headed into the lab.
I’d been in here only briefly last night. It had been dark, and I hadn’t wanted to draw attention to what was going on.
Lots of metal bits and curiosities lurked in the back of the lab, most coated with dust and grime. The groaning machine that made poison was only the size of a bookcase, with a conveyer through the bottom, which pulled canisters under a spout, then pushed them onto the solid floor where they waited to be dealt with. When I’d come in last night, twenty big canisters huddled around the conveyer. I’d moved them aside and added a few empty ones to the “in” side.
Menehem had made a lot of extra canisters. But whatever his plans had been, death had delayed them.
Though the canisters were large, the metal was lightweight and they were filled with aerosol, so they weren’t too heavy for me to carry. One by one, I lined them up by the door at the rear of the lab and draped a heavy cloth over them. The door was too big to open now; cold air would shoot in and wake everyone.
Menehem’s notes indicated he’d taken six with him for Templedark. And according to the notes, Janan and the sylph developed a tolerance to the poison swiftly, but so far we had almost three times as much poison, and there was more coming.
Maybe it would be enough to stop Janan during Soul Night.
Finished, I sneaked back into the living area and crouched next to Sam. In sleep, his face was peaceful and soft. I touched his cheek and traced the contours of his jaw and neck. He smiled a little as he opened his eyes. “Ana.”
I leaned down to kiss him, quickly because groans and rustling blankets indicated others were waking, as well. “Make sure the back door gets opened later so I can take the poison outside without everyone noticing.”
He squinted and rubbed his face. “Why?”
“I want to hide it.”
“From everyone?” Alert now, he pushed himself up and whispered by my ear. “Is there someone you don’t trust?”
“No.” I glanced at the people stretching in their sleeping bags and speaking to neighbors. “It’s not that. I just don’t think they’d understand. Not everyone. Someone—any of them—might get the wrong idea and destroy the poison.” I didn’t have a plan for the poison yet, but I wanted as many options as possible.
“Do you have to tell them what it is?”
I shrugged. “If they ask, I’ll have to tell them the truth.” These people were on my side because they didn’t want newsouls to suffer. But that didn’t mean they were willing to give up their own immortality for the possibility of more newsouls. They didn’t know—wouldn’t understand—that reincarnation was over anyway.