“Right, okay, you nut.” I pulled myself, slowly, into a sitting position. Holmes tucked a pillow behind my back. “So let’s break it down: she’s from England. That’s why we flagged her file originally, right?”
“She was born there, but she moved here when she was a teenager. Or so she said when I pressed her, after I shed a few homesick tears. My face is still swollen. I forgot how uncomfortable this whole crying business is.”
“No powder, no England. Two near misses, then,” I said. “Unless you somehow wronged her back when you were a toddler, if I’ve got her age right. Twenty-two?”
“Twenty-three.” Holmes got to her feet. “If she is, in fact, our culprit, she wouldn’t be telling the truth to us anyway, so it hardly matters. As it stands, I can tell she’s hiding something, but that could just be the sort of reserve you have around students. I’ll try to track down an actual sample of that powder tomorrow, because what I tried tasted more like dust than protein.”
“Shouldn’t we focus on someone who we have a clear lead on? Like, I don’t know . . . August Moriarty?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m off to write my Macbeth paper. Be careful tonight. And maybe shower. You smell awful.”
When she left, I realized I was starving. I wolfed down a roll of crackers I found next to the bed and took the small cup of what looked like Tylenol, washing it down with the rest of the water. As I set the glass carefully back down on the table—depth perception was a bit of an issue, post-concussion—I realized what I’d done. The woman taking care of me might be a poisoner. With a fixation on me and Holmes. And I’d put myself into her overnight care, tossing back the pills she gave me without a second thought.
The light in the next room flicked off. I stared at the door, willing it to stay shut, willing the nurse to pack up her things and leave. I willed this feeling to be just paranoia from my head injury, to remember the cluster of Moriartys sharing space on our wall. I willed Bryony to just be an ordinary woman who took a job at Sherringford because of the pay and the beautiful campus and because she didn’t mind taking care of teenagers with the flu, not because she’d tracked Holmes and me across an ocean to frame us on Moriarty’s orders.
The knob turned. The door swung open.
“I’m headed out,” Nurse Bryony said softly. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, thanks.” Leave, I thought. Go home.
But I heard her set down her bag. She padded into the room, smelling faintly of flowers. An ordinary, pretty-girl smell. I swallowed hard. The room was beginning to sway, like a ship, and I wished badly that Holmes was still there.
“You’re nearly out of water.” Nurse Bryony refilled my glass at the sink and took another roll of crackers from the cabinet above, setting them both by my bed. “There. Go easy on these. I’m surprised you’re not more nauseous.”
I wondered if Dobson was nauseous, before he died. I’d never had a concussion before. Was nausea a symptom? Was it a symptom of arsenic poisoning?
That’s it, I thought. Holmes can come up with the next plan.
In the half-light, Bryony was a dark silhouette, all except the shining hair that fell across her face as she leaned down over me. She had a strange, hot electricity to her. I thought, in my confusion, that she might kiss me, or slap me across the face, that she would pick up the pillow and smother me with it.
But she put a cool hand to my forehead instead. “Get some rest, Jamie, so you can see that girl of yours again tomorrow,” she whispered, her breath hot on my face. “The other nurse will be in first thing.” She gathered her things and left.
I didn’t even try to sleep. Instead, I stayed up listening to the quiet clock of my heart, wondering every moment if I was about to stop breathing. I’d been careless with my life, I knew I was, but if I died tonight, I was going to be furious. I debated texting Holmes a thousand times. If I was wrong, I’d look like an idiot.
Around dawn, I threw the water glass to the floor, needing to hear something shatter. It was plastic. It bounced. When the morning nurse came in—an older woman with round Midwestern vowels—I was shivering with the effort to stay awake.
But she washed and filled the same cup, gave me pills that matched the ones I’d taken earlier. She made some crack about how I looked as if I’d been chased through hell, and I was overcome with the sensation that I was missing something, something huge.
WHEN I FINALLY GOT SIGNED OUT OF THE INFIRMARY, IT WAS dinnertime. Mrs. Dunham insisted on escorting me back to my room.
“Now get into bed,” she said, waiting with crossed arms until I did. “I’ve already talked to Tom, and he’s going to bring you something back from the dining hall. I want you to call me if you need anything, or if you start feeling terrible, and we’ll get you right to the hospital.”