After everyone had gone to their rooms for the night, Westie grabbed a lamp and went to the main sitting room, where the walls were lined with shelves of books. Next to the fireplace was a light sconce. She pushed it toward the ground. The oil lamp in her hand shed watery light on a panel of books that slid without sound on rails and disappeared behind the fireplace. The hidden room was no bigger than a closet and was stacked to the ceiling with shelves of poisons in dainty glass bottles. Oil of oleander, doll’s eyes, and angel’s trumpet. Such pretty names. There was also strychnine and other exotic poisons Nigel brought home from his travels. And of course the local specialty, cyanide, which came from mining the iron hills. Nigel preferred the classics: castor plant, mushrooms, nightshade, belladonna, hemlock, wolfsbane, and the rosary pea. The bottom shelf belonged to the tricky poisons that came from the venom of reptiles such as the copperhead, rattlesnake, and cobra. So many poisons, each with their own different way of killing, though killing was what they did all the same.
Nigel used to tell her poisons were like women, placed in beautiful packages but deadly within. Westie had rolled her eyes when he told her women also preferred poisons when dealing in death. Less messy. He knew nothing about women.
“I hope you’re not doing what I think you’re planning on doing.”
Westie started but made no sound when she heard the woman’s voice behind her. At first she thought it was Lavina, and that somehow she’d snuck into the house without rousing Jezebel. But when Westie turned, she saw it was Alistair. He stood in the doorway wearing a temporary mask while his was being repaired. The replacement was delicate, made with bits of nickel and lined with lace, and it had a female sound box.
Westie shrugged her lips in a fleeting smile, and then it was gone. “Not today,” she said. “And not like this. I want justice. I want to watch the Fairfields hang on a branch like cottonwood blossoms.”
“Then why are you eyeing a wall of poisons?”
The lamplight filtered through the colorful glass bottles and cast rainbows across the room. All of Nigel’s poisons were the killing kind, but he didn’t keep them for that reason. Used in the proper dosages, they had healing qualities. She ran her finger across the labels and stopped on a green bottle the color of a tropical sea. Vampire blood.
When she pulled the bottle of blood from the shelf, Alistair’s eyes shone, for he guessed her intentions and approved. It made her smile and gave her more confidence to see his support of her decision. She opened the bottle. It was empty.
The sky was a black sheet over their heads with millions of holes cut out to show the light of heaven behind it. At least that was what Westie’s mother used to tell her about the stars.
A full moon lit the road ahead, and the howls of werewolves completing their cycles filled the night. Alistair shoved a piece of paper toward her. He had taken off the temporary mask after she’d teased him about its female voice, and refused to put it back on, trading it for a handkerchief. There wasn’t much light to read by, so she had to hold the piece of paper right up to her nose to see it.
This is a terrible idea, the note read.
Westie balled it up and tossed it at him. He caught it in the air.
“You thought this was a good idea when I pulled the glass bottle from the shelf,” she said.
Alistair uncrumpled the ball of paper and scribbled. He pushed it her way again. Westie rolled her eyes, missing his mask.
She looked down at the piece of paper: That was before you planned to take it from the source, it read.
The next time she balled the paper, she tossed it over her shoulder. Alistair looked behind him at the crumpled paper on the road and pulled a tablet from his saddlebag. He waved it in her face like a spoiled child. She laughed and dug her heels into Henry’s sides to pick up the pace.
Westie heard the music and raucous laughter before they reached town. They followed the glow of street gasoliers down the main strip. Alistair steered his horse closer to Westie and tossed a piece of crumpled paper at her face to snag her attention, hitting her nose. She looked at him with a terse glare. He held his tablet in the air, the words written large and dark enough to see in the vague light.
Let’s go back. We shouldn’t be here.