Dead man walking, p.12
Dead Man Walking, page 12
“What are you talking about, Miranda?” I asked cautiously.
“Oh, dear Lilith, she’s going to kill me if she finds out I told you, but I have to tell someone before I explode,” Miranda whispered through a sob. “I can’t do this anymore, Selena. I’m not cut out for this.”
“Who’s going to kill you? And for what?”
Miranda looked me right in the eye. “For not keeping secrets.”
I searched her face, unsure where she was going with this. “Miranda, if you know something about everything going on, you really, really need to tell me before anyone else gets—”
“Venus killed Declan,” she blurted, and I almost dropped my mug.
“What?! Are you sure? How do you know?”
“Because she wanted me to do it, but I couldn’t go through with it, so Venus… She did it for me.” I stared at her, speechless, while she set her mug down on the table carefully, then dissolved into tears. “I never asked her to, believe me! She and I met at the teahouse where she works to catch up the day before the reunion. We were talking about how neither of us could believe Declan was coming, and she floated the idea of making sure he didn’t. At first, I didn’t believe her, I thought she was just kidding around because she’s an old friend and knows all the grief Declan put me through, but she wasn’t. She meant it.”
“What did you do?”
“I told her she was insane to even say that!” Miranda shouted, and I hushed her, not wanting anyone else to hear this. “How could I do something like that to the father of my child, no matter how much I dislike him? It’s crazy, just crazy. I told her to leave him alone, to not even think about it, and then I tried to leave, but…”
“But what?”
Miranda hesitated, then took her bag out from under her arm to fiddle with the fabric of the pink bow wrapped around its handle. “She stopped me. To give me something, just in case I changed my mind.” She unzipped her bag, and I watched with bated breath as she rummaged around inside it. Several agonizing moments later, she pulled out a small glass vial full of an icy, blue-white liquid.
“What’s that?”
“Pure extract of Permafrost Poppy,” Miranda said, as if I had any clue what that was. Sensing my confusion, Miranda pressed on. “Permafrost Poppies are rare flowers that only grow in the extremely cold temperatures near the peak of Mount Starcrest,” she continued, and an image of the massive, central mountain that we’d passed in Blair’s flying car on our way into Starfall Valley for the first time flashed in my mind. I wouldn’t have guessed anything could grow in that climate.
Miranda turned the vial around in the air, sloshing the liquid and making me shiver. “The flower’s extract is harmless in small doses, but it can kill if someone takes too much of it. It freezes and shuts down your vital organs one by one, and it doesn’t leave behind any signs. I kept the vial because I didn’t know what else to do with it, and I didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands, but I got away from her as quickly as I could.”
“And you didn’t think to tell anyone about this until now?”
“No. Who would’ve believed me, anyway?”
“Even with a vial full of that stuff? I think the police would’ve been interested.”
Miranda sighed. “You’re right, I probably should’ve spoken up, but I just… I don’t know, I thought it was over! I thought she’d leave things alone, but then the next day when I met up with the other reunion attendees to come to Kindred Spirits together and Declan wasn’t there… I couldn’t prove it — maybe he’d just decided not to come — but I worried right away that Venus had done something awful. And then when I saw Declan standing in the foyer, undead and rotting, I knew she’d done it. I just knew. So, I confronted her about it.”
“Is that what you two were arguing about in the reception room?”
“Yes,” Miranda said, and my head spun. “She admitted it openly! Apparently, she invited Declan to tea with her later that night under the guise of making amends and spiked his drink. It takes a while for it to kick in, so he probably had no clue something was wrong until it was too late,” she said, and I thought of the vision I’d had of Declan stumbling through the night and snow toward Kindred Spirits, shouting about someone or something named Poppy. Now I finally knew what he meant; someone had poisoned him. But why was he heading here? Was he trying to get to Miranda? Did he not know she wasn’t staying here that night?
“Venus didn’t even try to hide it when I confronted her. Instead, she insisted she’d done me and the world a favor. Can you believe that?” Miranda continued. I couldn’t, but I also couldn’t find the words to say so; my mind was still reeling as all the pieces fell into place. “I told her she hadn’t killed him, not really, and that he was here in the inn somewhere, and you know what she said? That she must not have given him enough.” Miranda scoffed. “She’s crazy.”
“But I thought you said if you take too much of that stuff it’s lethal?”
“I thought so too until I did more research. After I saw Declan as a zombie, I wondered if Permafrost Poppy could’ve done it. Turns out, it can. It’s rare, but apparently if the victim doesn’t take precisely the right amount,” Miranda said, pinching her index and thumb together to illustrate the precision, “then sometimes all their organs stop working except for their brain. It gets damaged, but it doesn’t die, unlike the rest of their body. That’s what turns them into zombies.”
“I don’t understand. How did Venus get her hands on this stuff?”
“Some boutique teahouses also use Permafrost Poppy for medicinal brews. It has a chilling effect on the throat when you drink it, like peppermint,” she said, and my stomach dropped. Venus worked in a teahouse, so of course she had access to ingredients like that — and she’d know exactly how much to mix in to make it deadly.
Miranda put the vial back in her bag and set it down on the counter to retrieve her mug, but I snatched it away from her. “No! Whatever else you do, don’t drink that.”
“What? Why not?”
“Venus recommended I bring you some peppermint tea, and I think that might be a trick she’s used at least twice already,” I said, immediately thinking of Declan meeting her for tea and of Edna dead with tea splashed all over herself upstairs. Miranda glanced from the mugs in my hands back to me in horror. I hurried to a nearby dish sink and dumped the contents of both mugs, flushed it with water from the tap, and whirled on Miranda. “Why didn’t you tell someone else about this?! We could’ve helped you stop Venus. Edna didn’t have to…” I trailed, and Miranda clapped a hand over her mouth.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” she sobbed, and I could just barely bring myself to confirm it with a nod. “No…” she whispered, looking away from me. Her chest heaved several times as she fought back sobs, but when she’d gathered herself, she turned back to me with a truly haunted look in her eyes. “You’re right. I’m so sorry, Selena. I should’ve said something — and I wanted to, trust me! — but I couldn’t because when I confronted Venus with what I knew, she threatened me. She said that if I didn’t help her find Declan and finish him for good, or if I told anyone what I knew, I would be next to go.”
A chill raced from the base of my neck to the tips of my toes and back up to my brain as I realized what it meant — and that I’d inadvertently played a role in all this by telling Miranda about Declan being somewhere on the grounds. It was a mistake, an innocent one, but one that’d cost Edna her life and nearly gotten Declan killed — for good. “You were the one who told Venus we were keeping Declan in the shed, weren’t you?”
Miranda nodded, spilling tears down her face. “As soon as you said he was on the grounds somewhere, I figured it out — where else could you have hidden a zombie out there without one of us noticing? I’m sorry, Selena. I didn’t want to tell Venus, believe me, but she didn’t leave me another choice. She’s ruthless. Just a few minutes ago, while you were checking on Edna, she threatened me again. She knew you were closing in on her and promised to hurt me if I said anything. That must be why she suggested the tea. She wanted to tie up the last loose ends.”
I felt horrible for Miranda being in that position, but despite that, something about her story wasn’t adding up. “Wait a second. Venus was in the bathroom with me when the shed went up in flames. How could she have done that?” I asked, thinking of the robed woman I’d seen through Declan’s eyes in my second vision. She had the same curly blonde hair as Venus, but she was far too young for it to have been Venus herself.
“She didn’t. She had help,” Miranda said, though I took no pleasure in having my theory confirmed.
“Who in the world would’ve helped her do something like that?”
“That word you told me Declan kept saying, Poppy… I don’t think it’s just about the poison,” Miranda said, and I hung on her every word. “Poppy is also the name of Venus’ daughter,” she continued, and my vision swirled as everything locked into place.
Venus held a grudge against Declan for firing her for alleged theft, and she’d probably passed her hatred of him on to her daughter. She’d likely spent years telling Poppy that their lives were so miserable because of what Declan had done to Venus when she was pregnant, but they’d finally gotten their chance to make things right. Once Venus and Miranda figured out we’d moved Declan to the shed, all it would’ve taken was a simple phone call to her daughter to make sure no one ever heard from Declan again, and none of us would be any wiser about it — until Edna caught Poppy outside. Venus probably would’ve killed Fallon too if she’d gotten the chance.
“That’s why Edna had to die,” I said, more to myself than to Miranda. Poppy must’ve seen the light on in Edna’s room, then told Venus that they might have a loose end because of it, so Venus had slipped Edna a dose of Permafrost Poppy, too. Now that I thought about it, that was probably the real reason Venus had gotten so nervous about me touching her purse in the bathroom — she didn’t want me to know about or damage the lethal liquid she had inside it.
And if she’d gone this far, there wasn’t anything that would stop Venus from finishing what she’d started, which made the fact she’d seen me coming out of the basement the night before even more alarming. She had to have guessed Declan was down there — and I’d just left her alone under the guise of “getting cleaned up,” a realization that made my skin crawl because the only thing she was going to “clean up” was the mess she’d created with Declan.
Without a second thought, I jumped off the table and stormed across the prep room back through the kitchen with Miranda, Thorn, and Jadis chasing and shouting after me, but I didn’t have time to fill any of them in.
I had to get to the basement.
Chapter Fifteen
Horror flooded me as I skidded around the corner into the foyer and realized that both the inn’s front door and the one to the basement hung wide open. Frigid air filled the room, making it as cold as a grave, and the fire in the brazier at the center had guttered out.
I raced to the basement door with the sound of my blood pumping in my ears and strained to see some sign of life through the all-encompassing darkness. I didn’t know how Venus had gotten the door open, but I couldn’t afford to think about that.
Thorn caught up to me first. “Selena! What in Lilith’s name is going on?”
Breathless, I whirled and found him standing next to Jadis, who looked similarly confused. Fallon and Miranda had joined us, too. “It’s a lot to explain and I don’t have time to, but the gist of it is that Venus is behind all this and I think she’s gone into the basement to finish Declan off. Oh, and her daughter is probably here somewhere helping her. We have to stop them,” I said, still unable to believe the lengths we’d been going to in order to protect someone who didn’t really deserve it.
“What?! Wait, and Declan’s down there? Selena is that why I found you—” Thorn stopped, shaking his head. “You know what? Never mind. Are you sure it’s Venus?” he asked, but Miranda put a hand on his shoulder and nodded, silencing him.
“She’s sure. We both are, trust me,” Miranda said.
Thorn straightened up, summoning confidence. “Well, then I’m definitely not letting you go alone, especially since it’s not just rats you have to be afraid of down there.”
“Neither am I,” Jadis said.
“Where are Blair and Kiki?” I asked her.
“I’m not sure. They both disappeared during breakfast after you took off. I think Blair’s upstairs somewhere, but I haven’t seen Kiki since you left to check on Edna. Maybe she’s in the office?”
“Wherever they are, I need you to find them, tell them what’s going on, and call the police, okay?”
“What? No way, I’m going downstairs with you. Why can’t you send Fallon or someone—”
“Jadis, please,” I interrupted. “We’re going to need them, and the others can’t access all the same places we can. Go. We don’t have time to waste arguing.”
Jadis stared at me, silently begging, but eventually gave in. “All right, fine.”
“We’ll help you look, Jadis,” Miranda said. “Besides, we can keep an eye out for Poppy, too. She and Venus might not be together.”
“Good point. Now go. Hurry,” I said and watched Jadis, Miranda, and Fallon dash away as I pulled my mostly useless wand from my robes. I didn’t honestly think it would help me if I crossed paths with either Venus or Poppy — the most damage I could do would be to blast a stain off their robes with my cleaning spell — but it was still better than nothing, and it made me feel more confident. “Come on, Thorn,” I said, nodding at the dark staircase behind me.
“Not so fast. I’m going first,” he said, and pulled his wand from his robes. “Lumino,” he muttered, and the tip of his wand flared. I repeated the spell, hoping it would ping Blair again and alert her to where we were, just in case, and followed Thorn through the door and onto the staircase.
Maybe it was partly because of my panic, but the journey downstairs seemed to be a much longer and darker one than it’d been previously. I didn’t want to admit it, but as I stared at the back of Thorn’s head while we took step after step, I also appreciated not having to go into this blind and alone because I had no idea who or what I’d find.
“We’re here. Watch your step,” Thorn whispered at last and offered me a hand as I reached the last stair, but I ignored the offer. Instead, I raised my wand high above my head to let its rays of light spill out across the room. Disappointingly, I saw nothing to suggest there’d been activity.
“This way,” I whispered back, pointing in the direction I’d last seen and spoken to Declan. Though Thorn seemed uneasy about it, he let me take the lead. With every step I took closer to the spot on the wall where I’d left Declan sitting against it, my heart seemed to claw its way further up my throat.
Finally, the light from my wand reached the spot — but Declan wasn’t there. “No! No, no, no!” I hissed while panic swelled and pressurized inside my chest. Frantically, I whirled in a circle, looking for something, anything, to clue me into where he might’ve gone. When I didn’t find a shred of a clue, I froze and took a series of deep breaths to calm myself down and think clearly. Just because Declan wasn’t where I’d left him didn’t mean that Venus or Poppy had gotten to him; he might’ve just moved on his own.
“What’s wrong?” Thorn asked.
“The last time I saw Declan, he was right here against the wall, but he’s gone.”
Thorn retraced my circle, examining the surrounding hall to see if I’d missed something, which annoyed me.
“I already looked; I didn’t see—”
“Shh!” Thorn hissed, holding a finger to his lips. “Listen. I hear voices.” I stood rooted to the spot and cupped a hand around my ear to amplify the sound. I heard something, but it was too far away for me to make out whether it was really a voice or something else. “Come on,” Thorn said, and waved me back in the direction we’d come from.
We hurried down the hall and back into the main room where the staircase led up to the foyer, careful not to trip over each other or any of the crates and stacks of random objects Lox and Keez had collected and piled along the walls.
Speaking of the devils, as Thorn and I paused and strained to hear which direction the noises were coming from, a piercing squeal tore through the entire basement, and I knew right away that it could only have come from one of the twin imps. “Oh no, Lox and Keez!” I shouted and dashed off down a hall to my right where the sound seemed strongest with Thorn on my heels.
“Selena, wait! Slow down, we don’t know—”
His words cut off when I abruptly stopped and he slammed into my back, nearly sending me head over heels. I held my wand out in front of me to better illuminate what I hoped I wasn’t really seeing, but the light only confirmed what I’d feared: Lox and Keez lay injured in a tangle of wings, tails, and limbs at the center of the room we’d entered.
“Lox! Keez!” I shouted and, without thinking, ran toward and dropped to my knees at their sides. Thankfully, both had their eyes open and though they seemed dazed and spacey, their little chests were still rising and falling with breath. Even better, I didn’t spot any signs of physical injury on either of them.
“Look at their expressions. Someone hit them with a stunning spell,” Thorn said.
“Then we must be close,” I said and fought back a shiver as I looked around, wondering if Venus or Poppy were watching us and waiting for the opportunity to take us down next.
“I wonder what happened?”
“I don’t know, but look, there’s a door here,” I said and pointed at an unremarkable slab of wood built into the wall to my right. As I raked the light from my wand over it, a scorched spot by the handle drew my attention, so I crept closer to take a better look and recoiled at the acrid smell of freshly burnt wood. “Were they trying to get in there or something?”
“Maybe, but the door also could’ve just gotten caught in the crossfire of whoever was trying to stun the imps,” Thorn said.
