Chapter 14 #2
Bright white light burst behind my retinas, and the glowing flower the ghost had cradled in her hand bloomed in my vision as another image forced its way through—
Taking the scalpel from his hand, feeling the weight of it settle into my palm, the handle still warm from his grip.
I could bring the blade to my forearm and press down with just enough pressure to part the skin cleanly, and watch the flesh split open in a thin red line, the layers separating to reveal muscle and fascia beneath.
Then I would take the flower and press it into the wet tissue, tuck it between muscle fibers, and let it take root.
I could picture them spreading through my arm with pale, questing tendrils, seeking nourishment in blood and marrow, weaving themselves through the architecture of bone and vein until flower and flesh became indistinguishable from one another.
The voice sighed with deep contentment, a feeling of rightness and completion so profound it made my chest ache.
“Miss Reed?”
Dr. Ambrose’s voice cut through the vision. I blinked, my eyes refocusing on his face creased with concern, on the scalpel still clutched in his hand—not mine.
“Apologies,” I said, steadying my voice with effort. “I was lost in thought for a moment.”
"I will need your assistance,” he said, still frowning as he searched my eyes. “When I make the cut, you will need to hold the Bacopa stem steady. The cambium layers must align exactly or the graft will fail."
"Of course," I said, moving to stand beside him at the bench.
He handed me a pair of fine tweezers and a set of thick gloves. “Put these on so the hemlock sap does not touch your skin.”
I nodded, following his instructions.
"Ready?" he asked.
“Yes, ready."
He made the first cut with swift confidence, the blade slicing through the hemlock stem at a diagonal angle. The cut was clean, exposing the pale green interior tissue.
"Now the Bacopa," he said. "Hold it steady."
I positioned the tweezers, gripping the delicate stem just below where he needed to cut.
His scalpel slid with precision, creating a matching incision that would allow the two plants to join seamlessly.
"Excellent," he said, reaching for a vial filled with the nutrient mixture. He placed several drops onto each specimen where he had cut them, then nodded up at me.
"Now bring them together slowly."
I guided the Bacopa stem toward the hemlock rootstock, my entire focus narrowing to the point where the plant tissue would meet. His hands worked in tandem with mine, one holding the rootstock steady, the other ready with grafting tape.
We were so close now that his breath fanned against my temple, warm and steady, his concentration absolute.
The stems touched, aligning perfectly.
"Hold it," he breathed. "Just like that. Do not move."
His fingers worked carefully, wrapping the grafting tape around the union point several times, securing the joined plants until it was stable enough to heal on its own.
"There," he said finally, stepping back to examine our work.
I released my grip on the tweezers slowly, not wanting to disturb the delicate graft we had just completed.
We stood there for a moment, both of us studying the joined plants, and I found myself suddenly aware of how little space remained between us—of how his shoulder still pressed against mine, of how easy it would be to turn my head and find his face mere inches away.
It was dangerous, this attraction that pulled at me whenever he came close. He had entered my thoughts with the ease of a toxin absorbed through the skin—no moment of ingestion required, only proximity and time until the poison had already spread too far to extract.
Men were quite similar to treacherous plants, I supposed. They appeared harmless until they were inside of you.
In the plant's defense, however, poison, at least, was rarely hypocritical. It did exactly what it promised. It did not pretend to be harmless for moral reasons, it simply looked attractive and let fools make assumptions about whether or not it was safe to consume.
I stared ahead at the specimens, letting out a ragged breath.
He was my employer, though, a man whose secrets I was actively trying to uncover.
A man who might have killed his wife, leaving her ghost to wander these halls, possibly covered in the same vine that had been used to create Hawthorne.
And yet, my body refused to maintain appropriate distance, refused to recognize the danger my mind cataloged so methodically.
"Hawthorne was my wife's idea,” he said quietly, pulling me from my thoughts and cementing what I had already assumed.
M. was his wife.
I turned to look at him, stunned by his willingness to speak about her.
"Oh?" I managed, keeping my voice neutral, not wanting to say anything that might make him retreat back into silence before the conversation had truly begun.
He nodded, glancing at me with a knowing expression before reaching for the second hemlock specimen.
"She was brilliant. Far more so than I in many ways, though she would have argued the point.
" A small smile touched his lips, fond and painful in equal measure.
"She had this way of seeing connections I would never have noticed, of taking my rigid scientific approach and...
softening it. She made it flexible enough to imagine possibilities I would have dismissed. "
His hands moved automatically through the preparation for the next graft, muscle memory allowing him to work while his mind dwelt elsewhere.
"She loved plants. Truly loved them, in a way that went beyond scientific fascination.
She would spend hours just observing them, talking to them sometimes when she thought I was not listening. "
I watched his face as he spoke, saw the grief etched in the lines around his eyes, the love that still resonated in every word. It was not the countenance of a man who had murdered his wife. It was genuine loss, genuine longing for someone who had been taken too soon.
"She sounds remarkable," I commented.
"She was." He glanced up at me then, his eyes holding mine for a long moment. Then his gaze dropped to the green velvet ribbon at my throat. He stared at it, his expression shifting to something that I could have sworn looked almost like guilt before he mastered it.
He turned back to the specimens without another word, his jaw tight.
The conversation was over.
We finished the grafting in silence, our movements coordinated but our thoughts clearly elsewhere. When the final specimen had been secured and labeled, he stepped back from the bench.
"That should do for now," he said. "The grafts need time to establish before we can proceed further.”
He looked at me then, a frown creasing his forehead. “You look tired, and I have an appointment in town. You can take the rest of the day off, if you wish.”
It was a dismissal, gentle but absolute.
I removed my gloves, careful to avoid touching the sap that had leaked onto them, then stood there watching him for a moment as he cleaned the area.
How could I have suspected him of murder? How could I have entertained even for a moment the possibility that this man—who spoke of his dead wife with such devotion—had been responsible for her death?
Even the devil was an angel once, the voice reminded me darkly.
I pushed the thought away as I left the greenhouse, but it lingered nonetheless. The voice was right about one thing—I had seen what Dr. Ambrose was capable of creating, had read about the impossible made real through his research and determination.
And if he could bring dead tissue to life, what else might he be capable of? What other boundaries might he be willing to cross in the name of science or love?
The uncertainty terrified me more than any ghost ever could.