19. Chapter 19 #2
This was hardly the place to ask him to kiss me properly, Goddess damn it, but I still fought the itch on my tongue to do so.
My fingers blindly skimmed his jaw and traced the shape of his lower lip. “Are you mad at me for talking to Sybil?”
“I’ll get over it.”
I smiled, running my fingers through the back of his hair. “When did you come back?”
His breathing grew laboured. “A few minutes ago.”
I felt his hard swallow as I brushed my fingers over his throat. “How did you know I was here?”
My head tipped back when he nuzzled my neck and ran the tip of his nose down my pulse. “Did you know I can recognise your heartbeat from miles away? Did you know it drives me insane?”
I felt warm blood come down my nose and slip between my lips. “It’s not like I do it on purpose.”
I swallowed down a gasp when he pressed another quick, demanding kiss on my mouth, lingering just a little this time.
But it was long enough for every nerve ending in my body to fire with life.
I had the sudden need to tear my ribcage off with my bare teeth for not letting my lungs expand more, breathe in more until they’d finally burst.
He pulled back and slipped the ribbon off my eyes. His gaze seared as he licked his bloodied lips and then wiped the blood on my skin.
My smile might have looked a little crazy, but I didn’t really care. “Hi.”
His eyes paced between mine, his pupils growing wider and wider the longer he stared at me. “Hi.”
“So, I’m not in trouble?” I asked, finally noticing how many eyes were on us. And for some reason, I just couldn’t find it in myself to care about anything else but the way he was looking at me, the small smile lingering on his lips, the way his chest met mine with each harsh breath he inhaled.
“Oh, you’re in deep fucking trouble,” he said, his palms settling against my ribs. “But Alfred wants to see you.”
“Please tell him I’m not interested in him like that. He’s cute and everything,” I said, dragging my hand down his tie and keeping it there against his chest. “He just doesn’t do it for me.”
His fingers tightened against my ribs. “Cute and everything?”
I bit down my smile. “Why does he want to see me?”
“Apparently, you were right. The samples you’ve collected, he says they’ve changed the colour of the cold iron sheets you placed in them.”
Alfred was less than happy to see me in his laboratory, but he’d been very cooperative while we’d collected the samples from a new cadaver, unlike last time.
The specimens we’d collected from the Madness-infected cadaver had all turned the cold iron an acid green colour, just as I’d predicted.
A pretty conclusive indication for poison, and not the kind he was familiar with—whatever that substance had been, it had been poisoning the chaos in the vampire’s blood.
Despite Alfred’s aversion to matters of magic, his curiosity had betrayed him. Asking mile long questions per minute while also insisting he just couldn’t see what I could see. And all while refusing to re-learn anatomy the way I’d been taught it.
“This is the last time I might be able to do this,” he chattered, pacing back and forth as I discarded my gloves in soapy water. “If the results differ, we’d be back to ground zero. No lead.”
“There are other leads, Alfred.”
And they all connected to the Basilica. To those cursed tunnels and the well.
To Fredrick who’d risen from the dead. The same Fredrick who’d purposefully led me into town that day so I could see the burning witch.
He’d clearly known my temper, that I’d be pushed to use magic and subsequently killed.
The clergy was hiding something, I was sure of it.
Or at least…something was hiding in there, using the Basilica grounds as shelter.
I was close to cracking both of these eggs, to saving Ethel and leaving a solution behind for Logan to solve this Madness once and for all.
But I knew I was running out of time. I could feel it in the way my body was starting to refuse obeying simple commands.
While the cold iron worked on the new samples we’d collected, we sat at his desk, having tea.
“Alfred,” I started, too many questions clawing at the walls of my brain. “You’re a man of science. You’ve sworn yourself to the academy of medicine to be honourable, to uphold the truth, to do no harm.”
The old human man took off his round specs, wiping them on the corner of his shirt. “What are you getting at?”
“How many of my sisters have died these past few years? I’m sure as head coroner you would know.”
He retracted back into himself, a shadow of something similar to fear covering his face. “My lady, I cannot—”
“What is this illness they speak of, Alfred? Is it truly that? An illness?”
His eyes lowered as he pulled his specs off again. “It is not. Not of the body, at least.”
The teacup shook as I lowered down on the table. “Please, Alfred. If you know something. Anything, just please. My friend’s life depends on it. The lives of many other innocent witches, too. I know it’s not just Meridian witches who are dying; Cassandra Duncan did, too.”
He swallowed and then sighed as he ran a hand over his bloodshot eyes. “I think it’s best if you see for yourself.” His fatigued gaze jumped to the door as he shakily reached for a piece of paper to scribble something that seemed to be an address on top of it. “This is where they’re buried.”
Nightshade Cemetery. Silverholm Street. Darkheim.
They’d been buried within my husband’s county. Not that far from the Duncan estate.
“Alfred?” I called, and all two-hundred and six bones in my body crushed under the weight of each letter I spoke. “Does my husband have anything to do with it?”
I’d doubted Gerda’s words from the start. Not even realising how easy I’d found it to trust him. How I still trusted him regardless. How I trusted his motives for hiding this from me. But I needed to know—I had to at least know. For Ethel, I had to exhaust every option I had to save her.
Strength had vacated my limbs as I waited for him to speak.
“It’s for you to decide how much hand he has in it.”
The tepid grey streets of Mortdale were swallowing me up. People pacing the streets blended into one floating dark wave of a haze as we rode west, back to Darkheim.
Logan leaned against the carriage wall as he read through the report Alfred and I had strung together after a second batch of tests.
I was so close to unlocking a puzzle that had been costing countless lives but all I could think of was him.
And the address that was still tucked in my corset.
I was so close—to having an answer for Agnes that could save Ethel, to maybe putting an end to this whole nightmare that was plaguing my kind, to dying.
The new ruby-adorned watch wrapped around my wrist ticked for long, long painful moments while he read through every note Alfred and I had strung together.
“It was pretty conclusive for poison,” I said, tasting every heavy note in the air. “Both tests. We ran them three times.”
“Magical poison,” he slowly said, struggling to articulate the concept.
“Before I present my theory to you, it is important that you know every detail.” I set a photo on Logan’s hands and grabbed Liam by his shoulders, bringing him forward in his seat. “Tell him.”
Logan leaned back, narrowing his eyes on Liam. “Tell me what?”
“That day—you know which—we went to the Basilica,” I started.
“I know. He’s not entirely useless.”
I glared at Liam and turned back to Logan. “We saw him again. The acolyte who I’m pretty sure was a dead human living in Meridian only a short year ago, called Fredrick Newman.”
Logan grabbed the picture. “And you’re really sure it was him?”
I smacked Liam until he almost dropped off his seat. “Can confirm, boss.”
“And?”
“And?” I asked, bewildered. “I told you, I sent his bloody corpse for burial. Embalmed. Sowed up. But not before I sliced through his brain. His heart. And every other organ in his body.” I shoved Liam forward again. “Tell him what he smelled like.”
Logan’s attention turned to Liam who sighed. “He was a vampire.”
I tapped a finger on the notes I’d written in my notebook. “He was human when I autopsied him. I can swear it, Logan. Note the level of decay when I’d received his corpse. Decay. Not petrification.”
“I believe you.”
Feeling less insane, I held my notebook up.
“Ethel sent me this for a reason. She must have known about it. I think there’s more of them out there.
All the dog-eared pages. I strongly believe they've infiltrated into Mortdale.” After blowing a heavy breath, I told him, “Sybil’s guard—he’s one of the corpses in my notebook.
He was most likely appointed to keep watch over her.
This has to be Agnes’s work. And I suspect that because I believe she’s used the Blood Chalice to create these new undead.
Only she as the Holy Mother has access to the Blood Caves where the chalice is kept. No one else.”
His frown was dangerously steep. “You’re not saying Meridian might have a hand in it? Do you realise what your accusation would mean, Willow?”
My hair follicles were itching, burning, begging to be pulled out of my scalp. “I don’t know what I’m saying anymore, but Ethel knows more than I know. She sent me this notebook for a reason. Maybe to warn me, but I’m not sure, Logan. I’m not sure at all.”
I took a deep breath, ironing back my line of thoughts.
“And now we come to this,” I said, unfolding my napkin to show him the scabiosa flower I’d plucked from the walls. “Smell it.”
My husband, though reluctant, trusted to do as I was asking him. “Honey.”