What is happening?she thought. Her mind moved slowly, and a fog of confusion settled over the panic. Each breath she took was labored, as though some invisible creature sat on her chest. Her heart beat slowly, and a foul taste filled her mouth. Drool dripped from her lips, but there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“Yellow jasmine,” said a voice. It was a man’s voice, high and nasally. He spoke with a saccharine aristocratic accent.
Elswyth tried to jump from her bed, but her body would not move. She forced her eyes to the right, scanning the room.
A shadow sat at the tea table near the balcony doors. A thin wash of moonlight illuminated his features: short, with gray hair and dangling jowls. He wore a somewhat ragged suit that must have been expensive once and a tall top hat of black silk. Over his eyes, he wore a pair of violet spectacles. His skin was pale and his lips were the blue of a drowned man.
“Also called gelsemium,” he continued. He raised a hand, and small yellow flowers sprouted from the veins at his wrist, forminga bouquet. “Pretty little flowers, no? And a powerful paralytic. You’re stuck.” He giggled. When he smiled, his teeth were tinged with violet.
Elswyth tried to sayWho are you?but she only managed to moan.
“What was that?” the nasally man said. He stood and nearly danced across the room to Elswyth. He carried the chair with him, which he set by her bed.
Elswyth tried to speak again.“What… do… you… want?”
The man smiled, eyebrows raised. “My. Most would be incapacitated completely with this amount of jasmine in their blood. I was told you were strong, but I had no idea. ’Tis such a shame. In another life, I’d have you as an apprentice.”
Elswyth focused on her blood, feeling the poison there.Yellow jasmine, she thought,Gelsemium sempervirens.
The man with the purple lips leaned back in his chair, and something silver flashed in his hand. Elswyth’s eyes widened.
He examined the knife, a foot of gleaming metal with quick, serpentine curves. Green liquid dripped from the edge, running through veins on the blade. Even from her place on the bed, she could smell the acrid poison.
“I do hate to take such a talented floromancer from the world. So little of the old blood left. Still, no reason to dally, I suppose. What must be done must be done. Although I may take my time. I do take such pleasure in my work…”
The man giggled again as he traced the tip of the blade on Elswyth’s arm. A red line followed it, spilling blood onto the sheets. Through the fog of the yellow jasmine, she could barely feel it.
Then the man raised the blade high, the metal reflecting the moonlight, and brought it down, driving the tip toward her stomach.
Elswyth rolled; she sprung from the bed just as the blade tore into the mattress below her. Feathers plumed in the air.
She stumbled. Her body collided with the wall on the far side of the room, still drunk from the jasmine. The moment he’d told her the name of the poison, she’d begun fabricating the antidote into her blood. Gelsemium was a common paralytic; it had been one of the first poisons Kehinde had taught her.
She scrambled for the door. Behind her, the man giggled.
“Splendid! She’s formidable,” he said.
Elswyth had her fingers around the door handle when the vine wrapped around her neck.
She gagged; the ivy was like a hand around her throat, crushing her windpipe. The door handle slipped from her grip as the vine wrenched her backward. She tried to scream, but the ivy twisted more tightly around her throat. Soon she was scratching at it, trying in vain to breathe.
A weight slammed into her, forcing her back. Her head hit the wall, and the vine at her throat was replaced by a firm hand. Through the fog of her vision, she could see the blue-lipped man in front of her. See the crags of his violet teeth, the jowls that wobbled as he spoke, as pale and smooth as fish bellies, and his spectacles like two dark holes, staring at her.
“Tut tut, Miss Elderwood. You wouldn’t want anyone to learn there was amanin your bedroom, would you?”
Elswyth squirmed in his grip. She tried to push him away. Hemlock essence seeped from her hands, and she smothered the man’s face with it.
He only smiled, skin glistening. Then he licked his lips. “Delicious.”
From the hand around her throat, poison spread. It fanned in waves, making her skin blister. Pain wracked her body and bloodpooled in her mouth. She tried to identify the poison, but it seemed there were hundreds of them, all mixed together in patterns she could not determine. There was no time to fabricate an antidote, not when she didn’t know which poisons to treat.
She screamed. She screamed from the pain and the fear, but the man’s hand moved from her throat to her mouth.
“Go to sleep, Miss Elderwood,” the man whispered. His hand pushed harder over her mouth, and her screams stopped. His breath filled her nostrils: the smell of old wine and rotten poppies. His teeth shone darkly in the moonlight, though the rest of him was cloaked in shadow. A smile without a face. “Dream sweet dreams for me.”
The tip of the dagger traced over her nightgown… and then slid into her belly. Pain exploded up her spine, making every limb seize. Her eyes bulged and she gagged into the man’s hand.
“Shh…” the man whispered. “Quiet now.”
