“Who else would pay Mr. Clipper well enough to acquire a blade like this?”
“But why send an assassin at all?” Percival asked. “Why attack you, and why now?”
“The Reaper sent the mandrake to spy on me. I captured that spy, but perhaps there are others. He might have heard that I discovered the truth and sought to end my life, lest I reveal it.”
Percival frowned. He dropped Elswyth’s hand and stood, beginning to pace around the bed. “Then he is watching you very closely now. And he is concerned enough that he hired a Nightshade Assassin to kill you. This is not good, Elswyth.”
“On the contrary, one could think that this is affirming. My efforts are bringing me closer to him. He is afraid.”
Percival rubbed his beard. “Perhaps,” he said. “There is no way to be sure. Only Mr. Clipper truly knows why he was there that night, and who sent him.”
Elswyth turned away, hiding her scar. “The only man who might have known the truth of the Reaper’s identity, and I killed him.”
Percival shook his head. He knelt next to Elswyth, taking herhands. “You had no choice. He would have killed you if you had not fought back.”
Tears stung her eyes. The rush of emotion surprised her. “I told myself that I would never kill again, and I cannot even keep that oath.”
Percival looked uncomfortable. He hesitated and then said: “Elswyth, I must ask. Dr. Gall made some rather frightening comments about… about the state of the man’s corpse. It was rotting. At first we weren’t sure what to think when we found you with him. It seemed as though he’d been dead for weeks. How exactly did you kill Mr. Clipper?”
Elswyth looked at Percival, mouth open. She wanted to tell him the truth, all of it, about her scar, about her abilities. But she couldn’t. He would never forgive her.
Still, she spoke. The words seemed to come of their own volition. She looked down, unable to meet his eyes.
“I can do it. Take the vitæ out of anything. Plants, animals… people.”
“I see,” Percival said. He tapped his finger on his cane. “I understood this to be impossible. In all my travels, I have never seen such a thing. There are folktales, of course. In China, I heard of witches who could drain the life from people with a kiss. Dim mak, they called it. Death-touch. But those were only stories.”
“I don’t know how I do it,” Elswyth said, “and I never choose to, not unless it’s absolutely necessary. After my mother died, my father caught me sapping mice in the basement. The vitæ from people and animals… it feels good. It helps me heal. Lets me do floromancy that no one else can. Father made me promise never to show anyone my ability. He called me a monster.”
Percival turned back to her. “You are not a monster. You did what you needed to do to protect yourself. That man deserved to die. Some people just do.
“I, for one, am glad that you have this ability. This will not be the last assassin the Reaper sends. He failed this time only because he underestimated you. A man with his resources… he will not fail again.”
Elswyth began to cry. “I don’t want to kill again, Uncle. The next time he comes, I won’t do it. I’ll find another way.”
Percival frowned. “You need to defend yourself, Elswyth.”
“I cannot,” Elswyth said.
“And if it were the Reaper himself, the man who took Persephone—what then? What other justice is there?”
“Uncle Percival, please,” Elswyth said. Tears ran down her face in warm streams. “I won’t, I won’t, Iwon’t.”
A look of sympathy came over him. “What is it, Elswyth?” He knelt beside her bed and looked up at her. She hesitated, struggling to make the words come.
“I killed her,” she whispered. “I killed my mother.”
Percival’s brows knitted together. He looked confused for a moment. “What? Cerise?”
“I killed her, Percival. It was me,” Elswyth said. The tears fell freely now, and she choked out each word.
“That’s… that’s nonsense. Cerise died of blight.”
Elswyth shook her head. “No. No, she never had it. She was healthy. It was me. I was the one who was sick. She was taking care of me.”
The memories washed over her, panicked portraits of those days in bed. Her a little girl, wracked with fever. Her mother, leaningover her, laying a damp cloth on her forehead. Her father, first speaking in hushed tones to the doctor, and then raging at him.
“Your father said—” Percival started.
