“Youarecontributing. Accurate cataloging is essential to my research.” He picked up his teacup with infuriating casualness.
My gaze fell to his hands. I imagined, for a moment, what it might feel like to have those elegant fingers wrapped around my throat. I wondered how long it would take, how many seconds of pressure before consciousness fled—whether he would watch my face, as my life slipped away. Would he catalog each stage of my death with the detached interest of a scientist observing an experiment, noting the exact moment my heart stopped beneath his touch?
I wondered too, if that was what he had done to his wife.
My little companion hummed with approval, raising the vivid image in my mind. I could almost feel the touch of his fingers. I could envision the slight furrow of concentration between his brows as he squeezed harder and harder until no breath remained in my lungs.
The vision dissolved, leaving only the reality of Dr. Ambrose sipping his tea, oblivious to the grotesque images that had played out behind my eyes.
The voice’s laughter echoed through my skull as it slithered back into the darkness.
“How long?” I asked, keeping my tone measured by force of will.
“How long what?”
“How long must I prove my basic competence before you will allow me to assist you directly?”
He studied me over the rim of his teacup, considering the question thoroughly, then he smirked. “That depends entirely on you, Miss Reed.”
I fought the narrowing of my eyes, but failed. “Very well,” I said, forcing my voice to remain calm. “I shall endeavor to impress you.”
He inclined his head, that damnable smile still playing on his lips as he returned to his breakfast.
We finished in silence, the earlier tension easing. When Agnes returned to clear our empty plates, she looked between us with obvious satisfaction, and smiled at me with such genuine goodness that I nearly recoiled.
Delicate things should not be allowed to trust so openly, I thought, they never knew how easily they could be broken and ruined.
“Shall we?” Dr. Ambrose asked as he stood.
I stood as well, smoothing my skirts. “Of course.”
We made our way through the house together, morning light growing stronger through the windows as Dr. Ambrose led me into his study, then to the greenhouse door beyond. Warm, humid air rushed out, carrying that familiar scent I still could not place.
“After you,” he said, holding the door.
I stepped into the greenhouse, breathing the scent in deeply, and tried not to think about how many more days oftedious cataloging I would have to endure before he deemed me worthy of real work.
The day was as mundane as I expected.
I stood at my workstation surrounded by dozens of small pots, each requiring examination and documentation.Cicuta maculatafrom the American colonies.Conium maculatumfrom Greece. Page after page of Latin names, origins, and condition assessments.
Within the first hour, my back ached and my fingers cramped from writing. By early-afternoon, the discoloration had crept farther up my wrists, though I kept my hands positioned carefully enough that it would not be obvious. I was determined not to give Dr. Ambrose any reason to question my capability.
Across the greenhouse, he worked with that same absorbed focus I had observed the day before. The distillation apparatus ran beside him, its glass components carrying liquids in a steady progression. He bent over his notes, rubbing his forehead in deep concentration, and occasionally reached for a reference text stacked at the end of the bench, cross-checking something against his observations with a small, dissatisfied frown.
I tried to focus on my own work, but found myself watching him—and his experiments—from the corner of my eye.
The logbook lay open beside him, but the notes were too far away to read. What I was able to determine with any certainty was that the belladonna extraction he had been working on the day before had yielded disappointing results.He had pushed it to one side and brought forward a different cutting, though I was unable to identify it from where I stood.
His fingers brushed a poisonous leaf, and I imagined the plant recognizing him. A colleague, perhaps, or a rival. Something equally as dangerous.
I forced my gaze away from his hands, focusing on his journal. The urge to cross the greenhouse and simply look at his notes was almost overwhelming.
Instead, I bent over my own log and wrote down the root structure of a hogweed seedling while trying to think strategically. I needed to find a way to impress him, to demonstrate my knowledge in a way he would not expect—to offer him something useful enough that cataloging would become an obvious waste of my time.
But how?
I was still calculating the geometry of this problem when something moved forward in my skull. It was the same feeling that had been present the day before—the slithering sensation I had grown accustomed to each time my companion emerged from the darkened depths. There was a directional pull against my eyes as my attention slid from my work without my permission. My gaze drifted from one corner of the greenhouse to the next, searching, though I still had no guess at what it wanted.
