Page 128 of Nightshade

A force slammed into me, and the weightlessness of before crashed heavy in my gut, tickling as it climbed into my chest. I opened my eyes to black wings. Beautiful, raven black with hints of blue and purple. Warm skin against my cheek. The magnificent profile of a face and patched eye.

A fuzzy haze crawled over him, the fringes of my view closing in on all sides. Narrower. Narrower. Until only a pinprick of light flashed before my eyes and everything turned black.

41

Farryn

The sensation in my stomach rose up into my throat. I hit the water with a crash that sent an explosion of needles across my spine. Down, down, down.

Bubbles expelled upward, the last bits of air rising toward a surface too far to reach. I clawed at the aqueous walls that pressed down on me.

Pressure tugged at my chest, beating with desperation.

Breathe. Breathe!

I shot upright on a sharp inhale to find myself tucked in bed, the book I’d been reading the night before propped to the page where I’d left off. My mind rewound to what’d happened: the conversation with Aurelia and her going into labor. The details of what followed seemed blurry and out of focus, but I recalled screaming. Horrible screams. The cluster of women.

And Anya.

Muscles jolting, I scrambled toward the edge of the bed, right as the door clicked open and the devil herself peeked into my room. There, I halted, contemplating whether, or not, I could barrel through that door and knock her down along the way.

“Good morning, dear. Just thought I’d check to see you’re feeling well, seeing as you didn’t show up to the kennels this morning.”

“You …. I saw you. I saw what you did.” As soon as the words carelessly tumbled from my lips, my eyes shot to the lock on the door. Would she dare lock me inside? The door stood far enough away that I’d never reach it before she did.

“Saw what?”

“What you did to Aurelia. And her baby.”

Brows furrowed as if confused, she tipped her head. “Aurelia? I’m afraid I don’t know an Aurelia.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. You are not playing this game. Aurelia was here. She was pregnant. I’ve dined with her every night since I got here.”

Stepping inside the room, Anya cleared her throat. “Miss Ravenshaw, you’ve supped alone since the first night you arrived. One of the kitchen staff mentioned that you called her Aurelia that first night, but I simply chalked it up to the bump on your head and the fact you weren’t well-acquainted with anyone quite yet. There is no one here who goes by Aurelia, and I surely wouldn’t have had you keep company with someone I’d never met.”

“You’re lying! You and the others …. I watched you devour her. You ate her and her unborn baby! I saw it all!” I glanced down toward the floor, where there surely should’ve been blood. A speck in the cracks of the wood, or something, but I didn’t notice anything, at all. Kneeling, I looked closer, under the bed, and on the sheets on which I remembered the blood having sprayed. There was nothing. Not a damn drop of it.

Even if the evidence of Aurelia was nowhere, I hadn’t hallucinated what’d followed. “I ran. I ran across the yard to the cliff, and I jumped. But I forgot to eat the flower, so I fell. And I thought I was going to die, but Mister Van Croix, he caught me midair.” I was rambling. I never rambled, but damn it, Aurelia wasn’t just some figment of my imagination. Backing myself onto the bed once more, I felt a tickle of panic in my stomach, which reminded me of falling the night before, the absolute terror I’d felt in that moment.

The expression crinkling Anya’s face, tinged with worry, told me she didn’t believe a word I was saying. “Are you feeling all right? Admittedly, you’re frightening me, a bit.”

“Aurelia. Was. Real! She had a baby, and she was bleeding! There was so much blood that you and others fed on!” Again, I scanned over the floors, completely absent of any evidence.

They had to have cleaned it up while I slept, though it would’ve taken quite some time and effort to get that much blood sopped up. I should’ve recalled that at some point in the night, heard them scrambling about, but I must’ve slept hard.

Nodding, Anya stepped back toward the door, setting an alarm off in my head. “Very well. I’m fetching the doctor.”

“Yes, you were going to fetch a Doctor Venable. But you didn’t!”

“Doctor Venable? I don’t know a Doctor Venable, either.”

“Enough of this! You’re trying to make me look like I’m crazy, and I’m--” A piercing pain struck my skull, and I pressed my fingers there, clamping my eyes shut to jagged light. Dizziness and nausea swept through me, as if the room spun around me.

“Miss Ravenshaw, I’m urging you to lie back down before you hurt yourself.”

“I’m fine. I’m …, It’s a migraine. I get them …” I opened my eyes to floating objects in my field of view and Anya’s form blurring on the fringes. “Please stop messing with my head. Aurelia was … here. She was kidnapped.”

Warm hands guided me toward the bed, and as much as I wanted to push her across the room, the scent of Anya reminded me of Aunt Nelle’s perfume. It was called Nights in Paris and I remembered her sitting at her vanity, the evening wind billowing the long. white curtains, while the sounds of Chicago’s streets played a distant backdrop. She always had a jazz record going, and loved to smoke a cigar with a glass of wine as she performed her nightly rituals. The rich, tobacco scent, mingled with her perfume, had always set me at ease.