Page 26 of A Curse On Black Lake (Black Lake Gothic Cowboys #1)

Chapter twenty

Eliana

Vines with thorns so sharp they drip with my grief stricken blood, consuming my pain as they grow from my chest, crawling over my breastbone, to my collar and gripping into my shoulders digging deeper and deeper.

Part of me wishes Killian would go so I can cry and bleed in peace. Lean into the pain.

But I’m also glad he’s here. I take a ragged breath and another sip of my lavender tea, silently begging for respite.

No one has held me while I cried. I don’t feel so alone with him, so broken by loss. There’s another part of me, the one I don’t want to address, that begs me to crawl back into his lap and tell him to hold me and never let go.

He stood up for me.

He let me cry.

He gave me relief.

Killian lifts the mug to his lips, and his eyes widen. “Wow, that’s good.”

“Thanks, it’s my own blend,” I sigh.

“Hey, I have a question. Since you know so much about plants, do you know that weed-looking flower that pops up randomly?”

I nod, knowing the one. When I was little and it popped up overnight, I would pick it so I could study the flower. I always thought it was pretty.

“Do you know anything about it? Why does it come up randomly?” he asks.

A feeling in the back of my mind tickles, and the Spirits are strangely silent, and it dawned on me that when Killian was holding me they went really quiet. As if he told them to let me be.

“I know Grams did some research on them to see if there was some medicinal value. We can look,” I tell him, setting my tea down.

He follows me into Gram’s study, where generations of Greers have studied, collected information, and created different remedies, tonics, and poultices to help people in the community. I’ve ruined our legacy.

Nausea crawls up my throat, and I swallow it down, breathing in the small room that still smells like her. It’s filled with shelves that go almost to the ceiling. There’s a desk sitting on a rug in the center with a little table off to the side where testing is done.

The Greer journals are all stacked across a few shelves by date, going all the way back to 1850.

“Wow,” Killian mumbles, looking at the shelves filled with books.

I smile and drag my finger across a line of spines pressed together.

Grams started her own collection, complete with drawings, explanations, warnings not to mix with specific materials, and warnings for women who need help, but could be pregnant.

Some of these plants could severely hurt someone if used the wrong way.

“Grams was very good at what we do. She found a lot of ways to help people heal mentally and physically, get pregnant, and feel better.”

“Sounds like she had been teaching you for a long time,” Killian says.

I glance at my own growing stack of journals.

A lot of it was research already done, but when I was younger, it was the practice of the thing.

Soon those journals turned into full scale sketches.

I tried to capture every detail I could with the naked eye.

In the others, I created my own recipes, trying them on myself as much as I could.

Similar to the tea that helps calm anxiety.

“She taught me everything I know. She saved me too…” I trail off. I don’t want to talk about my parents, but I opened the door.

Then again, death seems to surround both of us.

“What did she save you from?” he asks carefully.

I look over my shoulder, and his eyes find mine. The beat of my heart becomes strangely louder, and blood rushes in my ears.

“My parents died when I was seven. They drowned in Black Lake. That’s still all I know. Grams wouldn’t tell me the details, or she didn’t know. I eventually stopped asking.”

“A few years later you had your seizure,” he mutters.

I nod and self-consciously run my hand through my hair.

Tears brim in my eyes, and I force a deep breath, but it fills my lungs like razor blades, slicing me at every angle. I walk around the room, looking for the journal I know Grams put it in.

Moving a few stacks of books, I find it at the bottom. A piece of paper was sticking out of it. She probably left it there because she was going to come back to it. But never got the chance.

“Here it is,” I rasp.

Killian comes up behind me, waiting patiently for me to open the book.

It almost feels like I’m trespassing. I’m aware she doesn’t need any of this.

It’s not like she’ll catch me going through her things.

Not that she would care either, she always encouraged me to learn and study, ask questions no one had asked before.

I force my hand to grab the corner and open it, making my fingers flip through the pages until I find it.

Oddly enough, the paper was marking the spot. She probably wanted to study the flower more.

There is a picture of the flower she drew.

It’s small cone shape with purple flowers on either side going up the stem.

Long leaves frame the flowers. It’s quite pretty, and yet very strange that it’s here for a day and gone the next.

There’s one pressed between the next pages, snipped before it could die.

“This is it,” Killian says.

My throat tightens as I read the name and description of the flower.

Monitio Flos de Letum. Part of my schooling with Grams, on top of getting through typical high school, was to learn Latin.

Most research is in Latin when it comes to plants, naming them and where they fall in the scheme of things.

Are they just flowering plants, or do they produce a fruit or vegetable?

In this case, this flower, or weed, is nothing but a symbol.

I read what Grams wrote about the flower, based on her observations, and my stomach lurches.

It would appear that this flower correlates with a death in Black Lake. A woman was murdered a year ago. Considering the timeline that was given by the local paper, the flower sprung up possibly later that night after she was killed. The weed or flower also came up when Eliana’s parents drowned.

“What?” Killian asks.

I step to the side, letting him read it. He glances at me and studies the flower. “What does the Latin mean?” he asks.

“I have a feeling you already know,” I mumble.

“Enlighten me,” he drawls.

Skimming my tongue across my teeth, I look him in the eye and say, “Its direct translation is Warning Flower of Death. In other words, Death Flower.”

“Do you think the timing of the weed coming up is truly connected to death? That’s a bit far-fetched, isn't it?” he asks.

I shrug and trace the lines of Gram’s drawing. It’s not very good. She was never very good at drawing, but she could describe every detail.

“If Grams said it is, then it is,” I tell him.

His brows squish together as he rubs his beard.

“Why are you asking about this?”

He drops his hand, slipping it into his pocket. “I found it in the woman’s hand … the woman on my land, as if he picked it the last time it came up. I’m starting to think the killer has a strange sense of humor, using this as a signature.”

Bile rises in my stomach, and I think back to when Grams died. It sprung up then too, but I didn’t think much of it.

“Do you know how dry it was?” I ask him.

Drying plants is a long process. If the person drying it wants to maintain the integrity of the bloom, it has to be done carefully, with temperature control, and making sure moisture is pulled from the piece so it doesn’t mold.

It’s not difficult, but it does take attention.

“I didn’t touch it, but now that I think about it, it wasn’t flat like this one between the pages. It was as if someone had cut it from the stem and dried it without disturbing a petal. The shape and everything was intact, but the color was dull.”

“Kind of like the lavender?” I ask him.

“I mean, sort of, but that could have come from anywhere,” Killian says.

“You said it’s a signature. You’ve seen it before?”

He nods absently.

“Were the others like that?” I ask him.

He rubs the back of his neck, flicking a look at me. “I can’t remember if it was all of them for sure. It was years ago. I distinctly remember a few with the flower, though.”

“Based on what you told me, he’s meticulous. Which tells me he would have the skill to be able to dry flowers like that. Again, it’s not that it’s difficult, but for something to be so perfectly intact means temperature control. A space for the flower to hang without being disturbed.”

“How do you know it’s a man?” Killian asks.

“I don’t know, but I find it hard to believe a woman did this.”

“I agree. I don’t like to assume, but I’ve always thought the same,” he says.

“So what now?” I ask him.

His jaw ticks as he thinks. “It means we have more information than Wyatt, at least I think. But this flower might mean more than simply a note from the killer.”

“Do you think he’s trying to communicate?” I ask him.

“Maybe,” he grunts.

I turn the page and on the back is a note from Grams, explaining that other Greer women have studied this flower, and that it’s tied to something else.

That’s odd.

Answers can be found in our past. The Spirits say.

“Does this have to do with everything else?” I ask them out loud.

“What?” Killian says.

It is possible.

“What are they saying?” Killian asks.

Ignoring him, I grab past journals from my ancestors. I don’t recall ever seeing this flower in the other journals, but it’s feasible that I missed it, assuming it was lilac or another flower.

“I think there’s more to this Death Flower.”

“How is that? These types of offenders are good at providing meaning that only makes sense to them. That’s partly why they call it a signature,” he says.

“That might be true, but I think in this case it means something else.”

“Like what?” he asks, tilting his head.

I can’t help but smile. He’s so cute. I’m not going to say it, but I want to.

But I won’t.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing, uh, I wonder if my ancestors have any information on this flower. It’s just so specific. You have to be ready to catch this weed. And the fact that it pops up at random times despite the fact people are dying all the time, especially here in Black Lake, is very strange.”

Everything has balance. Everything is linked.

My hands tremble, and my stomach hardens with their words. It feels like I’m starting to trudge into the swamp, and I can’t see what’s below me, but I have no choice but to plunge myself under the dark water.

I grab the journal that would be my great grandmothers and start flipping through the pages.

“Can I help?” Killian asks.

“Yeah, grab the next one.” I point without looking.

He comes to my side with the next book and carefully opens it, turning each page one by one.

After I finish hers, I move to my great-great grandmother, Juniper.

My great-grandmother named her daughter after her mother.

Five pages in, I find a description and the name of the flower.

Not much information is provided, but my she picked up on the strange correlation between death and life of the plant.

It’s not something I’ve ever seen occur in nature before — as if God Himself sends the flower to grow when someone dies. But it’s almost pointed, only for specific people, not all deaths.

Moving on to the next one. Killian finishes with his and pushes it back on the shelf next to the one I returned. His thick finger drags across my hand before he reaches over for the next one, and I can feel my cheeks heat under his gaze.

I wanted to kiss him earlier, but it felt wrong. We had been talking about the people we love the most. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t want to kiss my friend.