Page 30 of A Witch’s Guide to Love and Poison

30

W ith Xander’s help, Bisma made more of the cure. She told him to rest—that she could do it herself—but he wanted to see how she had accomplished the feat that had eluded them all these weeks.

‘Brilliant,’ he said, shaking his head in awe as she showed him how she had grown gulkhaira, a single-blossom flower that was rose pink, shading into pink and white. She had used the root of the plant to treat stomach disorders before, and with some magic and manipulation it was just what their cure needed. ‘Bis, you’re absolutely brilliant,’ he said, looking at her with wonder in his green eyes. She smiled to herself, cheeks warm.

When the cure was ready, they treated her sisters together: Deeba first, then Azalea, Nori, Mei, and, lastly, Luna. They were all groggy and grumpy, as if waking from a midday nap that had accidentally turned into a day-long slumber.

‘My tummy hurts,’ Nori said, pouting, while Azalea groaned.

‘I feel awful,’ Luna said.

‘Owie,’ Mei added, rubbing her eyes.

Deeba whimpered as Bisma scooped her into her arms, cuddling the toddler.

‘Nori, get off,’ Luna complained, as Nori stretched out on top of Luna.

‘But you so warm,’ Nori said, cuddling closer, smiling at having successfully vexed Luna.

‘Go bother Azalea—she’s warmer,’ Luna said.

Azalea shot up. ‘Do not bother Azalea,’ she warned.

Bisma had never been happier to hear their noisy complaints; the greenhouse was brimming with them. With all the girls awake, the private space that was hers and Xander’s now felt crowded, but in the very best way, all of them snuggled tight and cozy.

‘I missed you so much,’ Bisma said, going to kiss each of them.

Deeba jumped from her arms onto the cot to snuggle with Mei, while Bisma hugged Luna tight. Azalea waved Bisma off when Bisma approached.

‘It’s too early in the morning for this,’ Azalea fussed, but Bisma didn’t care, she plopped a kiss onto Azalea’s cheek.

‘Where are we?’ Nori asked, looking around with wide blue eyes.

‘I’m starving ,’ Luna added.

They were all sitting up now, taking in their surroundings.

Bisma felt Xander’s hand at the small of her back, and she turned to look up at him.

‘You girls get reacquainted. I’ll get some food,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she said, reaching up on her tiptoes to brush a soft kiss against his cheek.

His face lit up with such innocent cheer that she wanted to kiss him properly, but she was aware that all her sisters had stopped their complaining and curious glances to watch with shocked faces.

‘EW.’

‘What was THAT?’

‘BAJI?!’

Xander laughed as he walked away, leaving Bisma to face the girls.

She smiled shyly. ‘ That was none of your business,’ she said, walking over to Xander’s bed to grab a blanket. ‘Mei, help me set this down.’ She and Mei placed the blanket on the floor for them all to sit, and Azalea grabbed pillows. As the girls crowded on, getting cozy, she continued, ‘Xander helped me find the cure that saved you all.’

The girls had a thousand questions, ranging from asking how the goats were (Nori) to how long they were asleep (Mei) to what exciting gossip they had missed (Azalea). Bisma answered all of them, everyone talking over one another as they came up with more and more questions. She had missed them so sorely: each of their voices, their expressions, their touch. Her heart panged.

Then Xander joined them with food—a hearty vegetable soup with warm bread and baked potatoes topped with golden butter and melting cheese—and the girls ate their fill, growing more and more energetic as their weakness wore off, their voices and laughter increasing in volume by the minute.

They all laughed and teased. Deeba looked on in wonder at all of them, speaking her own gibberish, her little chubby hands squeezing Bisma’s.

Bisma held Deeba close. She had nearly lost all of this … that could never happen again. Now that they were all alright, she needed to find out who did this. She would get revenge.

Eleanora was the only promising lead she had come up. But how to bring it up? How to investigate?

And there was now a glaring hole in her theory—why would Eleanora poison Xander? Even if only to hurt Bisma, it was hard to consider that Eleanora would risk her precious son.

‘What is it?’ Xander asked, as if he could sense her thinking.

She turned to him, to his patient, kind face, the face that she loved so dearly. She couldn’t do it—she couldn’t tell him her suspicions, not without evidence. ‘I—’

She broke off, noticing a figure lurking behind Xander. In the shadows outside the greenhouse, Frederick was watching her.

When her gaze met his, he spun on his heel and disappeared.

Why was he watching them?

‘Bis,’ Xander said, brows furrowed. ‘What’s wrong?’

She cleared her throat. ‘Nothing.’ She stood. ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ she said, smiling reassuringly at the girls and Xander.

‘Anything I can do?’ he asked.

She touched his cheek. ‘No, thank you.’

Bisma slipped away from the greenhouse, leaving them chatting and laughing. She went to the mansion; she knew where the back door to the laundry was and it was easy to sneak in from there.

Inside, she ducked away from servants, not wishing to be seen. Lurking quietly, she made her way upstairs, going to the wing that housed all the family’s rooms. She soon found it—Frederick’s room.

Bisma slipped inside, closing the door behind her. A grandfather clock ticked in the corner, as she looked around, her heart beating fast. Frederick’s desk was clean, but she pulled open the drawers, finding vials from the Apothecary; she recognized the special glass bottles imported from Castletown.

They were regular-looking potions, nothing suspicious or strange. In his papers she saw maps of town, blueprints, nothing of any use.

Bisma glanced out the window behind the desk. Down below, Frederick was talking to a group of men who looked to be workers—surely the workers on his expansion project.

Her thoughts raced. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the poisonings began soon after Frederick came to town. Bisma had been too preoccupied suspecting Eleanora to consider someone just as powerful and resourceful. She had ruled him out because he was not a garden-witch, but what if … ?

Bisma looked out the window again, and this time, Frederick and the men were gone. Logically, she knew that she should have left his room before he returned, but she wanted answers. And she wanted them now.

Setting her jaw, Bisma pulled out the leather chair in front of Frederick’s desk. She sat down, making herself comfortable. Then she waited.

A few minutes later, the door opened and in came Frederick.

He didn’t look surprised to see her; he looked as if he had been expecting her.

Anger flared through her. What was going on?

‘That is my seat, you know,’ Frederick said, entering the room. He closed the door behind him.

‘Why were you watching us?’ she asked, her voice hard.

Seeing that Bisma had no intention of getting up from his chair, Frederick pulled out the chair across the desk from her, taking off his coat and setting it on the back of the chair before sitting down. He crossed his legs languidly, as if he had all the time in the world.

‘I wondered when you might put two and two together and come see me,’ he said, and it was unnerving how similar the cadence of his speech was to Xander’s.

All of it was unnerving, really: the green of his eyes, the fall of his hair. This was her beloved’s uncle, and though on the surface, they may have resembled each other, he was missing all the heart that made Xander, well, Xander .

‘Put what together?’ Bisma asked, grinding her teeth. She was horribly confused.

‘It might be simpler if I showed you,’ Frederick said. He stood with ease; he didn’t seem alarmed to have Bisma in his room, questioning him. The man was just as confident, just as secure—even as he pulled something out from one of the desk drawers and set it upon the table.

It was one of the vials she saw earlier.

‘Wouldn’t open it, if I were you,’ he said, sitting back down, and suddenly she understood. It was the poison.

She itched to inspect it, and he noticed as much. ‘Alright, go on,’ Frederick said, his voice amiable. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter whether or not you get infected now that you’ve found a cure.’

‘You’re the one who’s been poisoning us? Why?’ she demanded. ‘What have I ever done to you?’

‘Xander always talks about how intelligent you are.’ Frederick glanced at the grandfather clock, then smiled, leaning back in his chair. ‘Why don’t I give you a moment to figure it out, dear?’

Her mind was racing—Bisma’s original theory was that this was all about Leilani. Xander had said Leilani was like an aunt to him, that she and Eleanora were best friends … What if Frederick had loved her?

He and Eleanora could be united in seeking revenge—the poison had clearly been made by Eleanora. The bottles were made of special Castletown glass, which only the Apothecary used. Even so, one thing still didn’t make sense.

‘Why poison Xander?’

Frederick nodded. ‘Ah, yes, a small hitch in the plan,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t meant to be poisoned. That was meant for you.’

She furrowed her brows. But then she recalled meeting Frederick at the festival, how he had kissed the back of her hand and squeezed her palm. He had been wearing gloves.

‘The poison was meant for me,’ she said, blinking. She understood how the poison worked then. ‘The poison is transferable.’

‘Yes,’ he affirmed. ‘Transferred through a touch or a kiss, maybe.’

Bisma felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. That was how her sisters were poisoned, even when they hadn’t left the Enchanted Forest, when they hadn’t even left the treehouse, because she was the one bringing it straight to them.

‘You didn’t account for the risk of me transferring it to Xander?’ she asked. ‘Even though we were at the festival together?’

‘I am not so callous with my beloved nephew’s life,’ Frederick said, for the first time seeming offended by her words. ‘I gave you a more potent dose that night, which should have affected you immediately, but I should have accounted for my nephew’s charms on the most romantic night of the year. Again, a slight hitch in the plan, but it’s no matter.’

‘What plan?’ she demanded. She was still so confused; she had so many questions.

‘I’ll answer all your questions, dear, so do take your time,’ he said. She didn’t understand that, either.

‘Why are you answering my questions?’

He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Well, the jig is clearly up so I might as well feed your curiosity,’ he replied.

Her thoughts were all jumbled. She didn’t know where to begin.

‘You said the poison is transferable,’ she said.

‘Yes. It was easy enough to have someone brush by you in town, transferring the poison to you,’ Frederick explained. ‘Then you would take the poison home and transfer it to one of your sisters. You lot are always so affectionate. And before you ask, “Well, Frederick, why not just poison the girls directly when they came to town?” I’ll tell you that, too. I needed the girls to be poisoned at home for it to really be effective.’

‘You and Eleanora were in this together,’ she said, a fact more than a question. ‘Only she could design such an intricate poison.’

‘Yes, all Elle’s genius, though I wouldn’t say we were “in this together”. She merely designed the potion; she doesn’t know what I used it for.’

‘But … I thought this was about Leilani … that Eleanora was getting revenge on me, that you both were?’ Her theory made no sense if Eleanora was not aware of what the potion was being used for.

‘Leilani?’ Frederick tsked, disappointed. ‘I thought you would understand by now!’ He stood up. ‘No matter, let me give you a hint.’

He came around the table, opening the drawer she had looked through earlier. Pulling out a roll of papers, he laid them flat on the table, showing her what looked to be the finalized blueprints for the town’s expansion project. It included tearing down the eastern neighborhoods—but where would they go?

As if sensing her question, Frederick lifted the page, showing her the answer.

‘But that land belongs to the Enchanted Forest,’ she said quietly.

This was never about revenge.

‘Yes! Now you’re finally understanding!’ Frederick said, pleased. ‘Why do you think I said the girls needed to be poisoned at home?’

Finally, finally , Bisma understood.

The rotting fruit, the Forest’s strange behavior—the thinning border fog. The Enchanted Forest was weak, and it was weak because the girls had been sick.

‘You poisoned us to weaken the Forest so you could cut it down,’ she said.

‘Now you’ve got it!’ He sat back down. ‘Nothing personal, of course, you must see that, dear girl? I figured out that the Enchanted Forest gets its power from you girls—what is a home without its inhabitants, after all? So I picked you off one by one to gradually weaken the Forest so we could demolish it.’

It had never been about her sisters, never about her. It had always been about the Forest.

Bisma was shaking with anger, but Frederick was as cavalier as ever. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk.

‘Oh, I am not evil,’ Frederick said. ‘I never wished to kill your sisters, or this all would have been much simpler! I knew if I poisoned your sisters, you would eventually find a cure, which is why I intended to poison you last. And I knew that even if you didn’t, then Xander would figure it out, or at the very least, Elle would, and by then Phase Two would be complete.’

Bisma’s mind reeled. Rage burned through her, making it difficult to move. She looked around for a weapon but found none. It was no matter; she would claw his eyes out with her own hands. He would suffer. But something he had said made her pause her plans for violence.

‘Phase Two?’ she repeated. ‘No.’ She stood. ‘Your plans have failed. The girls are awake, and the Forest still stands. We are healed, and the Forest will recover, as well. It was all for nothing.’

He gave her a look of pity then, one that chilled her down to her bones.

‘Oh, sweet girl,’ he said, frowning as if he felt very sorry for her indeed. ‘I never wanted you girls to stay ill forever, just for as long as I needed. You all woke earlier than scheduled—but you’re already too late.’

Her heart filled with dread as she thought of the men she had seen Frederick talking to outside the mansion, the workers. He had made her see him outside the greenhouse; he had wanted her to come ask him these questions. To stall her.

He had kept her here while the workers went to the Enchanted Forest to enact Phase Two—to tear down her home.

Bisma ran.