Page 38 of This Vicious Hunger

Chapter Twenty-Three

I know about Olea.”

I stand in Petaccia’s lab the next morning, feet apart in a fighting stance.

As usual, even on a Saturday, the doctor is starting her day behind her desk, writing notes from some overnight spark of genius.

She is dressed in black and it highlights the pallor of her skin.

She looks tired, her hair frizzing around her head—but I don’t care. I need answers.

She glances up when I speak, pausing her writing, but doesn’t say anything, just peering at me expectantly. A rush of fury overtakes me.

“I know about the garden too,” I say. “How long were you planning to keep me in the dark? I thought we were supposed to be partners.”

Petaccia purses her lips. “What,” she says coolly, “exactly is it that you think you know?”

“Olea told me everything.” It’s a bluff, and one that I know within seconds hasn’t paid off.

“Well, if you know everything, why are you here?” Petaccia steeples her gloved fingers. It is strange, I realise, talking to her in this room without her vine coiling around her wrist. A pang of guilt almost stops me in my tracks, but I refuse to back down.

“Okay, not everything,” I admit. “But I know about the poison plants. I know Olea tends them at night. I know she’s your ward , for god’s sake.

Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?

All this time you’ve had me fannying around playing children’s science with those—” I gesture at the seedlings in the window, bigger than they were but still stunted by the full sun.

“The drought is a serious problem, Thora,” Petaccia snaps. “I wouldn’t exactly call it children’s science.”

“No? Then why is it that you share it with me but not Olea’s garden?

What on earth are you doing in there that is so, so…

” I can’t say it. I can’t even think it.

The memory of the bird touching Olea’s skin and falling down dead comes unbidden and I feel sick, a mixture of revulsion and vicious hunger deep inside me.

Unnatural. “I’ve been in the garden. I’ve seen it all.

I know that there’s more than what it seems.”

Finally, I think, I have Petaccia’s full attention.

She closes her notebook—different, I realise now, from the ones we have always written in together.

Different, too, from the one she gave me to read her notes.

She slides this into the top drawer of her desk.

Her eyes are narrow, but thoughtful rather than angry.

“If you have spoken to Olea, then you must know I spend very little time in her garden. And what time I do spend there is focused on helping her to create a—a catalogue of sorts. Olea is a very talented gardener and she has been working on her little… project, I suppose you could call it, since she was young. All I have done is encourage her affinity.”

“For poison plants,” I say. As if that is the most normal thing in the world.

“Yes, poison plants, amongst other things.” Petaccia shrugs.

“It’s also an area I myself find fascinating.

And why not? All of nature’s miraculously self-defensive plants being encouraged to grow in one place—it’s quite the marvel, isn’t it?

And as I said to you when we first met, it has always been my goal to encourage other women in science.

Olea’s science is just a little more… unorthodox.

Scholarship does not suit her, she is too…

” Petaccia searches for the word. “Frail.”

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me about it,” I grind out. “Do you not think that I deserve to know? I live right above the garden.”

“Well, I can hardly be blamed for that.” Petaccia’s face is a mask. I don’t know , I think. Can you?

The anger rises in me again. This whole conversation is going nowhere.

I want to know how much Petaccia knows about Olea’s affinity , as she calls it, and whether she has seen the results like I have, or whether she, too, has been kept in the dark, if all her notes about exposure and tolerance are just that—notes.

Half-baked ideas at best. The doctor must see the anger in my face because she shifts in her seat and rolls her shoulders.

“Look,” she says. “It’s true I haven’t been entirely honest with you about the real nature of my research at St. Elianto.

My work in the lab is important, and it’s better I do it than that hack Almerto.

Can you blame me for keeping a little back for myself?

You’ve seen what the others are like, how they crave fame and fortune without wanting to work for it.

What real proof have I that you are any different from those praise-grabbing male students out there?

And, yes, maybe you’ve gained some trust. But let’s get one thing straight: I haven’t any obligation to share my other research with you.

I told you that you would have to prove yourself, and my ward’s work in the garden is not mine to share. ”

“But—” I protest. Petaccia stands so quickly that the creak of her chair startles me and I step back, instinct reminding me of every time Aurelio ever did the same. I let out a frustrated breath.

“Let me finish.” She clasps her hands behind her back and strides around the desk until we are truly face-to-face.

Up close the dark circles under her eyes are more apparent than ever, and I wonder if she, too, is struggling to sleep at night.

“We stand upon a most important precipice. And, yes, perhaps it is time for me to open up to you.”

“Tell me,” I say urgently. “Please. I’m so tired of always being one step behind. Let me prove to you that you’ve made the right choice.”

It isn’t what I intended to say, nor is it what I expected when I marched into the lab ready to walk away from it all if Petaccia dared lie to me again.

As always, the lure of true knowledge, of being part of the inner circle, turns me into that same child who begged to learn to read, who stole books under the cover of night, who risked her whole life and future for just one more page .

Petaccia shakes her head. The ground rushes beneath me like a river, lightheadedness threatening to engulf me. I lean against the doorframe, breath coming in short bursts. The doctor doesn’t move, only watches me curiously. I pull myself together.

“Tell me,” I spear through gritted teeth, “or I will make sure that everybody knows just how dangerous your little garden experiment really is.”

Do I mean it? I don’t know. In that second, maybe I do. I draw myself up to my full height and give the hardest stare I can muster.

Petaccia smirks. “ There she is.” It is almost a croon.

“Good girl.” Her smile grows at my confusion, like that of a wolf, slow and sinister as a snarl.

She rubs her hands together and then claps them.

This time I don’t jump. “You’re finally starting to think like an achiever.

Devour all the knowledge and fuck the rest. I think…

rather than tell you—perhaps it will be better to show you. Come with me.”

“La Vita has always been a hub of cutting-edge research,” Petaccia lectures as she leads me out of the lab.

I follow her into the dusty stairwell, grateful for the cool dimness and a chance to slow my racing heart.

“My parents met at the university and worked here all their lives. I was practically raised here. Of course, it was very different back then. They had half the funding and twice the inexperienced staff. Work was stolen, names changed on academic papers. It was a mess.”

The doctor turns to smile at me over her shoulder and it’s that same wolfish grin, a flash of stained teeth in her ghostly oval face.

She’s mad , I think abruptly. It’s not genius, but lunacy.

But it’s a fleeting concern. I’m more focused on making sure I don’t trip.

Until I know more, I plan to reserve my judgement.

“Anyway, there’s a lot of their theories at play in my own work.

My father, especially, was fascinated by the life-death cycle, in both animals and plants.

He became convinced that the end of life was merely another stage, like birth or adolescence.

Not just in words but… how do I put this—in essence? ”

“My father believed something similar,” I say despite myself. “That’s why he used to say that grieving and care of the body were so important.”

“Ah yes, but you see this is where your father and I always differed. Don’t misunderstand me, he was one of the most respectful undertakers I’ve ever met—and I’ve met a handful over the years.

But when I talk about life stages I don’t talk about birth, adolescence, adulthood, death.

I talk about birth, life, and afterlife. ”

“Of the soul…?” I venture. We’ve reached the middle landing of La Vita, whose locked doors I have tried many a time to no avail.

I’ve assumed they were the same as the room on the ground floor, where we unpacked the imported tree, though I’ve never stopped checking, just in case. Petaccia holds out her hand to halt me.

“Not an afterlife of the soul,” she says. “Of the body.”

She pulls a ring of keys from one of the pockets of her top skirts and inserts a tiny brass one into the lock of the door to our right.

It swings open to reveal a deceptively large, dim room.

There is a single window draped in muslin; a long metal table runs the length of the room, ditched in the middle like the base of a valley, with grates in the floor at several intervals and taps for running water.

On the back wall runs a battery of metal cages, perhaps ten feet tall stretching from floor to ceiling—covered at top and bottom by some kind of spongy material.

Some cages are larger than others and many are empty.

Those that are not house shredded hay bedding and rats, mice, the odd small bird, and in one even a rabbit.