Poison (9 page)

I felt myself blushing so hard, I thought I would combust.

“Come in,” she said, laughing.

“No, really—”

She grabbed my sleeve and dragged me inside.

•  •  •

On the coffee table was a tray of fantastic-looking frosted cookies. “Did you make these?” I asked.

“No big deal,” she said.

Unfortunately, she was right. I took one bite, and it was all I could do to choke it down. It tasted like a year-old gingersnap.

“Yuck?” Morgan asked.

I had to help my peristalsis by massaging my neck. “No, they’re great,” I lied.

She laughed that wild, hearty laugh that made me want to laugh with her again. “Actually, they’re year-old gingersnaps,” she said. “I put a glamour on them.”

“Man, I got it right on the nose,” I whispered as the platter took on its original appearance. Mold was even growing on some of them.

“I was hoping I’d be able to fool you.”

I finished choking. “Did I tell you I’m a cook?” I asked.

“Wonderful. Cook for me.”

“And deprive you of creating these?” I pushed the cookie tray her way. We both laughed.

“Seriously, I’m glad you’re here,” Morgan said. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Thinking what?”

“About you being the Mistress of Real Things. How about showing me what you can do?”

I felt myself blushing again. “You’re kidding,” I said.

“No, I mean it.”

“It’s not very interesting. Mostly the history of tables and chairs.”

She shrugged. “How about this?” she asked, handing me a pewter and ceramic tankard. The pewter was pitted and thin, and the ceramic was so ancient, it looked like smooth stone.

“It’s really old,” I said.

“You think?” she said sarcastically.

“How old is it?”

She shrugged. “Fourth or fifth century. British, but of Roman design. Probably from the occupation of Britannia under one of the later emperors. Valentinian the Third, maybe.”

I set it down gingerly. “Wow,” I said. “You really know your history.”

She waved the compliment away. “So, what do you see? Or do you want me to go first?”

“Huh?”

“I’ll show you what I’ve got, and then you show me.”

That took off a lot of the pressure. “Okay,” I said. “Just don’t turn into a gargoyle or anything this time.”

“Okay. Sit over there.” She pointed to a chair with carved wooden arms and a seat upholstered in mauve velvet. Next to it was a small marble-topped table on which rested a cage containing a delicately worked bird made of silver filigree.

I almost reached over to touch it, but I stopped myself.
What’s with me?
I wondered. Why the sudden fascination with
stuff
? I’d never cared at all about things like jewelry and decorative objects. I didn’t even use bubble bath. Peter was always complaining that it was hard to buy presents for me because I’d rather have a bottle of saffron than a bottle of perfume. He gave me a pen for my birthday, and even that was too frilly for my taste.

But here everything was different. Celtic harp music quietly filled the room as Morgan took the bird out of the cage. “It’s Bengali, about a century old,” she said, gently stroking the fine metal filigree of its wings.

Just then I saw what looked like a movement of the bird’s head. I blinked, and it happened again. “What—”

“Shh.”

The bird looked at me.
Saw
me. I could see into its eyes. It flapped its silver wings and flew around the store, fully alive now, its metallic color replaced by the gray feathers of a living sparrow.

“Omigod,” I said. “You can bring inanimate objects to life.”

She laughed. “No. Hell, no. That would be like raising the dead. No one can do that.”

Well, there was one person. Peter’s little brother, Eric, could do exactly that. Which was why no one who knew about it ever,
ever
talked about his talent, even to other witches. Eric was only eleven years old, and had enough problems without having the whole world beating down his door. So I didn’t see any reason to tell Morgan—or anyone else who didn’t already know—about him.

“All I can do is change something’s appearance,” she said, standing up and holding out her hand. The bird flew by. Then, with a movement too swift for me to follow, she snatched it out of the air. When she opened her hand, the bird had become a metal sculpture again. “It’s all about appearance anyway, isn’t it?”

This time I did reach out to touch it. As I did, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the bird’s eyes. They were panic-stricken.

“The bird—”

Morgan pulled it gently out of my grasp. “Convincing illusion, huh?”

“But it
looked
at me. It was alive.”

“Was it?” She handed the bird back to me. I looked into its eyes. There was nothing. No sign of life at all.

Everything felt very still for a moment. Finally I said, “I guess you’re right,” and gave it back to her. “I didn’t mean
to . . .
accuse
you or anything,” I said, waffling. “It was just—”

“God, girl. Lighten up.”

“So . . . ” I swallowed. The whole episode had left a strange feeling in my belly. “You can make things look any way you want?” I asked.

She made a small gesture. “Like what?”

“Could you make the bird look like a bear?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you could,” I answered without thinking.

“My, you’re ambitious,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s your turn,” she said.

“I can’t do anything like . . . ” I looked at the bird. It still gave me a queasy feeling. “Like you did.”

“Too bad,” she said. “A deal’s a deal. Get cracking.”

“Okay,” I conceded, picking up the tankard and focusing on it. I used to not have to focus. At one time everything about the object, including everyone who’d ever touched it, would come rushing at me as soon as I picked it up, so I’d learned to control that. Now I didn’t get anything unless I was trying. It was a lot better that way, believe me.

“I meant it when I said it was old. Its vibes are dim, as if it hasn’t been touched in a very long time.
Your
imprint isn’t even on here.”

“I cleaned it,” Morgan said.

I pushed a little harder. “I can hear music,” I said. “Someone’s singing. Someone who’s blind drunk, from the sound of him. He’s got brown hair and a beard, and . . . and he smells really bad.” Seriously, this dude’s body odor was nearly overpowering in the humid mist of the lake.

“The lake?” I said aloud.

“Go there,” Morgan said.

“What?”

“You can see it, right? The lake, the tankard, B. O. Plenty?”

“Uh-huh.” I was trying to keep the image in my mind while talking to her. It wasn’t easy.

“So take it one step farther. Go into it.”

“Go into what? The tankard?”

“Yes.”

“But how would I get back?”

“Don’t be stupid. You’re not really
going
anywhere in the first place. You’ll be here.”

“Oh.”

“So go ahead.”

“You mean now?”

“No. Next week.”

“Okay, okay.”

“On the count of three.”

“No. That’s too—”

“One.”

“Morgan, I told you—”

“Two.”

“I can’t. I need more—”

“Three. Go.”

OMG. OMG. OMG.

I was there.

•

At first I felt really constricted, as if I were squeezing through a vacuum cleaner hose. For a second it seemed as if I would be crushed like a nut, but then . . .
foop
. Suddenly I was standing in a boat, which was not my favorite place to be, since I couldn’t swim very well. The last time I’d gotten into a boat, it had crashed, and the only reason I’d made it home alive was because Peter had carried me through a mile of mud.

So there I was, trying to figure out how large I should be. Since I had no body in this place, it was hard to tell what size I was. I swung from being tiny, crawling around the wet boards, to being gigantic and hovering over the craft like a cloud.

Finally I was able to get a vague fix on things and take in the scene. It was night, a dead, starless, moonless night. I wondered what this fool was doing in a rowboat at night, but since he was so drunk, I figured he probably didn’t know himself.

He took a swig and belched loudly.
God, men can be so
gross,
I thought. Then he laughed and started rocking the boat from side to side.

“Like that, do you?” he slurred.

“Hold still, you moron!” I yelled, but of course he couldn’t hear me. He just kept rocking until water started sloshing over the side. This really wasn’t a fantasy I wanted to live out. “I can’t swim!” I shrieked.

He responded by spitting.

Okay, I can handle this,
I told myself. I was perfectly aware that this was magic I was doing, that some part of my mind had gone through the tankard to the time and place where the tankard had come from. I knew that my body was really perfectly safe inside the Emporium of Remarkable Goods, and that Morgan was . . .

“Morgan?”

She was
there
, in the boat with him. With me. At least it looked like Morgan, except that her clothes were completely different. She was wearing a long gown with a sash. I think it was green, but the night was so dark that it was really hard to see anything clearly. There was just something about her eyes, gleaming as if she were enjoying this macabre midnight boat ride, that made me think . . .

But no, it couldn’t be. It was all too weird.

“Give us a kiss, love,” the drunk man said, sloshing beer or whatever it was all over himself as he stood up and squat-walked through me to where the girl (was it Morgan?) was sitting.

“Go back to your end of the boat, you lout,” she shrilled, laughing. “You’ll tip us over.”

It couldn’t be her, I decided. My mind was doing that, making
it seem to be Morgan because of some psychological connection. The question was why.

Her head swiveled to face Mr. Charm. Unfortunately, I was wobbling directly in front of the man, so it looked for all the world like she was staring straight into my eyes. Then, with a big grin that sent shivers running though me, she said, “It would not do for you to drown, my dear.”

I knew in that instant exactly what she was going to do, but it was too late to stop her, even if I’d had a real body to stop her with.

She stood up suddenly and straight-armed her date right in the neck. He had just taken a drink from the tankard, and that mouthful spewed all over the place while his eyes bulged out and his arms began to windmill.

“No!” I shouted as he lost his balance. “No!” the woman shouted at the same time, scrambling toward him on all fours while the boat swung crazily around in the water. I guessed that she’d changed her mind about throwing the drunken fool into the lake, but she didn’t reach for him. Instead she grabbed for the tankard. I felt a brief moment of relief. If the tankard didn’t fall into the water, there was much less chance that I’d drown. But then the man grabbed it right out of her hands before lurching toward the side of the boat.

I needed time to go back into the tankard. Without it I’d be lost. But there was nothing I could do. I was tethered on a psychic level to the tankard. Wherever it went, I had to follow. If I didn’t, I knew, I would die. The guy bellowed like a crazed bull as he fell into the water, still clutching his drink, and I felt myself being pulled behind him, through the dank air toward the algae-covered water. The last thing I saw was the girl, who
looked so much like my new friend Morgan, standing in the boat with her hands on her hips, shaking her head in anger.

“Morgan!” I called. I couldn’t even reach the tankard now.

I was in the middle of a lake in an unknown place and an unknown time. Even if I lived through this, I’d never be found. “Help!” I screamed. “Get me out of here!”

Her eyes met mine, and I saw her mouth move. “Goodbye,” she said.

Well, maybe her eyes didn’t meet mine. Maybe she was looking at her date. Her date, whom she might have just murdered.

Water shot inside every opening in my body—up my nose, filling my mouth, blinding my eyes. I came up sputtering, flapping my arms uselessly as I tried to teach myself to swim then and there.

It wasn’t working. For a moment the moon came out, and I saw the girl’s face again, bathed in cold light. “Morgan!” I called. I was hoping, praying that she could see me, but she gave no sign of it. She just kept standing on the boat as it drifted away.

“Please help me,” I squeaked.

The man, finding his way to the bank, climbed up and shook himself like a dog. “I’ll see that you pay for this, you harpy!” he shouted.

The woman responded with a rude gesture. “Idiot!” she shouted. “’Tis
you
ought to have drowned!”

Even though I was panicking, a part of my mind registered the way she had emphasized the word “you,” and it struck me as odd. It was as if she knew that someone besides the man had been in the boat with her.

But none of that mattered now. All I knew was that the water
was invading every part of me. In the last glimpse I had of her, she was standing like a statue in the boat, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. As I sank beneath the water, I watched her pull the shawl more closely around her arms.