Page 48 of The Thirteenth Child
Now.
I found vials of hemlock and nightshades. Used in small doses, they helped treat asthmatic patients struggling to draw breath. But if I were to brew them together, in a strong enough tea…
Their hearts would stop first, in theory.
I’d certainly never had cause to test it, but I was almost positive that the tea would make their pulse go slow and sluggish. They’d drift off, falling into a coma. It would be a quiet death, an easy death, one far more merciful than the horrors their own bodies intended for them. Than the horrors their bodies would pass along.
I picked at the cork stoppers with the tip of my fingernail,wondering if I could actually do it, if I could truly administer a lethal dose of poison to my own parents.
“You’re not killing them,” Merrick murmured softly from the doorway. He was so good at guessing my thoughts. “You’re saving them. Saving them from the indignity of a death most brutal.”
“But why am I the one who has to do it? Why can’t you save them? Why can’t you ease their suffering?” My voice quavered. I was still hopeful he’d intervene.
Merrick blinked curiously. “Ihavesaved them…. I brought them you.”
His words sank in deep, and I knew there was no way out of this. It was me or nothing.
We did not speak again as I set the kettle to boil.
Chapter 17
The Sixteenth Birthday
The morning of my sixteenthbirthday, I woke to thunder and a chorus of dead faces pressed against my bedroom windows, staring in with hungry white eyes.
There were four of them, one for every deathshead I’d seen.
One for every murder I’d committed.
Papa.
Mama.
The baker three villages over, whose wicked case of consumption threatened to infect every customer unlucky enough to purchase his blood-flecked loaves.
A soldier who’d broken his ankle chasing after a maid who’d wanted no amount of his kisses.
Their mouths opened and shut again, wordlessly, like the great carp that surfaced in the pond behind my cottage, forever looking for a little something to fill their bellies with.
The first time I’d seen one of them—Papa, stumbling into my cottage the night after I’d poisoned him, with Mama not farbehind—I’d been terrified out of my mind. For one long, horrible moment, I’d believed the poison had not worked. I’d feared them still alive, come to exact a horrid revenge.
I’d backed into my dining room table, blessedly knocking over the set of shakers and shattering one of the crystal baubles. A spray of salt scattered across the floor and my parents had recoiled, staggering back from the grains as their faces twisted in painful rictuses.
I’d spent the rest of the night pushing their foul specters back, inch by inch, tossing salt at them until they were out of the house, then had raced around the inner perimeter, dusting each doorway and window to keep them out.
I rolled over now, pulling my quilt to my chin, and lost sight of the soldier, my father, and the baker. Only one ghoul was at the window now.
Mama.
I studied her face, wondering if she remembered what today was, wondering if she remembered anything at all.
The ghosts recognized me, obviously, forever trailing after the person they’d spent their final moments of life with, but did she still know it was me, or was I simply a lantern, a beacon bringing in the moths of those I’d killed?
I pushed myself out of bed and joined her at the window, huddled safe and warm on my side of the salted glass. Somehow sensing me, she raised her hand to the pane in greeting. Her flesh had recently begun to fall away, and the tip of her finger bone tapped at the glass.
I raised my hand to hers, marveling at the difference between us.
My heart weighed heavily within me, full of so many things I wished I could tell her, things I wished she could understand.
