Page 65 of A Drop of Anguish
He shakes his head. “I doubt it. She’s not the note type. Too personal. She’s more about whispers and rumors.”
“Well, there’s been plenty of those too.”
Jarron stands and takes the jealous-ex note and the longer poem over to the counter.
“Anything in particular?” he asks casually as he reaches for a jar of red liquid.
I shrug. “I feel like I don’t hear as many of them as others. I can see that people are talking about me, but what they’re saying is usually outside of my reach. Maybe because my hearing isn’t as sensitive as the supernatural’s here.”
Jarron crunches up a few different leaves and then combines them. “Well, right now, there are certainly rumors about your potions work,” he says, all the while completing his own. “Your relationship with Thompson is being scrutinized constantly. I still haven’t decided how I feel about him.”
“You don’t have to feel anything about him.”
He pauses his spell work. “If someone is untrustworthy and placing themselves close to you, that’s not something I’ll ever ignore. However, he did put himself in danger to help you.”
I nod.
“What do you think about him? You trust him?”
“I—not completely, but mostly.He’s hiding something, for sure. And I reserve the right to change my mind once his secret is revealed, but my gut says he’s sincere and generally good.”
He nods, accepting my answer.
“What’s this going to do?” I couldn’t follow all the ingredients. Some of them appear to be pre-brewed concoctions. Likely to make new potions easier to create. It could be some kind of tracer, but he said Laithe would do a spell for that. This is something different, I assume.
“It will reveal the essence of the author.”
“Essence?”
“Should reveal their species or world origin.”
“Oh, interesting.” I watch him use a dropper to withdraw a small amount of his potion. “Could we have done something like this on the Akrasia Games calling card?”
He raises a brow. “If you hadn’t gone running into danger first.”
Right. I ran right into that one, didn’t I?
“The investigators did even more than that during your sister’s investigation. They came back inconclusive. I assume those behind the games used a spell to conceal their essence.”
I bite the inside of my cheek while Jarron lets one single drop fall onto the short note page, followed by a single drop on the longer note.
There’s a spark then white steam. My head tilts. “What does that mean?”
He grimaces. “There should be a color, or at least a smell.”
“So…”
“They’re both inconclusive.”
I match his grimace. “How easy is it to conceal your essence?”
“Not easy.”
“You sure you did the potion right?”
He glares at me, and I shrug.“I did it correctly.”
Wonderful. That means it’s unlikely the note came from a taunting peer. If Auren, or even Corrine, had been involved in the messages, that would have shown.
