Page 142 of A Dose of Agony
They both pause, staring at me like I have three heads.
“On the cyclops,” she says, face entirely blank.
“Yes. He’s been weakened somewhat because I added the weakener to the wine, but he’s still strong. And Vincent is there. Either one of them would try to kill you, so if you—if you can’t or don’t want to, I’ll do it, but—”
Lola puffs out her chest, purple dust falling. “I can do it. They’d find you right away. I’m fast and small. I can remain unnoticed long enough to get it done.” She turns and points to Janet’s nose. “You. Go now.”
Janet gasps like she just now remembered her quest. “I love you both!” she yells as she’s running out of the room.
“Love you!” Lola and I say back. And then, we make eye contact.
I recognize the gravity of what I’m asking her. It’s not her fight. None of this is. If the council gets away, and if the High Orizians fall, it won’t change her life or future at all.
“You don’t have to do it,” I whisper.
“How much?” She looks down at the vial that’s nearly as big as her torso, despite being one of my smallest.
I take the vial from her hand and pop it open. I let one tiny drop fall onto my fingertip. “Drink up.”
She swallows and lands on my forearm. Then, she slurps up the drop.
Purple sparks fly from her wings. Her eyes widen, and in the next instant, she’s gone.
“Lo?” I whisper.
“Ha! You can’t see me, can you?”
My lips twitch. “Not even a little. Show me your dust real quick. I want to check.”
Her tiny weight leaves my hand, and a moment later, little sparkles of purple appear in the corner of the room. “I can see it,” I tell her. “It’s subtle, but you need to be discreet. Get very close to him before you use the dust. Make no noise and be very careful with any of your magic; it might be visible. I’m hoping he won’t be hard to put down because he’s been dosed with poison and the weakener, but I don’t know for sure. Once he falls, get out of there.”
“Got it!”
There’s a tiny ripple in the looking-glass that tells me she’s out of the room and into that world beyond, completely out of sight.
“Now what?” Thompson asks.
“Now, we wait,” Manuela says somberly.
There are splatters of blood against the wall. The butler slumped over, eyes dim and blood pouring from an open wound on his stomach. They attacked the butler while I wasn’t paying attention.
I swallow down bile.
“Ha!” Vincent says, spinning around, hysterically laughing and looking to some unknown witness. He knows I’m watching him, doesn’t he?
I feel powerful right then because he knows I’m there. He knows I’m responsible.
“You missed a few,” he growls. “Where are you, coward? Little human. Come face the three stronger than your death potion. You’d think you would have done enough research to know which potions affect Orizians, but clearly you were wrong.”
The cyclops’s one eye darts around, like he’s following something in the air. Lola? Can he see her? Hear her? Smell her?
“What is it?” Vincent mutters.
“Something—” the cyclops yells.
“Not so loud, moron!”
The cyclops turns again, swatting around his head.
