Page 22 of Magic Blooms
I glanced around the room a few more times but came up short in my search. The space was pretty neat and orderly. There were still some clothes piled on one of the chairs and an assortment of personal items on the dresser, but nary a speck of the green I needed to find.
Lorraine hadn’t asked me to use my eyes. She’d asked me to use my magic. So I closed my eyes again and focused on the feeling of the ground beneath my feet, the sun warming my cheek.
And when I exhaled, a piece of my essence went with it. I didn’t fully understand what I was doing, but I let it happen, let the magic guide me.
And then when I opened my eyes, I waited for… nothing.
I frowned. Well it had surely felt like my elemental powers had done something. But everything looked the same as it had a few seconds ago.
Frustrating.
What was I supposed to do now?
Turning toward Lorraine, I shook my head with disappointment. And in that fraction of a moment, I heard a soft rattling sound from beside the bed and glanced over to see a small black receptacle shaking. Part of me wanted to back away, but I had a feeling whatever was inside was coming to see me, had been summoned by me even. I took a few steps closer and watched as dark, snaking tendrils emerge from the bin.
The vines crept straight up before developing branches that stretched out in either direction. A few seconds later, star-shaped leaves blossomed from the stem and spread open in greeting.
And then everything stopped and waited for me to come closer still.
I leaned forward, fearful but resolved to push through that fear.
As I closed the rest of the distance, it became evident that a full, mature plant had grown from a previously empty trash bin. How?
Oh, yeah. Me.
“Wh-wh-what is it?” Lorraine asked with a shaky voice from several paces behind me. “What did you do?”
nine
I watched with bated breath as Jasmine spun a leaf from the plant in a slow circle.
Lorraine had already flipped the shop sign to closed and locked the door upon entering so the three of us wouldn’t have any interruptions as we discussed what I’d found. Now we just had to wait for Elyria’s local expert on herbs and spices to classify the mystery plant I’d magically manifested.
“Fascinating,” Jasmine murmured as she brought the organic starburst closer to her face.
“Well, can you identify it for us?” Lorraine’s heart thrummed so loudly I could hear it from my place at her side. The rest of the shop fell quiet, seeming to wait with just as much anticipation as we were.
“Sure, I can,” Jasmine answered confidently as she handed the leaf back to me. “It’s ricin.”
“Ricin,” I repeated. “Huh. Where did it come from?”
“From what Lorraine told me on the phone, you. It came from you.” She blinked hard behind her thick oval glasses. “Are you regularly in the habit of using your elemental abilities to pull poisonous plants out of thin air?”
I took a step back. “Poison? Me? No, we don’t use our powers to destroy. Only help.” I thought back to the storm I’d caused on day one. That had been an accident, and I’d dealt with the damage, corrected things. Had I accidentally poisoned one of Lorraine’s guests with my unstable magic? It didn’t seem likely, but I hated that it was even a possibility. If it were my fault, this was one accident I wouldn’t be able to fix.
I gulped hard and shook my head.
“Polly didn’t grow that plant until well after Karen Harrison was found dead. It wasn’t her fault,” Lorraine said with far more confidence than I felt.
“Maybe not,” said Jasmine as she picked up the leaf again, took off her glasses, and studied it with her bare eyes. “Ricin is a painful and messy death. I imagine your Karen would’ve ended up going to the hospital. If nothing else, there would’ve been a huge mess to consider.”
She hummed a beat before continuing. “The poison is in the beans, you see. The little things look more like coffee than anything else. But if you take out the capsule surrounding the bean and get at the insides, that’s where trouble arises. I can’t remember the exact amount it takes, but I do know that just a small handful of beans is enough to kill a full-grown man. It certainly is easy enough to slip to anyone. The poison stops cells from making proteins, takes about three days to kill someone with it, if I recall correctly. But within those three days, like I said, she would most definitely have been showing symptoms.”
I thought back to my one interaction with Karen Harrison. “She was afraid of Oinkers. I don’t think any reasonable person would feel that way. Was it a warning sign we missed?”
Jasmine smiled up at me. “I don’t think overreacting to livestock in Fox’s End would be a symptom. Did she seem pale or weak?”
I shuddered as I remembered her loud screams that tore through the inn. “No. She seemed pretty strong. Strong-willed, too.”
