Naturally, we all turned to her. She looked at Lochlan. “Do you mind?” And then she rose and came forward. He happily passed her the pen for the dry-erase board, and she drew the arsenic symbol.
Then she drew a second one. I wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
It was Theodore who said, “They aren’t the same.” Trust an artist to have that kind of eye to detail.
“They aren’t?” I asked. I couldn’t see the difference.
She nodded her head and nodded to him as though he were a prize pupil in her class. “Exactly. Look at this.” And she circled a squiggle at the bottom of the arsenic symbol that had been stenciled on the wall of Karmen’s workshop kitchen. And then she opened the mysterious alchemy book, and there was the same squiggle. “But in regular alchemy books, the symbol for arsenic doesn’t have that extra codicil.”
“That’s very clever of you, dear,” Gran said, as proud as though Jen was another granddaughter.
She nodded, looking pleased with herself. I passed the book around, my chest swelling with pride. Jennifer was my best friend for a reason. And the vampires who’d definitely been a little uncomfortable having yet another mortal amongst them immediately warmed up to her. I could see that by the end of the evening, she’d be an honorary member of the club too. I mean, unlike me, she could actually knit.
Rafe said, “Well done, Jennifer.” He was always generous with praise when somebody got something right.
“But what does it mean?” Hester asked, looking aggrieved by the whole process. I thought she was just annoyed that she hadn’t figured out the connection.
“I think it means,” Jennifer said, “that the Wicked Witch of Wallingford owned this book. And I’m going to take a huge step forward here and suggest that she’s the one that put the spell on it.” She tapped the word “book” on the whiteboard. “And this is what she was referring to when she cried ‘the book,’ the last words she spoke before she died.” Jen turned to Rafe. “Did she know it was in your possession?”
“I’m beginning to think she was the one who sent it to me,” Rafe said.
“If we can break the spell of this book, we may figure out who murdered her.”
There was silence in the room as we all took this in.
“But how are you going to break that spell?” Gran asked. “It looked very tightly locked to me.”
I had an idea. “We were able to turn back a hex that Karmen witch put on Violet. It was the combined power of me, Violet, my great-aunt Lavinia and”—here I felt my voice hitch—“and Margaret Twigg, the head of our coven.”
Jennifer nodded as though it was a good idea. “So the combined power of the right energy might just be enough to break the spell.”
“I think so. Maybe.”
“I still don’t understand why that witch tried to kill Lucy with a poisoned elixir of life sent to her in a box decorated with runes,” Gran said.
Jennifer wrote on the board, As above, so below. “That was the basic message of the runes, correct?”
Rafe agreed that it was.
She tapped the pen against the saying. “That’s one of the most important slogans in alchemy, and it was the message on the rune box.”
We all looked at her, waiting for the next part, but she seemed like she’d run out of steam.
Rafe continued, “And the swan is often used as a symbol for arsenic in alchemy.”
I felt a jolt of excitement. “From the cygnet, comes the swan. Another stenciled saying on her wall. Are they clues? Like a treasure hunt?”
Sylvia had been watching all of this with cynicism, I thought. Meanwhile, she was busily knitting. But suddenly she put her knitting down and said, “I don’t give a flying fig who killed that woman. But I paid an extremely high price to buy Lucy enough of the elixir of life to keep her young and beautiful for centuries. That’s all I care about. So where’s this woman’s recipe book? Where’s the elixir she took for however long she’s been alive? That’s what I want to know.”
Lochlan nodded. “We should probably get hold of her alchemist’s laboratory. If she successfully managed to make the elixir of life, then you’re right. It shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“As above, so below. Did she have swans?” Gran asked.
Sylvia suddenly put her knitting away and stood up. “I don’t know about you, but I feel that there’s no time like the present. We’ll need shovels and some good strong backs. Somewhere in that witch’s house or on her property, we will find that elixir. Who’s with me?”
Jennifer turned and stared at me with a startled gaze. I shrugged. I was too accustomed to Sylvia to be surprised. Besides, what seemed like time to go to bed for us was when the vampires were at their most energetic.
“Sounds like an excellent idea,” Carlos said. “I have a strong back. I don’t mind doing some digging.”
Once the young, sexy Spaniard had spoken, all the vampires agreed that they also had strong backs and could think of nothing they’d rather do than dig up a witch’s garden in Wallingford in the middle of the night.
Rafe looked at me inquiringly, and I nodded. I didn’t think I’d get any sleep tonight anyway. We might as well take a field trip.
He said, “Olivia will have gone to bed now, but there are shovels and every gardening tool you could imagine in the outbuildings. Help yourselves.”
Carlos led everyone out. Only my gran and Sylvia stayed behind. I hadn’t thought that Sylvia would be the one to get her hands dirty. She was more management than labor.
“Do you think she really did have the elixir of life?” Jennifer asked.
Sylvia nodded.
“Wow. That would be cool,” Jennifer said.
I nodded.
“And possibly dangerous,” Jennifer reminded us. “I was looking through those alchemy books.
