Immortal Memory (Iris' Atlantis 1)

17: The Three Aconites

Aconite

I had missed the lecture.

I stood in the doorframe of the empty lecture hall and felt as if I had stepped on empty air in a stairway. I had never missed one of my own lectures. Never.

I sank into an empty front row seat and lifted a hand onto my temple. I couldn't roll back time. I knew that. I tried anyway.

I stood in the doorway of the empty lecture hall. I sighed and closed the door. The good news was that this specific lecture had been for a witchy audience. I wouldn't need to try and find an excuse. They were witches. They knew.

But tomorrow I would have a class with a non-magical audience. I needed it. I needed the mushrooms. I hadn't even realized how dependent I had become on the medicine. Now, with a full week without my special drug, I was absolutely lost. I had relied on the medicine for time keeping for over twenty years. My head was a drifting place without it.

No. It wasn't drifting. I had no problem with focusing on correcting exams or going through research resources. That wasn't the case. I just forgot the time. And there were moments when I found myself watching the dark screen of a smartphone unsure of what I was supposed to do with the digits displayed on the lock screen. How did they work again?

I left for meetings too late or too early. Sometimes by various hours, as was the case just now.

And I didn't dare ask Plume to return my dark treasure. I didn't dare ask him to give me some of his venom. I still had good amounts of merfolk hair at home in an aquarium. It was forbidden to have anything of the humanoid creatures. But I couldn't easily restock those. And the aquarium was too large to move.

And it wasn't a human liver with odd fungus growing on top.

If the witch elders went through my closets at home, I believed the hairs were the worst they could find. And there were other unfortunate things for them to find as well. But all that could be explained.

A human liver couldn't. Especially after they would find out how I kept it alive. Or to whom it had belonged. It was just unthinkable for the witch community to know. It would jeopardize everything we had been working for.

"Aconite!"

I jerked my head up.

Rosemary was standing in front of the door to my office. I racked my brain for yet another missed appointment or a lunch date or anything. I couldn't come up with anything.

I stopped.

It was such a silly thing really. But they really looked like each other. Short and determined with a fragile, lean build. Always dressed smart. I could see Plume's young vampire features in every line around Rosemary Scale Tongue's eyes.

I wondered what she would do if I leaned in and kissed her. And what would Plume think of me if I did.

No, I decided then. They looked nothing alike. The light reflected on Scale Tongue's gray hairs that streaked her long black mane. And the lines around her cheeks had been wrought by beautifully full human years. She carried herself with the grace of a real dancer, by the strength of decades of ballet. And Plume would never wear a colorful scarf like hers, a little extraordinary detail against her otherwise harmonious outfit.

"Are you busy right now?" She asked. "I was wondering if you wouldn't fancy a walk outside? It is a bit cold, but there is hardly any wind today."

I found myself nodding.

"Of course. I have had a bit of a busy week. I would love a walk."

The lines deepened around her dark eyes as she smiled.