Page 55 of Taking Jenny
I stopped near the breakfast table, panting for breath. “They’re evil…magicians are why Justice…murdered all the conduits.”
“No, Justice murdered all the conduits because they were the only people who could have usurped his power,” she said in a flat tone. “Magicians didn’t come into authority untilafterthe conduits died.”
I shook my head. “Everyone knows they study and use forbidden magic! That alone—”
Her lips flattened into a grim line. “You’re wrong, Tiger.”
I had no time to argue with her, not when Jenny was dying. “Where is his lab?”
Discord hesitated, then finally said, “I will take you, but only if you swear you will not attack him and you will allow him to help Jenny.”
I nodded. “I swear not to attack him until Jenny is stable.” Right now, it was the only compromise I was willing to make.
She huffed a breath. “I’ll take what I can get. Follow me.”
We ran into the mansion and through the halls, until we came to a set of stone stairs at the end of a hall that spiraled downward. At the end of the stairs, a large wooden door blockedthe path. Blood pooled just before the door, and I looked back. There were drips of it on the stairs, too.
I panicked. “He’s killing her!” I said, and burst into the lab.
Jenny lay on her side atop an exam table, her skin pale, blood streaked from her nose and mouth. A rounded pillow braced her neck. She was still unconscious, blessedly unaware, as Surge hovered over her face with tools I did not recognize or understand. Longshot and Mal stood behind him, ready to help if needed.
Fear rippled through me. “What is he doing to her?”
Mal stepped toward me, placing his hands on my shoulders to keep me back. “She’s going to be alright, but you have to stay clear so Surge can heal her.”
His words did nothing to ease my anxiety. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Her nose is broken, for one,” Surge said, not looking away from Jenny as he worked on her. “She has a concussion. Possible neck strain, which I’ve stabilized for now with the pillow. I did a hand reading and I’m not seeing much blood on the brain, which is a good sign.”
Longshot started to ask Surge something, but didn’t finish the question. A horrible crunching sound echoed in the room. Longshot turned away and vomited into a nearby sink.
“Big tough assassin can’t handle a simple nose reset?” Surge muttered as he gently wiped Jenny’s face clean of the blood.
He wretched some more as his answer.
Mal finally released me and turned to the small man. “What can we do to help you, Surge?”
“Now that I’ve got the bleeding under control, I’ll need you to help me reposition her body. Longshot, be a dear and take the vomiting elsewhere. It’s distracting. Discord, I’d like you present while I examine the rest of her body. In case she wakes up in themiddle of things, I’d like a woman present. Tiger, do you know the hydnora?”
“What?”
“It’s a flower that looks like a brown rock with an orange mouth—”
“You mean pigbane?” I asked, recognizing the description.
“Right, right,” Surge said, nodding. “Can you search the path they were on for it? It will draw out any poisons and toxins—”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest. I nodded and ran back outside to find the pigbane. Ugly flowers, if ever there were such a thing. Surge was right. They did look like rocks with mouths. The parasite flower reeked, too, making it easy to find.
The pigbane lived at the bases of trees, eating whatever bark it could reach—its favorite food. One flower could eat halfway around a hundred-year-old tree in a day. Pigbane was so good at deforestation that early Ladrians used it to clear land. But they had to be careful. Pigbane’s mouths could bite fingers and tails off.
As kids, we collected pigbane to hide in bedding as a mean prank. Aside from trees, they liked the taste of Ladrians. Kapok had come to my rescue when someone did it to me. I was three when it happened. The pigbane in my bed had taken a chunk of my tail hair before I found it. I was luckier than the boy who did it—Kapok held the older kid down and let the pigbane eat one of his fingers as revenge.
The memory clawed at me. Grief tried to rise up at the thought of Kapok, but I shoved it down. I didn’t have time to get melancholy. Not now. I had to focus. I had to find the flower to help Jenny.
Wait—if she tripped and fell, how would she be poisoned, too?
I shrugged it off. Maybe it was magician logic. Or Surge was being cautious. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much blood she’d lost. The way her face looked. Slack. Pale. Wrong.
