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I opened The Natural Versus the Supernatural, pointing to the relevant passage. The illustration showed a climbing vine plant with strange purple flowers. The blooms hung from the stem in an arch, puffing out like a sultan’s cap over a distinct yellow stamen.
“Bittersweet nightshade contains a glycoalkaloid poison called solanine.”
“Do you know what a glycoalkaloid is?” he asked suddenly.
“I happened to perform very well in chemistry, thank you, so yes.”
“That is far sexier than I anticipated,” he said, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “Have I mentioned that I adore your little blouses and pencil skirts? I’ve never worked full-time in an office, but I think I would enjoy chasing you around my desk in the outfit you wore to work today.”
“Why am I the secretary in this scenario?” I asked. “I could be your boss.”
“Fine, you could chase me around your desk.” He sighed. “I would enjoy it either way.”
“Stop sidetracking me with premeditated sexual harassment,” I snipped. “Now, in humans, this causes dizziness, fever, intestinal chaos—the descriptions of which I will spare you—and sometimes paralysis. But vampires don’t get dizziness, fevers, or the intestinal pyrotechnics. Instead, you just get the paralysis. That might not be so bad, except, thanks to the aconitine, all of the little transmitters in your brain are wide open, so it’s a total shutdown of your systems.”
His face darkened, and my triumph at having found the answer was diminished. Someone had tried to tear him down completely, to make him defenseless, helpless, so they could sneak into his house and finish him. I couldn’t find the words to comfort him or to help him see that ultimately, it didn’t matter, that he’d outmaneuvered them anyway. So, I just kept talking.
“The only treatment for the poison is feeding, flushing it out with fresh blood,” I said, pointing to the page. “Unfortunately, in you, this seemed to trigger the emetic aspects of the solanine, and you vomited. A lot. On me.”
“Message received. I will stop vomiting on you,” he grumbled. I grinned cheekily and nudged him with my elbow.
I thumbed to an index of each plant’s ideal growth conditions. It was a concise little chart with color photos and a handy little map illustration with each entry.
“I think we can safely assume that whoever is diddling with the blood supply is the same person who poisoned you. If we could just figure out where this person is growing this stuff, it might help us figure out what they’re using for the mass poisonings.” My finger traced down the index, stopping next to a cluster of small white flowers with yellow centers. “That’s weird,” I mumbled, flipping through the pages for the plant’s full entry. I hopped up to grab The Natural Versus the Supernatural, finding the plant bolded in the index under “highly dangerous.”
I studied the illustration in Jane’s book. I murmured, “Glossy green leaves, white flowers, spots on the … how many plants could there be that look like that?”
“Is this a private conversation, or can anyone join?” Cal asked dryly.
“Cute.” I pulled a face at him and showed him the illustration. “When I was looking at the lab reports before, I couldn’t figure out why chemicals found in lungwort were showing up in the poisoned vampire’s blood. This plant in Jane’s book, fangwort, would be very similar in structure and chemical makeup. Jane’s book says it ‘fires the bloodlust of vampires to a painful degree; they will recognize neither friend nor foe.’ It’s supposed to grow in hot, humid areas of the Iberian Peninsula—you know, modern-day Spain, Portugal, a little tiny bit of—”
“I know where the Iberian Peninsula is, Iris.”
“I know, I know, you probably built the first road or furrowed the first wheat field ever sown there.”
“Brat.”
“Cradle robber.”
“Grave robber.”
When I couldn’t come up with a sufficiently snarky insult, I went on. “Fangwort is supposed to grow in the warm, humid areas of the Iberian Peninsula. But I swear to you, I’ve seen it before. I remember spotting something like that on one of my mom’s hiking expeditions. She used to take me on these hikes through the woods to find interesting plants for her garden. We’d cut a sample to dry and another to plant. She loved using wild, uncultivated flowers in her beds. She said it kept her gardens honest. And in general, they were heartier than what you buy at a nursery. And I remember seeing something like this weird-looking plant on one of the last trips we took before she died. Mom liked it, but we’d already taken so many that day that she didn’t want to be greedy. But—”
I hopped up, dashing to the bookshelf. I ran my fingers along the spines until I found the spiral notebook I was looking for.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for my mom’s cutting journal.”
“What is that, exactly?” he asked. “Was your mother a particularly violent woman?”
I shoved at his shoulders absently as I searched the shelf. Mom’s journal was a thing of beauty. A smooth canvas cover embroidered with little spring green leaves, hand-stitched by Gigi as a Girl Scout/Mother’s Day project. Inside, Mom had catalogued every interesting plant we’d seen on our hikes, by date, including the latitude and longitude, the size of the bed, a description of the environment, and a sketch of a sample. My mother’s neat block print brought a strange longing sensation that I hadn’t expected. I missed her so much. I missed the way she teased a laugh out of us when we were upset. I missed the way she cheated at Monopoly and tried to make us think that we’d just forgotten that she had hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. I missed knowing that we were safe and that Mom and Dad had everything in hand.
I flipped to the end of the book, to June 2005: Found a rather sizeable plot (6m by 4m) of this strange root plant today in an area off County Line Road. It’s clearly a “wort” plant, note broad flat leaves, and small white flowers with greenish-yellow stamens. Similar to an illustration of bloodwort,* but leaves seem too different. I didn’t take a cutting because it just felt, well, wrong somehow. There was something very off-putting about the plant, a bit like approaching poison ivy and knowing you’re about to do something that will bring about itchy misery. Iris wasn’t keen on it, either, so we left it alone. *Illustration found on page 233 of “An Illustrated Guide to the Flowering Plants of Europe.”
I opened the book to show Cal my mother’s sketch, which bore a striking resemblance to the illustration in the book. “My mom wouldn’t have had access to books like Jane’s; otherwise, she might have known what she was looking at. So, how are all of these obscure foreign plants finding their way here to rural Kentucky? I mean, other than the warm, humid climate, the two places have nothing in common. And why is there a patch of it growing in a field in the middle of nowhere? There are no houses in that area near County Line Road. I don’t know if there ever have been, so it’s not like it’s some remnant of a Civil War era garden.”
“Where is it?” he asked, pulling out a map of McClure County.
