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There’s a pause in our conversation, one that makes me worried she is debating leaving me out here until Killian gets back from his business meeting. I groan against the grass, even with the slightest movement, my hip screams in agony.
The sun overhead is temporarily shadowed by Ava’s silhouette, blocking out the bright rays long enough for me to squint up at her.
“And how did you manage that, exactly?”
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. Between me being stupid enough to take cues from my cat and thinking that was somehow a genius plan, to lying prone on the ground begging for help, I hadn’t exactly gathered the time to put together a convincing cover story.
Whatever Ava reads on my face, it’s enough to make her shake her head and bend over to help me up onto my feet again. She moves with me slowly, all of my weight practically being held up by a small, twig-thin blonde that looks as if she could barely move something heavier than a cup of coffee.
I hobble with her inside, Leo following us the entire way with an impatient set of meows that only seem to mock me. Ava doesn’t say anything to me until she has me sitting down in a chair in what looks like some kind of lab that had been down the hall from the kitchen.
I look around it, surprised that she’s been able to squeeze something of this size into a room that, from the outside, didn’t look much bigger than a small office.
I hold my arm to my chest, wincing at the pain that radiates down to my fingers. I rub at the spot I’d hit directly, I most likely will be left with a nasty bruise, and hopefully nothing more than that.
Ava grabs my arm and sets an ice pack on my skin, adjusting it until I nod at her.
She puts her hands on her hips, making me feel like a kid getting in trouble with their mom.
I try to ignore the disappointed look on her face and instead focus on her lab.
“What is this place?”
“I believe it’s obvious.”
“Well… sure. But what do you do in here?”
Ave shifts on her feet, then. Looking around the large space. “Mostly research. Right now, I’m developing a few ways to administer poison without any taste detection.”
My eyes widen. “P-Poison?”
She nods at me. “My mother had this recipe that was almost indistinguishable from the taste of flour. Very easy to hide in food and drinks. But I want to take it a step further and make it completely undetectable no matter what you put it in.”
I readjust the ice pack on my arm. “That’ll be impressive when you figure that out.”
“Yeah. Just takes time.”
I can feel the dull ache starting to fade away slowly while the cold from the ice pack. I hope this means that I didn’t break anything.
“What made you want to follow in your mom’s footsteps with all this?”
Ava doesn’t answer me for a long moment to the point where I feel like I’ve somehow overstepped my boundaries by asking. I open my mouth, ready to apologize, but she cuts me off by starting to speak again.
“I always believed that she was a witch… even before I knew what that meant. In a way, it feels like I’m carrying on the craft. Keeping her alive not just in my heart but through my work too.”
I smile a little at that.
“Other than my mom, Killian was the only other person growing up who I trusted completely. Everyone else I could tell had their own motives for things, laying in the shadows just waiting for the right moment to strike. I’m sure you know what that’s like.”
I look away, not wanting to really get into my own family dynamic with her. Anytime I feel I have a grasp on who they are, another layer is added and my whole worldview gets shifted.
It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.
“I can tell that he cares for you, Antonella.”
That catches my attention. I shrink a little under Ava’s hard stare.
“I’ve never seen him invested in someone like this before. He can be a dick, don’t get me wrong, but he always has his reasons for doing what he does. Even if it doesn’t exactly make sense right now. It’s just the nature of our line of work.”
