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At those last words she gets a dreamy look in her eyes.
“Thank you,” I tell her, getting to my feet and taking the bottle from her. “How much do I take?”
“Start with a few drops into water and see where it takes you. Avoid alcohol if you can, it will make you extra sleepy. Unless that’s what you want.” She goes to the door and grabs my coat. “Some nights the nightmares are so terrifying and feel so real, I take more than I should, just to get a good night’s sleep.”
“What do you have nightmares about?” I ask as I drape my coat over my arm, slipping the laudanum in my pocket next to the note and the necklace, then gather the banketstaaf.
Her face falls in such a way that I immediately regret asking the question.
“It just started a few days ago, but it’s almost always the same,” she says, her voice a whisper. “I’m on the altar in the cathedral. Completely nude. Four cloaked figures stand around me, chanting. One of them reaches out with a bone, it looks like a human bone, a femur, except the end is carved into a knife-like point. They take the bone and slice open my stomach and remove something. The first time I think it was my appendix. Then my gallbladder. A kidney. Each time they take something different.”
It feels like a cold hand is wrapping around my heart. “Then what happens?”
She shrugs. “I wake up.” She runs her hand over her stomach. “I’m always so certain I’ll see a suture or some sign that something was done to me, but there’s nothing ever there. It’s just a dream.”
I think about that for a moment. “You said that Sister Leona had asked you to bring back a lot of opium for them,” I say. “Do you know what they do with it?”
She stares at me blankly. “I’m sorry, Katrina, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I’m about to tell her that the last time we talked, she mentioned that Leona had asked her to bring back opium. But I decide the best thing for me to do would be to just leave at this point.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “It’s best I go now. Thank you for the medicine. I’ll bring it back when I’ve taken some.”
“Keep the bottle, I have more,” she says to me as I exit her room and start walking down the hall. “Be careful,” she whispers.
I nod, giving her a quick smile, then hurry around the corner, through the mezzanine and down Crane’s wing. The hallway is quiet, and at first, I think perhaps they aren’t in his room at all, maybe they’re at the library, or went to the dining hall early.
But I knock on the door with bated breath and wait.
It opens slowly, Crane’s grey eye peering at me through the crack.
“Kat!” he exclaims once he sees me and throws the door open. “What are you doing here?”
He pokes his head out into the hall to make sure no one has seen me, then puts his arm around me and ushers me inside, locking the door behind him.
I have to admit, I’m surprised that the both of them are fully clothed, Brom just stepping out of the bathroom and rubbing a washcloth at the back of his neck.
“I’m sorry to just come over like this,” I tell them. “I know you have to keep our relationship a secret from the Sisters, and this is risky.”
“Kat,” Crane says deeply, coming over to me and cupping my face in his large, warm hands. “I’m ever so glad that you’re here.” He looks down at the cloth in my hands. “Is this what Famke made for you?”
“Yes, I brought it for you,” I tell him. “But that’s not the real reason why I’m here.”
“What happened?” Brom asks, his brow creasing as he comes over to me. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, really,” I assure him as Crane lets go of my face and steps back. He takes the bundle of pastries over to his desk and sets them down. “I just found something interesting. Including something I forgot to tell you before.”
“What is it?” Crane asks, biting into a pastry already. He closes his eyes and moans. “My goodness this is tasty. Compliments to Famke.”
“Speaking of Famke,” I say, and then I begin to tell them everything. I show them the necklace and the note, then I tell them about visiting Ms. Choi and everything she told me; that she looked sick, that she was adamant that Lotte slipped, that she was having bad nightmares, that she seemed to think the painting on the wall was watching her. I finish by talking about Leona putting in orders for opium, orders that Ms. Choi suddenly doesn’t remember, then I take the bottle of laudanum out of my pocket and show it to them.
