Arsenic for the Soul (10 page)

“
You should be on your way.
Get some rest and forget about what Crenshaw said today. Maybe skip
that extra cup of coffee and take a nap.”

She wondered why he was gentle and
kind to her. Instinctively, those signals put Vivian on her guard.
She couldn’t get a read on this man or his aura.

There was something almost inhuman
about Milo, as if he came from a different world. She marveled at
him.

Once more, she lost herself in the
random details of his face that she didn’t see before. When the
sight of his lips made her squirm for him, she bolted for the door.
She needed to escape not only this hospital but this insanely
attractive and kindhearted man. Such a creature couldn’t possibly
exist.

Such a creature would pose all kinds
of dangers.

“
Yeah, a little rest would
take my mind off things.” She smiled and retreated one step at a
time. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Milo. Take care.”

He only watched her as she cut a path
to the nearest park. She wondered if he, too, felt this magic
playing out between their dangerous hearts.

* * *

Camilla grabbed her mail on
the way out of the office. Tomorrow’s issue of
Blaze
would finally show what a week’s
worth of research into Prague’s criminal syndicates could result
in.

Despite her flavor for crime
reporting, she never wanted to get any closer to the nature of this
evil. Fortunately, the apparition of her stalker seemed to become
less real over time. She wasn’t visited by any more threats,
warnings, or strangers peeking through her window.

The calm after the storm had finally
arrived. Perhaps she would return to her apartment just to assure
herself the threat was over.

She tripped on her way out of the
office, spilling the letters from her readers onto the sidewalk.
Instead of letting anger best her, she chuckled at her
clumsiness.

She bent down to scrape up the letters
before the wind could snatch them.

One of the envelopes felt unusually
heavy between her fingers. It conspicuously lacked a sender’s
address. It tingled in her fingers like an angry pulse.

She ripped it open. The key to her
apartment fell out. Her breath was wrenched out of her lungs in
violent sobs. The sight of that key was more than enough to
convince her that she would never be safe. He was still watching
her, plotting against her. Something else was tucked inside the
envelope.

She retrieved a photo depicting an
isolated bench in a forest. She flipped it over, expecting more
taunts or jeers from her stalker.

Did you like my memento in
the Black Atrium?

Meet me in Kunatrice
Forest to see my face.

SEVEN

Camilla’s research into the seedy
underbelly of Prague rarely took her to the medical examiner’s
office. She always maintained a special distance from the
morticians and the bodies. Now that buffer didn’t exist. At least
Vivian was at her side as she traversed the sterile halls that
ultimately led to the pathology lab. She had to yet to meet this
Gavin that Vivian spoke so fondly of, but she prattled about him as
though he was her personal celebrity.

The only thing Camilla cared about was
the test results of the umbilical cord.

“
He’ll be in here.” Vivian
chirped.

The roguish girl didn’t look the least
bit bothered by the morgue. As of late, she only listened to half
of her conversations with Camilla, as if something was always
distracting her. She suspected it had more than a little to do with
the man she fancied at the hospital.

Maybe I should find myself
a crush, too. That would certainly take my mind off stalkers and
morgues.

A strange guttural noise greeted her
when she entered the lab. The walls themselves droned with the
souls roiling in the drawers.

“
Vivian has told me much
about you.” She turned around to see a man with blades jutting from
his head. Even in the morgue he wore his signature spectacle,
flaring brightly in the shadows.

“
It’s all right,” Vivian
laughed. She pushed Camilla toward the frightening man extending
his hand in friendship.

“
You must be Gavin,” she
smiled sheepishly, gripping his skeletal fingers. She couldn’t take
her eyes off the metal blades fused with his skull. Judging by the
stains on his shoes, he had recently wrapped up an
autopsy.

“
In the flesh. I do wish we
could meet under better circumstances, however. Before we peel back
the layers of your family, I must ask you something… How badly do
you want to know the truth?”

Camilla’s first instinct was to
laugh.

“
That’s the only reason I
would come down to the medical examiner. Why wouldn’t I want to
know?”

Gavin’s shoulders sagged.

“
I’m afraid I’m going to
disappoint you. I have more questions than answers.” His eyes lit
up as if a stroke of genius occurred to him. “I’ll go fetch the
umbilical cord and we can begin! Make yourself comfy. Well… just
don’t sit down on anything. Don’t lean up against anything either.
Actually, just stay put.”

He tossed bloodied saws, hammers, and
knives in the sink as if he was tidying his home for guests.
Camilla watched with wide eyes as he dashed off.

“
He’s a weird
one.”

“
He’s adorable, isn’t
he?”

“
I’m starting to see a
pattern among your mentors.”

“
What’s that?”

Camilla grinned.

“
Let’s just say I see where
your
incredible fashion sense
comes from.”

Gavin returned not a moment too soon
with the umbilical cord that sparked this disaster. He set the coil
down on a steel tray.

“
Thanks to the blood sample
you provided, I can unequivocally say this umbilical cord is yours.
I can’t explain how it has been preserved for so long, though. It
seems strange that your stalker would be in possession of
this.”

“
That’s why I believe he’s
related to me by blood. At this point it’s fair to assume this
stalker is somehow connected to the Magdalene asylums, too. He
wouldn’t have any other reason to leave that article about the
Magdalene Midnight Mission—bloody warning and all—in my
apartment.”

“
So who among your family
knows that you exist and would target you?” Vivian asked. “A
parent? A sibling?”

Camilla shrugged.

“
Like I said, I know little
besides what Uncle Sebastian told me. As far as I knew, everyone
passed away.”

Gavin cleared his throat.

“
I can think of one reason
why your umbilical cord was kept.” He lifted the cord with a pair
of toothed forceps. “In some cultures, it is traditional to keep
the umbilical cord as a sign of good luck. That brings me to the
subject of your family…”

“
What did you learn about
the Veselys?”

Gavin began to rummage through a
briefcase she didn’t notice before. After digging through a few
books of Renaissance poetry and symbology, he produced several
files.

“
I’ve compiled a list of
your immediate relatives, both deceased and living.” Gavin’s bony
fingers slid the death certificates across the table as though he,
too, wished to distance himself from her tainted bloodline. Camilla
blanched as she roved across the names of family members long
forgotten and rotten.

“
Deceased,” she uttered. “I
had no idea I had this many relatives. Almost everyone is deceased.
Except…”

“
The only relative
unaccounted for is your mother.” Gavin adjusted his spectacle
gleaming in the iridescent light. “James Vesely, Lily Vesely, and
their sons and daughters are dead.”

“
Do I have any
cousins?”

“
None.”

Camilla chewed her lip.

“
And you can’t confirm
whether my mother is dead or alive?”

“
Unfortunately not. Without
a name, there is little I can do in the way of locating her.”
Vivian looked over Camilla’s shoulder at her family
tree.

“
Thank you.”

“
If I might add, your
family died very young. You might be interested to know how. It
draws an eerie parallel to something Vivian brought to my
attention.”

“
I don’t know if I can
stomach that now.”

Camilla wanted nothing more than to
take a liberating walk, but even that pleasure seemed sinister. Her
stalker could be prowling in the parks, the gardens, anywhere that
brought him one step closer to his prey. The only solace he
couldn’t take from her was her journal and tea.

She knew how to put an end to this,
but it would be messy. She still had a gun hidden away in her
apartment—but that meant stepping over the police tape and setting
foot inside. She never imagined actually pulling the trigger. That
gun only represented a precaution against the unlikely scenario of
a rapist or stalker. Who would have guessed that threat would
manifest in the form of her family?

She almost left the cadaver lab when
Vivian stopped her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. She sighed
and turned to Gavin.

“
How did they
die?”

He chewed his lip.

“
Tuberculosis.”

The proclamation stopped Vivian’s
heart.

“
Just like the outbreak in
the hospital… I saw another case of skin tuberculosis yesterday. Do
you think your family is somehow connected to this? Or is it just a
coincidence?”

The latest letter from Camilla’s
stalker seemed to burn a hole in her pocket. She would know soon
enough when she faced him in Kunatrice Forest tomorrow.

EIGHT

Vivian returned to the University
Hospital after spending a chilly evening at the medical examiner.
She was more than a little disturbed by Gavin’s findings. The
umbilical cord belonged to Camilla but it still didn’t explain who
was hunting her or why. She sided with Camilla’s suspicions about a
zealous relative seeking revenge for the closure of the Magdalene
asylums.

Adding to this twisted tale, the last
generation of Veselys succumbed to tuberculosis. That fact, coupled
with the recent outbreak of tuberculosis at the hospital, didn’t
sit well with Vivian. She wasn’t sure if Vivian’s family was
connected to the hospital cases or not.

Her instincts were telling her to look
deeper. All she could do now was keep an eye on the evolving
situation.

Still, there was something more
terrifying than Camilla’s family or a tuberculosis epidemic. That
something happened to be a person walking gracefully down the
hall.

Milo.

To hell with the consequences, today
she would ask him to meet her for coffee sometime. This was the
third time she failed in that mission. Every time she passed him in
the hallway or traded coy glances, the words she longed to say
dried on her tongue. How bad could the outcome be? The worst he
could do was reject her with an awkward smile and avoid her until
the end of time.

“
Milo!”

The word came out before she could
stop herself.

The young man skidded to a
halt.

“
Fuck,” Vivian said,
looking for a place to hide. Too late. Milo’s eyes flickered as he
spun around and spotted her.

“
Vivian! So good to see
you.”

“
As always? Anyway, where
are you sneaking off to in such a hurry?”

“
Just heading down to the
lab to run some more tests. Do you have any plans for the
weekend?”

“
No, my friends are out of
town.” Maybe the lonely demeanor would set the stage. Even better,
perhaps he would nip at the bait and ask her on a romantic
outing.

“
I didn’t think nursing
students had time for friends. Soon you’ll be doing nothing but
homework and reading. That’s not so bad, considering it all. Come
to think of it, you won’t have any downtime for absinthe and
clubs.”

How easily he skirted her hints. It
both irritated and thrilled Vivian as they strung out this game of
cat and mouse. No matter, she was patient and, with enough time,
she would find an opening in his armor.

“
Wow, your weekends must be
a blast.”

She tried to prolong his walk to the
blood lab. She certainly wasn’t in a hurry to let him off her
hook.

“
So what do you do with
your free time? Perfect your mysterious, brooding persona and read
Nietzche in the trendiest café?”

“
Me? Brooding?”

Damn it, are you really
going to make me ask you? Fine.

Vivian’s heart slugged her chest and
she felt sweat breaking out.

“
Anyway, I was wondering if
you would like to—”