Chapter Seven
"So, werewolves, do you know anything about them?" I repeat the question to Pete, who's face is slathered in skepticism.
"Pete?" I say, trying to pry any other emotion from him. He thinks I'm being senseless, irrational, and I'm slowly dying as I wait for his response.
Pete blinks twice before throwing his head back, hands clutching his stomach as hysterical laughter slices through the tense silence.
This only irritates me.
"Pete!"
He wipes a fresh tear from the corner of his eye, "Werewolves? You can't be serious!"
"I'm dead serious." I set the laptop on the desk before him, double tapping to open the browser. "You did a report on them, didn't you? I think it was freshman year when we were reading The Mark of The Beast."
Pete frowns. "Yeah, but I bluffed through half that essay. I didn't even finish the book."
I groan and resolve to typing random searches.
"Come on, Shell, you can tell me," he says. "Did you get into your mom's herb stash again?"
I punch him right in the thigh. "Shut it, Pete. I need your help! I tried earlier, but I don't think I was searching the right stuff. It kept coming up with television shows."
Pete takes a deep breath, and then scoots the chair up to the desk. "Fine. I'll humor you."
"Thank you!" I say, and clear the web browser, "and hey, my mom does not smoke pot. That was a bag of oregano."
Pete snorts. "Yeah, oregano laced with skunk spray."
He places his finger on the track pad and clicks into the search box. "Alright, werewolves...I'm sure there's a ton of legends and stuff. Do you want local stories, international, what?"
Pete's waiting for an answer, and I realize I have no idea where to start.
"Okay..." he says, "let's narrow it down. What is it that you want to know?"
If I'm going bonkers, I silently retort. Out of everything I want to know, it's if that guy was telling the truth—if he's actually what he says he is. If it is, if he isn't some psychopath, does that mean that everything else is true?
I shudder at the thought. That would mean the bit about the Ironide isn't a lie. Someone is poisoning me, but what are they so bent on making me forget?
The guy said that Ironide is a mixture of iron and some sort of petal.
"You know what, scratch that," I blur, "let's look up plants."
"From werewolves to botany," Pete shakes his head. It's obvious how senseless he thinks I'm being, how crazy. I can't say that I blame him for the hesitancy. First this morning, I express my repetitious dreams about wolves at the cafe, and now we're researching folklore and hooky herbs.
"So, basically, I want to know if there's a plant or chemical that can be used as a suppressant."
"What kind of suppressant?"
I bite my lip. "It could be anything, but memories, mostly."
Pete frowns, "I can try, but I've never heard of a plant that could do that."
I groan and push off the bed. I have to move to think. While Pete keeps typing, I take a moment to clean up the pile of clothes I flung around earlier.
I sigh, stuffing my now-ruined formal dress into the black bag it came in. I doubt a dry cleaner can fix this bloody mess. I can't really explain to the dry cleaner that I don't remember how I got a massive gash in my back. He'd have a field day with the rumors he could concoct from it.
"Hey, is there somewhere we could go, like someone we could talk to who would know a lot about botany?"
Pete's brown eyes light up, "Now that's something that I can easily Google."
Before I can ask, his fingers are already pounding the keyboard and I hold my breath until I hear him smack Enter.
"What are you—"
"There's three to choose from," Pete blurts, "Bill's Greens, Nature's Nursery, or The Fox Glove."
"These are all local plant shops?"
"Greenhouses, yes." Pete smiles, "The Fox Glove looks like it's the closest. It's about three blocks from the school."
I nod, skimming over the directions before grabbing a fresh coat out of my closet. "Hey, maybe you should buy flowers for your mom, since you bailed on the garage sale."
"I didn't bail!" Pete shuts the computer, "You were the one that dragged me off."
I grab his coat off my bed and press it into his chest,"C'mon, we've got a date with a botanist."
Pete parks on the left side of the one-way street, directly in front of two wide, glossy windowpanes. Beneath a row of curved, green block letters, I catch Pete's reflection as he steps onto the curb.
"You good?" says Pete through the open door. His eyes are latched to my knuckles suffocating the door handle.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I force myself to say. In honesty, I'm not entirely sure I want to find out. There's a small part of me that would down a pill right now, just so I could go back to the world I knew this morning. Then again, what's the point of living in a house when the walls are made of paper?
"Let's go," I say, but Pete's already got my door open by the time I decide to get out of the car.
We step through the wooden door, and in sync, we gasp.
The Fox Glove is like a painted picture of Eden. The rows are made of huge, green plants and trees. The stone walkway is sprinkled with a thousand shades of flowers, only to lead us to another glass room filled with Greek statues and an intricately designed, running fountain.
"This is—" Pete starts before having to duck under the set of vines hanging low off the ceiling.
"Magical."
He snorts, "I was going to say 'a jungle', but that works too."
"Where is everyone?"
"Beats me. Whoa! Do you think they'd sell me one of these?" Pete asks, and when I turn, he has his nose an inch from a tall, fully bloomed cactus. It's thorns just begging for him to scoot a little closer.
"Be careful," a small voice sounds through the trees. "Some plants aren't afraid to bite."
Pete jumps backward into the statue of cupid behind him. "Holy ghost child, where's that coming from?"
The voice laughs, and I whip around to meet the round face of a grinning boy. His bowl cut and round glasses are oddly endearing, in a young Harry Potter sort of way.
"We take preorders," he says proudly. "This one's just for show, but the Espostoa can get pretty big. It usually takes us two weeks to dig one up and deliver it."
I smile, "Oh, thanks, but we're not actually here to buy a cactus."
"Good salesmanship for a kid," Pete whispers. Then, he says, "You're a bit young to work here, kid."
"It's Damien, and yeah, I know. But I've been doing this forever since my mom owns it," the kid says, "So, if it's a no on the cactus, what else do you guys want?"
I glance at Pete in search for the words, but he only nods when we make eye contact. So, I take a breath and say, "This will sound strange, but we need to know about any plants that can wipe someone's memory."
Damien squints through his black glasses, "Um, I don't know if we carry those right now. Sorry, we don't really sell the bad plants. Not that I know of, anyway."
I frown, "Is there anyone here that would know?"
The kid nods, "Yeah, my sister's upstairs."
Before we can say anything, he pivots and runs around the corner of cacti. His feet smack against the cement floor, echoing until they hit, what sounds like, a staircase.
"Ollie? Ollie! Customers!"
When the kid scrambles back down the path, his dark hair looks like he just got off a roller coaster.
"She'll be down in a second. She hates when I yell at her." He says it with a grin—the same sheepish grin that Kennedy gives me whenever she's done something she knows she shouldn't have.
Damien suggests, "We can look at the catalogue until Ollie gets down here."
So, we follow Damien towards the front of the store, meeting him at the wood cashier's station. Across the way, I can faintly see through the window of the hardware store. Inside the shop is dark, but for a split second, the headlights of a passing truck illuminate the faint outline of a human figure, but with the next pair of lights, it's gone.
I blink the image away. "Hey, what time do you guys close?"
Damien shrugs as he lifts up a book the size of an encyclopedia and slams it onto the desk. "Whenever the last person leaves, I guess."
Pete smirks and I lightly elbow his side.
"So, here's the catalogue. I like to use the Index in the back. It's alphabetical, but it lists the main things that each plant does." He takes a look at both of us and adds, "Sorry, it's all we have."
"Damien!" A sharp yell echoes above us, followed by quick steps booming across the ceiling.
"Damien?!" The female voice repeats, and then the steps hollow out as they hit the stairs. "Damien, I've told you a hundred times not to yell—"
The voice freezes and when I turn to meet the person attached, a chill sweeps across my skin.
The girl from the cafe is standing in front of us—the very one that argued with my stalker just an hour before he confessed to being a werewolf in my front yard.
You. She doesn't say it, but the recognition is prominent, even through the heavy liner and fake lashes. She appears just as surprised to see me as I am to see her.
"Ollie, they are looking for a supplement," Damien says, and instantly, her dark brows fold.
"A suppressant," I correct. "I'm looking for a plant that could be used as a suppressant."
"Hey, I know you," Pete blurts, surprising us both. "I've seen you before, in the library. Your sister—"
"Yes," she cuts in. "I do. Now, why do you want a memory suppressant?"
She clicks around the two of us in a pair of electric blue pumps, only to trade places with her little brother.
"I need to know what plants can make someone lose their memories."
The girl gives me a hard stare, and I'm not sure if she thinks I'm crazy, or if she's surprised that I'm asking.
"Can you help us?" Pete asks, and she slams the catalogue shut when he reaches for the Index.
Her green eyes skewer us. "Why do you need to know?"
Pete looks at me, his body giving off a mix of uncertainty and fright.
I chalk this up to my lack of sharing. Miss Bitch doesn't help the situation either.
He knows I haven't told him everything yet, and that there's more to this than a simple curiosity. Despite his goofy exterior and lame jokes, Pete's intelligent. I'm sure he's got a theory behind my sudden madness.
I need to tell him. I want to, I'm just not sure where to start. It's not like I can say, 'Hey, so this man from followed me home, broke into my house, tried to sniff me, found out I'm being poisoned, and then told me he was a werewolf.'
Yeah, that will go over really well.
I exhale and then force out the words before I can stop myself, "I think someone's been feeding it to me—the suppressant—and I want to know why."
The girl's wide eyes scan over the room suddenly, and I'm not sure what it means.
"Hey, Damien, can you start locking up? Then I need you to go upstairs and check the stove. I don't want dinner to burn."
Damien nods and it's quiet as he shuts the blinds, and locks everything but the front door. We remain silent until his footsteps solidify his position in the upstairs apartment.
"Well, that was cryptic," Pete shuffles, and I lightly elbow his side.
"Look, if you can't help us, just say so, but I'd really appreciate it if you could, Ollie."
"Olivian," she says matter-of-factly. "Only family can call me Ollie."
She blinks at the two of us, and finally flips open the catalogue.
"So, there aren't many out there—if there are any flowers that can mess with memory. Most of the time, if a plant is used for something other than decoration, it's usually as a healing tool, not as a way of handicapping someone."
"What are the options?"
"Well, listed under memory, there is Hawthorn, Bacopin, Rosemary, Schiisandra, and Agrimonia, but these are all thought to shed light on repressed memories." The girl brushes back a piece of curled, black hair. "Do you have any leads on what the plant may be? Any visual aids or particular attributes you know of?"
I shake my head, "No. All I know is that if the petals are mixed with iron, it can create a memory suppressant."
The girl's hand freezes mid-turn of a page, and when I look up, her entire being is stiff, save the eyes fiercely set on mine. Just as I open my mouth, Olivian slams the book shut.
"I'm sorry, but we don't have what you're looking for," she says as she slides the book back under the counter.
"You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"
Her dark ringlets shake vigorously with her head. "No, I'm sorry. I can't help you."
"You know what is! You know about Ironide, don't you?"
Olivian backs away from the counter and her heels clink against the cobblestone. "I'm sorry, we don't carry any plants by that name."
"It's not a plant, but you know that already. You probably make it. Is that what you're cooking upstairs?"
I'm already following her through the maze of greenery, with Pete trailing behind. I can hear him calling out to me, but I refuse to let her out of my sight.
She's already got one heel on the bottom step of the staircase when I say, "I saw you this morning. You were at the café, with him."
Fury ripples through her pale face, and before I understand what's happening, she has my back against a wall of vines. Her voice is quiet, but so enraged that the lack of volume is terrifying.
"Don't you dare bring him into this. You know nothing! You know absolutely nothing! So, I suggest you shut it before you get him killed."
"You know!" I probably sound as frightened as I feel. "Then why won't you tell me?"
"God, you're lucky I'm a friend of his. You're so stupid," she spits, pushing me into the wall again. "I could want him dead, and you just fed him right to me! This is why I freaking hate outsiders. I hate them! Why he does this, I'll never understand."
"All I want to know is about the Ironide. We can leave him out of it."
She finally releases the pressure of her forearm against my neck.
"You're not getting information on either."
"He's the one who told me about it. He told me to stop taking it."
She growls, taking a step back as she straightens out her cardigan and dress. "Well, don't listen to him. In fact, you should take a double dose tomorrow morning."
I frown. "Then I'll forget everything."
"Exactly," she scoffs.
"Um, Shelland?" Pete cuts in and when I look, he's pointing at the woman to his right. She's a taller version of Olivian, but with a bob and a matching pair of Damien's glasses.
"Hello," she says smoothly, and Olivian whips around at the voice.
She flicks her gaze from me to the woman and says, "Hey, mom."