Read Noir for Free Online Page B

you going?” C.L. calls after me as I scramble down the back stairs, into the corridors beneath the house.
    “I’ll be right back!” I say, leaping into a run, the clap of my boots echoing off the walls of the underground cavern. “Just keep doing as I said!”
    I get to the forks and turn toward the terrarium room. Hurtling down the corridor, I throw back the doors.
    A pulse of steam coats me, rendering me damp from head to toe. I push through the heat and white mist, through the trees to the sycamore at the back of the room. Where is it? Where were they? Frantically I bat back the leaves of the ground foliage, searching. Ginseng. Fennel. Hawthorn. I clip through them. Think, where was it?
    I turn, and the elephant-ear-like petals of the giant hostas catch my eye. The delicate leaves of Chemodendryum charcoalreous peek out from under their skirts. There it is! It was close to the charcoalreous ! I rush forward and fall to my knees at the plant’s base, lifting the leaves of the ones around it and tearing others. The scent. The scent. I’ll know the scent when I smell it. I lower my head and breathe deep. At first I smell nothing but sheep shite and dirt, and then . . .
    My nose finds it: a sharp, musky scent, like the vinegar-mustard poultices my mother used to mix for my chest when I was young and sick—only this one’s gone rancid. That’s it! My gaze locks on to the spidery plant with fluffy, oak-shaped leaves growing in a spiral around the stems of a heavy hosta, in a living circular staircase. I bat the big dog-ear hostas aside, snatch a handful of greyish-white leaves, and curl them into my palm.
    Funny, I remember them being darker than this, a greyish-brown. I stare down at them, my heart pounding, and within seconds they begin to crumple and turn colour, affirming what I remember. “These are right.” I leap to my feet and race to the door.
    Please, Lord, don’t let me be too late . . .
    Bolting back through the kitchen door, I dash over the threshold a sweaty mess, my dress clinging to me. Perspiration rims my hair.
    “Where have you been?” C.L. turns and scowls at me, his chin wagging.
    “To get these!” I hold out my hand.
    His pupils flash at the sight of the leaves. He didn’t know I knew about the terrarium room, neither of them did. The shock on their faces confirms that.
    I drop to my knees beside Cordelia and wave the withering leaves past her face . . . but nothing. She doesn’t respond. My already-galloping heart races up my throat. If this is just a severe seizure, the leaves should have done something. Perhaps I’ve taken too long. Perhaps she’s too far into the seizure. If she is, just smelling the leaves won’t bring her out of it. I’ve got to get them into her system— into her bloodstream —quickly.
    “Go and get more of these!” I bark at Iris, tipping Cordelia’s head back and blowing into her mouth, taking over her duties.
    Iris sits back and stares at me, bewildered.
    “From the garden!” I shout, threading my fingers and pouncing on Cordelia’s chest, pumping up and down briskly. “Hurry!”
    Iris jolts into motion.
    “It’s near the Chemodendryum charcoalreous plant,” I shout after her. “At the back of the room under the hosta leaves! They’re grey and white in colour before you pick them!”
    Iris’s shoes hit the stairs at incredible speed.
    “Boil some water.” I turn my head toward C.L. “And find me some woodworm and aloini tincture—”
    “But that has belladonna and strychni—”
    “I’m well aware what it has in it! Now, just go!” I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to draw Cordelia’s blood out and infuse it with serum, and then send it back in her body to battle the attack right in her veins. The strychnine should shock her pulmonary system while the belladonna opens up her airways—if it doesn’t stop her heart first. Belladonna is known to make the heart race at inhuman speeds and, if