Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Eden Moore 1)

"All right, then, maybe I'll just dump it down the sink in the kitchen. " I left her immediate vision and walked towards the door.

Eliza shrugged, and by all appearances was unconcerned. She didn't even try to see what I was doing. Either she knew I wasn't going to do it, or she knew she could easily get more. Or I supposed she might be bluffing. Perhaps it ran in the family. I hesitated. Or maybe Harry was right and the foul-smelling stuff was inconsequential. Hmmm. So many possibilities. There might be a way to tell.

I returned to Eliza and stood before her again. Her eyes were tilted skyward once more, and they did not come down to meet me. "Herbal stuff. Folk medicine, huh? Then I bet it doesn't have anything more interesting in it than saw palmetto and mud. Maybe I'll just take a drink of it myself. "

That got her attention, but she didn't seem sure how to react. She was reluctant to give too much away; she refused to struggle against the bonds or try to call out, but she clearly had something on her mind. She brought her eyes off the ceiling and looked at me again.

"Well?" I held my breath and put the bottle to my lips.

"Urngh—" she grunted. "Urngh urgh. "

I stopped, and pulled the gag out of her mouth with two careful fingers. The rag was soaked with drool and I didn't want to touch it. "Yes?"

She didn't start screaming again, which was a relief; in fact, she didn't say anything at all.

"Well?" I waggled the bottle before her. She blinked, but kept quiet. I'm not sure what I wanted her to say, but whatever my expectations, she disappointed them. "All right then, bottoms up. "

She gasped as I poured a mouthful of the stuff past my teeth.

I would have gasped too if it wouldn't have meant spewing the brew all over the place. Eliza's herbal medicine tasted as vile as it smelled. I swallowed with force so quick that it made my throat hurt—but the pain was more tolerable than the taste so I couldn't complain. The stuff burned going down, boiling all the way to my stomach where it simmered and stewed.

"What on earth is in this shit?" I asked, more as a rhetorical statement than a genuine question.

Despite the limited progress I'd made in Eliza's interrogation, Harry was not happy. "You shouldn't have done that. She probably doesn't know what's in it any more than I do, and it might be . . . bad for you. "

"Oh, please," I wiped my tongue around my molars, trying to scrape away the fetid flavor. "Anything a woman her age regularly drinks can't possibly be that harmful. See? No ill effects. It's disgusting, but I'm sure it's harmless. " For emphasis, I threw my head back and took another deep, hearty swallow—this time taking care to plug my nose to dull the assault on my taste buds. To my surprise, this second swill left the bottle close to empty. Hard to believe I'd ingested so much of it. Hard to believe anybody could.

Eliza finally broke her silence. Her voice was strange, soft, and unhappy. "You shouldn't drink that. "

"Why? Is Harry right? Will it hurt me? I know you don't care, so be sure to try a different approach when you answer. "

"No. I don't care if you choke on it. Look at yourself, guzzling down a sick old woman's medicine that you stole from her cabinet. I need that to live, and you don't need it at all. You're young and strong, and you are killing me with every drop you drink. "

"That's not much of a deterrent. If anything that makes me want to hunt down every bit of it you've got in the house and run it down the sink. " I wiped at my mouth with one of the napkins that had not been used to plug Eliza's mouth. I couldn't have downed another sip if they'd held a gun to my head. How she'd been drinking it in such quantities for years astounded me. "You've got a lot of faith in this stuff. "

"It's strong medicine. I need it. "

"But you can get more. Harry said you get a new shipment about twice a month. "

"I don't know if I'll last until the next one comes. " She was afraid. I saw it in her eyes, in her floppy jowls, and her quivering mouth. I looked down and saw there was enough "medicine" left for maybe another smallish dose. I looked up at Eliza.

In that moment, she and I understood each other for the first time. We both understood that I had leverage.

"You really do need this, don't you? Or at least you think you do. "

"Yes, I do need it. "

"Then tell me where you get it from, and I'll leave you the last bit. "

"You already know. I get it from a friend in Florida. "

"Who?"

"No one you know. " As she made her curt replies, she was watching me intently. Even in her fear, she was curious. She was expecting something, but what? What could the stuff possibly do to me? My stomach was sloshing and queasy, and burned in a place or two where the liquid rolled against it, but I did not feel any different.

Not better, not . . . worse.

"Satisfy my curiosity. " My voice came louder than I meant for it to. "Who lives in Highlands Hammock?"