The Potion Diaries (19 page)

I grimace. ‘I’ll email my ideas back to my parents to check.’

When I open my email, though, it’s flooded with messages from other Finders, suppliers and chancers attempting to sell me ingredients at ridiculously high prices. I can see that several are offering Aphroditas powder at an extortionate rate, and who knows if it’s real or not?

‘Anyone want to buy golden jasmine for two hundred thousand crowns?’

‘You’re kidding me!’ says Arjun.

‘Nope, look right here . . .’

‘Obviously the sellers have caught wind of the next ingredient everyone is searching for. Anyone selling vastly overpriced eluvian ivy yet?’ Kirsty asks.

I do a quick search, but there’s nothing.

‘Good, then at least we know we still have an edge.’

‘Or it might be wrong,’ I say. I lift my head from the screen as the smell of incense that had hung in the air so sweetly turns acrid in my nostrils. ‘Is someone sitting too close to a candle? It smells like something is burning.’

Instinctively everyone pulls away from the nearest lantern, but there’s nothing amiss. I look up, and against the darkening sky see a tall column of smoke. ‘Fire,’ I whisper.

All heads whip up, and then it’s a mad scramble to see who can get off the balcony quickest. Arjun is through the door first, and a worried Vijay and Mr Patel chase after him. We follow behind, Kirsty grabbing her bag and instructing me to pull on my boots. I do them up as fast as I can, almost sliding down the stairs in my haste.

‘It’s coming from the jungle,’ says Vijay.

‘Come on, Sam, hurry.’ Kirsty snaps on a torch from her bag, and the beam illuminates the thick tangle of green in front of us, so dense it could almost be a wall. She tosses me another one, which I fumble and drop on the ground.

‘We’re going in there when it’s burning?’ I’d rather be heading in the opposite direction.

‘This is the rainforest, Sam. And it’s the rainy season. The trees don’t burn like that on their own.’ Kirsty is already running. ‘That’s where the pink jasmine is.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Samantha

I
KEEP MY TORCH TRAINED ON KIRSTY’S back as we run. The last thing I want to do is flash it at the jungle darkness and see some huge spider staring back at me – or the glowing eyes of a carnivorous jungle cat.

More worrying though, is that it’s getting lighter, even as the smoke is getting thicker and heavier. The light seems to be coming in bursts from between the trees.

Suddenly one of those bursts is right in front of us, a python of orange and yellow flame writhing through the foliage. I can’t help myself: I scream. Loudly.

The flames stop, cut off abruptly, just as Kirsty and I freeze. Then a woman’s voice whispers a word, and a spray of blue light bursts all around us. The lights drift to the ground, illuminating the surrounding trees.

The spots take a minute to clear from my vision as my eyes adjust to the new light.

Kirsty adjusts faster than I do.

‘Emilia.’

‘Miss Donovan, good to see you.’

My vision clears. I see Emilia, her long grey dress and cape replaced by a sleek grey jumpsuit. She no longer looks like a burned out alchemist, but more like a fierce Finder. I turn to Kirsty. ‘You know her?’

It’s Emilia who answers. ‘Finding is such a small world, isn’t it? Of course I know the famous Kirsty Donovan, independent Finder to Nova’s once most prominent alchemists. She’s a dying breed. When I wanted to learn how to Find, I knew I had to learn from the best. The man who trained Kirsty trained me as well.’

‘Before you murdered him.’ Kirsty spits on the ground, which sizzles. ‘How did you find us here?’

‘You might know how to cover your tracks, but that other team isn’t so clever. I’ve been tracking them since they left Kingstown – although it was only when they picked up
you two
that they really became interesting. Now I can finish two teams in one – I do love being efficient. I mean, who knew those mild-mannered Patels were hiding a patch of
pink jasmine
up their sleeves. It seems like such a shame to have had to destroy it all.’

Her formerly straggly hair is tied up into a sleek ponytail and on her back is a terrifying-looking flamethrower. All around her, soot is falling like some kind of perverse snow.

‘It’s not fair!’ I cry, unable to help myself. All I can think of is the jasmine and our chances both going up in smoke.

‘Nothing is fair in life or a Wilde Hunt, honey.’ Emilia steps towards me, but Kirsty is one step ahead.

‘Don’t come any closer! I have salamander dust and I’m not afraid to use it.’

I shudder.
Salamander dust – a nasty compound that burns eyes and skin, causing insatiable itching.

Emilia stops in her tracks. ‘This is your warning, Kemi. Today I destroy the ingredient. Stay on this Hunt and I might not be so lenient with you next time.’ She pulls out a glass vial from her belt and throws it down in front of us.

Kirsty pushes me as thick smoke fills the air.

I fall to the ground, the heat of it burning my knees. There’s a rush of sound through the forest and I almost expect it to be Emilia, back to gloat some more. But then the smoke clears and there’s a sharp inhale of breath from someone surprised, shocked, at the scene in front of us: Anita. And an anguished howl from the next person to arrive: Vijay.

Emilia is gone.

A stream of Bharatan words spill from Vijay’s mouth. It doesn’t take a linguist to figure out what he’s saying.

Anita sinks to her knees next to me. She buries her hands into the ash, swirling it around, as if she’s searching for something.

‘Well, she’s really set us back now,’ says Kirsty.

‘Wait, you’re still planning to continue after that?’ Anita asks. ‘She’s not going to give up.’

‘And neither are we.’ Kirsty pulls anxiously at the end of her braid. She notices me noticing, then whips it around her shoulders. ‘Come on, Sam.’ She storms past us and heads back towards the village. I scramble after her.

‘Can we track down more pink jasmine?’

‘No. We’re running out of time. We’ll have to settle for golden. Source it somewhere else. It’s the easiest ingredient on your list. We haven’t been careful enough. This is a Wilde Hunt we’re talking about here and we’ve committed the worst crime: underestimating our opponents.’

Back in the village, Kirsty heads right up to a shack with a motorbike outside. She knocks, and talks to the man who opens the door, gesturing at the bike. They exchange heated words and there’s a lot of gesticulating, but they come to some kind of agreement. Kirsty stands the bike up. ‘Grab your stuff,’ she says to me. ‘We have to go, now.’

‘But what about Anita? And Arjun?’

‘Look, only one team can win the Hunt.’

I’m momentarily stunned. ‘But they told us about the pink jasmine.’

‘And you told them about the ivy. You’re even.’

‘What if we split up, like you suggested . . .’

‘That was a possibility before, but the stakes have just been upped. Who knows how many of the other Participants Emilia has stopped already.’

I’m about to protest again, but Kirsty continues. ‘Sam, they’re slowing us down. We should have gone straight for the pink jasmine tonight. Emilia told us she traced us here because of them. Now I do know where to find eluvian ivy, so let’s go.’

‘But eluvian ivy might not be an ingredient. It’s just a theory!’

Kirsty holds me square by the shoulders. She stares me straight in the eye. ‘It’s your theory, and that’s good enough for me. If your instincts aren’t right about this, then we’re out of the Hunt anyway. I trust you.’

Her blind faith in me makes me proud and nervous all at once. But the more I think about it, the more the ingredients make sense – merpearl, jasmine, eluvian ivy, abominable hair. There’s something else that I can’t quite put my finger on, but those ingredients seem to fit in my brain, the jigsaw coming together. I can sense how they would mesh together to form the love potion, how each ingredient brings out a different quality in another. And more than that, I can visualise the mix, and my fingers itch to get started. I feel like I’m right, and Kirsty thinks so too. She nods, a slight smile on her face, and walks past me, back to Vijay’s house, where she ignores the questioning faces of the family and grabs my backpack.

I want this. I want to win this Hunt. We knew an alliance couldn’t go on for ever, that at one point we would have to separate – whether it was now or further down the line. So does it really make a difference when? And together we seem to have no luck whatsoever . . .

Arjun and Anita break out of the jungle as we’re loading up the bike, the biggest backpack inbetween Kirsty’s legs, the other on my back.

‘Sam?’ Arjun loads my name with accusation; he’s already guessed what’s happening.

‘Where are you going?’ Anita says. ‘I—’

Arjun stretches out an arm to stop her, to cut off whatever she’s about to stay. ‘They’re leaving,’ he says, matter-of-factly. ‘Let her go.’

‘I . . . I’m sorry, guys. Kirsty—’

Now it’s me he cuts off. ‘You’re the Kemi, you don’t have to do what she says. We’re stronger together. I thought we said that if one of us wins it, that’s better than some synth. And now we have an even bigger reason. We know that Emilia is trying to sabotage us. If we work together . . .’

I make a decision, throwing my legs over the back of the motorcycle. ‘There’s no time. And we’ll be safer apart. Emilia can’t catch both teams at once.’

It hurts seeing the angry look on Arjun’s face, and even more the wounded one on Anita’s. ‘Wait,’ she says, dropping whatever it is she’s been holding in her hands and running towards me. At that moment Kirsty fires the engine and pulls away. Anita yells out again, over the roar of the bike, and she reaches us in time to throw herself at my back, but then we start to gain speed and pull away from her. I look back over my shoulder to see her on her knees, with Arjun rushing over to help her, and a deep pit of guilt fills and overflows in my stomach.

When we stop to fill up with petrol, I pull the backpack off my back. There, imprinted on it like a slap, are Anita’s handprints, blackened by soot and soil, staring at me in accusation.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Princess Evelyn

A
H, NOW THIS WAS BETTER.

She had finally,
finally
been allowed in a room alone with the beautiful Lyn. In fact, everywhere she looked, she could see her, reflected again and again in beautiful mirrored glass. It was what she had asked for. ‘Take us to the dressing room,’ she had told Renel. ‘So I can show her my beautiful clothes.’ But it hadn’t been because of the clothes that she wanted to take Lyn there. It was because of the mirrors. That way she could see Lyn reflected in 360-degree glory.

She felt emboldened, now that they were alone. She reached out her hand to touch Lyn, and Lyn did the same. But a barrier, a little spark of electricity kept them a hair’s breadth away from each other.

Lyn blushed. She actually blushed at the thought of a single touch.

She was so modest. And even more beautiful for it.

Eve wondered if this is what it had been like in older times, when a mere glance could have been deemed inappropriate. She had laughed when she was told that men once swooned over the sight of a bare ankle. That women would faint over a lingering glance.