THE NEXT DAY WAS a busy one at Carrolls’ Gardens.
Shoppers filled the store all morning, keeping Mr. Carroll chatting in the main room and Mrs. Carroll fluttering in the floral department. Eliza’s mother burrowed down in the workroom, open books piled around her like stacks of paper pancakes, muttering to herself about crenate and crenulate leaves.
Even Eliza was too busy to think about the attic. The Carrolls gave Eliza her very own Carrolls’ Gardens name tag, which made her an official store employee. Mrs. Carroll taught her how to help customers. She was supposed to ask “Can I help you find anything?” and, unless the customers’ answer was “The bathroom,” to send them straight to someone else.
When she wasn’t pointing customers to one of those two places, she was helping Tommy with chores. They wiped the front windows. They put away a shipment of water picks and floral wire. In the late morning, they headed into the leafy depths of the rare-plant room.
Tommy mumbled something about picking up any dead leaves. Then he turned around and stumbled over the laces of his own shoes.
Eliza bent to pick up some broken palm fronds. From the corner of her eye, she glanced at Tommy. He was dusting leaves with a soft white cloth. Tommy looked even more slumped and saggy this morning, Eliza thought. He looked…tired. Could her tripping over Moggie have woken him in the middle of the night? Or—maybe—could he have heard the sounds coming from the attic, too? Did he know something important about the place, something she just hadn’t thought to ask? Eliza’s breath caught. Maybe she could—
“Look out!” said Tommy.
Eliza jerked upright. Her head bumped something that squished. Sticky wetness dribbled along her neck and into the collar of her T-shirt. Eliza looked above her. She’d straightened up right beneath a hanging basket, where a plant with long, sleek leaves and flowers like streaky pink genie bottles was swaying wildly back and forth.
Eliza swiped at her neck. “What is it? Is it poison? Am I dead?”
Tommy stepped toward her. “It’s okay,” he mumbled. He patted the damp spot on her shoulder with his cloth. “It’s just sappy stuff. The plant uses it to lure bugs.” He squinted down at her shirt. “At least there weren’t any dead bugs in that one.”
Eliza checked her shoulder. Tommy was right: no dead bugs. That was a plus.
“It’s a pitcher plant,” Tommy explained, wiping a streak on her neck. “They’re carnivorous.”
Eliza perked up. “Carnivorous?”
“They’re bug-eating. Not, like, man-eating.” In the middle of another wipe, Tommy seemed to realize that he was touching a girl. He backed rapidly away, leaving Eliza to grab the rag on her shoulder. “They only eat insects,” he said, shaking his hair back over his eyes. “They dissolve them and absorb them. Like Venus flytraps do.”
Eliza threw another look at the plant. Its pink-green pitchers bobbled tauntingly.
Embarrassment seemed to have knocked Tommy’s words loose. “People usually call them pitcher plants, because of how they’re shaped,” he hurried on. “Or monkey cups, because monkeys like to drink that sticky stuff, too. But their real name is Nepenthes.”
“Nepenthes?” Eliza instantly forgot the sticky stuff on her neck. “Like in ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe? ‘Respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore’?”
“Um. I guess.” Tommy blinked at her. “They get used in painkillers. Nepenthe means ‘without grief.’ ”
Eliza stared at Tommy. All at once, she felt solid—like for the first time since arriving at Carrolls’ Gardens, both her feet were planted on the floor. “You know weird stuff,” she told him.
Tommy looked like he’d just been sloshed by a pitcher plant of his own. He gave a startled twitch. Then he fixed his eyes on the floor, taking two shuffling steps backward.
“That’s good,” said Eliza, before Tommy could shuffle straight out of the room. She smiled. “I know weird stuff, too. I mean—I just quoted ‘The Raven’ at you.”
Tommy stopped shuffling. “Oh.” He gave Eliza a glance from under the shaggy ends of his hair. She couldn’t tell if he was smiling back, but he might have been.
“So, you really think this plant stuff is interesting?” Eliza gazed around at the twining vines and gleaming berries and the flowers shaped like tropical birds. “Why?”
“Um…” Tommy scratched his head with one hand, making his hair hang even more crookedly. “What you said about ghost research the other night—that’s kind of like plant science. You know, witches putting a bunch of weird herbs in a pot, making potions, figuring out plants’ powers. It sounds like magic. But that’s how medicine began.” He nodded around the leafy room. “Plants are science and magic.”
“Science and magic,” Eliza repeated. She stuffed the damp rag into her pocket. “Have you ever read the story ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’?”
Tommy shook his head.
“It’s about this obsessive botanist guy who feeds his daughter little bits of poisonous plants.” Eliza dropped her voice to a spooky storytelling register. “He gives her more and more over time, so eventually she’s not just immune to all the poisons, she becomes poisonous. Like, she can kill people if she touches them. Or even breathes on them. It’s supposed to just be this creepy story. But I suppose it could actually be true.”
Tommy’s hazel eyes grew wider. “Cool,” he breathed.
Eliza was used to most people not thinking “Rappaccini’s Daughter” was cool. She beamed at Tommy. She was about to launch into another creepy story—maybe “The Willows”—when Tommy whirled around.
“I’ll show you something,” he called over his shoulder.
Eliza followed him through the leaves to a shrub with glossy black berries.
“This is belladonna,” said Tommy. “A super-famous poison. Also known as deadly nightshade.”
Eliza had heard the name deadly nightshade in plenty of stories. She stared down at the plant. Its berries were beautiful, like little drops of blackberry jam. “You sell poisonous plants here?”
“Tons of normal houseplants are poisonous,” Tommy pointed out. “Peace lilies. Narcissus. Dieffenbachia. Philodendrons are really poisonous, and everybody’s got one of them in their living room.” He crouched beside the plants. “Just a couple belladonna berries can kill a little kid. But people have also used it in medicine, or built up a tolerance to it—like that Rappahannock’s Daughter girl—”
“Rappaccini’s.”
“Right. People have even made the berries’ juice into wine. Poison wine.” Tommy touched a jet-black berry with one fingertip. His voice was smooth and confident now, not mumbly at all. “There are legends of ancient kings killing entire enemy armies by tricking them with gifts of belladonna wine.”
“Wow,” said Eliza. The words poison wine sent a pleasant shiver rippling up her back. “You make plants actually sound interesting.”
Tommy flushed. He smiled down at the floor. “They are interesting. I mean, I think they are.”
“You know who you should hang out with? My mom.”
Tommy’s eyes widened. “Oh. I wouldn’t want to bother her….”
“You won’t. She loves having somebody to talk to about this stuff. In the summers, when she doesn’t have her classes to teach, it usually ends up being me. Come on.”
They found her mother at the workroom table, scalpel in hand, bending over something in a metal tray. Beside her was the plant with the golden leaves and bright red berries. As Eliza moved closer, with Tommy trailing after her, she saw that the tray held one of those berries, neatly sliced in half.
“Hello, you two.” Her mother glanced up. She nodded at Eliza’s wet shoulder. “Did Moggie get you again?”
“It was Nepenthes this time.” Eliza leaned against the worktable. “We just thought we’d come and see how things are going.”
“Oh, they’re going!” Her mother started to poke the scalpel into the bun on top of her head, but stopped herself just in time. “I’m getting a good look at this berry. It’s similar to a red currant, really, in texture and in color. But the epicarp—its skin—is tougher. And you can see the seeds, right here…” She pointed with the scalpel. Tommy leaned in eagerly. “The seeds aren’t like those in a currant or a grape. They’re closer to a blueberry’s.”
“Hmm,” said Tommy. “So…um…do you think it’s edible?”
“Hard to say. Without eating it, that is.” Her mother pressed the tip of the scalpel against her open notebook, then put the scalpel down and grabbed a pencil from her bun. She scribbled a few words. “It could be edible. It could have medicinal properties. It could be toxic, although it’s not contact-poisonous. I’ve tested it on my skin already.” She tapped her cheek dreamily with the pencil’s eraser. Eliza reached out and pulled the scalpel out of her mother’s reach. “I’m sure your aunt and uncle wouldn’t love the idea of rodents in the shop, but if I could have just a couple of mice…”
“Mice?” echoed Eliza.
“Animals’ senses of smell are far more developed than ours. If a mouse willingly ate the berry and survived, then—” Her mother broke off with a sigh. “No. Never mind. A few weeks isn’t enough time for animal studies anyway.” She lifted the berry to her nose and sniffed.
Eliza grabbed her mother’s wrist. “Mom, you’re not going to eat that, are you?”
“No,” said her mother. “I’m just smelling it.” She took another sniff. “Sweet. Slightly tangy. One would think it had evolved to attract potential eaters, who would then distribute its seeds through excretion. Smell?” She held it out on her palm.
Tommy craned in and took an avid sniff. The word excretion—which Eliza knew was scientist-speak for poo—made her not-so-interested in sniffing anything, but she finally leaned toward the berry and inhaled, too.
The fruit did smell sweet. Kind of like a cranberry candle. But Eliza didn’t care much about cranberry candles or rare red-berried plants. Tommy, on the other hand, looked like he’d never seen anything more fascinating than this bisected berry.
“Um…would a plant maybe evolve to seem edible but actually be poisonous?” he asked.
“Good question!” Her mother smiled. “Many poisonous plants do have edible lookalikes: wild grapes and Menispermum canadense, chestnut and Aesculus or buckeye…”
Her mother went on, using terms like Vavilovian mimicry and phytochemistry, making gestures that got bigger and bigger. Tommy listened, his face intent. Eliza’s mind began to feel like a salad spinner, full of leafy green words that she couldn’t quite grasp.
She took a step toward the door. “Well—I’m going to finish picking up in the rare plant room.”
Tommy jerked. “Oh. Yeah. I should go, too.”
“No.” Eliza waved a hand. “I’ll do it. You two keep talking about buckeye excretions or whatever. Have fun.”
Tommy gave a shy smile.
Eliza stepped out the door, smiling, too. She’d done something nice for Tommy. That felt good. Of course, it didn’t get her any closer to uncovering the ghostly mysteries of this place, but—
Wait.
Maybe it would.
Eliza scanned the shop.
Mr. Carroll was carrying a customer’s crate of plants toward the front door. “I’ll load up these orchids for you,” he told her. “Of course, it will cost you extra.” He boomed a big laugh. “Just orchid-ing!” The bell jingled as they stepped outside.
Mrs. Carroll’s voice fluted out from the floral department. “What was that, Ranunculus, dear? These mums are drowning you out. Sing out! You’ve got such a lovely voice!”
Eliza slipped across the room and circled behind the counter. With the attic key, she’d dash upstairs, unlock the door, and return the key to its hook. Then she could explore the attic at her leisure later tonight.
She reached for the ATTIC hook.
It was empty.
Eliza frowned. She crouched to check the floor. Maybe the key had fallen somewhere nearby. She was hunched there, groping around, when a voice said—
“Excuse me?”
Eliza looked up.
A woman with sleek black hair stood at the counter. “Do you carry seaweed fertilizer?”
“Like…for growing seaweed?” Eliza asked.
The woman blinked. “No. It’s made of seaweed. Kelp. Laminaria. Bladder wrack. Do you have any?”
“Um…” Eliza glanced around the shop. Mr. Carroll hadn’t come back inside. Mrs. Carroll was still giving her flowers a pep talk. Tommy was shut in the workroom. Well, Eliza could handle this on her own. Tommy had told her where they kept the fertilizer.
“Let me check the basement,” she told the woman. She pulled the BASEMENT key from its hook. “I’ll be right back.”
She hurried through the rare plant room into the hallway.
The basement door opened with one turn of the key. Eliza patted the inner walls until she found a light switch. Somewhere below, a dim gold light blinked on.
Eliza gazed down the stairs. They were steep and wooden, with railings blocking the emptiness on either side. The basement itself—as much of it as she could glimpse—had brick walls and a cement floor. It was filled with the kind of darkness that told Eliza the light she’d turned on was probably one bare, hanging bulb.
Eliza pattered down the stairs. The air against her skin grew cooler. The smell of soil gusted around her, mixed with a whiff of chemicals or mold or something else she couldn’t recognize. She reached the bare stone floor and took a look around.
This basement wasn’t so different from the basements in most old houses. She could make out the metal tanks of appliances, the twining pipes climbing up the walls and across the ceiling like big bare veins. Shelves piled with sacks and crates and boxes—boxes that Eliza hoped contained seaweed fertilizer—stood all around. A breeze whispered over the back of her neck.
Wait.
Where was a breeze coming from?
Eliza glanced over her shoulder. Was there an open window down here? No—there couldn’t be, not so far underground.
The hairs on her neck rose. This breeze wasn’t a dog’s breath. This breeze had to be something else. Something supernatural. Wishing she had her thermometer or her Spectral Translator along, Eliza turned toward the basement’s depths.
Another touch of cold air brushed her skin. It was coming from the darkness behind the stairs. Eliza’s skin tingled. The darkness itself seemed to be calling her to come closer, closer, closer—
“What are you doing?”
Eliza whirled around.
Tommy stood at the bottom of the stairs. Half hidden by dimness and shaggy hair, his face was hard to read—but it was definitely not smiling.
Eliza’s heart thudded in her throat like a tiny basketball. “I was just looking for something.”
Tommy stared down at her. “For what?”
“A customer wanted seaweed fertilizer. You said you kept fertilizer down here, so…” Tommy’s gaze flicked past her into the shadows. There was no sound but the rumbling of the pipes.
“I’ll get it,” he said at last. “You should go upstairs. My aunt and uncle don’t want anybody down here.”
“Why not?”
Tommy looked straight at her now. “Because it’s not safe.”
This could have meant many different things. Eliza would have liked to find out which one it did mean, but something in Tommy’s voice halted her. Sometimes his voice was mumbly; sometimes it was smooth and clear and enthusiastic. Now it was smooth but cold. And very hard. It was a lot like the chilly stone underneath her shoes.
“Okay,” said Eliza. “Sorry.”
She moved past him, up the steps.
“Wait.”
Eliza halted. Maybe Tommy was going to explain something about the basement. Maybe he’d decided he could trust her. She turned to him, hopeful.
But all he said was “The key.” He held out his hand.
Eliza dropped the basement key into his palm. Then she hurried up the stairs.
Tommy didn’t speak to her for the rest of the day. They continued silently with their chores, working on the opposite sides of each room.
Tension spread through Eliza’s body. Her head felt tight. Her back ached. She stretched it while dusting the leaves of rubber plants. Her stomach ached, too, but she couldn’t stretch that. She’d started to feel not quite friendly with Tommy, but something friendly-ish. It had been nice to talk to someone who wanted to listen, who had odd hobbies of his own, who even knew what the word Nepenthe meant. She’d started to hope that he would help with her Carrolls’ Gardens ghost hunting—because clearly, there were ghosts here to be hunted. But now everything had changed. And this time the change was her own fault.
She glanced over at Tommy just once, while they were both checking for weeds in the greenhouse flats. She found him looking straight back at her. His hazel eyes were icy. And for once, Eliza was the first one to look away.
