have no idea what you are talking about,” he muttered.
“Virgil said she ran away, but it’s not true. No one leaves this place, you said so. It would never have let her go. She’s dead, isn’t she? Did he kill her?”
Noemí and the doctor stared at each other. The doctor stood up stiffly, snatching the glass from her hands and setting it on the night table.
“Perhaps if you’d let us speak, the two of us alone,” Francis told the older man.
Dr. Cummins clasped Francis by the arm and gave Noemí a narrow look. “Yes. You must talk sense into her. He won’t tolerate this behavior, you know it.”
Before exiting the room, the doctor paused at the foot of the bed, his medical bag held tight in one hand, and addressed Noemí. “My daughter died in childbirth, if you must know. She couldn’t give the family the child they needed. Howard thinks you and Catalina will be hardier. Different blood. We’ll see.”
He closed the door behind him.
Francis grabbed the silver tray and brought it to the bed. Noemí clutched the covers. “You really must eat,” he told her.
“Isn’t it poisoned?” she asked.
He leaned down, set the tray upon her lap, whispering in Spanish to her ear. “The food you’ve had, the tea, they’ve been laced with something, yes. But the egg is fine, start eating. I’ll tell you.”
“What—”
“In Spanish,” he said. “He can hear, through the walls, through the house, but he doesn’t speak Spanish. He won’t understand. Keep your voice low and eat, I’m serious. You are dehydrated and you vomited so much last night.”
Noemí stared at him. Slowly she grabbed a spoon and tapped the hard-boiled egg’s shell without taking her eyes off him.
“I want to help you,” he said, “but it’s difficult. You’ve seen what the house can do.”
“Keep you inside, apparently. Is it true I can’t leave?”
“It can induce you to do certain things and stop you from doing others.”
“Control your mind.”
“In a way. It’s more rudimentary than that. There’s certain instincts it triggers.”
“I couldn’t breathe.”
“I know.”
Slowly Noemí nibbled at a bit of egg. When she was done he pointed at the toast, nodding, but shook his head at the jam.
“There must be a way to get out of here.”
“There might be.” He took out a little flask from his pocket and showed it to her. “Recognize this?”
“It’s the medicine I gave my cousin. What are you doing with it?”
“Dr. Cummins told me to get rid of it after that episode, but I didn’t. The fungus, it’s in the air, and my mother makes sure it’s in your food. That’s how, slowly, it gets a hold of you. But it’s very sensitive to certain triggers. It doesn’t really like light much, nor certain scents.”
“My cigarettes,” she said, snapping her fingers. “It irritates the house. And this tincture, it must irritate it too.”
Did the healer in town know this? Or had it been a happy accident? Catalina had figured out the tincture had an effect on the house, that was certain. Accidental or intentional, her cousin had discovered the key even if she had been prevented from turning it.
“It does more than that,” Francis said. “It interferes with it. You take this tincture, the house, the fungus, will loosen its hold on you.”
“How can you be sure about that?”
“Catalina. She tried to run away, but Virgil and Arthur caught her and brought her back. They found the draught she’d been taking and determined it was affecting the house’s control on her, so they took it away. But they didn’t realize this had been going on for a little while, and she must have asked someone in town to post a letter for her.”
Catalina, clever girl. She’d devised a fail-safe mechanism and had summoned help. Unfortunately, now Noemí, the would-be rescuer, was also trapped.
She reached for the flask, but he caught her hand and shook his head. “Remember what happened to your cousin? Take too much at once and you’ll have a seizure.”
“Then it’s useless.”
“Far from it. You’ll have to drink a little bit each time. Look, Dr. Cummins is here for a reason. Great Uncle Howard is going to die. There’s no stopping it. The fungus extends your life, but it can’t keep you going forever. His body will give way soon, and afterward he’ll begin the transmigration. He will take possession of Virgil’s body. When that happens, when he dies, everyone will be distracted. They’ll be busy clustering around both of them. And the house