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Kneebones’s rim line, and without another word, he stalked out

Gwendolyn aze

“I don’t know the dosage,” he said “All I knohat the bottle looks like—and there’s more than one”

DORIAN AWOKE FROM a restless, nighthtmarish pain

His head pounded relentlessly His insides churned, raith bile

Slowly, carefully, he inched up to a sitting position and reached for the bottle on the nightstand He put it to his lips

Empty

Already? he wondered dully Had he finished it off in a single night? Or had several nights passed in the oppressive haze of pain and opiates?

It didn’t matter

He had seen the silvery wraiths again Today, they’d slowly closed in from the peripheries and shi preparations through sparkling ripples undulating in the air like waves in a ghostly sea

Then, finally, the silver shards had vanished from his vision and sliced into his skull like white-hot blades

Now he understood why his hosts” had vicious talons, and why she’d screa to rip the wicked claay

Even he had trouble rehosts nor claws, that it was all a sick fancy

He wondered how uish between sick fancy and reality, how long before he began confusing those about hie

But he would not, he told himself Kneebones had pro the delusions along with the pain

Dorian edged closer to the nightstand and opened the door He reached in and found the porcelain cylinder

He took it onto his lap and pried off the lid

The narrow bottle, nestled in a woolen cloth, lay within

The elixir of peaceperhaps eternal

He took it out and with trehtstand

Then he hesitated, but it was not the prospect of eternity that gave him pause No, he was too shallow and base for that It was the witch he thought of, and her soft h to set hislaudanue was consuet her hospitaland it was his duty, besides, to get an heir

But her hospital and the end of the Camoys would not matter to him when he was dead, Dorian reood riddance, and God forbid he should leave a child behind With his luck, his offspring would inherit the same defective brain and live—briefly—and die in the sa way

He unstopped the bottle

“I should be careful, if I were you,” came a quiet, familiar voice out of the darkness “You are married to a witch What if I’ve turned it into a love potion?”

The room was black as Hades He couldn’t see her—couldn’t focus past the throbbing anyhow—but he could s sea of pain like ghostly fingers and lifted him up to consciousness

“It ht even be a potion to turn you into a cat,” she said

He could not hear her approach past the relentless harowing richer, more potent Jasmine?

Sliers closed over his icy ones

He tried to speak He moved his lips, but no sound came out Pain slammed his skull His stomach lurched The bottle slipped from his hands

“Sick,” he gasped “Christ, I—”

He broke off as so else, cold and round and smooth, pressed into his hands A basin