The Peculiar Alchemist

29 || Never a Dull Moment

Sammy found himself unable to go back to where the cult is. He was standing outside of the chapel Briar's cult had hidden themselves under, but the wards drawn all over the place prevented him from entering. Only humans could.

So unless Briar noticed that he wasn't there or if one of the members decided to randomly summon him, Sammy found himself stuck outside with nothing to do. Not that he was eager to go back. All they did there was study their dumb rituals and command spirits around.

Sammy wanted something exciting to observe, that is why he decided to go to Agnes' cottage like he did so many times before, and just stood there observing.

He could see Aubrey sitting there with a distant stare as he rested his chin on a book he gave up on reading, and he was looking right at the crow looking deep in thought. There was nothing much going on with Agnes herself since she was probably coming up with new messed up things to create, and judging by the distraught spirit hovering over her, someone had recently been killed here.

That made Sammy look around the place searching for the person who interested him the most, but he was nowhere in sight.

Disappointed, Sammy stuck around for a while hoping for something to happen before something actually did. It's never a surprise whenever someone barges in, so just like his two living companions, Sammy didn't react much to whoever walked in. Especially not when it was the less interesting helper, Toby.

It was clear that he was upset about something, and Sammy watched him curiously as he slowly approached Agnes who knew he wanted to speak with her, but still didn't give him any form of acknowledgement.

Used to it, Toby cleared his throat. "You've been keeping secrets from me."

"I don't keep secrets." Agnes denied tonelessly, still not sparing him a glance. "I just don't bother to tell people what I know."

Toby scowled at that. "I died the first day I came here, didn't I?"

That made Agnes let out a heavy breath as she dropped whatever it was in her hands to turn around and face him. The sooner she dealt with him, the sooner he'd go away. "Obviously you did, idiot. You drank one of my poisons."

"So I did die." Toby said sounding bewildered like the two boys who were listening to his conversation with Agnes. She was the only one who retained a blank uninterested expression. "You knew I could come back to life and you never said anything."

"You're not supposed to remember or know about it." She muttered not really caring about the betrayed look he was giving her. "The crow does it, too. You're nothing special."

This was another mess she planned to throw at Kellen, she did not want to deal with Toby at all.

And Sammy watched as Toby took a few steps back from her looking like he didn't trust her anymore. "Why did you keep this from me?"

Agnes let out an annoyed frustrated sound as she glared at him. "You wanted me to get rid of your stupid psychometry and that was it. I don't care about anything else. Who told you about it anyway?"

"Why should I tell you when you didn't tell me anything?"

"Fine then, don't." She huffed not really caring much. "Idiots are not my problem."

With that, Toby stormed out of the cottage feeling stupid for not realizing anything sooner. It should have been suspicious how he always found himself in her basement waking up from what felt like a sudden nap. He couldn't remember anything, and he made the mistake of not questioning it sooner.

But before he walked away from her stupid cottage, someone caught up to him.

"Toby, wait." A hand caught him by the sleeve making him stop and turn around. His anger showed on his face as he stared down at Aubrey who looked up at him worriedly. Sammy was standing there behind him, invisible. "Are you okay?"