The Peculiar Alchemist

59 || Poor Judgment

Despite the fact that she was so chaotically messy, Agnes knew if someone touched her stuff. Her perceptiveness was admirable, but so was her memory. As soon as she returned to her cottage late at night and entered her private storage room, she knew something was missing, and something else had been taken and returned.

She was not her grandson, she couldn't speak to ghosts, and even if she could there were no witnesses to the crime. That ability would have been useless, but she knew exactly who would be daring enough to touch her stuff.

It was someone who knew that she had a soft spot for them, because if it was anybody else, they'd already be begging for their suffering to stop. That's why she went straight to her room that night without giving the matter another thought, but her postponing it didn't mean that she had forgotten.

Which is why Aubrey found himself being stared down by her with the very same poison he had borrowed from her storage room. "Do you know why I put this here?"

Aubrey looked down at the very familiar bottle before shaking his head. "No idea."

"I am sure you do since you took it. Mind telling me why?"

"But I didn't." Aubrey insisted, lying to her again.

It was useless, though. Lies did not work on Agnes, she saw right through them. "I have been dealing with that useless thing for years now. He's a much better liar than you."

"I'm sorry." Aubrey hung his head low in guilt, knowing it was futile to lie to her anymore. Even Kellen didn't always get away with his lies around her, and Aubrey suspects that even with the ones he does get away with, it was mostly because Agnes didn't care enough to acknowledge the lie.

Agnes scoffed, crossing her arms at him. "I don't want apologies, I want an explanation."

"I was planning on using it on Kellen." Aubrey told her honestly. Talking about killing Kellen, even before he knew about him, had always been so easy. "I never did make him drink it, though."

As expected, Agnes liked that answer and relaxed. "And what about the pendant that you took?"

"I made it in the first place." He mumbled not really knowing where he put it, which was perfect since he was able to immediately spell it into his hand and place it right next to him on the table. "I had to make sure he was a necromancer somehow before I- Well, I was going to kill him anyway, but the poison was painless."

The blank stare he got was probably the closest thing to a stunned reaction he would get from her. "That does explain the pendant, yes. How many times did he die?"

"Over a thousand."

"That's less than I expected." Agnes muttered, sounding amazed that her grandson actually survived so many days with her. It was even more amazing to know that he had been dying ever since she killed him at six years old, it has been twenty years since then and yet the number of his deaths was so low. "Why hasn't he wiped your memories yet?"

Aubrey frowned at her. "What do you mea-"

"It doesn't matter. His reasons don't concern me, what concerns me is the fact that you took my things without permission."

Aubrey looked away guiltily. "In my defense, I had been spending a lot of time with Kellen. He's not the greatest influence."

A look of disgust appeared on her face after he told her that. It'll never cease to amuse him how unloving she is towards her own grandson. "Don't tell me you're close friends now."

Unable to help himself, Sammy, who had been quiet the whole time, let out a loud laugh annoying Aubrey in the process. He was so glad he was there to witness Aubrey quickly deny Agnes' words.