Swapped Fate

47: Conspiracies and Deductions.

I was looking at Mr. Vlad in a new light. He was still an enigma, but part of him had been deciphered. A part of him that was filled with immense power he could wield at the tips of his fingers. The man looked to be in his fifth decade, yet his body was fit and muscular, his face with a youthful look about him. I finally understood why.

The other part  concerned his relationship with Tristan. He was a vampire with deity-like powers, yet he was at this young chap's beck and call. The pieces weren’t all there.

The vampire tucked his hands into the pockets of his black overcoat and replied Tristan’s question. “I haven’t found the culprit, and I still have four people to question.”

“Make that eight,” Tristan said. “New suspects have come to light.”

“How so?”

“We hadn’t considered the possibility of Lea’s previous suitors,” Tristan cast me a glance. “Choosing Adrian over them could have incited some spiteful feelings.”

Mr. Vlad hummed. “So it is a battle of love.”

“Not that any of them loved her in the first place,” I supplied.

Tristan turned to me, his scrutinous gaze cutting through my skin like a knife of ice. “And what would you know about love?”

I opened my mouth to retort, but found that I in fact had no smart comment to throw back. So I ignored him, focusing my attention on more light-hearted, fascinating matters. Matters such as the vampiric display I had just seen.

I looked at Mr. Vlad with stars in my eyes. “Could you perform that hypnosis on me? I would like to know what it feels like.”

Mr. Vlad tilted his head. “You want me to hypnotise you?”

“That is what I requested, yes.”

He cast an uncertain glance Tristan’s way, but the fiend whistled, twirling a finger near his head. He chanted, “Cuckoo.”

Mr. Vlad shrugged his shoulders in disinterest and gazed back at me. I steadied myself, an expectant grin on my face for his magic trick.

The moment I met his cool blue eyes, I felt all the muscles in my body relax. His dark pupils dilated as the blue sparkled, and I found myself trapped by the beauty.

“Tell me,” his voice was a sonorous caress in my ears, seeping into my mind and wiping it of all thoughts. “Have you ever fallen in love?”

My mouth moved first, without giving any chance for my mind to process the question and suggest answers. “No, I haven’t.”

“And why is that?”

My voice sounded foreign to me when I spoke. “Even if I wanted to, I didn’t have the time or room for it in my life. I was always working, caring for Jennifer and trying to survive on my own. I didn’t wish to shift my burdens onto someone else.”

The tension slowly returned to my muscles, and a breeze blew across my brain, awakening it. My senses returned to me, and I was made aware of everything once again—The Devereux house, Tristan, and that I asked Vlad the vampire to hypnotise me.

It felt like arising from a mindless stupor in which I had no control over myself.

It was fascinating!

“Whoa,” I breathed, blinking several times. “That was....intense. The way I volunteered those answers wasn’t natural! I wasn’t even thinking!”

“That is because they come from your heart,” Mr. Vlad explained in his ordinary bored tone, and his impassive blue eyes just as the maid returned.

He picked his cup of coffee off the saucer, giving his thanks.

He took a sip, nodded in appreciation, and said to me. “My hypnosis pulls out the deep-seated parts of you that you wouldn’t admit even to yourself. Rationality cannot defeat it.”

“You would know the darkest secrets of anybody with just one look. That is amazing!” I squealed. “And also frightening. The fact that you can make them forget too, you can get away with just about anything! Even murder!”

Gasping, I turned to Tristan. “Shouldn’t he be a suspect?”

All the while, Tristan had been eyeing me with a rather odd look that sought more answers than I had given Mr. Vlad.

He quickly recovered and blasted my theory with a simple response. “He has no motive. And, why bother with a cursed goblin and a cursed bangle when he could easily hang Adrian on a noose and hypnotise us all into believing he was suicidal?”

“Because he likes to play games?” I offered. “He is a five-hundred year old vampire. I bet he gets plenty bored. Isn’t that so, Mr. Vlad?”

No response.

“Mr. Vlad?” I turned to him.

The vampire stood there, eyes straight ahead and cup still in hand. Nothing was out of the ordinary with him, not even when he uttered in a detached voice, “I believe I’ve just been poisoned.”

“What?” Tristan and I echoed.

“I feel myself growing less powerful by the second,” Mr. Vlad expounded. His gaze drifted to the cup in his hand. “It’s vithros.”

Tristan was astonished. “Are you saying our maid spiked your coffee?”

“Isn’t vithros a medicinal herb?” was my question. My eyes darted between Tristan and Mr. Vlad, a sense of panic rising within me.

Tristan scowled. “It is also a vampire’s weakness. When ingested, it strips them of their powers for seventy-two hours. Within that time, anything can kill them—the sun or a gunshot. Vlad, are you certain it’s vithros?

The vampire winced, his face draining of colour. “I feel its effects on me. That maid—”

We didn’t need to hear the rest of his statement. Tristan and I dashed towards the kitchen in a state if urgency and apprehension.

“Sylvia!” Tristan boomed as we burst in.

The woman by the island jumped, startled. She set her own cup on the island table and scurried towards us, her head bowed. “Yes, sir.”

“What did you put in the coffee you served?” Tristan’s voice was curt—a spark threatening to ignite hot flames.

She looked up, her eyes wide in fear and shock. “P-pardon? Nothing, sir!”

I grabbed Tristan’s arm and pulled him away from her in a bid to have him control himself. “She was questioned. You were there. She isn’t the culprit.”

“I didn’t put anything in the Sir’s coffee!” Sylvia cried. “I prepared it plain, just as requested!”

Tristan wrung his arm free and made to pounce, but I quickly moved in front of him as the maid cowered back.

Calmly, I asked her, “Was there anyone else in the kitchen while you did?”

She tore her terrified gaze from Tristan’s menacing frame to me. “Well....it was just me and...and Ari.”

Tristan stiffened behind me. His tone was low, spoken through clenched teeth. “Ari? Lea’s handmaiden Ari?”

Oh no.

Sylvia nodded. “Yes, her. She came in when I just finished preparing it. She stumbled and I accidentally spilled some on her. I left to the outdoor kitchen to pick up a rug for the mess, and she left soon after.”

With every word she uttered came a new wave of dread and assumption, just piling on top of the other.

Ari? Could it possibly be....

“Did he not like the coffee?” Sylvia asked, poor girl. “I apologise if it was not to his fancy but I swear I didn’t—”

“Where did she go?” Tristan demanded.

The confused maid replied, “Outside—”

He was out the door in a flash, while I was left to my thoughts of what had just occurred.

*******

All the curtains in Tristan’s bedroom were drawn closed to prevent any sunlight seeping through. Mr. Vlad sat in the darkest corner of the bedroom. His arms leaned against his thighs, his hands clasped and head hung. 

I was busy pacing the floor, unable to settle until I had made sense of whatever was taking place .

“There has to be a reasonable explanation for this,” I remarked, my finger rubbing my chin. “Perhaps she didn’t know what vithros is, or that it’s poison to you. How could she have known you are a vampire?”

“Vithros only grows around the Wispy Mountains, just like it’s antidote, the star’s trumpet,” Mr. Vlad relayed in a surprisingly calm voice. “What would she be doing near there in the first place?”

“Perhaps she wanted the vithros for medicinal purposes,” My brain wracked for possible excuses, unwilling to accept the one woeful conclusion. “She did have a sick mother.”

“Do you know what else is near the Wispy Mountains?” Mr. Vlad lifted his head. “The Forest of Despair. Where the dark forest deity resides, seeking to corrupt whoever wanders his way. The handmaiden was affected.”

I shook my head, my brain soaking in a lake of scattered thoughts.

Ari was the villain all this time? It couldn’t be. How could she know about Mr. Vlad? Why would she want to kill Adrian? It just didn’t make sense.

The door opened, alerting us to Tristan’s entry. He shut the door, and the displeased look on his face did not signal good news.

“She’s gone,” he announced bitterly, walking further into the room. “I spoke to her roommate. When Ari left to visit her sick mother, she packed her belongings but did not return with them. She has been plotting her escape the entire time.”

He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration, his lips twisted in a deep frown. “Damn!”

It was difficult to believe. Ari had never given me a reason to dislike her, much less suspect her. She was always there for Lea, and had participated whole-heartedly on our visit to Fate’s Heart. She had given me the list of Lea’s previous suitors for heaven’s sake! While we went on about Adrian’s business rivals, she was right under our nose the whole time!

“Ari is the villain?”  I voiced my thoughts, still incredulous of them. Disillusionment crawled into me, weakening my heart.

“We don’t know that for sure.”

I looked up at Tristan. “What do you mean?”

His hand rested on his waist, but he did not meet my gaze. “She could be working for someone. Like she always has been.”

It took a minute for the underlying meaning of those words to sink in. And my heart sunk with them. “Tristan...”

“She’s her handmaiden. Of course she would do whatever she asks of her.”

“It’s not Lea!” I almost shouted.

His glare was harsh when he looked at me at last, his dark brown eyes blazing with fury. “Why do you cling onto your word even now? Neither Lea nor Ari have been hypnotised. While Lea concocted that story about Ari’s mother being ill, her handmaiden travelled to the Wispy Mountains to retrieve vithros. It was Ari to do the dirty work, Ari to take the fall while Lea maintained an image of the sweet wife and daughter-in-law who knew nothing.”

“She is the sweet wife and daughter-in-law who knows nothing!” I maintained.

“Do you expect me to believe that?” Tristan questioned, narrowing his eyes . “That Ari acted alone without Lea’s knowledge, that she would be so detached from her not to know of her own handmaiden’s intentions? No. In this instance, they would both be guilty.”

“If you are so easily accepting of the possibility of Lea’s guilt, then why not the possibility of her innocence?” I shot back.

“Because it is safer,” he answered easily, stepping towards me. “I cannot take any chances, especially when it concerns my brother’s life.”

“So what will you tell him then?” I asked. “Will you pour out all your deductions to him and drive him further away from his wife? Surely you must know the devastating  results it will not only bear on him but the whole family as well.”

He shut his eyes tight, pondering. “He has the right to know.”

It pained me to say, but we could not keep the revelation from Adrian. “I agree. But only the facts. What we discovered today was that Ari drugged Mr. Vlad, and that she’s fled. That is all. Leave him to form his own deductions thereon.”

He pursed his lips. “Fine. But Lea’s name is not off the List until I hear it from her that she has nothing to do with the curses.”

Author’s remarks:

Well then🙃

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