Page 146 of Chaos
“No shit!” Shane yells. “He and Duane tried to kill us all in the greenhouse.”
“No,” Misty says. “Poison. She poisoned Ben.”
There’s a split-second pause.
No one else would notice it.
But I know Frankie.
I know her very well.
And suddenly it makes sense. Ben was sick starting the same day Frankie made me those cupcakes for my birthday.
And on the wall, she wasn’t surprised when I told her.
I’ve been guilty of sticking her on a pedestal, insisting on seeing her as sunshine and joy bubbles. It’s had me missing the grit of her. She’s stronger than I give her credit for.
“Check her purse,” Frankie snaps. “She tried to put something in my IV. I know it.”
I glance at Shane, and he tugs the big purse I’ve seen Misty carrying before out from under the feet of some of the onlookers. It must have been kicked aside.
He tugs open the top flap.
Immediately, a box labeled rat poison emerges in his hand.
A series of gasps fill the room.
“It’s hers,” Misty says. “I found it in the greenhouse. She used it to kill Ben.”
“She killed Nando, too.”
All around the room, people gasp and chatter.
Another voice joins the rest, and Cain stands from a chair at the back of the room, a bowl clutched in one hand, his face ashen. “I think she tried to poison me, too.”
“Why is Mitsy killing so many people?” Alice asks, her face drawn, the blood bags clutched tight against her doctor’s coat.
“Isn’t her name’s Misty?” I ask.
“No, it’snot!”She shoves at the bar irritably.
It takes a long time to get things back in order.
Colleen and Jacquetta return with handcuffs, and Misty—Mitsy—is taken away. Otillie reiterates her offer to Colleen to offer Rey and Kelly a place in the DC army, and extends an offer to take Mitsy to the recently established DC penal colony.
Sheila and Alice ask everyone to leave, so they can focus on the work of healing their injured patients.
Dinner is served in the ballroom which was the kid’s school house. Everything will have to be rearranged now, with so much of Thornewood either collapsed or caked in smoke.
People shuffle out slowly. Auden gives Frankie a few extra hugs, before leaving with the other kids. Shane and Ephie head for the pool house to get the dust and smoke off themselves, and finally, a degree of normalcy settles.
At least some, considering Ottilie is here somewhere with an army a few miles down the road waiting to take me back to DC.
“I can do it,” I tell Alice, when she blusters back into the room and installs a new IV line for Frankie, one we’re certain isn’t poisoned this time.
She looks longingly down at the tray she has of tweezers and antiseptic.
“All soldiers receive basic medical training. I can do it.”