Arsenic for the Soul Read Online Free PDF Page B

police cars outside the complex. She often visited
Camilla at her apartment and stayed overnight to watch drama films
together. This rendezvous felt far removed from those happy
occasions.
    She launched up the stairs to the
third floor, hoping Camilla was all right.
    An officer immediately barred the
way.
    “ Young lady, this is a
crime scene and no one is permitted inside. I have to ask you to
turn back.”
    “ I need to see
Camilla!”
    “ Please turn around and let
us handle this.” Vivian stared anxiously down the hall, waiting for
Camilla to emerge from the apartment and grant her much needed
relief. She spotted her in the shadows, speaking quietly with an
officer. Camilla locked eyes with Vivian and the sight startled
her. She backed away down the stairs, unsure of what she
saw.
    All of the blood had been drained from
Camilla’s face. Whatever ghastly crime scene concealed in her
apartment surely left its imprint on her brain.
    Dusk fell by the time Camilla shuffled
outside to greet Vivian.
    “ Thanks for coming to see
me. I’m sorry about the officers and making you wait. Weird, isn’t
it? I’m so used to interviewing cops but not the other way
around.”
    “ What happened?”
    Camilla wrapped her jacket tighter
against the baying wind. It took a few minutes to find her
voice.
    “ Someone broke into my
apartment while I was away. The deadbolt was on the floor when I
entered. They hurt my cat, too.” Her eyes swelled and cold sweat
beaded on her throat. “I can’t get over the shock of seeing his
body.”
    She cast nervous glances toward one of
the windows, where her apartment presumably resembled something out
of a nightmare.
    Suddenly, Vivian noticed the pendant
encircling Camilla’s throat. The vial of ashes glimmered where her
red scarf once hung. Gone was the black eyeshadow that cloaked her
emerald eyes. Those orbs looked solemn now in the evening glow.
Sometime over the summer, Vivian noticed a change in her
personality and it stemmed from the moment she finished her crusade
against the Magdalene asylums. It was as if Camilla’s life’s work
ended in that final blow to her family’s legacy—and now she spent
her days in restless confusion.
    “ Where did you
go?”
    Camilla’s sigh said it all.
    “ Vesely Manor.”
    “ Again? I’m beginning to
think you have a sick obsession.”
    “ I don’t know what I expect
to feel when I go there, but it’s neither helping nor hurting me.
Perhaps it’s a sign that something in my life remains unresolved.
Sure, my family is dead and the asylums are condemned, but this
feeling doesn’t sit well with me. I feel like things are just
getting started.”
    “ Here’s an idea, how about
you put all that nervous energy into writing a book? Obviously the
newspaper doesn’t keep you busy enough.”
    “ That’s partially the
problem. The police think I have an admirer who likes my articles,
as they lightly put it. But what kind of sick admirer writes
‘sinner’ in blood and leaves it for me?”
    “ What?”
    “ Sinner. That’s the word he
left behind. And perhaps it’s no coincidence that it was written on
an article about a Magdalene asylum— one
that I wrote .”
    Vivian balked at the
possibility.
    “ You don’t think one of
your relatives is alive, do you? And that he or she wants to harm
you for shutting down the asylums?”
    Camilla gazed down the shrouded
streets of the city of a hundred spires. Prague Castle and St.
Vitus Cathedral remained the dominant elements in this eclectic mix
of cyberpunk, medieval, and noir vice. Yet no place here called out
to her more than the home she couldn’t return to.
    “ I don’t know what this
means. Perhaps it’s nothing more than a disgusting prank devised to
silence me about the asylums. Either way, the police think it’s
best if I find another place to stay. I’m not too keen on sleeping
in my own bed anyway. The idea of going back in there eats away at
my nerves.”
    “ I don’t blame you.