Honeyed Words by J. A. Pitts Page B

floating off the floor once more. I sorta swam over to the mirror, determined to follow him, when Skella’s face appeared. She was crying. I stuck my head into the mirror, and she placed her hand on my head, pushing me back gently.
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered, glancing back over her shoulder. “We were going to remove the necklaces.” She pursed her lips, almost pouting as she thought to say something else.
    “What’re you on about there?” a gruff voice called from across the cavern. I could see three large men dropping tools and shrugging out of cloaks. Dwarves.
    Skella swung back around to face me. “The poison will wear off in about six hours. Get out of Vancouver.”
    I fell back, unable to grasp her hand. She mumbled something, waved her hands, and the mirror fogged for a moment, then returned to showing me the room.
    Great, we’d been poisoned by the elves and I was out of my body again. Now what could I do?

Twelve
     
    Six hours, for fuck’s sake. It took every single second of six hours for the poison to wear off. I floated around, unable to push my way into any of the mirrors, which sucked. I couldn’t even knit, as much as I loathed doing so.
    One thing I had, though, was time to think. Jimmy had some answering to do. He had knowledge I didn’t. Was he aware of the elves? This whole mirror thing was way out of my realm of reality. I’d been lazy, not confronting him—scared, frankly, to push things. I couldn’t face him, not with the massacre in the spring. Hell, I’d even let him hide Gram. What was I thinking? Gram was a part of me now, an integral tug on my psyche. When things settled down—when I got the job front rolling again—I’d do something about it. Yep, definitely, just as soon as I fixed a few other things in my life.
    Who was I kidding? If I waited around for things to settle down, I’d die without any answers. What I needed to do was change my direction. Maybe hit Jimmy head-on? I needed to just go out to Black Briar and face the music. This was some spooky shit. A year ago, I didn’t know dragons existed. Today, I found out that a couple of elves could travel into my room through mirrors and poison me in a way that leaves me helpless for hours. Talk about the ultimate roofie. I hate to think what they could’ve done to us. What a dangerous fucking world.
    Once the effects began to ebb, I found myself pulled back to my body. Not like I was doing any good out here anyway. Well, keeping watch was a good thing, right? I couldn’t even pick up a book or turn on the television. There were some serious drawbacks to all this.
    I woke with my head pounding and desperately thirsty around three in the afternoon. Not sure why no one had rousted us from the hotel. I’d be checking that.
    I rose, stumbled into the bathroom, and vomited into the toilet. The porcelain felt good against my forehead—cool. After a moment, I pulled myself to my feet and turned back to the room. The mirrors were normal, and the room was trashed. Katie’s skirt and blouse lay crumpled where Gletts had thrown it, bastard. He did not want to run into me again anytime soon.
    Katie was still out, which scared me. She’d had that necklace on for a long time. Using a thick washcloth, I held onto the necklace with one hand and snipped the vine with a pair of scissors Katie kept in her pack.
    Red welts circled her neck where the thorns had pierced her. The numbing effect must have been quicker with her, since she hadn’t complained when she put the necklace on, but I’d fallen to the poison much faster than she had.
    Once I had the necklace cut, I gently lifted her head and pulled the vile thing away. I placed it and mine in a plastic bag and set it in the ice bucket. I’d dispose of those later.
    I washed Katie’s neck and checked her for a pulse. Her heartbeat was strong. I called down to the front desk, and they said we had the room for one more night. Said we’d called down the night before and asked to