Page 76 of Potion Sickness

“I can tell you what happened,” Skye says, fidgeting. “I’ve told you before. Every night, actually. I was hoping you could hear me, like how on TV people in comas can hear everything everyone says to them, but I guess it doesn’t work that way. I guess this will be the first time that it counts.”

“Should we—” Ms. Carter begins, rising.

“Stay,” Skye says. “Please.”

So we stay, and she tells him. She doesn’t cry until the end.

“I did it because I loved the way you look at me and I was scared you’d stop looking at me,” she says. “And it turns out it wasn’t even working. Not like I wanted it to. Annabel says a philter can’t make a real feeling, it can only fake one, and you—” She stops, and wipes her face with the back of her wrist.

“A heart philter,” he says at last. “In the greens.”

“Yeah.”

“I hated the greens,” he says, gently. “Two years of green juice, angel, and I drank every one, because you made them, and you wanted me to.”

Skye makes a sound that’s mostly a sob and partly a laugh.

“I’m not… I’m going to need some time to think. About all of it. I don’t often need time to think, you know, I’ve always just said the line, so you’ll have to bear with me, because I don’t know how long it takes.”

“Okay,” Skye whispers.

Annabel examines him while Ms. Carter finally gets to distribute more banana bread. The verdict, delivered with two fingers on his wrist, is that his heart is strong, his system is clearing, but that he still couldn’t stand upright on the stage, even if the fate of Scotland actually depended on it.

“How long?” Damien asks.

“On your feet in three days or so. On a stage in two weeks, maybe, if you behave, which I doubt.”

“Oh, dear,” he says, burying his face into his pillow. “Somebody tell me who’s going on tonight. And don’t say that man Vivian knows in Brattleboro. She kept prattling on about some man in Brattleboro.”

“The man from Brattleboro remains in Brattleboro,” Englebert says, from atop the dresser. “The role has been prepared by one Gabriel Morgan.”

“The funeral director?”

“Indeed.”

“Is he an actor?”

“No,” Englebert says. “But he has benefited immensely from personal coaching.”

“By who?”

“Myself, of course.”

“Then it’s handled,” Damien says. “You’d have made something out of me too, maestro, if I’d come to you at thirty.”

“I made something of you as is,” Englebert nods. “We were getting so close.”

“I want to meet him. My replacement. Before tonight. Can that be arranged?”

It turns out it can.

Gabe happens to be nearby, dropping Addie off with his mother, which puts him less than ten minutes away.

He stops just inside the door with his script rolled in one hand, and the two Macbeths look at each other.

“Mr. Morgan,” Damien says. “I hear you’ve been learning my part.”

“Somebody had to hold it for you.”