I would have gasped too if it wouldn’t have meant spewing the brew all over the place. Eliza’s herbal medicine tasted as vile as it smelled. I swallowed with force so quick that it made my throat hurt—but the pain was more tolerable than the taste so I couldn’t complain. The stuff burned going down, boiling all the way to my stomach where it simmered and stewed.

“What on earth is in this shit?” I asked, more as a rhetorical statement than a genuine question.

Despite the limited progress I’d made in Eliza’s interrogation, Harry was not happy. “You shouldn’t have done that. She probably doesn’t know what’s in it any more than I do, and it might be . . . bad for you.”

“Oh, please,” I wiped my tongue around my molars, trying to scrape away the fetid flavor. “Anything a woman her age regularly drinks can’t possibly be that harmful. See? No ill effects. It’s disgusting, but I’m sure it’s harmless.” For emphasis, I threw my head back and took another deep, hearty swallow—this time taking care to plug my nose to dull the assault on my taste buds. To my surprise, this second swill left the bottle close to empty. Hard to believe I’d ingested so much of it. Hard to believe anybody could.

Eliza finally broke her silence. Her voice was strange, soft, and unhappy. “You shouldn’t drink that.”

“Why? Is Harry right? Will it hurt me? I know you don’t care, so be sure to try a different approach when you answer.”

“No. I don’t care if you choke on it. Look at yourself, guzzling down a sick old woman’s medicine that you stole from her cabinet. I need that to live, and you don’t need it at all. You’re young and strong, and you are killing me with every drop you drink.”

“That’s not much of a deterrent. If anything that makes me want to hunt down every bit of it you’ve got in the house and run it down the sink.” I wiped at my mouth with one of the napkins that had not been used to plug Eliza’s mouth. I couldn’t have downed another sip if they’d held a gun to my head. How she’d been drinking it in such quantities for years astounded me. “You’ve got a lot of faith in this stuff.”

“It’s strong medicine. I need it.”

“But you can get more. Harry said you get a new shipment about twice a month.”

“I don’t know if I’ll last until the next one comes.” She was afraid. I saw it in her eyes, in her floppy jowls, and her quivering mouth. I looked down and saw there was enough “medicine” left for maybe another smallish dose. I looked up at Eliza.