“Did you drink any?”

“No.”

That didn’t make sense. A rakosh had come here last night. She was sure of that. The elixir must have drawn it. She shuddered at what might have happened had Jack been here alone.

“You must have.”

Jack’s brow furrowed. “Oh, yes… I tasted it. Just a drop.”

She moved closer, feeling a tightness in her chest. “When?”

“Yesterday.”

“And today?”

“Nothing. It’s not exactly a soft drink.”

Relief. “You must never let a drop of that pass your lips again—or anybody else’s for that matter.”

“Why not?”

“Flush it down the toilet! Pour it down a sewer! Anything! But don’t let any of it get into your system again!’’

“What’s wrong with it?” Jack was becoming visibly annoyed now. Kolabati knew he wanted answers and she couldn’t tell him the truth without his thinking her insane.

“It’s a deadly poison,” she said off the top of her head. “You were lucky you took only a tiny amount. Any more and you would have—”

“Not true,” he said, holding up the still unstoppered bottle. “I had it analyzed today. No toxins in here.”

Kolabati cursed herself for not realizing that he’d have it analyzed. How else could he have known it contained durba grass?

“It’s poisonous in a different way,” she said, improvising poorly, knowing she wasn’t going to be believed. If only she could lie like Kusum! She felt tears of frustration fill her eyes. “Oh, Jack, please listen to me! I don’t want to see anything happen to you! Trust me!”

“I’ll trust you if you’ll tell me what’s going on. I find this stuff among the possessions of a missing woman and you tell me it’s dangerous but you won’t say how or why. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know what’s going on! Really. All I can tell you is something awful will happen to anyone who drinks that mixture!”

“Is that so?” Jack looked at the bottle in his hand, then looked at Kolabati. Believe me! Please, believe me! Without warning, he tipped the bottle up to his mouth. “No!” Kolabati leaped at him, screaming. Too late. She saw his throat move. He had swallowed some. “You idiot!”

She raged at her own foolishness. She was the idiot! She hadn’t been thinking clearly. If she had she would have realized the inevitability of what had just happened. Next to her brother, Jack was the most relentlessly uncompromising man she had ever met. Knowing that, what could have made her think he would surrender the elixir without a full explanation as to what it was? Any fool could have foreseen that he would bring matters to a head this way. The very reasons she was attracted to Jack might just have doomed him.

And she was so attracted to him. She learned with an explosive shock the true depth of her feelings when she saw him swallow the rakoshi elixir. She had had more than her share of lovers. They had wandered in and out of her life in Bengal and Europe, and in Washington. But Jack was someone special. He made her feel complete. He had something the others didn’t have… a purity—was that the proper word?—that she wanted to make her own. She wanted to be with him, stay with him, keep him for herself.