The doorbell rang. Magnolia had the key, but Poppy had asked her to give her some warning before coming in because it was always so spooky having someone enter without any notice. It had to be her.
Poppy had been sitting at the dinner table, but when she heard the doorbell, a series of emotions buffeted through her, slapping her around like a flag in a hurricane. A gurgling mixture of dread, delight, guilt, and shame fought for the top spot in her brain before, finally, a faint but potent sense of anxiety settled in. Anxiety about what, she didn’t know. Maybe it was the anxiety of seeing her sister, asking for help, or maybe it was showing how worried she actually was beneath the thick skin that kept everything in, and knowing that the second Magnolia saw her, she’d see straight through the cocky veneer. She was the only person who could do that. With a single glance, Magnolia saw what Poppy was actually feeling. She couldn’t hide anything from her, which was bad normally, and awful right now.
She pushed her shoulders back as she stood stiffly. She planted her feet squarely, taking a few, strong swallows. Each gulp caught in her throat as it went down, but it did eventually go down. She ran a hand through her hair and marched over to the door.
She had to remind herself that she was strong, not weak. She was powerful, not helpless. And, she was independent, not scared.
Poppy opened the door.
And there Magnolia stood. She was petite, but when she was worried about someone, she seemed to grow, to put off a comforting glow that made her seem a great deal bigger than she actually was. Then, though she stood noticeably shorter than Poppy, her concern gushed through the doorway in a nearly inescapable way. Her bags, probably hastily packed, sat behind her with her car parked by the road.
Neither Poppy nor Magnolia said anything. Poppy wanted to. She wanted to say how sorry she was for ruining Magnolia’s life and how much of a relief it was to have her back. But she didn’t. Instead, they locked eyes and her mouth opened to speak. Nothing came out.
For a second, that was all they did, communicate without saying a word. Together they explained every emotion, detailed what both of them felt, without having to speak.
Magnolia grabbed Poppy and pulled her into her version of a bear hug. Her small arms shuddered as they locked around Poppy’s waist and she buried her face into Poppy’s shoulder. In that moment, with her sister’s arms around her, it felt like someone had uncorked Poppy’s emotions.
Everything came pouring out, not with words this time, but with touch. She didn’t know how long she held onto her sister and hugged her there. Not a clue. Might have been as little as five minutes or might have been an hour, but every single second of it she needed. Magnolia never once pulled away and every time Poppy started to pull away, worried about seeming too needy, Magnolia didn’t give her the chance. She’d suck her right back in.
Everything was a bit of a haze for a few minutes. While Magnolia was gone, Poppy had created a sort of different life for herself with all these different figures and characters and stories all intertwined that hadn’t really existed beforehand. She’d fallen into a routine that hadn’t involved her sister in any way, and all of a sudden, she was back. It was jarring, in the best kind of way. She’d missed her, and stuffing her back into the world that she now lived in was…weird. Good, yes, but strange at the same time. It almost felt like a return to normalcy in a bizarre way.
Things didn’t return to semi-normal for a couple hours. Magnolia brought in her stuff and left it right there at the front door, immediately taking Poppy aside and sitting her down and talking with her. Poppy avoided Magnolia’s interrogations like the plague. Magnolia was a words person, so to her, it was helpful, but to Poppy, it was like dragging out emotions and she absolutely hated that and was rubbish at it to start with. But this time, it was a relief to talk about everything. They’d already talked about it the night before, but apparently Magnolia had been taking notes, because she went down the list and asked about particular things a lot more.
After a few hours of talking and probing, Poppy felt better, amazingly. It felt like a weight had been lifted off her back. Of course, she was still in mortal danger and her mate had abandoned her, but at least she didn’t have to deal with it alone.
And then, sweet Magnolia said the one thing that Poppy could never, ever in a million years imagine her saying.
“Let’s watch the sex video.”
Poppy choked on the cup of coffee in her hands, sucking it up into her nostrils for one awful moment. “What?”
Magnolia watched her earnestly, nodding her head. “Let’s watch it! We can figure out who it is!”
For some reason, the concept of Magnolia watching a sex video was the most bizarre thing to imagine. She was the “good girl” of the bunch, the one that would be horrified to wear a bikini in public. Poppy blinked a couple times. “Um. Yeah? I guess we could?”
Watching the sex video by herself was bad. Watching it with someone else would be uncomfortable. Watching a full-blown, explicit sex video with her sister just felt wrong, but at the same time, Magnolia was right. Maybe Magnolia would see something Poppy had missed.
So, approximately five minutes later, Poppy and Magnolia sat next to each other on the couch, sipping the mostly cold coffee and watching a sex video on the laptop on the coffee table.
Poppy tried to focus and look for clues, but it was simply too unnerving. There were some things that should never be done with a sibling, and apparently, this…this was one of them. Magnolia sat stiff as a board with slightly wide eyes, but she didn’t stop the video or look away. They got to the point where Poppy had gotten to, but after the blowjob, things got more intense. It took a distinctly amorous tone as they proceeded to go through a variety of sex positions right there in the goddamn shop, and right about the time that Raz was finishing up, Magnolia leapt forward on the couch and scared the ever-living hell out of Poppy.
“Wait!” Her eyes were wide open and she turned to Poppy, waving a finger around like she was trying to come up with what to say. “Wait, I just had an idea of who this could be!”
Poppy paused the video, blankly staring at her sister. A tinge of hope blossomed in her chest, not too much, but enough to get her excited. “Really?”
“Well, yes! But…maybe?” She wiggled her hands. “Jade! Jade, the uh, the delivery driver!”
Poppy froze. Jade? Did they know a Jade? “Really?”
“Yeah! Remember, the emo vampire girl? She had blue hair last time I was here!” She continued, explaining who she was talking about as Poppy fell completely short in trying to figure out who in the hell she was referring to. “She was the new girl with the delivery company when I came to visit last time. You have to remember! She only works after hours, and neither of us liked her. If you forgot to lock up, you probably didn’t lock the back either, and she could have gone in and added the poison!”
Poppy just listened as Magnolia kept explaining. The more she talked, the more that she explained, the more things started to make sense, and the more likely it seemed that a murderer delivered their mail.
Everything started adding up. Not just how the person had gotten in, but the fact that the red-haired girl onscreen was Jade, and not a natural redhead. The delivery girl who’d probably gotten to know Raz and had kindled an affair with him, and that was the red hair that Raz’s mate had been finding, not Poppy’s! The video proved what they were starting to suspect—after sex, Raz and the girl had started to cuddle before things took a significant turn for the worse. An argument spawned, and after a few minutes of a shouting match, the girl stormed offscreen. She took a long time, too long, and returned with the elixir for Raz. She shoved it in his chest, turning away and hiding her face as the video cut out.