Love Poison No. 13

By Jon Jacks

Born under the 13th sign, she dances as entrancingly as the serpent, he creates venomous potions.
She becomes the citizens’ darling, he the elite’s secretive aid to wielding power.
Her love is reserved for her art.
His finest concoction poisons the mind against those you love.
So, just how much will he give her to make her his?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Mar 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370978830

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Love Poison

No. 13

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children’s books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl

Text copyright© 2017 Jon Jacks

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Chapter 1

Those born under Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer, when the sun takes nineteen days to travel from Scorpius to Sagittarius, are infamous for being impervious to poisons, or for being as supple of mind and body as the serpent.

Now the former of these can make surprisingly successful careers as food tasters for king or queens (of which none alive today can fault their skills). The more industrious amongst them, however, take up either the administering or manufacturing of these very same poisons, ensuring the Serpents of Ophiuchus will always be gainfully employed.

The trade in poisons is remarkably vibrant, for who amongst us hasn’t, at some point, wished to rid ourselves of some pestilent fool?

It could be a matter of business, of politics, of nothing more than sheer envy, or, indeed, even a necessary defence – the first to strike first being almost invariably the victor.

Now many of the people who have found themselves unwillingly having to resort to such undignified means have also invariably found themselves following the directions of a well-meaning friend of a friend of an associate who, although wishing to remain nameless, has nevertheless provided invaluable information regarding a Master Caputo of a Lane Without Name.

It is on the Lane Without Name, of course, where you will find the providers of wares you will now and again direly need yet erroneously believe to be unavailable, for they are deemed unsavoury by those in authority even though they are the lane’s most regular patrons. Unlike most of the many winding, narrow lanes running like minor veins around the city, it has no obvious landing stage from which you can alight from your gondola but, rather, appears to be the entrance to just one of many similarly dilapidated buildings lining this particular canal.

The door, however, opens up not onto the expected room, but a dark cleft running between the other buildings, one so damp and wet it could reasonably be mistaken for the slenderest of tributaries running off the canal.

Master Caputo’s shop lies almost directly opposite a supplier of stilettos that can be easily hidden about your person, and next to a purveyor of the most universally approved love potions. There is, somewhere quite nearby, also a seller of the most pleasurable kind of artefacts, ones designed to secretly adorn the body, for the gratification of both wearer and observer.

On your first meeting of Caputo, he may seem abrupt, rude, moody, gruff; but don’t be dissuaded by this most unfortunate attitude that he takes with all newcomers seeking his wares. He needs only reassurance that you are in genuine need of his remarkable products. He abhors the merely curious, who are a waste of his precious time. He loathes those who are indecisive, who are bizarrely in two minds about removing an irritant from their lives.

It is not for him to help you come to a decision.

Yes, he can make your goal easier to achieve than you could possibly imagine.

He can help you assuage any fear of being caught.

He can make the death relatively swift and painless for the victim, if that is your preference.

Or he can make it long and drawn out, describing with the aid of detailed diagrams the various degrees of agony suffered after taking a particular poison (taking into account, of course, weight, build and gender).

But feelings of guilt; how can he possibly be held responsible for that?

So, if your mind’s unclear about what you’re hoping to achieve, then it is best for you that you stay away from his doorway.

Professionals rarely suffer fools gladly.

Now the man we catch alighting one night at the doorway to the Lane Without Name is no fool; he is wealthy even by the terms of wealth used within this city of the fabulously rich and the equally fabulously poor.

Tonight, of course, he is not dressed in a way that displays this wealth. Rather, his garment is dark and old, shabby and threadbare.

It’s not the place, not the area, to be seen wearing anything worth stealing.

Even the gondola is an ancient one, unvarnished, and soon to be of no use to anyone. He controls the boat himself, with difficulty naturally, for even as a youth it would have been ridiculous to describe him as lithe and healthy.

He has always liked his food, his drink, his women.

But now, like many a man, he realises that his happiness hangs on the attention of one particular woman, and one woman only.

Yes, the Impresario Guilfo is in love.

*

When Cauda first arrived in the city of watery lanes, of canalled streets and rivers for roads, she possessed hardly anything to sustain her apart from her suppleness of both mind and body.

How could a gondolier not offer just one, free journey to this girl who reminded him so much of his daughter?

Why would the women who prepared the costumes for a large theatre not find a spare cupboard for such a delightfully thankful and helpful girl to stay in?

When would the young inventor of the theatre’s marvellous mechanical devices believe he had earned enough money to ask this most entrancing of girls to become his wife?

Cauda was a pretty little thing, they would all say; a cheerful soul, everyone would agree, whose presence invariably brightened up the dullest atmosphere. She took on any task, no matter how mundane, how trivial, with a smile, sometimes even a joyful laugh.

And yet it was only the young inventor, Forisimo, who noted that she had a natural grace, a flow of movement, that would shame even the theatre’s most accomplished dancers.

Every rising of the eyes, every inclination of the head, every gesture with a hand, every step; each flawless move carried information, spoke to him of need, of intent, of emotion.

Why did he see what no one else saw?

‘Ah, now I see!’ he exclaimed excitedly on the day the answer abruptly dawned on him: they did see what he saw – they just weren’t entirely aware of what they were seeing!

But in the way they reacted to her every move, it was the way a cobra hypnotically sways to the moves of the charmer: this was the secret of her charm, of the way she – quite naturally, quite unintentionally – bent everyone around her to her will.

So why was he aware of what everyone else only saw?

Because, of course, the inventor Forisimo was in love!

*

The Impresario Guilfo treads carefully along the lane, being perfectly aware that the path is uneven, slippery, even dangerous to anyone foolish enough to think this part of the city is as well maintained as the elegant piazzas.

He knows his way; he almost knows every pitfall in the crumbling pathway.

He has been here many times before, if not to actually visit Master Caputo’s establishment; yet he knows where it lies. It stands towards what could be called the very end of the lane, for here it continues to become ever narrower, ever more winding, until it vanishes into a fissure in the brickwork no wider than a serpent’s tail.

His previous visits here have included perusals of a wide variety of wares offered along the Lane Without Name; but as to how many times he has been tempted to purchase, that is only for him and the vendors to know for sure.

Certainly, it