There was a momentary pause before she said, “Not reliably. Numbers are easier.”

“Okay. We can work with this. Shelby, give the bottle of water to Sarah and take the first aid kit. I need you to look for a vial labeled ‘belladonna.’”

“What in the world would belladonna be doing in your first aid kit?”

The pain in my eyes was starting to fade. I couldn’t tell if that meant my nerves were becoming overloaded, or if it was a sign that the damage was getting worse. Either option was bad. “Hopefully, saving my vision. Once you’ve found the belladonna—it should be a clear liquid—look for a jar of bilberry jam.”

“You keep jam in your first aid kit. Alongside the belladonna.” Now Shelby sounded outright skeptical. That wasn’t good. I wanted her to help me, not call the authorities to report my nervous breakdown.

“It’s a very specialized first aid kit,” I said, as patiently as I could. “Once you have the belladonna and bilberry, you need to mix them into the water Sarah’s got. Then—”

“What, there’s more? Should I be getting a cauldron?”

“A cauldron would be lovely,” said Sarah.

“We’re getting off track here,” I said sharply. “There is a small refrigerator in the pantry. Open it. On the second shelf you will find a rack of antivenin. Get the vial labeled ‘P. cockatrice’ and bring it here.”

“Alex, this is madness. If you’re really hurt, we need to get you to a hospital, not sit about playing chemistry lab with your cousin.”

“A hospital wouldn’t help me,” I said. “Now please.”

Something about my voice must have gotten through; maybe it was the desperation. There was a pause before Shelby sighed and said, “Oh, what the hell. It’s not like I had anything better to do this evening.”

I groaned, and stayed where I was, hands clapped over my face, as I listened to my girlfriend and my cousin mixing the substance that might—if fate was kind and I’d been correct in my split-second taxonomical classification—save my eyesight. It was the longest five minutes of my life. Sarah occasionally offered murmured corrections, equally divided between “useful” and “complete non sequitur.” It would have been entertaining if I hadn’t been in so damn much pain.

“How much jam?” asked Shelby.

“Three large tablespoons full.”

“And how much belladonna?”

“The same.”

Shelby muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “moron” and kept rattling around the kitchen, the clatter of her shoes followed by the softer padding of Sarah’s bare feet. I heard the pantry door open. “Second rack?”

“That’s the one. Be careful with the vial. It’s all we have, and there’s none back at the reptile house.”

“I can’t see why you think you need antivenin, you only looked at the thing—”

“Please.”

Shelby sighed. “I’m a fool for not loading you straight into my car and rushing you to the emergency room,” she said. There was a soft thud on the table in front of me. “The gunk you asked us to mash up is near your right elbow. Mind you don’t spill it, although what else you’re going to do with it is a mystery to me.”

“I’m going to apply it to the affected areas,” I said. I lowered my hands. The unyielding darkness that had replaced the room did not change.

Shelby’s gasp was followed by Sarah saying serenely, “Don’t worry, Alex, I caught the antivenin before it could hit the ground.”

“Well, that’s my nightmares sorted for the next week,” I said sourly as I began feeling around the table for the jar of jam, belladonna, and purified unicorn water.

“Alex, your eyes,” said Shelby.

“I know.” My right hand found the jar. I picked it up, sticking the first two fingers of my left hand into the thick goop that it contained. Scooping out a generous dollop of the stuff, I began smearing it on and around my eyes. It didn’t sting, but the pain was still there, burning and freezing deep inside. I kept scooping and smearing until I had practically covered the top half of my face. Gingerly, I set the near-empty jar aside.

“The antivenin, please,” I said, holding out my left hand.

“Oh, Alex . . .” whispered Shelby. The familiar shape of an antivenin vial was pressed into my hand. I unscrewed the cap with my right hand—the one without sticky fingers—and said, as cheerfully as I could, “Let’s hope this works, okay?”

Then I drank the contents of the vial in a single long gulp that burned all the way down.

The trouble with many cryptids—the trouble, and the reason we cryptozoologists sometimes resist allowing them to be reclassified as part of the so-called “natural world”—is that their capabilities defy many of the things we currently pretend to understand about science. How can anything turn flesh to stone? No one knows, but the petrifactors still manage to do it. Why do bilberries counteract petrifaction? Again, no one knows, although there were some fascinating rumors about bilberries improving eyesight during World War II. (They weren’t entirely false. Eastern Europe has a terrible basilisk problem, and anyone who wanted to avoid being taken prisoner behind enemy lines needed to be prepared for a few unpleasant encounters. Bilberries could save your life, if you swallowed them while you still had a throat made of flesh.)

Unicorn water isn’t actually the cure-all that legend claims it is, but it’s the purest thing known to man, cleansed down to the molecular level. That makes it the perfect sterile solution for something like this, since there was no chance of contamination before the seal on the bottle had been broken. I had applied the topical ointment. I had used the right ingredients. Now I just had to hope that I was as good at this as I thought I was.

If I die this way, Antimony is going to decorate my statue for the holidays for the rest of time. I could practically see myself turned to solid gray stone, standing on the front porch of the family home, with tinsel and Christmas lights wrapped around my neck. The thought was horrible and hysterical at the same time. I laughed.

It hurt.

That was a good sign. I kept laughing, and it kept hurting, until I figured out where in the pain I had left my hands and used them to push myself upright. Peeling my cheek away from the kitchen table took some doing; I had been slumped over long enough for my jam-based facial mask to start turning sticky and trying to gum me down.