Page 9 of Blood & Ash

Del set the tincture bottle on the counter. Her fingers rested on the glass. She didn’t move them.

“Which pack members?” she asked.

“The big one. Cole, I think. And a woman. Petra.”

Del’s chest tightened. She kept her face neutral. The counter was cool under her palms.

“How long have they been ill?”

“Cole started a week ago. The woman, three or four days.” Mrs. Harlow picked up the tincture bottle and dropped it into her purse. “Strange, isn’t it? Shifters don’t get sick like that. Not usually.”

“No,” Del said. “They don’t.”

Mrs. Harlow zipped her purse. “Well. I hope they figure it out. The pack’s been good to this town. Wouldn’t want to see anything happen to them.”

She turned toward the door. The bell rang again as she left.

Del stood behind the counter. The shop was quiet. The jars on the shelves caught the morning light coming through the front window: dried valerian in the wide-mouthed ceramic, powdered oak gall in the cork-stoppered vial, iron filings in the labeled tin.

She had given Marcus the samples four nights ago. Three vials, unlabeled. Components she had prepared herself, ground in this shop, at this table, believing they were for warding stones, all of it from Arrow’s list in his precise handwriting, measured to his ratios.

She still knew them by heart: three parts valerian to one part oak gall, iron at half the valerian, birch at a quarter.

She hadn’t asked what they were for. She had lost the vote. She had done the work.

Del placed both hands flat on the counter. Her palms were dry. Her heartbeat was steady in her chest. She counted to five, inhaling through her nose, exhaling through her mouth, a habit her mother had taught her when she was nine and the nightmares came.

The bell didn’t ring. No one else came in.

She moved to the back room. The door closed behind her with a soft click.

The back room of Nightshade & Nettle was narrow and cool. Shelves ran floor to ceiling on both walls, packed with labeled ceramic jars, bundled dried roots, and stoppered glass bottles. The overhead light cast everything in a flat white that washed out color.

Del took her work apron from the hook by the door and tied it around her waist. The canvas was stained along the hem from years of spills. She reached for the inventory clipboard hanging beside the shelves and started at the left wall.

Valerian: stocked. Chamomile: stocked. Lemon balm: two jars remaining, order needed. She made a note. The pen moved across the paper in her tight handwriting. She worked down the shelf, counting jars, checking seals. The routine settled her hands. Her breathing evened.

Her fingers stopped on the oak gall jar. It sat on the lowest shelf, cork-stoppered, the label written in her own hand two years ago: powdered oak gall, three grams on Arrow’s list. She had measured it exactly. The powder inside was fine and dark, almost black in the flat light.

She didn’t pick it up. She moved to the next jar.

The iron filings came next, fine grade, in a tin labeled with masking tape. Four grams had gone on the list, and she had weighed it on the brass scale that still hung from its hook above the worktable. The scale plate was clean. She wiped it every night.

Her hand returned to the oak gall. She lifted the jar and held it. The cork was tight. The glass was cool against her palm.

The door chime rang from the front.

Del set the jar on the shelf. She straightened and turned toward the door.

The shifter came through the doorway and caught himself on the frame. He was young, maybe twenty-five, with broad shoulders and brown hair darkened with sweat. His skin was flushed red across his cheekbones and down his neck. He braced one forearm across his ribs and breathed in shallow pulls. Each inhale caught halfway.

“I heard you might have something.” His voice was rough. “For the fever.”

Del stood with her back to the shelves. The overhead light threw his shadow long across the floor. She looked at him.

The gray tinge at his lips was faint but unmistakable. The discoloration started at the corners of his mouth and faded toward the center. His left hand pressed against his side, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt like the pressure was the only thing holding his ribs together. Under the sweat and the human smell of illness, she caught it: a chemical note, sweet and wrong. The same smell that had risen from the combined powders through the paper two years ago. The smell she had scrubbed from her hands under cold water until the water ran clear.

She knew this working. She had ground the valerian root in the stone mortar until her wrist ached. She had measured the oak gall to three grams. She had folded the iron filings into the packet and sealed it with wax. She had done it believing every word Rosalind had said about warding stones, protection and the greater good. She had done it because the coven voted and she lost.