Page 45 of The Filigree Key

I could’ve kicked myself. Couldn’t see the forest for the trees. But I had a little cat who could make up for my deficiencies with his strengths. “Yes, Sawyer! That’s brilliant. Find some autumn olive tree bark. And some sweetgum balls.”

“I think I’ve got those around here somewhere,” Brandi said, an excited note lifting her weary voice.

As they dug through the mess on the table, I grabbed a hefty pinch each of rosemary and blue lavender and a small hornet’s nest from a basket absolutely full of them. After briskly rubbing all three of them together between my palms to mix and powder down, I threw it all up into the air like confetti and made sure I spun around three times while it rained down on me. Shrouding powder, a cousin of masking sand. Now I had more of an edge against Ossian finding me than just “I hope he doesn’t think to check for me here.”

“Found the spiky balls of death!” Sawyer said.

“And here’s the bark.” Brandi lifted a burlap sack from where it was stored under the workbench.

Two handfuls of autumn olive bark and three sweetgum balls went into a spare mortar and pestle to get ground down before I added the remainder of the ward-dissolving sludge. What resulted was a concoction resembling wet sand.

“Sprinkle this thinly at the base of every cell.” I set the mortar down and put the handle of one of those gold stirring spoons into Sawyer’s mouth. “But not in a continuous line. Leave spaces so it looks like lichen or mold growing.”

As the tomcat worked, the hedge witch and I began the frantic process of loading up my foraging bag. Anything and everything of value went in: the supplies I’d need to counteract the stronger effects of the toirchim tonic, the ingredients to make more masking sand, a vial of undiluted Caer powder, and anything else that struck my fancy. We took only small amounts, or whatever wouldn’t be missed right away, and risked one whole row of vials from the rack. With the general disarray of the workbench, Ossian would have to count the vials himself to determine how many were actually missing.

“I don’t suppose you have a spare cauldron, do you?”

Brandi snorted—her preferred response to any question of mine that she thought too foolish to merit a worded reply.

I sent a mental apology to Shari; it looked like I was using her metal teacup again.

At some point during the raid, Sawyer finished sprinkling and began a more thorough exploration of the dungeon starting with the door left of the stairwell. As he explored, he gave me a report of his day’s side quest with the foraging bag.

“The spies seemed tasked with removing anything of value.” Rising onto his back feet, he pawed at the coarse-cut stone of the doorway. “That is, until they found the spent tourmaline crystals from your parasite jewelry. They forgot about everything else and were obsessed with trying to steal those.”

With a little grunt, he leapt up, dug his claws into the tiny hand- and footholds he’d discovered, and climbed up to peer into the keyhole.

“What would he want with bleached-out tourmaline?” Brandi wondered.

I’d been wondering the same thing, hoping either Sawyer or Brandi had the answer. I shrugged my shoulders to answer her, and Sawyer didn’t reply.

“What did you do with the spies?” I asked.

“Chucked them out the window into the yew bush. Hey! There’s a tunnel down there.”

“It’s what those men use to bring more creatures in here,” the hedge witch supplied. She fitted the lid over a tin of hornet’s nests and dropped it into my bag as I raided the jar of dried mountain laurel.

“It stinks, too.” Sawyer gagged and dropped down away from the door.

“It’s also the tunnel they use to export our waste,” the hedge witch replied smugly. “No toilets around here, as you might’ve noticed, just buckets.” She flipped her white hair over her shoulder. “I might be shackled to this table to make potions all day, but at least I’m not schlepping crap.”

I paused in filling up a vial with the black feathers of a chickadee’s cap to smile at her. Even after all the terrible things that had happened to her, some of them of her own making, she’d never lost her pluck.

“Gross.” Then he caught me looking at him. “Nuh-uh! Don’t you even think about it.”

“I’m not thinking anything.”

“Yes, you are! I know that look, Meadow. You bite down on the right corner of your bottom lip and your eyes get all squinty.”

Surely enough, I found my teeth and eyes doing just that. “I do not!”

The cat batted at my ankles, his claws not quite sheathed. “You were going to give me another side quest! Go sneak down that tunnel and see if it leads to where they’re holding Ricky and all the others they’ve snatched.”

“Your words, not mine. And what a marvelous idea.” I bent down to give him a scratch behind the ears. A quick one, for he swatted at my hand. “I’m so thrilled you volunteered. And you like Ricky, don’t forget.”

His ears flattened. “Of course I like Ricky, but you didn’t see that tunnel. There’s hardly a twist or turn and it’s lit by the same blue light here. There’s nowhere for me to hide!”

From his vehement protest, I realized maybe I was asking too much of him of late. He was brave and resourceful, but he wasn’t an experienced familiar like Ame; he was a junior cat barely out of kittenhood. By rights he shouldn’t have had his first solo mission until he was at least three years old and graduated from Grimalkin University.