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“Here?”

“Yes.”

Marcus reached for the alcohol swab. His movements were efficient, practiced. He tied the tourniquet above the shifter’s elbow and the vein rose under the skin. The needle went in smoothly. The shifter didn’t flinch.

Del stood in the doorway. The morning air pushed against her back. Marcus hadn’t asked her to come in. He hadn’t asked her to leave. He worked with his head bent over the shifter’s arm, filling vials, labeling each one with a quick scribble. The blood came dark. Too dark. She could see it from where she stood.

The metallic note reached her across the room, the same wrong richness she had smelled on the young shifter in her back room and the same wrongness that had come off the samples she gave Marcus four nights ago.

He knew. He had to know. Three patients with identical symptoms, identical blood work, and she had handed him the components in unlabeled vials without explanation. He had taken them without question because that was the job. He treated whoever came through the door. He asked the useful questions and didn’t waste time on the rest.

The shifter’s blood filled the third vial. Marcus capped it and set it in the rack. He released the tourniquet and pressed a cotton ball to the puncture.

“I need a tissue sample,” he said to the shifter. “Forearm. Local anesthetic. Small incision.”

The shifter held out his arm. His hand was steady. Marcus reached for the syringe.

Del took a step back. Her shoulder touched the doorframe. Marcus didn’t look up. He injected the anesthetic and the skin raised. The shifter watched the needle with flat eyes.

She forced a nod, small and professional, the kind one practitioner gives another at the end of a handoff. Marcus was already making the incision. The scalpel blade caught the light.

Del stepped out into the morning and closed the door behind her. The gravel crunched under her shoes. The carriage house sat quietly in the early light, the brass lamp still burning in the window. She walked back down Harrow Lane alone. Her hands were cold. She put them in her pockets and kept walking.

Marcus came to Nightshade & Nettle twenty minutes after Del turned the sign to CLOSED. He knocked instead of trying the handle, although the light in the back room made it obvious she was still there. Del let him wait through a second knock before she crossed the shop and opened the door.

He stood on the sidewalk with a wrapped bundle under one arm and the fatigue of a sleepless day carved around his eyes. His flannel shirt had been changed, but a dark streak of blood marked the cuff near his left wrist. Del stepped aside without inviting him in, and Marcus accepted the distinction as he crossed the threshold.

“How is he?” she asked while she locked the door behind him.

“Alive. The fever climbed another degree, and his blood shows the same degradation as the others.” Marcus placed the bundle on the counter and unwrapped three empty sample vials. “These belong to you.”

Del looked at the vials but didn’t touch them. She had scrubbed each one before carrying the samples to his clinic, removing the labels and every trace of powder from the glass. Seeing them lined up beneath the shop lamp made the secrecy feel childish.

“You already knew the samples were connected to the sickness.” Marcus’s voice held no accusation, which made the statement harder to meet. “You recognized the smell on the shifter before I drew his blood.”

“I recognized some of it.” Del walked behind the counter and rested both hands on the wood. “That isn’t the same as knowing what Arrow made from it.”

Marcus studied her for several seconds. “Then tell me what you do know.”

Del considered refusing. Rosalind would call the information coven business, and coven business didn’t leave the family unless the elder permitted it. Three sick wolves and one frightened young man had changed the value of that rule.

She led Marcus into the workroom and pulled the ingredient ledger from the locked cabinet. The book landed on the table with a dull thump, raising a small cloud of oak-gall dust from the cover. Marcus took the chair opposite her but left the ledger closed.

“Two years ago, Arrow offered the coven protection,” Del said. “In return, he wanted ingredients prepared to his specifications. Rosalind brought the proposal to a vote, and I was the only one who voted against it.”

“Why?” Marcus asked.

“The ratios were wrong for warding stones. Valerian does nothing useful in that quantity, and the iron should have disrupted the rest of the working.” Del opened the ledger to the first set of orders. “Rosalind said Arrow was adapting an old protection formula. I knew she was lying, but knowing someone is lying isn’t the same as proving what the lie hides.”

Marcus read the list. His fingertip moved down the column without touching the paper, pausing at each quantity she had memorized long ago. “How many batches?”

“One every week for two years.”

His hand stopped. “You made all of them?”

“Most. Other members filled the orders when I refused, and the work came back to me after the batches failed inspection.” Del closed the ledger before he could turn the page. “I told myself I was controlling the quality and keeping track of what left the shop. The truth is that I kept doing the work because refusing would have cost me my place in the coven.”

Marcus leaned back, and the old chair complained beneath his weight. He looked toward the shelves, where every jar stood labeled and sealed with the care Del had learned as a child. “You thought staying close would let you see the danger before it reached anyone.”