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Rosalind straightened. “We should vote.”

Del stared at her. The room hadn’t settled. The youngest witch was still frowning at her notes. The one with the burn scar had her arms crossed. Rosalind called the vote anyway.

“All in favor of accepting Arrow’s offer, raise your hand.”

Her own hand went up first. It was steady and certain.

Seven hands followed one by one, pulled by the weight of Rosalind’s yes. The youngest witch hesitated, then raised hers. The one with silver glasses followed, then the quiet one, then the burn scar. Three more Del couldn’t name without turning her head, and she wouldn’t turn her head.

“All opposed.”

Del raised her hand without a tremor.

No other hand moved.

Her no sat on the table like a stone. Nobody picked it up or looked at it. The youngest witch studied her lap. The one with the burn scar examined the ceiling.

Arrow stood. He gathered his folded cloth square with the same two fingers and tucked it into his pocket. “Thank you for your trust. I’ll have the first component list delivered by week’s end.” He nodded to Rosalind. To the table at large. He didn’t nod to Del.

He left. The door closed behind him without a sound.

The coven sat in silence. Rosalind blew out the tallow candles one by one. The room darkened. The chemical smell lingered.

Nobody spoke to Del or met her eyes. They gathered their things and filed out through the shop, murmuring about tomorrow’s work, about the weather, about anything else.

Rosalind was the last to leave. She paused at the door, her hand on the frame.

“Lock up.” She didn’t look at Del.

The door closed. Del sat at the far end of the empty table with her hands flat on her thighs and the dark settling around her. The chemical smell had a name, probably. She didn’t try to find it.

A week later, Del locked the front door of Nightshade & Nettle and turned the sign to CLOSED. The shop went dark. She carried a single oil lamp to the worktable and set it down. The flame jumped, then settled.

Arrow’s list lay in front of her. His handwriting was precise, each letter standing separate from the next, with no hurry and no flourish. She read the list once, then again: dried valerian root, powdered oak gall, iron filings in fine grade, birch bark from the inner layer only, and one more item. She stocked every one of them, and nothing on it made her hand rise to her throat.

She pulled jars from the shelves. The valerian was in the wide-mouthed ceramic on the second shelf. The oak gall lived in a cork-stoppered vial she had to stretch to reach. The iron filings were in a tin she’d labeled herself last winter. She lined them up on the table left to right in the order he’d written, each measured by weight.

He had specified weight, not volume.

She took the scale from its hook and set it beside the lamp. The brass weights were cool. She wiped the scale plate with her sleeve and got to work.

The valerian root came first. She broke it with her fingers, then reached for the mortar. The pestle was stone, heavy in her palm. She dropped the root in and ground it. The dried root resisted. It cracked. It split. It became fibers, then powder, pale and fine. The pestle made a low sound against the stone. She worked it in slow circles. Her wrist ached. The dust coated her fingers first, then the inside of her wrist, a fine gray film that caught the lamplight.

She weighed the powder. Seven grams exactly. She folded it into a paper packet and sealed the edge with a drop of wax.

The oak gall was next, already powdered. She measured three grams. The iron filings were four. The birch bark she had to scrape from the inner layer of a stored strip, and the scraping took time. Her thumbnail collected bark under the edge. She blew it off and kept working.

The ratios nagged at her: three parts valerian to one part oak gall, iron at half the valerian, birch at a quarter. She told herself it was consistent with a binding-ward base. Warding stones used layered preparation. This was standard. This was nothing.

She didn’t write down what she was making. The list was his. The work was hers. Writing it down would make it something she owned, and she didn’t want to own it.

She didn’t ask Rosalind. Rosalind hadn’t spoken to her in seven days.

The lamp guttered. The flame bent sideways, then straightened. Del measured the last component (dried clover, two grams) and folded it into the third packet. Her hands were gray to the wrist. The dust had worked into the lines of her palms. She sealed the third packet and set it beside the others.

Three paper packets sat folded, sealed, and stacked.

The back room smelled wrong.