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Del looked toward the Alcott house. A single lamp burned in the parlor window, and Mara’s shadow moved beside the mattress. “If Elise dies, her mother will remember that I stood in that room and admitted I helped.”
“If Elise lives, she will remember the same thing.” Marcus folded the stained cloth and put it into a separate pocket of his kit. “What she does with the truth belongs to her.”
“You make guilt sound very orderly.”
“It’s not.” He closed the kit and faced her. “I’ve simply carried enough of it to know that suffering isn’t restitution.”
Del wanted to ask what he carried. Instead, she touched the inside of his wrist, where fresh punctures joined the older marks. Marcus looked down at her hand and then back at her face.
“You defended me in there,” she said.
“She was wrong.”
“She was grieving.”
“Both can be true.”
The road lay empty around them. The cool air pressed against her heated cheek. Marcus’s skin was warm beneath her fingertips. She withdrew before the contact could become a question neither of them was ready to answer.
“We should get the samples to the clinic,” she said.
Marcus nodded, but he waited until she was walking before he fell into step beside her. He kept himself between Del and the dark tree line for the entire journey back to town.
Chapter 6
Del walked the gravel drive in the dark. The carriage house waited at the end; its windows black except for the single brass lamp burning above the worktable. Her cloak hung heavy on her shoulders. She hadn’t taken it off since last night.
The door was unlocked. She turned the handle and pushed. Cold air followed her in, carrying the smell of cut grass and the damp that settled in the hollows before dawn.
Marcus stood at the worktable with his back to the door. The brass lamp threw his shadow long across the stone floor. He sorted vials on a steel tray, his movements quick and practiced. Each vial clicked against the next. He didn’t turn.
Del shut the door. The latch caught with a soft sound.
“I came back,” she said.
Marcus lifted a vial to the light. He examined the contents, capped it, and set it in the rack. He reached for the next one.
“I told you everything last night.” Del’s hands gripped the fabric of her cloak at her sides. “I ground the valerian root. I measured the oak gall. Three nights each week for two years.” Her voice caught on the last word. She forced it steady. “The binding agent came from Baton Rouge. Chen. She doesn’t ask questions.”
Marcus sorted another vial. His shoulders were set under his flannel shirt. The sleeves were rolled to the elbows.
“I knew the ratios were wrong.” Del’s eyes fixed on the floor. The stone was worn smooth in the center from years of boots. “Three parts valerian to one part oak gall. Iron at half the valerian. Birch at a quarter. Warding stones don’t use those proportions. I knew that. I kept grinding.”
She took a step forward. Her boots scuffed the stone.
“The packets went out. Three per batch. Sealed with wax. Someone picked them up. I never saw who.” Her voice broke. She swallowed. “I never asked what they were for. The coven voted. Rosalind’s hand went up first. Seven followed. My no sat on the table.”
Marcus set down a vial. He reached for the logbook beside the tray and made a note. His pen scratched across the paper.
“The blood.” Del’s throat closed. She forced the words out. “What it does to the cells. You showed me the slides. The membranes coming apart. Hemoglobin leaching. The border between human tissue and shifter cells. Knife-sharp. No transition.”
Marcus turned.
His hazel eyes were flat. His jaw was set along the bone. He looked at her with the same assessing, calculating look he gave a wound that needed stitching, no judgment in it. “Can you unmake it?”
Del stared at him. The question hung between them. She had prepared for anger, for disgust, for the cold that came from spending his nights drawing blood from sick wolves and his days staring at cells that wouldn’t behave. She hadn’t prepared for this.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked at the edges. “I should have...”
