Page 24

“Can you unmake it?” Marcus repeated. The words were the same but harder, like he was talking to someone wasting time he didn’t have. His hands rested on the worktable. The knuckles were white.

Del’s mouth opened and closed. She looked at the floor again. The stone held a faint stain near the exam table, dark against the gray. It was shifter blood, dried and scrubbed but not quite gone.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Marcus swept a section of the worktable clear with one hand. Glass vials clinked against each other. He set down a stone mortar; its interior still dusted with something pale. Beside it he placed a set of brass measuring weights, the smallest no larger than a pea. From the cold storage box beneath the bench, he lifted a sealed jar. The liquid inside was dark, almost black in the lamplight. It was a shifter’s blood, one of the sick ones.

“Start with the composition,” he said. “Tell me every component you supplied. In order.”

Del’s hands shook. She reached for the mortar anyway. The stone was cool under her palms. She turned it, feeling the weight, the familiar heft of something she had held a thousand times in her own shop.

“Valerian root first,” she said. “Dried. Ground to powder in the mortar. Seven grams per batch.”

Marcus picked up his pen. The logbook lay open. His handwriting was cramped, slanting left, each letter pressed into the paper as if he feared the words might escape.

“Oak gall next. Powdered already. Three grams.”

The only sound in the clinic besides their breathing was the scratch of the nib on paper.

“Iron filings. Fine grade. Four grams.”

“Source?” Marcus asked.

“The hardware store. Heller’s. I told them it was for garden work.”

He wrote it down.

“Birch bark. Inner layer only. Scraped thin. One and three-quarter grams.”

“Birch from where?”

“The stand behind the ridge. North side. I harvested it myself last spring.”

The pen scratched. Del watched his hand move. His fingers were long, the nails cut straight across. They were a country doctor’s hands, steady.

“Binding agent?” Marcus said.

“Chen’s. Baton Rouge. Witch hazel base with a silver nitrate suspension. Two milliliters per batch.”

Marcus looked up. “Silver nitrate.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not in warding work.”

“I know.”

He held her gaze. Then he wrote it down.

“The packets were paper. Heavy stock. Folded twice, sealed with beeswax from my own hives.” Del’s voice had found its rhythm. The recitation steadied her hands. “Three packets per batch. Collected every Thursday night. Someone came to the back door. I never saw who.”

“Timing?”

“Two years. Three batches a week. Steady.”

Marcus capped his pen. He set it beside the logbook and looked at the list he had written. His expression didn’t change.

“The pack can’t know you’re here,” he said.