Page 3
It rose from the combined powders through the paper, faint and sweet in a way that made her jaw tight, and it was neither lavender nor the chemical dark from the meeting. She knew every smell in this room. She had cataloged them for ten years. This one was new.
She didn’t open the packets to check. Opening them would mean she doubted. Doubting would mean she had a reason, and she didn’t want a reason. She had a job. The coven had voted. She had lost.
She took a square of linen from the drawer and wrapped the packets. The cloth was clean. She tied it with twine and set the bundle by the door for the morning pickup. Someone would come. Arrow hadn’t specified who.
Del went to the sink in the corner and turned on the water. It ran cold. She held her hands under the stream while the gray turned the water cloudy. The dust circled the drain in slow spirals. She scrubbed with the bar soap kept beside the tap, working at her nails, the lines of her palms, and the inside of her wrists where the gray had reached the cuff of her sweater.
The water cleared. She turned off the tap and dried her hands on a towel that hung from a nail. Her shoulders were set. Her face was blank in the dark glass of the window above the sink. The shop behind her was silent. The packets waited by the door.
She blew out the lamp and stood in the dark.
Chapter 1
The carriage house was cold at two in the morning. Marcus lit the last lamp and set it on the shelf above the exam table. The stone floor held the winter like it was paid to. The shelves along the east wall ran floor to ceiling with tinctures, reagents, and the tools he’d collected since 1936. Most of them worked better than what the hospital downtown had.
Cole Andrews sat on the edge of the exam table. His black hair was damp at the temples. His gray eyes tracked Marcus without complaint, but his breathing had a catch in it. Marcus noted the catch. He noted everything.
“You said two weeks,” Marcus said.
“Started last night,” Cole said. “Worse today.”
Marcus pulled a stool over and sat. The lamplight caught the brass fittings of his microscope on the workbench behind them. The clinic smelled of alcohol and the faint copper note that followed shifters when they were hurt.
“Shirt off.”
Cole unbuttoned his flannel and dropped it on the table. His chest was broad, muscled for a man in his fifties. A thin scar ran along his left ribcage, old and silvery. Marcus placed his hands on Cole’s sternum and worked outward. His fingers pressed each rib in sequence. He counted under his breath.
Cole hissed when Marcus hit the fifth rib on the right side.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
Marcus pressed again, lighter. The tissue beneath gave more than it should. Nothing was broken, but something was wrong.
“Lungs feel clear,” Marcus said. “Heart rate’s elevated. You’re running a fever.”
“I know.”
Marcus reached for the blood draw kit on the shelf. He tied the tourniquet above Cole’s elbow and swabbed the inside of his arm with alcohol. The vein rose under his fingers. Marcus slid the needle in one smooth motion. Cole didn’t flinch.
The blood filled the tube dark and fast. Something about the color was wrong, too rich and too metallic. He’d seen shifter blood a thousand times. This was different.
He filled three vials and released the tourniquet. Cole pressed a cotton ball to the puncture while Marcus carried the samples to the workbench. He set the first vial in the rack and reached for a slide.
The microscope was German, circa 1948. Marcus had traded for it with a hunter who didn’t know what he had. He dropped a sample on the slide and adjusted the focus. The cells swam into view.
He went still.
The red cells were degrading rather than rupturing, the membranes thinning and the hemoglobin leaching into the plasma in a pattern he’d never seen. Marcus moved the slide and checked another section. It showed the same thing.
“Problem?” Cole asked from the table.
“Working on it.”
Marcus reached for the first reagent. He chose iron sulfate and added one drop to a fresh sample on a second slide and placed it under the scope. The cells darkened but the degradation continued. He tried copper nitrate next. The cells clumped but the membranes still thinned. The third reagent was his own formulation, witch hazel and silver nitrate in a ratio he’d perfected over decades. It did nothing.
He sat back. The lamplight guttered. Outside, the wind pushed against the carriage house windows.
