“That was a guess,” he said. “It can have psychoactive effects.”
“But this is also a blood potion,” I said. “Dragon’s blood would make the wolf’s blood coagulate.”
He frowned. “Willow’s bark or cat’s claw would prevent that.”
“That doesn’t seem right.” I shook my head. “We’re missing something.”
I checked the beaker and was pleased to see the potion reducing quickly. Hopefully once it thickened enough I could dry it and analyze it in powder form.
“Kate?” he said quietly.
I turned my head to the side to look at him through the veil of my hair.
“You’re stalling.”
I stretched and worked the kinks out of my neck. As I did, I caught the time on a clock he’d installed over the distilling apparatus. Two hours had passed. I glanced quickly toward the large windows and was shocked to see it was already full night. At some point while I’d worked, John had turned on the large lights overhead. With some embarrassment, I realized that I’d been enjoying myself so much I hadn’t even noticed the time passing.
“I’m not stalling,” I said. “I’m trying to be thorough. Magic isn’t the answer to everything, John.” The beaker was hot, so I used the cuff of my shirt to pick it up. I tipped it over to spread it out on a drying sheet.
“Messing with those beakers isn’t going to cure Danny. Time’s a-wasting, Kate.”
Something hot burst in my stomach. Guilt. But also fear and definitely a lot of resentment. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t decided to build on Bane’s turf.” When in doubt, turn your anger on someone else. So much easier than facing your own role in the problem.
He crossed his arms. “You really want to play the blame game or are you going to make shit happen?”
I wanted to rage at him. I wanted to punish him for bringing me here. I wanted to walk away.
Unfortunately he was right. I could resist reality or I could accept that I just had to do the damn thing, as Pen was fond of saying. “Fine,” I snapped. “Do you have a divining bowl?” I almost prayed he didn’t.
He smiled. “Of course.” He reached to a top shelf and pulled down the most beautiful divining bowl I’d ever seen. The porcelain was so fine it was practically transparent. Once again I was struck with how far we were from the days working in my mom’s kitchen, reading potions in the chipped coffee mugs she stole from the Blue Plate Diner. “Like it?” he asked, mistaking my look for admiration. “Bought it at auction last year. It’s from Jingdezhen. The alchemist who fired the porcelain named it the ‘Bowl of Illumination.’”
I sighed and shrugged. “It’s fine.”
He frowned like I’d insulted his manhood. Jesus, what happened to the ’hood rat who once gave me wilted dandelions as a romantic token?
“Grab me another ampoule,” I said. His frown deepened, as if his patience with my bossing him around was losing its novelty.
He set the new vial next to my hand. “What else do you need?”
“Lights out, complete silence, and some privacy.”
His left eye twitched like he was trying to decide if he should argue with me about the privacy part. Apparently my own look told him that this was one area where I wouldn’t budge. I wasn’t about to let him stare at me like a voyeur while I stumbled my way through serious magic for the first time in a decade.
“Suit yourself.” He turned on his heel and marched toward the archway that led to the old factory floor. “There’s matches and candles in the drawer to your left,” he called over his shoulder. A second later the overhead lights extinguished, leaving me alone in the pitch black. Through the large windows to my right, I saw lights from the Mundane part of town glowing cheerfully across the river.
With a sigh, I removed the gloves and scrubbed my damp palms on my thighs. My hands fumbled with the drawer, but soon a small flame licked the darkness. I blew out a long, centering breath. Showtime.
I poured the entire vial in the divining bowl. The potion’s rusty color looked like old blood against the pristine white. I took a step back and closed my eyes. Drew in air through the nose, expanding my ribs. A pause. Exhaled slowly, yet audibly, through the mouth. Repeat twice. Imagined circling myself with an aura of golden, protective light since reading dirty magic opened one up to all sorts of negative energies. Once I felt as though I’d cleansed and protected myself, I opened my eyes and began.
Stepping up to the table, I raised the bowl and swirled it widdershins three times. I raised my left hand and held it over the liquid. The potion’s energy reached toward mine like metal shavings toward a magnet. I touched the dark light of its aura gingerly at first. A tingle skipped up my arm.
Next, I swirled my left hand up, gathering the energy into a ball and balancing it on my fingertips. It glowed as if someone had flipped on a black light. Inside the center of the ball was a poison green core. Its energy rolled through me like thunder.
“Who made you?” I whispered.
The core began to shift and morph. At first it looked like a blob of mercury rolling in space. But then, slowly, it turned into the shape of a wolf. The symbolism for that was obvious given the purpose of Gray Wolf. Squinting, I pulled my hand closer for a better look. The wolf morphed into the shape of a cat with its hackles high. The symbol of a deceitful acquaintance. That wasn’t much of a shock. That cat became a dragon—the symbol of Bane’s coven. So far, so good.
I held my breath and tried to will the magic to reveal itself faster, but magic had its own agenda. The dragon’s fire spread out to form a protective barrier around it, but from the resulting smoke a new creature emerged. The monster had the head and feet of a rooster but the tail of a serpent. It was a basilisk.
Like a flashbulb, the mysterious wizard’s identity appeared behind my eyes. My stomach pitched and rolled into icy waters.
The rooster reared back its head and let forth balls of flame and a high-pitched hiss. The dragon exploded, leaving behind a bag of gold. Then the basilisk transformed into a green, crowned serpent, which curled around the gold and began to swallow its own tail.
The symbols came so fast and furious and the messages they delivered were so troubling, I felt shaky and my skin was clammy with sweat.
But the magic wasn’t done telling me its story. The image shifted and a second snake appeared. The two serpents braided over each other until they started swallowing each other’s tails, creating a sort of infinity symbol. In the next instant, a sun, moon, and six-pointed star rose behind the entwined snakes. On a gut level, I knew this last image had nothing to do with who created the potion. It was a portent, a warning.