Using her good hand, she pushed herself up into a sitting position. But she moved too fast and ended up swaying. I reached out a hand to steady her but she shied away. “I got it,” she snapped. Then she settled herself back and looked at me. “I was thinking that I was in pain, Kate. For the last week, I’ve been in constant pain. I can’t sleep, I can barely eat, and I was so fucking exhausted.”
“You could have—”
“What?” she snapped. “Arnica didn’t do shit and you told Baba to stop giving me the philtres.”
“So the solution was to steal an old woman’s arthritis potion? Jesus, Pen.”
She blinked at me but didn’t respond for a long time. Just watched me like she was seeing me clearly but didn’t like what she found. “You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve judging me.”
Gut check. This time it was my turn to look away. With those words, she hit on the thin vein of guilt that I’d been suppressing ever since I got the call she’d been injured. If I hadn’t hidden my magic use from Pen in the first place, that damned party never would have happened and she never would have been in that car for that asshole to run into her.
Recriminations rose like bile in the back of my throat, but I wouldn’t let her off the hook completely. “Me cooking to save Danny’s life is light-years different from you stealing an old woman’s arthritis potion.” I was being nasty and I knew it, but defensiveness added venom to my tongue.
“I tried to fight it,” she snapped. Off my doubtful expression, she looked me in the eye. “Really, Kate. I tried. But when Baba left her purse on the bed, I saw the apothecary bag sticking out. I told myself to just ignore it. The pain was bad but I wasn’t dying or anything. But then this little voice in the back of my head starting whispering about how one little potion wouldn’t make me fall off the wagon. About how I could just do it this once and no one would have to know. Baba was going to be gone all afternoon. I could have a little relief and then I’d never take it again. I guess it’s what Rufus always talks about—the bargaining?”
I nodded. I knew that seductive voice all too well.
“Anyway, before I knew it, my hand was grabbing that bag and hiding it under my pillow. And then, once Baba was gone, that same hand was opening the vial and lifting it to my mouth. The weird thing was, it didn’t even feel like it was me taking it. It was like watching a movie of someone falling off the wagon.”
I grabbed her uninjured hand in mine and squeezed. “This doesn’t have to be you falling off the wagon. Maybe it’s just a wake-up call. You tried it and it sucked. Now you know and can never try it again.”
She looked down at our hands. Her teeth worried her bottom lip for a second. Then she whispered, “That’s the problem.” She looked up, and her eyes were bright with fear. “It didn’t suck, Kate.”
I closed my eyes and cursed. A memory elbowed its way to the front of my brain. Holding the Gray Wolf potion in my hand. The tingle of energy zinging up my arm. The rush of adrenaline making my pulse sprint. The surge of power that bordered on lust. No, I agreed silently, it didn’t suck at all.
Let her off the hook, my conscience begged.
But I couldn’t. In my gut I knew it was a mistake to enable her just to ease my own guilty conscience. “This ends today,” I said. “No more.”
Her expression morphed from regretful to rebellious. “Don’t take that tone with me, Detective. I’m not some freaker strung out on a five-dollar dirty magic potion.”
I raised a brow. “Not yet.”
She paled as if I’d struck her. “What are you gonna do, report me to your precious team? Send Morales over to put me in cuffs?”
I sighed. “It’s not like that and you know it. I’m worried about you, Pen. Have you forgotten the last time you got hooked on potions?”
Her gaze skittered away from mine. “This is different.”
I stared her down. “The pain you’re experiencing isn’t easy, but it won’t kill you. But we both know an addiction will. Your heart is still weak from the last time.”
A decade earlier, Pen had been a stressed graduate student who fueled her studying binges with an energy potion supplied to her from one of her classmates. On her twenty-third birthday, she had a massive heart attack.
A wave of emotion rose like a tide in my chest. I blinked quickly before I lost my ability to deliver the tough love she needed. “If I find out you’ve taken another potion, I won’t be coming back around.”
My words lay between us like a bomb. In the other room, the sound of Baba bustling through the front door echoed through the tiny apartment. “Kate? Pen?”
Pen ignored her. “In here,” I called, glancing toward the bedroom door.
“I want you to leave.”
I swung back around, my mouth open in shock. “Pen—”
She jerked so suddenly, I was worried she’d hurt herself. “Get out!”
Baba appeared at the door, a worried expression on her wrinkled face. “Kate?”
I held out a hand to quiet her for a moment. “Think real hard before you tell me to leave again,” I said in a low tone. “Because it won’t be easy to get me to come back.”
She looked me directly in my eyes. “Go back to your precious team. That’s where you’d rather be anyway.”
Her words were like jabs to my gut.
“Girls?” Baba said.
Instead of responding to either of them, I rose with as much dignity as I could muster. I collected my coat and shrugged into it on my way toward the door.
“Pen? Tell her to stay.”
I shook my head at the old woman. “She made her decision.”
Baba paled. Clearly she believed this fight was all about Pen’s potion use. I wasn’t going to be the one to correct that assumption. “Make sure you check your purse before you leave. If she steals anything else, I suggest you file charges.”
“Bitch,” Pen hissed.
I looked back at my best friend. Her hair stuck up in spiky tufts, and her skin was pale. Dark circles made her eyes look like black holes.
“Get well soon, Pen.”
With that I turned and walked out the door with the echo of my best friend’s sobs chasing me all the way out of the apartment.
Chapter Nineteen
October 25
Waxing Gibbous
The next afternoon I rolled into the gym feeling like I’d spent the night sleeping on rocks. Frustration and anger over my argument with Pen had pushed at my pressure points until I was tossing and turning like the princess and the fucking pea. I’d finally given up trying to sleep before the sun rose.