Page 94 of The Wolf Queen’s Curse

“I’m a necromancer on my maternal side.”

Silence, as several of the girls shrink back, making no effort to hide their distaste.

“That’s too bad,” Hanora says.

“I don’t think so,” Ann says.

“You like having ghosts pestering you?” Ruby asks with a shudder.

“They don’t pester me, and necromancers can also raise and control the dead.”

The three unnamed girls shrink back more, but Hanora leans forward. “Control them how?”

Ann shrugs. “Make them work for me.”

“Like an army of the dead to do your bidding?”

“Not exactly.”

Ann seems ready to leave it there, but Hanora pushes, obviously intrigued where the others seem horrified. Ann isn’t ashamed of her power—nor should she be—so she answers Hanora’s questions as we finish the drink. The conversation goes deep into necromancy, and we don’t even notice our glasses being refilled until Hanora raises hers and says, “A toast to our fine ladies, for being such good sports.”

I smile. “When you live with a werewolf Pack, you relish time with other women. And time drinking with other women is even better. Ann and I feared we were going to need to retire to our rooms and stare at the clocks.”

“No need for that. We’ll keep you company.” Hanora waves her glass at me. “Now, tell us about this husband of yours. He calls you his mate. Is that a thing with werewolves?”

I answer the question, and then I raise my glass for a sip and stop as the smell of opium hits me.

I quickly whisper a privacy spell between myself and Ann, and then I lift my glass to my lips, masking them as I say, “Don’t drink.”

Of course that startles her, but there’s no way to preface the spell with a warning or explanation, not when everyone’s looking at us. To her credit, she quickly realizes no one else heard me and covers her reaction by saying, “I really need to drink gin more often. This is surprisingly excellent.” Luckily, I snap the privacy spell before anyone notices her lips moving and no sound coming out.

I smile. “It really is good, isn’t it? I don’t normally drink gin.”

“Of course you don’t,” Hanora says with the bite of sarcasm.

“I should,” I say. “The first glass was fine, but this is something else entirely. I can already feel it going straight to my head.”

Hanora smirks. I fake a long draught and then I keep talking, pulling Hanora and Ruby into conversation again, allowing me to do a little sleight of hand—assisted by blur spells—that lets me dump the contents of my glass into an already dying plant and then switch my glass with Ann’s. I’m honestly surprised that I pull it off. But after we both compliment the second vintage, they don’t pay any attention, and it’s enough to go through the motions of drinking.

I should be furious, but mostly I’m just disheartened. Feeling foolish, too. Earlier, I’d been reflecting on how young they are. But the one who’s truly young is me.

They invited us to share a drink, and I’d been delighted, growing even happier as we’d talked and Hanora had taken an interest in necromancy, which had pleased Ann. It’d seemed to be going so well.

It had been going well. If “it” was Hanora’s plan to lower our guard and drug us.

Why put opium in our gin? Bishop would leap to the most nefarious conclusion, but I don’t see any point in targeting Ann and me.

The problem is that I can’t gauge the dosage. As a lycan, I can smell something in the gin. As a witch who deals in medicines, I can identify it as opium. I also know that putting opium into alcohol creates tincture of opium, better known as laudanum. What I can’t judge by smell alone is how much opium they put in our gin.

Knowing how much is in our drinks would tell me their intentions. Is it enough to harm us? Even kill us? Enough to put us to sleep, which renders us unable to fight against anything that might be done to us in that state? Or is it a low amount, which could be their idea of a prank? A malicious one, if they want Bishop to come back and find his wife stumbling around like a drunkard. Or less malicious, if they’re drinking the same thing, using laudanum to relax.

The only way to know how much they’ve given us is to try it. That’s not as dangerous as it seems. If there was enough opium to kill us with a single gulp, the smell would stop even Ann from drinking. I take the tiniest of sips and wait. Then I take another.

Opium is, of course, popular as a drug of recreation. I took it under the watchful eye of my human friend, Audrey, because I was curious. Mostly a professional kind of curiosity, but also—I must be honest—personal curiosity. I knew Lenora would fuss if I asked her to supervise, and I knew Audrey would not, but that she would also supervise closely, with no interest in trying it herself.

I didn’t care for the sensation. That’s good, because my one fear in experimenting was that I’d like it very much when I know it’s highly addictive. Mostly it made me drowsy, which is understandable, since the morphine form of it is used for pain relief. I decided that the appeal of opium was mental pain relief, not unlike alcohol. It lets you forget your worries. For me, alcohol comes with a delicious lightening of inhibitions, while opium just made me want to sleep, and so I decided to stick to alcohol.

As laudanum, opium enjoys a certain popularity among women, and a reputation as a drug specifically for “female concerns” afflicting middle- and upper-class women. My theory has always been that “female concerns” aren’t so much our monthly cycle as our place in the world, where we live under the weight of endless expectations, one of those expectations being that we don’t actually do much if we’re a “proper lady.”