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She called this place her burrow. She had a leather club chair and a small writing table at the opposite end. A door to the right of the table led to a meditation and sleeping room which housed a garden. She’d created beds by jack-hammering the rock and filling the deep holes with a lot of good soil. She grew shrubs and flowers with gro-lights, vines that crept up the walls, and even a small tree in the corner. In the center of the room, she’d scattered faux furs on a stone-laid floor. There were nights, especially when her grief over Frank’s death overwhelmed her yet again, she slept on the furs.
Only her witch mentor, Kiara, knew about her underground garden-burrow and how much peace of mind it gave her. Kiara had encouraged her to go there as often as needed. So, she had.
Thoughts of Kiara, however, forced her to grow very still in front of her work table.
Veyda had abducted Kiara three weeks ago and Maeve had been hunting for her ever since. Two days before rescuing Braden from the Graveyard, she’d finally located Veyda’s well-hidden compound. She’d even succeeded in finding Kiara’s holding cell.
While waiting for Braden to recover, she’d gone back each night. It was a tremendous struggle to work her way through Veyda’s security spells to reach Kiara’s cell.
Where she was imprisoned was a small eight-by-eight space, one of a number along the west side of Veyda’s building. Each cell had barred windows and no glass. Steel shutters came down during the day to protect the inmates from the deadly sun. Other than that, the prisoners had to endure the falling temps at night then the rising desert heat as the sun rose.
Last night, she’d had a breakthrough and had made her first telepathic connection with Kiara. The latter had wept and spoken of the kind of torture she and the other women were enduring. Worse still, the torture eventually ended in death.
Maeve wanted desperately to help her, but she didn’t have either the natural witch power or the basic physicality to do it. As young as she was in alter terms, she didn’t have a single connection in the community of good witches that could help her. Kiara had been her only link in Elegance.
She’d tried taking Alfonso with her, but the presence of an extra person had somehow tightened Veyda’s spell and she’d been unable to pierce it with the tall shifter in tow.
She wasn’t even sure what it would take to break Kiara out of the place. Kiara’s plight was a problem Maeve’s mind now worked on constantly.
For the present, however, she felt a strong drive to get Braden back on his feet. He was well out of danger, but somewhere she’d come up with an idea. Maybe, if they worked together, this powerful alpha shifter could somehow help her rescue Kiara.
Swallowing hard, she went to her small refrigerator and took out a dark green bottle with an eye-dropper for a lid.
Emerald flame.
The purified content of her flame supply had cost her a small fortune, but worth every penny. She had two different forms of the drug. One liquid, the other granules. She used the liquid for infusions and potions. The granules went into any mixture that involved the grinding of herbs and other ingredients in her mortar.
She carried the bottle back to the table carefully as though the smallest bump would cause an explosion. Emerald flame didn’t work that way. It had no power to ignite the elements in her spellroom. But if it aerosolized in a large amount, the fumes could kill her. Even if she hadn’t known the nature of the drug, her witch instincts told her just how much power she carried in her hands.
Sheba offered a warning meow.
Maeve glanced at her. “I’m well aware I need to be careful.”
Sheba’s tail swiped back and forth twice, but her gaze was fixed to Maeve’s hands.
Opening the small bottle, she squeezed the eye-dropper to bring the liquid into the attached glass tube. She carefully shifted to a nearby spoon, held level in a special cradle she’d made just for the purpose. She never added the drug straight into whatever concoction she was creating. More than the number of required drops would ruin the effect.
With painstaking effort, she slowly squeezed first one drop, then two into her spoon. She breathed a sigh of relief.
She pivoted to return the dropper to the bottle and tightened up the seal. She then took the bottle back to her fridge and tucked it carefully toward the back.
Returning to the table, she drew several deep, purposeful breaths, then held the last one. She picked up the spoon with its two tiny drops of emerald flame and lowered it into the liquid.
The moment the droplets hit the potion, they partially aerosolized then shortly afterward dissipated. She’d only made the mistake once of breathing during the process of adding the drug. She’d awakened on the floor with a high that had lasted the rest of the night. If she’d been a druggy, she would have been in heaven. Instead, she’d wept for her stupidity.
As she stirred the mixture, she finally allowed herself to breathe. The drug was now incorporated into the infusion. She drew close and opened her nostrils. The same scent returned of lavender, marigold and hyacinth only heightened.
She closed her eyes and there it was, a kind of brightness within her mind. At the same time, because the drug took on the essence of the other ingredients, she felt waves of healing flow and knew she’d succeeded.
Sheba’s tail twitched and as if to confirm the efficacy of the infusion, she meowed once.
“Yes, I agree. This will help Braden heal.” The entire four days Braden had been in her apartment, Sheba hadn’t been far from the wolf, something that surprised Maeve. Sheba was known for ignoring everyone. But not Braden. Maeve had often found her curled up on the end of the bed as though guarding him.
She transferred the infusion into a separate black crockery that used a tea-light for heating. By means of a small tray, she carried the infuser up the spiral stone steps and into her living room. Maybe emerald flame would take Officer Braden the rest of the way and bring him out of his coma.
As she entered the darkened room, she moved to the left of the bed. She carefully avoided his IV and set the tray on the nightstand. She had to push the metal lamp almost to the edge to make room.
Once she knew the tray was secure and the tealight doing its warming chore, she stepped back around the IV and drew close to the bed. She allowed herself this much, to look at the wolf.
