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“I heard there was a hot fae man!” Ness announced.
Addie, no longer the sheepish little woman she’d been before, wiggled her brows suggestively. It seemed that a bit of detective shifter dick had done Addie some good. She was way happier than she’d ever been before, and I was…I was happy for her.
I wanted something like that for myself, but it wasn’t going to be Rhoan. I knew that much for sure.
I lifted a finger and pointed it at Ness. “Don’t you even start.”
4
CERRI
At the end of the day, I stood outside the café and considered marching up to Beryl’s restaurant at the edge of Lake Onondaga. It was too soon. I needed to figure out how I was going to approach her. Entrapping her in her own fae bargain would take finesse; I knew that much, at least.
Instead, I turned towards the warehouse district at the mouth of the river that fed into the lake. I’d called it home, enjoying my refurnished warehouse apartment for the past few years. It was feeling less and less like home lately.
Maybe it’d been Alvin’s invasion that made the apartment cold and unwelcoming. It could have been Bastien’s army of zombies that’d ruined it for me. I swear I could still smell death in every corner even though Addie promised me that I’d gotten every last scrap of dead-thing out of my place.
Cleaning that mess had been nightmarish, and I never wanted to experience it again.
When I opened the door, I expected to find Rhoan waiting for me inside. He was nowhere to be seen. The place looked just the same as I’d left it. No one had been by. Rhoan hadn’t even bothered to come to check up on me.
I didn’t know why my stomach sank with disappointment. I didn’t need him to protect me. Soon, I wouldn’t need anyone. I would get Beryl off my back, and I would settle into my old life once more. That was all I really wanted.
I traced the scar around my throat. My heart trembled with fear. I had to remind myself that Alvin Combs, the former leader of the Lakesedge shifter pack, was truly dead. Ness, Ryder, and Addie had seen to that.
Bastien had used Alvin’s corpse more than a few times. The Reaper had invited that monster’s soul back and shoved it into the rotten wolf corpse so that he could run rampant over the landscape once more. Bastien had been using Alvin to hunt Addie, but the idea that Alvin could be back struck a chord in me.
Ice slithered through my veins like sudden cold rain on a hot day. I shuddered and turned towards the bathroom so I could take a hot shower and wash away the stickiness of working in a coffee shop.
I was safe…well, at least as safe as I could be with Beryl breathing down my neck. At least, I wasn’t the same person I’d been back when Alvin first kidnapped me. He’d used my near-human weakness against Ness in an attempt to make her submit to him. Ness had refused, and it’d almost gotten me killed.
It would have been nice to say that I didn’t blame her, but a twinge of anger still simmered inside me. My friends never meant to hurt me. I was just the weak link between them all. My body was fragile compared to someone like Ness. And while Vi and Addie were more like me, they had a wealth of power to keep others away from them.
Up until recently, all I had were my potions. They hadn’t prevented anyone from picking me up and carrying me off.
Shoulders hunched, I gripped the edge of my sink and bit back a scream that’d been building inside me since Ness decided to face Alvin head-on. Nothing had been the same since then. While the community was safer, I couldn’t find my own peace.
Over and over, someone crashed in and stole it from me. I didn’t want to be a princess or a queen. I wanted to be able to sleep without nightmares. Was that so much to ask for? Why didn’t I deserve a bit of safety for once? It didn’t make sense to me.
I pulled the collar of my shirt down so I could look at the fading scar puckering the skin on my chest. The wound had healed slowly, like my potion had lost its punch. Though I was tired from work, we would need more healing potions. Ness could heal on her own, but Vi, Addie, and I needed a bit of help.
After my shower, I padded out into the kitchen to get to work. There, I paused. Over time, I’d collected just about every herb I could have wanted. When I trailed my fingers over the jar lids, I felt the pulsing energy within each.
Chamomile hummed softly like someone snoring in their sleep. Lavender had a similar soft energy. Black tea and coffee grounds buzzed with liveliness, one like classical dance and the other like a bustling rave. There were others with more ominous energies, like comfrey and pennyroyal.
I could do almost anything with a handful of herbs and my cauldron. The propane burner clicked beneath the black cauldron before flaring to life. Pale blue flames licked the black iron while I considered what I really wanted to do.
A sensation rippled through me and shoved me into action. I lurched forward, snatched a book from the shelves above my brewing station, and slapped it open on the counter. It was a book that I didn’t open often, filled with recipes for potions that could be dangerous. I usually stuck to utilitarian potions because I wasn’t about to dabble in dark powers.
This wasn’t dark, though. At least, not by the classic definition. I wasn’t trying to poison or curse anyone. The potion recipe I needed was meant to explore one’s own shadow. There was a side of us that took on everything we didn’t want to acknowledge about ourselves. It was a dumpster for our bad memories and our cruel thoughts.
I sprinkled herbs for clarity and guidance into the cauldron and felt their power swell. My conviction slipped. I didn’t know what my shadow held. I hoped that it would have memories of the life I’d left behind as a child.
Feri, clearly peeved that I’d been ignoring him all day, stomped up to the edge of the stove where my cauldron sat. His little nose twitched. He cocked his head.
He gave me a disgusted look. “This smells poisonous. Are you crafting a flying ointment?”
Taken aback, I asked, “Awhat? I’m not trying to fly.”
