Chapter 188

Russo’s POV

Lisa let us into the apothecary’s shop. The scent of herbs, dried and fresh, hit my nose, making the inside tingle. Before I could hold it back, two violent sneezes burst from my nose. I caught them with my elbow to cover.

Lisa laughed. “It takes a while to get used to the scent of this stuff.”

She walked to the werewolf behind the counter and passed him the list. “I’m going to need these herbs as fast as possible, please.”

“In what quantities?” the werewolf asked.

Lisa bent over the list, studying it, and I suddenly became very glad that we had her on our side. When I read the books, Solomon’s Key had listed measurements that I was completely unfamiliar with.

What exactly was a thumb of powdered wormwood? Because my thumb was significantly bigger than hers if we were using actual fingers as measurement.

But Lisa rattled the measurements off to the werewolf, who seemed to know exactly what she was talking about. He jotted the notes on an invoice. When they finished, the werewolf passed her a bill.

Lisa looked back at me. “I assume you guys are covering the tab since this is for you?”

I nodded and pulled out my wallet. Justin would be sure to pay me back later. Besides, even if I had to fund this myself, getting rid of the Huntsman was worth just about any cost.

The werewolf then began bustling about the shop, putting various herbs in glass vials and little paper sachets or wrapping them in black cloth.

“Why all the different packages? I asked Lisa.

“Because we don’t want any contamination from their wrapping when we’re doing the rite. Not only can they not touch each other until they’re ready to go into the potion, but they also can’t touch a material that they would absorb properties from them. This werewolf is very good at his job. He already knows what things need to be wrapped in what papers to make sure that no cross-contamination happens.”

“Interesting,” I said.

I leaned closer to her, whispering, “You must be very good at your craft.”

I was vague and quiet so that the werewolf wouldn’t overhear. I trusted the people in this town, but one never knew who might be taken and manipulated. And I didn’t want to bring any attention to the fact that we were using these herbs for anything other than medicinal purposes.

If the werewolf running the shop knew that we were using these for some sort of spell, she would immediately know that Lisa was a witch. I was too well-known in town. No one would assume I was anything but fae.

“For my own protection, I’m not going to tell you how good I am,” Lisa whispered back.

“I suppose I could take that to mean you’re either not very good, and we’re all putting our necks on the line by trusting you with this project, or you’re extremely good, and you don’t want to be outed for what you truly are.”

She nodded. “Exactly why I’m not saying anything else.”

I put my hands on her shoulders and stood at her back, resting my chin on top of her hair. “I hope someday you’ll trust me more than this,” I whispered.

“When lives aren’t on the line,” she murmured, “I probably will. And if it were just my life and yours, I might go ahead and trust you now. But you’re asking me to trust you with the fate of several entire species. I’m going to have to ere on the side of caution.”

“Understood,” I said.

“Here you are.” The werewolf held our packages out to us after placing them in a paper bag.

“Thank you,” Lisa and I said at the same time.

I took the receipt, and the werewolf handed Lisa a slip of paper. “Four of those needed to be special ordered. They’ll be in by next Friday or possibly the following Monday.”

I sucked air in through my teeth. “That’s going to be close.”

Lisa patted my arm. “It’s plenty of time. We have until that Friday before we can put everything in motion. As long as the herbs come in by Monday, there’s no problem.”

“If you leave your number, I can call you when they come in,” the werewolf offered.

Lisa shook her head. “That’s okay. We’ll just give you a call on Friday and see if they’ve arrived. And if not, then we’ll stop by on Monday.”

The werewolf nodded. “Our deliveries come in by noon. You can call any time after that, and I’ll know whether or not your stuff has arrived. Or, if I haven’t gotten to unloading things, I can at least check the packages.”

Lisa and I left the shop, and outside, the cold winter air seemed completely devoid of smell in comparison to the inside of the apothecary’s. But honestly, it was a relief to my nose. I hadn’t realized until I walked out the door how much my sinuses had started to burn.

“I don’t like Apothecary shops,” I told her.

Lisa laughed at me. “As I said, you get used to the smell. I’m not entirely sure how a werewolf would manage with their heightened sense of smell, though.”

To my delight, Lisa slipped her hand into mine, wrapping her fingers in between mine. “Are you ready to show me to your house?”

Helen’s POV

I lay back on the bed in my house, enjoying the quiet after having spent most of the weekend with Lisa and the rest of the guys. Above my head, on the edge of a picture frame, perched Freya.

“I’m glad you’re willing to spy for us,” I said. “I know it’s a lot to ask.”

“It’s not a lot to ask,” she replied. “We’re talking about rescuing the rest of my people, assuming that they’re still alive.”

“But there’s always the risk that you could be caught somehow and destroyed, and then there wouldn’t be any more of your kind alive.”

“If we do nothing, then there definitely wouldn’t be any more of my kind after I die,” she said. “I’m not like your mate, Justin. Where are you going to find anyone that I can have pixie babies with? I’m too small to take a human-sized mate. And I’m not like a fruit tree. I can’t self-pollinate.”

I giggled at that. “That would be kind of funny, especially since you give off yellow dust like pollen.”

Her laugh tinkled off of the edge of the picture frame. “I suppose it does look a little like pollen, doesn’t it?”

I sighed and sank deeper into my pillow. “I can see why you would be willing to risk it, though. I’m so, so glad that you’re such a brave pixie.”

She floated down and landed on my forehead, walking her tiny steps along the line of my nose until she stood on the tip. She stared into my eyes.

“It’s easy to be brave when you have nothing else to lose. You should know this. How else did you face Justin when no one else could? By the time you got caught and used as a sacrifice, you were already miserable, broken, abandoned, and abused by your parents. Really, what did you have to lose when you faced the last Lycan?”

“I never thought about myself that way. I was in a pretty pitiable state, wasn’t I?”

She nodded. “And yet you bravely faced everything that was thrown at you. After that, fighting for the one that you love is easy. I love my people, and I will fight for them because if I lose them, I’ve lost everything.”

I tried to giggle without twitching my nose so that I wouldn’t knock her off. “When did you get wise on top of being brave?”

She fluttered her little golden wings. “I’m just awesome.”

“I know you are. Is there anything that I can do for you while you’re waiting?”

She shook her head. “I’m like you. It’s going to be hard to wait, but we’ll find the strength. And then we’ll take the Huntsman down.”

“We will have to come up with a way that you can communicate back to us if anything goes wrong. It’s one thing to have you spying, but if something goes wrong and we don’t know it . . .”

She wiggled her body, sending pixie dust sprinkling all over me. The next thing I knew, I was holding something in my hand. I held it up where I could see, and it was a little gold earpiece.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s made of my magic. It’s a communication device. Just put that in your ear, and you’ll be able to hear me. I’ll talk to you through my magic. It’s not very durable because it’s just made out of pixie dust,” she apologized.

“But it’s the only way I can leave enough of my magic with you that we can communicate with one another.”

I set it carefully on the nightstand beside my bed. “I’ll make sure that I keep it safe until the day of. And then I’ll keep it nowhere but my ear. If it breaks, it means I’ve taken a blow to the head, and things have gone very wrong.”

Freya shook her head. “We’re not going to talk like that. Nobody is going to come after you because you guys will be safely doing the spell from a distance. This is going to work. You need to believe that.”