Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
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Sadie’s feet carried her to the brewing room before she consciously decided what she wanted to do.
No, the problem was that she knew what she wanted to do, but that was exactly what she couldn’t do.
Pulling Nicholas into the nearest private room wasn’t an option.
Being near him, knowing she couldn’t have this life, hurt.
Spending the day in the brewing room caused a similar pang, but the eventual—inevitable—loss of access to ingredients and a cauldron was an ache Sadie had long ago learned to live with.
Just as she’d learn to live without Nicholas, but it would be easier if she was never truly with him to start with.
Luckily for Sadie, the old grimoires that she read while Jane brewed were fascinating. Once she managed to lose herself in the theoretical hypotheses about ingredients and brewing procedures, she forgot the real world. At least for a little while.
A shiver overcame Sadie, though the room was warm, and she looked up from a passage about the differences boiling versus simmering made in the effects of potion bases.
She’d probably been sitting still for too long and needed to move a little.
Stretching her neck, she glanced over at Jane and saw her scooping a powder into her current brew from a jar with a red line painted all around the outside.
She put down her book and leaped to her feet. “What are you doing?”
Jane glared, her usual hesitation gone. “Brewing a potion.”
Sadie admitted that her question had come out sharp—with good reason—but Jane’s snappish reply still took her aback. Snugged in her bodice, the charm Nicholas had carved grew warm. Sadie pressed against her chest. What sort of protections had he placed on it?
She gentled her tone. “But what are you adding to it?”
“The ingredients.”
If the charm grew any hotter, it was going to burn her.
What sort of protection was that? Since she didn’t want to fish around for it, Sadie did her best to ignore the charm.
She moved around the table to look at the grimoire on the stand at one end.
It was still open to the pages for the simple headache potion she had located for Jane earlier.
A potion that did not require any dangerous ingredients, which all the ones in the jars with red bands were.
She read the label on the open jar and blanched. “This potion doesn’t call for any foxglove, Jane.”
Sadie reached for the lid, and as her hand brushed against Jane’s, a spark flared between them, a familiar shimmery blue. Apparently, the charm did something besides heat up.
“What are you doing?” Jane asked, and this time she spoke hesitantly. Diffidently.
The charm cooled. Sadie looked over and saw the other woman’s clear confusion as she glanced between where Sadie now stood and the stool where she had been reading earlier.
Sadie touched the back of Jane’s hand. No spark.
“I’m putting this away. The jars with red bands are all dangerous ingredients.
You shouldn’t make anything with them without the supervision of an experienced brewer. ”
Jane’s brow furrowed as she looked at the array of jars on the table. “I didn’t … the last thing I remember is simmering the base for the potion.”
The potion was well beyond that stage. Sadie looked closer at the other jars spread out over the work surface.
They were not the ingredients for a headache potion.
Many were innocuous in and of themselves—nothing else was as dangerous as the foxglove—but taken all together?
“Jane, I think we should neutralize what you have in the cauldron. It isn’t safe to use potions made by a distracted witch. ”
Jane gulped. “You’re right. I don’t know what came over me. I must have been thinking too hard about other things. How do I neutralize a potion?”
Sadie wasn’t sure distraction could really account for the way Jane had pulled together ingredients for a deadly potion, but her amulet was still holding all others’ thoughts at bay since Nicholas had infused it with more power.
She didn’t know what Jane had been thinking about or if her confusion now was genuine.
But the protection charm that had reacted so strongly before was quiescent now, so she gave the younger woman the benefit of the doubt. Something strange was going on, but she didn’t think Jane was at fault.
Sadie shared the steps for cleansing magic from a brew, thankful that Jane was too anxious after what had happened to wonder why she knew such a thing.
Once they disposed of the potion, Jane announced that she was done for the day. Sadie considered staying behind, taking the opportunity to brew something herself, but after what had just transpired, she had other priorities.
She needed to talk to Nicholas about the protections he had included in her charm. Maybe then she’d be able to understand what in the world had just happened.
He was supposed to be with Beatrice today, and though Sadie shouldn’t interrupt, she didn’t think the other woman would mind. She made her way to the library, figuring it was the most logical place to find them.
Beatrice was there, but not Nicholas.
“We are enjoying our day by spending it apart,” she told Sadie. “He is all yours.”
Did she mean … no, Sadie was reading too much into Beatrice’s comment. She just meant that Nicholas was available if Sadie needed to talk with him.
She tried the engraving room next, but it was empty. Finally, Sadie asked a servant and was directed to the baron’s study. She followed the directions to the unfamiliar room and knocked. She could see a sparkle of blue through the keyhole—he had the door warded.
Nicholas’s voice was muffled but understandable through the heavy door. “Who is it?”
“Sadie.”
The blue winked out, and she took that as permission. She opened the door to find Nicholas coming around his desk. He stopped short when she stepped into the room without waiting for him to invite her.
She shut the door. “We need to talk.”
Nicholas leaned against his desk, a large wooden affair that was rough with natural impurities and knots underneath a glossy veneer. He didn’t tease her, no doubt sensing how serious she was. “About what?”
“The charm you gave me.”
Nicholas scowled. “I’m not taking it back, you know that.”
“That’s not—” Sadie cut herself off. Best to get directly to the point. “Something strange happened just now in the brewing room with Jane, and the charm activated.”
She explained what had occurred, and saw her own worry and confusion reflected back at her in Nicholas’s hazel gaze.
“The heat is a warning element,” he told her. “It is supposed to alert the wearer to intangible dangers. Honestly, I’ve never had any of the charms I made with that glyph included react to anything before.”
His mouth snapped closed, and his eyes went wide.
“Except, I was carrying your charm when the bat attacked Lenora, and it grew warm then, too. I didn’t think anything of it, since the bat was clearly a threat of some sort, but the charm should have only warded me against attack, not grown warm, since the bat is physical. ”
“What does ‘intangible dangers’ even mean?”
“The grimoire I found that glyph in was sparse on the details. I believe all it said was that it would alert bearers to intangible threats such as telepathy.”
Sadie’s hand twitched, but she suppressed the instinct to clap a hand over her amulet. Did Nicholas know every time she used her telepathy?
No. That made no sense. He’d have figured out her power if that were the case. Besides, he had just said the incident with the bat was the only time he had experienced that glyph in action. Maybe the grimoire he had found it in was wrong.
“Of course,” Nicholas continued, “I rarely have any charms on me, so my data is limited.”
“You don’t carry one of your own charms?”
“I’ve never felt the need. I can only fit so many glyphs on a charm, meanwhile I can craft myriad wards without one in a blink if needed.”
Then the glyph might do exactly what he thought.
This time, her hand rose to the amulet at her throat before she realized what she was doing.
The glyph her grandmother had found in a forbidden grimoire was the only other one she knew of that affected telepathy.
The designer of the glyph hadn’t been trying to shield against witches, though.
No, that grimoire had dealt with one topic only.
Demons.
Dark creatures of spirit and mind with no corporeal body of their own. Creatures that would revel in the dark thoughts Sadie had picked up in the foyer the other morning and again when Abigail confronted her and Nicholas at the edge of the forest.
If Nicholas’s power hadn’t still been flowing through her amulet, would she have heard a shift in Jane’s thoughts as the demon took over and made her brew poison rather than a potion?
Sadie swallowed, squeezed her amulet tight, and met Nicholas’s eyes. “What if the forest really was haunted? And now the demon is in the manor?”