The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(57)
She’d never imagined herself in a position where someone with power over her could slap her, pinch her, and shove her against the hot stove, but she’d always thought she was the kind of girl who wouldn’t take that kind of abuse without a fight. But somehow things were more complicated than that. Dinah was bigger, stronger, and had the ironclad legal power of Blue’s guardianship on her side. The woman could simply claim she was disciplining her charge, or that it had been an accident, and the law would support her.
And while deep down Blue knew Dinah would never hurt Nessa because it went against her self-preservation instincts, she didn’t want Nessa to see Blue helpless to protect herself.
She reached for another small hunk of ordinary metal, heat billowing from the stove beside her. Maybe she wasn’t yet able to protect herself against Dinah’s fury, but she might still be able to help Halette and Jacinthe and get the Chauveaus out of her life. She just had to get this experiment right.
Especially because there were others out there who also needed protection. Ana hadn’t been seen by any of her friends now for weeks. The little five-year-old boy from the streets in the Gaillard quarter had disappeared completely as well. And Lucian had informed Blue the day before that he’d started asking questions of children in other quarters and had discovered that in the Chauveau, Roche, and Barbier quarters, street children regularly going missing had been happening for years.
Blue wanted to get to the bottom of it. Guilt over Ana’s fate and Blue’s lack of focus on the girl’s disappearance sat in her stomach like a stone. She’d petitioned the queen yesterday for help, and the queen had agreed to bring it up at the next council meeting, but at the moment, their hands were full trying to hunt down the witch who was killing people throughout the city.
Blue needed to thoroughly search for Ana and the others. She needed to help Halette and Jacinthe escape the man in the black boots. She needed to take breaks from the shop, swim in the sea, spend the day with Grand-mère, and have her house back. And all that required that she get her experiment right.
Dinah had returned an hour ago, still in her strange, dangerous mood, and was spending her time on the shop floor, sifting through boxes of receipts and sorting the contents of every shelf, cupboard, and chest. Blue had left her to it. As long as the older woman was busy, she was leaving Blue in peace.
Adding another log to the stove, Blue carefully placed the metal in her pressurized pot and screwed the lid into place. She was setting her tongs to the side when Dinah swept into the storeroom.
“I know it’s past dinner bell, but I wanted to try adding a different mineral to the procedure,” Blue said before Dinah could complain about the time or demand to know why Blue hadn’t yet produced gold or slap her because she’d decided Blue must be dragging her feet on purpose.
“Where are your recipes?” Dinah scanned the room.
Blue blinked in surprise. “Um . . . in those books.” She jerked her chin toward a set of five bound books of parchment on a shelf by the spare jars. “Why?”
“I don’t have to tell you why.” Dinah moved to the shelf of books and began looking through them.
“If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can help you find it much faster,” Blue said carefully.
“I’m interested in recipes that contain rare or very hard-to-find ingredients. Preferably an older recipe. Maybe one of your mother’s.”
Blue frowned. What would Dinah want with an older potion recipe? The woman caught Blue’s expression and snapped, “Vintage alchemy recipes containing rare ingredients are a collector’s item, girl. I can fetch a good price, which I’ll obviously need since you still haven’t improved on the first yellow rock you made.”
Blue didn’t think vintage alchemy recipes were worth enough to satisfy Dinah’s debts, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Joining Dinah, she took one of the books and began searching its pages, careful to stay out of striking range. They worked in silence for long moments, punctuated by the occasional discovery of a recipe that required something rare. Every time, Dinah perused the spell, said it wasn’t quite what she was looking for, and then asked Blue to help her find more.
By the time they finished going through all five books, the cathedral had already rung another bell, and they hadn’t found a spell that satisfied Dinah. Blue checked the progress of her experiment, and then asked, “Would you like to go home for dinner while I finish up here?”
“I’d like to find the rest of the potions your mother owned,” Dinah snapped.
“What potions?” Blue unscrewed the pot’s lid, careful not to burn herself with the escaping steam, and added more water, plus another pinch of rhasvedot, a brittle green mineral mined in the northern mountains of Loch Talam.
“Your mother was brilliant.” Dinah sounded nostalgic, but there was an urgency to her voice. “She told me about several spectacular potions she designed, but I don’t see them in the shop. There must be another place she kept things.”
Blue glanced around the storeroom and shrugged. “We don’t have any storage beyond the shelves you can see in here and the cupboards you already searched out front.”
“Not here.” Dinah gestured toward the door. “At the farmhouse.” She looked at Blue as if waiting for her to reveal where the rest of Mama’s spells were kept.