The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(57)

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.

“She died when I was seven,” Blue said quietly. “I don’t have any memories of her keeping potions around the house, and Papa never mentioned it.”

Dinah’s jaw clenched as she approached Blue. “All right, forget about potions. Think about where your mother kept things. Important things. Things she didn’t want to lose or forget or have damaged in any way.”

Blue’s heart lurched, a sudden, sickening ache in her chest, and she took a step away from Dinah. There were little reminders of Mama all through the farmhouse. A quilt she’d helped Grand-mère make one winter when Blue was a baby. The painting of a ship at sea she’d picked out for the room she shared with Papa. A pair of goggles hung on a nail in the kitchen where she’d sometimes done experiments.

But the rest of Mama’s things were packed up in chests and kept in the root cellar.

“You know where she kept things.” Dinah’s voice was flat.

“I’m not helping you look there.” Blue’s hands shook as she curled them into fists.

“Look where?”

Blue pressed her lips closed. Dinah rushed forward, grabbed Blue’s shoulders, and shook violently.

“Where are her things?”

Blue shoved Dinah’s hands off her shoulders. “No. You’ve taken my home, my grandmother, and my shop. You’ve hit me, pinched me, and burned me all while I’m trying to help you save your daughters. And now you want to drag me down into the root cellar to hunt through Mama’s things so you can sell one of her spells for a little bit of coin. I’m not going to do it.”