Page 58 of Sore Throat, Slight Fever

Rory frowns. “We don’t have to do this now.”

“No, I want to. Effie needs her bridle.” She smiles and it must be convincing enough because Rory nods and turns back to the stove.

“I’m almost done with the base,” he says, picking up a glass stirring rod.

“How can I help?”

He removes the stirring rod from the cauldron, placing it down on a dish towel spread out on the counter, before turning around to face her. “The main thing about our dear friend Griselda is that she is very specific about ingredients but not so much about quantities, preparation, how and when to add them. I’m making some assumptions here. The rosemary will stay whole, since it needs to be tied together. But I think we should muddle the forget-me-nots and the poke berries together.”

“And the cowslip?” she asks, holding up the bundle of yellow buds.

Rory leans against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. For once, he’s wearing a short sleeve t-shirt, showing off his broad shoulders and sculpted arms. “Ground up into a powder.”

“Why ground up, instead of muddled with the other ones?” she asks, with genuine interest. For someone making assumptions, Rory seems perfectly at ease making such deliberate decisions. Alchemy must be more like potion making than she thought.

Rory’s answer confirms this. “I broke it apart like an alchemical experiment. The Common Base is neutral. Nothing in it will react negatively or positively with the ingredients. But we still need them to combine in the cauldron to create a cohesive solution.Cowslip can increase the absorption of other herbal ingredients—I don’t know if that’s why she included it, but I think adding it, not only first, but as a powder will help it spread throughout the base more evenly…” His voice fades, and he arches an eyebrow. “Why are you smiling like that?”

She lifts a shoulder. “I like listening to you talk about this stuff.”

He cocks his head to the side, his eyes glittering. “Oh yeah? Maybe after this, we can try our hand at another Griselda concoction.”

“I’d like that.”

Rory smirks, showing off a canine tooth that is just a little too pointy to be human, and she remembers how he looked as they stood by the roadside. Warmth floods her cheeks, and she ducks her head down, pulling the mortar and pestle to her.

They work in companionable silence, Rory bent over the cauldron on the stove as he prepares the base. Calliope grinds the cowslip, the sound soothing in its regularity. In its mundanity.

They move around each other with ease. Calliope is comforted by the space that Rory takes up, in the shapes they make when they stand next to each other. At some point, there is a tapping sound at the door, and it swings open to admit Kane. A flutter of wings and he’s perched on the chair opposite her.

Calliope looks up from her work. “How is Effie?”

“She hasn’t spoken to me. Or maybe she can’t?”He twists his head to the side, golden eyes calculating. “There’s something different about her though.”

Calliope glances out of the window, where the green mist swirls against the smooth surface of the lake. “She’s restless. I think so, anyway. She hasn’t spoken to me. I think she can only speak to me in the Ether.”

Kane begins preening his wings and Calliope returns to her mortar and pestle, grinding the poke berries to squeeze out their juice. Beside her, sits a strainer, balanced over a bowl. As she pours the berries into the strainer, she blinks against something in the corner of her vision. She even absentmindedly brushes away a curl, only to find there’s nothing physically there.

She looks up at Kane, whose focus is still on his wings, and Rory, whose back is turned as he checks the consistency of the potion. She turns back to the strainer, but the spot appears again, a soft yellow that’s asking for her attention. She stills, tilts her head, keeping the glow in her peripheral vision.

And then she blinks, because the glow has solidified into a shaft of light pointing right at her. She looks down at her chest.

“Everything okay?”

She looks up. Rory has turned around, eyebrows knitted together.

“Yes.” Her voice comes out rough. She clears her throat. “Yes, sorry. Still a little tired.”

His frown deepens as he steps toward her. A gentle,cool hand is pressed to her forehead. She can’t see his face because she realizes, with mild alarm, that the shaft of light aimed at her chest is also aimed at his, an ethereal pathway of illumination that connects them.

“You’re burning up,” she hears him say.

“I’m always burning up.” She gently clasps his hand and pulls him down to her level so she can see his face.

He obliges kneeling in front of her, the lines on either side of his mouth etched deep. “You can go to bed early. I can finish this up here.”

The sun is just beginning to set, and a breeze blows in through the window, bringing with it the smell of rain. “Okay, thank you.”

She begins to leave the kitchen, the tendril of light continuing with her. Before the door closes behind her, she turns to look at Rory. His attention is once again on the stove, his gray-streaked hair hiding his face from view as he leans forward. The light is still there, and she reaches out, briefly, to try and touch it. He presses a hand to his chest, where the light connects with him, but doesn’t seem to realize it’s there.

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