Page 55 of Shadows of the Soul

“Follow me to the kitchen?” Aunt Anita asked.

“Sure. Did you bring a blessed bowl?” Mike asked. “Oh, excellent, and what about a pan?”

My stomach flipped. “Am I going to have to drink this? With the rabbit’s eyes?”

Someone squeezed my shoulder. “Best not to think about it,” Aunt Anita advised.

“We can blend it,” Mike suggested. My hand flew to my mouth as their footsteps disappeared into the kitchen.

I was about to drink blended rabbit eyeballs plus other shit that would no doubt enhance the taste. The sofa dipped next to me.

“I could ask them to add some flavoring?” Hudson offered.

“Stop trying to help,” I gritted out as my stomach twisted and threatened to relieve me of my bread and honey. Damn it. What a waste. I should have saved the baked goods until after the bloody smoothie.

An electronic whirring drifted from the kitchen. I ground my teeth. In the words of teenagers everywhere: this was going to suck.

“Here we are,” Aunt Anita sing songed.

I could down it in one go. Quick and easy. Right?Cora Roberts—queen of optimism.

“I’m going to start the spell,” Mike explained. “Then you need to sip the mixture. The spell should take about four minutes. You need to make the drink last that long.”

I grimaced as Hudson wrapped a hand around mine and opened it. A cool glass slid into my hand.

“It’s cold.”

“We could heat it?” Mike offered.

I shook my head. Hot or cold, this was going to be disgusting.

Mike began to say a spell in Latin. I brought the glass to my lips and took my first sip. I was wrong. It didn’t suck. It freaking sucked hairy giant sweaty balls. I won the initial fight with my stomach and poured every ounce of concentration into sipping the gross globby mixture that slid down my throat worse than Maggie’s mushroom lasagne. Oh, what I’d give to make that swap right now.

Four minutes had never seemed so long. “Last part,” Aunt Anita declared. I tipped the glass back and swallowed everything that was left. Mike shouted one final word, and the world lit up like a firework on New Year’s Eve. Power ripped through the room, knocking a colorful canvas of a cow off the wall with a clatter.

I blinked against the startling light. “Water, please,” I begged as I looked around the room. Everybody was staring at me in expectation, including the Jimmy Neutron wannabe who was squatting in front of me. “I can see,” I declared. “But I need something to wash this taste out of my mouth.”

Hudson was sitting to my right. He pulled the empty glass out of my hand and replaced it with a new one. I tried not to dwell on the gray, green, and scarlet swirling mess that was stuck to the side of the glass.

I took a mouthful of the water, swirled it around my mouth and spat it into the glass with the remnants of the potion. “That’s marginally better,” I mumbled before I gulped the clean water down.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Mike asked, waving his hand in front of me.

“Three.”

Mike nodded and rose. “My work here is done,” he declared.

I followed his retreating back. That was too easy. My stomach gurgled. Okay, not easy. But simple. And now the medic was slinking away.

“I have another appointment,” he said to Aunt Anita. “Can you give me a lift to the airport?”

She studied me from head to toe. “You have your full sight back?”

I glanced around the room, glimpsing Harry hovering in the background with a worried scowl. He seemed more vivid. As if the veil between our worlds was thinner.

“Everything is good,” I answered.

She nodded. “I’ll be back in a couple of days, Cora. I have a few things I need to take care of. Stay out of voodoo priests’ heads while I’m away, okay?”

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