Chapter 13: The Healer's Kitchen

"I want to see the healer," I said.

It was the first thing I had said in an hour.

Elias did not ask me to wait or to sleep first.

He took the car keys from a steward's hand and held the passenger door open.

Junie climbed into the back with her pockets full of sample jars, and nobody spoke on the mountain road.

The Garrow lodge sat at the end of a gravel lane, long and timbered, with the clinic wing on the left.

I had walked through its back door ten thousand times.

I walked through it now.

The healer's kitchen smelled of woodsmoke and dried yarrow.

Copper pots hung over the stove, and the same worn chair stood at the same worn table.

The stooped woman sat in it, tying paper packets with string.

She looked up, and her eyes went to Elias, then to Junie, then to me.

She put the string down.

"Maxine," she said.

"Twelve years," I said. "What's in the cup?"

"You know what's in it. The Keep's keeper will have told you."

"I want to hear you say it."

She folded her hands on the table.

"Moon lichen, silverroot, and a little wolfsbane for the bitterness. It hides a scent."

Junie made a small sound behind me.

"You told me it was for her blood," she said. "You told me when I was fifteen."

"Your Alpha told me to say that. I let you believe it." The healer's mouth shook. "I'm sorry, child."

"I'm not a child," Junie said. "I made it for her nine years."

"I know you did."

I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down.

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