"So what is it this time?” I asked, amusement in my voice. "A potion for the lovelorn, or the promise of passion?”
"Neither,” she said, her voice low and sexy—the sort of voice that would make her a fortune if she ever decided to go into the phone-sex business. "We're off to the Healesville market this weekend. They love the harmony and peace potions up there, so I need to stock up.”
They loved them because the damn things worked. I briefly touched the simple leather strap that held the charm currently nestled between my breasts. I'd been sixteen when she'd finally convinced me that I couldn't continue to walk the gray fields unaided. The charm she'd made me had been little more than a small piece of petrified wood, to connect me to the earth, and two small agate and serpentine stones for protection, but it had still saved my life when a spirit had attacked me on the gray fields. I'd been wearing it ever since.
"Is this the last of the lot?”
"Yes.” She glanced at me then, her green eyes startling against the dark gold of her skin. "Sorry about the smell. I thought you'd be off to the hospital already.”
I smiled. Not only was Ilianna a powerful witch, but she—like my mom, and sometimes like me—was clairvoyant. We'd all met at a school that had catered strictly to the offspring of rich nonhumans, and Ilianna, Tao, and I had been the misfits—the strange kids who could do things we shouldn't have been able to. Tao and I had the additional stigma of being half-breeds—although at least both he and Ilianna were able to take on their alternative forms. Alone we'd been vulnerable, but together we'd been safe. So the three of us had stayed together all through school and into our working lives. I couldn't actually imagine my life without Ilianna or Tao.
"Visiting hours don't start until eight. I thought I'd come home to shower and change first.”
She nodded and returned her attention to her bottling. The rose scent sharpened every time she dipped the ladle into the bubbling mixture, perfuming the air with not only its scent but also an odd sense of tranquility.
"A parcel came for you last night,” she said. "The delivery guy was a little weird.”
My eyebrows rose. "Weird how?”
She glanced briefly at me, nose wrinkling. "He reminded me of a rat. You know, beady-eyed and furtive.”
I laughed. "Maybe he was a rat.” There were rat shifters, after all—even if they tended to keep to themselves rather than mix with other shifters and humans, like most nonhumans did.
"Yeah, I know, but he didn't feel like a shifter. He felt like something else. Something more.” She shrugged, as if it didn't matter, but the mere fact that she'd mentioned it suggested otherwise.
"Was the security system on?”
She gave me a look, and I knew that was a dumb question. If Ilianna was home alone, then the security system was on.