Page 89 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

One wall was entirely made up of tiny drawers. Each labeled by means of words scratched directly into the old dark wood. Ingredients, I realized, recognizing a few of the names.

A raised bed sat at the middle of the space and looked to be a recycled hospital gurney. The faux leather covered cushion torn in several places, foam spilling out.

“Sit her down,” the woman said, bustling over to a tiny pedestal sink against the far wall to wash her hands.

Clay gingerly slid me onto the lumpy hospital bed and rolled his shoulders back, cracking his neck.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Stella?” he urged when she didn’t reply right away. “You want my help or not, boy?”

Clay clamped his jaw shut.

It’s okay, I mouthed to him when his gaze fell back on me. Relax.

“Are you going to give her some—”

“Yes,” she said, snatching a bowl from the sideboard next to the sink and taking it over to the wall of drawers to begin filling it with various herbs and little sprinkles of what looked like confetti.

“I’ll give her something for the pain. It’ll cost you, though.

Charity already owes me for my help with the boy.

She’s lucky I have a soft spot for mortals.

That boy was as good as dead by the time she got him here. ”

“Thank you,” I blurted, finally finding my voice. “Thank you for helping him. He…he was my friend.”

“Hmm,” she replied. “Did he shift then? The boy?” My chest squeezed.

“No,” Clay answered for me. “But the other two who were bitten did.”

“Good,” she said, pouring a red liquid into the pewter bowl and beginning to grind everything together with a mortar. “I mean, about the boy. I was hoping my saving him wasn’t for nothing.”

Okay then.

I was getting the sense this lady didn’t particularly like our kind.

As if reading my mind, Clay crossed his arms over his chest and pursed his lips. “Don’t take offense,” he told me, his tone dripping with disdain. “Stella doesn’t like anybody. It’s not just us.”

Stella smirked. “True enough,” she said with a sigh. “I keep to myself, if you know what I mean.”

I did.

Probably better than most people.

That’s exactly what I was trying to do before Jared and Clay took me in and my life turned into a proverbial shitstorm. Keep to myself. Mind my own business.

That didn’t exactly work out for me though, did it?

Looked like it wasn’t working out for her either. Judging by the fact that she had two shifters in her witchy cellar asking for help at god only knew what time.

Stella spoke some words I couldn’t understand over the mixture in the bowl and strained it into a chipped teacup. She passed it to me, her dark eyes leveling on mine. “Tastes like sour pond water, but it works. Bottoms up.”

My nose wrinkled as the tangy earthen smell of it reached me. I could already feel my gag reflex saying a huge hell no to drinking it, but I had a feeling I’d regret that choice. Re-breaking a partially healed bone didn’t sound pleasant.

Clay gave me a tight, encouraging nod, and I downed the elixir, eager to get this whole ordeal over with and get back to camp. Get back to Layla and Viv and Jared.

Two big swallows got most of it down before I choked, only barely managing to keep it down. It made my tongue feel numb almost instantly, and a warm flush crept over the back of my neck. My chest slicked with cool, clammy sweat.

The floor tipped up as a wave of vertigo took me, and I gripped the edge of the gurney with my one usable hand to keep from falling.

Clay was there in an instant, a hand holding onto my shoulder.

His steadiness made the strange sensation subside, and I was able to blink back to myself, finding the room had righted itself.

Stella regarded me with a perplexed expression for a moment before stepping in to examine my arm. “That’s an ugly one,” she said with a little grimace, then sighed, gesturing to Clay. “Hold her steady. The potion should be good and soaked in by now.”

She settled her gaze back on me as she gingerly began to draw out from arm from where I had it clutched to my chest. The shirt that’d been laid over me like a shawl fell away and I pulled it back onto my lap, needing at least to have part of myself covered in front of this stranger.

“It’ll hurt a bit to be sure, but nothing you can’t handle—”

A cry tore from my lungs as she tried to straighten my arm. This was no tiny amount of tolerable pain. Stars danced through my vision, and I had to go back to gripping the table.

“Give her more,” Clay hissed at Stella. “You obviously didn’t give her enough.”

Stella paused, relaxing her hold on my arm. She’d managed to move it a whole six inches from my breast, but no further. She stared curiously into my watering eyes. “I already gave you double the regular dose.”

My stomach twisted, and I bent over, grimacing as a tight cramp formed deep in my belly.

“What did you give her?” Clay roared, coming around the gurney to take me by the shoulders. He shook me, trying to get me to sit up. To look at him.

But the pain in my abdomen was only getting worse, and the acid taste of bile in the back of my throat was the only warning I had before I leaned past Clay and vomited onto the floor.

The reddish liquid poured back out of me, the only thing my body expelled.

“Allie? Allie!”

I retched, my sides splitting as my body worked to get the last of it out in dry heaves. Shaking.

Finally, catching my breath, I was able to lean against Clay and slide the back of my hand over my lips. “Ugh,” I groaned into his bicep. “I’m okay.”

“What the fuck, Stella?”

The woman backed away, staring at me as though I were some sort of foreign creature. Her hands were raised in front of her like a shield against Clay.

“I’ve never seen someone reject that potion,” she said in a whisper, her disbelief clear. It was obvious she hadn’t done anything to purposely sicken me, even though I could feel Clay’s sense of betrayal pressing into me.

I brushed my fingers over his arm and pushed myself to sitting with more difficulty than I liked. “Chill, crankypants,” I told Clay, feeling strangely delirious for a moment while I got my balance back.

Stella hedged nearer, pointing at my arm. “May I?”

“Fuck no.”

I glared at Clay then gave Stella a nod.

“I won’t touch her,” Stella said as she carefully put herself closer to me—and closer to Clay. Stepping around the puddle of regurgitated elixir on the floor.

Sufficiently subdued by her promise, Clay clenched his jaw and let her hover her hands above my busted limb.

Stella shut her eyes and a strange symbol, like a circle with a line through its middle materialized in the air beneath her palms. Crafted of pure light, it shimmered in the air for a moment before drifting down like magical glitter to rain onto my arm.

It felt…warm. But that was it. “Should that have…done something?”

Stella snapped her attention back to me and withdrew her hands as though burned. Her mouth fell open. Her naturally olive-toned skin turned a chalky white. “I can’t help you.”

“What?” Clay demanded. I deflated. Well, fuck.

“What do you mean you can’t help her?”

In a daze, Stella stepped back and dropped her gaze, staring at her hands as though there may have been something wrong with them.

“Are you all right?” I asked her, much to Clay’s annoyance. His upper lips curled.

“Hmm?” she looked back up, blinked. “Oh. I’m fine.

I just—I’m not sure what it means.”

“What what means?” Clay asked, still seething.

She bit her lower lip, giving me a sorrowful smile. “You seem to be unaffected by alchemist magic.”

“Unaffected?”

“Your body rejected the potion. My healing sigil barely breached the outer surface of your skin. I could attempt casting another over you to test the theory, but I don’t think…” she trailed off.

“Strange,” she added after another moment. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Clay stared at the grotesquerie of my arm and bared his teeth. His eyes sparked with the blue flame of his wolf. “The fuck does it mean?”

“Like I said before,” Stella said with the practiced patience a teacher may use to explain something to a kindergartener. “I can’t help her. I’m sorry you came all this way.”

Clay ran a clawed hand through his hair and groaned. “What the hell am I supposed to do then? Hmm?”

“We’ll just have to reset the bone without your witchy magic shit.” I held my arm out as best I could. “Let’s do it now.”

I didn’t want to wait to get back to camp and have Layla, Viv, and Jared be party to my pain. I’d do my best to hold it inside for Clay’s benefit. But he was the strongest of us. He could take it.

Clay looked like he might be sick, but he didn’t argue.

“You’re certain?” Stella asked with a raised eyebrow.

I pointed to a wooden spoon beside the sink. “Pass me that.”

It was nearer to Clay, but it was Stella who retrieved it for me, pressing it into my palm. Clay just stood there, sweat beading over his brow. “You can wait outside,” I offered him, sliding the rounded wooden handle of the long spoon in between my teeth.

Clay shook his head.

“Hold her still then.” She ordered Clay, springing into action.

She gathered out strips of cloth from a cupboard and dug around in a bin until she came up with a thin plank of wood about two inches wide.

“I may not be able to heal you, but I’ve set a good number of bones in my ninety years.

I’ll get it set right and splinted. It’s the best I can do. It should heal quickly nevertheless.”

Did she say ninety years?

Clay moved back into position behind me and pulled me back on the gurney until my back was pressed against his chest. The skin to skin contact sent a shiver through me.

Then he wrapped his arm around me, placing it like a bar across my chest, using his own body to brace mine from being able to move.

With his other hand he held on to my free arm.

Stella’s slender fingers curved around my wrist and just above the break in my forearm.

She looked at me with a question in her eyes. Are you ready?

“Just do it,” I said around the mouthful of wood, biting down and looking away.

“One,” she said, and I bit back a whimper. “Two.”

Clay kissed the top of my head and held me tighter. “Three.”

Fuck.