13. The Voices in Your Head
For the second time in an hour, I snapped my fingers in front of Angel’s face. She blinked, startled, then frowned at me. I released her hand and watched her drop the pinch of herb onto the counter.
“Mother!” She yelped in exasperation as she realized I’d moved the bowl she was using out of her reach.
“Angel, what happens when you add mouldwart to an infusion of moondance potion?” I asked in a very patient tone.
“Why on earth would you want to add mouldwart to moondance potion? That would completely defeat the purpose of it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t. But, apparently, you were going to. New experiment?”
She stared at me in horror, then down at the herb sprinkled on the counter. She took a deep breath and frowned more deeply.
“I didn’t realize.” She murmured.
“Obviously.” I snorted. “Care to share why you’re all zoned out and trancing constantly?”
“I honestly don’t know. It’s like there are these whispers in my head that I just have to listen to. I thought it was Isis at first, but it’s not. It’s driving me up the wall.”
I had frozen at “whispers in my head”. I swiveled my gaze down to stare at Nia and Precious, who both gazed back at me innocently.
“I am not amused.” I remarked mildly. Precious had the audacity to yawn at me. “You do realize that if she had added the mouldwart to that potion, it would have become quite toxic? What if she’d touched it?”
Precious rolled her eyes at me.
*Made her add jimson powder already. The mouldwart wouldn’t made it toxic to touch. It would need to enter the blood to do harm.* Precious snorted in my head.
“How much harm are we talking about?” Angel murmured absently as she wiped the counter down.
*A pinprick could kill. Very effective for arrows.* Precious replied, watching me stare at my daughter with wide eyes. *Has a half-life of six months. Less effort to manufacture for poison on the barrier thorns. No need to do it magically anymore.*
“Hmm. Where’d you learn that one, Mom?”
“From Precious, just now.” I responded and waited.
Angel turned around, staring between myself and my two familiars. Nia had the good grace to look abashed then while Precious began to purr.
“Um, Mom?” She half grinned. “Joke, right?”
“Nope.” I shook my head and as an added precaution, pulled the bottle of jaegermeister out of the cooler.
“Crap.”
“Yep.”
“How?”
“Don’t ask me. Part of your development, I suppose.”
“This is getting old.”
“Yep.”
“Aren’t you even worried about this at all?”
“Nope.”
“Uncle Tremayne is right.”
“How’s that?”
“I hate you, too.”
“Right back at you, Cub.”
I handed her a small glass with a very small amount of the liquor in it. She stared at me as if I had just turned polka dotted, then took it and knocked it back. Staring at me defiantly, she held out her glass once more. I sighed and poured her another splash, then poured some in a glass of my own. She waited until I held mine up then clinked hers against it.
“To unexpected developments.” She smiled grimly.
“May the gods have mercy upon us all.” I winked at her and we drank. She gave a shudder.
“That’s vile.”
“Tequila’s worse.”
“I think I’d rather have chocolate.”
“It helps to have at least one vice you can use as a pacifier.”
“I should have stayed in my room until I was twenty-one.”
“Why twenty-one?”
“I don’t know. Should I have picked an older age?”
“Too late to go back now.”
“What now?”
“I say we sit on this until dinner time.”
“Why dinner time?”
“Everyone will be there.”
“What difference does that make?”
“More entertaining that way.”
“You’re twisted.”
“You can hear Precious. What does that make you?”
“Slightly bent?”
“Nice try. Chocolate?”
“Yeah. Lots of it.”
“‘Kay.”
I fixed my daughter a very large, very sweet mug of hot chocolate, complete with gooey marshmallows and myself a very large glass of tequila sunrise. Then we sat in the kitchen, listening to the familiars and the Rock wolves discuss war tactics and strategy. I promised myself I’d cry later.
