Lenson grabbed a few bottles of varying liquids. They had no labels on, but I was confident they knew exactly what was in each of them. Rockhard and Lenson were more commonly known as The Scientists. Their knowledge of potions and spells was unparalleled in North America, so much so, my grandmother had tried to recruit them numerous times to The Order. They preferred to remain independent of the politics and were picky about who they helped.
“Is there something different about this flower?” I wondered as I took a step back and watched them work.
Lenson raised a jar half full of sapphire liquid and held it up to Rockhard. Rockhard shook his head. “Let’s do that last in case it destroys the bloom.”
“What can you tell us about the flower?” Hudson asked as he leaned against a metal worktop.
Lenson glanced over his shoulder as Rockhard spooned some gray powder into a clay bowl. “Datura is its Latin name.”
“Something I can’t get from Google,” Hudson pushed.
“Datura is poisonous. Ingested, it causes a number of symptoms including hallucinations.” The knowledge snapped in my mind at what he was hinting at. Oh, boy. I was a stupid elemental for not putting this together. This was magic 101.
“Which means?” Hudson asked.
“It means they are carriers of spells. They are a great deliverance item for powerful magic.”
“The air was heavy with expelled magic in Peach Tree,” I confirmed. “Under the death and the false evidence pointing toward Satanism, a great deal of magic hung in the air.”
“Is there a way of telling if the flower was part of such a system?” Hudson asked. I didn’t need confirmation, it was the only thing that had made sense in the last twenty-four hours.
Rockhard pushed the tweezers inside the jar and pulled a petal from the flower. He dropped it in the clay bowl and ground it together with the powder.
“Stand back,” Rockhard muttered as he pulled a helmet over his face and slid the visor down. I stepped back and pressed myself against Hudson. Lenson pulled on a gas mask.
“Should we leave?” Hudson muttered in my ear.
“Um, not unless they say.”
Rockhard nodded once at Lenson, who tipped a little pale green liquid that smelled like urine into the bowl. For a second nothing happened. Thenboom. An explosion which shook the walls echoed around us. Hudson yanked me against him and hit the floor. I was squashed under two hundred pounds of hard shifter. I tapped my hand on the floor.
“Let me up,” I grumbled.
Hudson’s hands had protected my head from cracking against the floor, but he was still crushing me like a buffoon. “Is it safe?”
“Yes,” Lenson said.
Hudson leapt to his feet and offered me his hand. I launched up and spun to find the walls splattered with different colors of magic. It was a rainbow of power, and the remnants were still glittering in the air. I sucked in a breath and spun.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“Right here, you have the big four,” Rockhard said, snapping his visor up to stare at the display. “Water,” he said, pointing to a deep blue streak. “Fire.” He waved a hand through a faint reddish glitter in the air.
“Earth,” Lenson added, motioning at a green swirl.
“And air,” I finished, hovering my hand over a splat of silver on the wall.
“Elemental magic did this?” Hudson said with a scowl.
“Yes, that bloom was trying to deliver elemental magic,” Lenson said as he poked at the rest of the flower in the jar with a scalpel. “And a whopping dose of it too.”
“For what purpose?” Hudson asked, taking a step closer to the table.
Rockhard shrugged. “We are scientists, not psychics.”
“How much would be needed to affect the whole town?” I asked. “Because there were hundreds of bodies.”
“The whole town?” Rockhard said with a tilt of his head. “Fields and fields of Datura. The heavier the magic, the more flowers needed to deliver it, and this shit was heavy.”
