“How would one go about breaking a curse?” I asked. “Irina, walk me through exactly what happened.”
“I was foraging for mushrooms away from our settlement,” she said. “There’s a rare type of mushroom that’s supposed to ease labor pains.”
“You ate an unidentified mushroom?!” I almost prayed she said yes. I could deal with weird mushrooms. I couldn’t deal with curses.
“Of course not.” Irina glared at me. “I was going to run it by Lily Locke first, ask her to make me a tincture with it. She said she could, but she just didn’t have access to any of the Arrowroot mushrooms. She said if I could find them, she’d make the potion for me.”
“And Lily is...”
“Our Mixologist,” Silas said shortly. “Like a potions master.”
“Right.Right. Right.” I blinked. Nothing like a crash course in the Bewitching Arts. “Of course she is.”
“She’s on her way here.” Silas repeated, “You were the closest option. And probably the only one who can break this curse.”
“I don’t know anything about curses!” I hissed-yelled at Silas. “I am a mortal from Manhattan, lest we forget!”
“Learn quickly,” Silas said.
The warm-hearted man I’d trusted at the altar of my wedding had all but vanished. It made me wonder if I’d done the right thing, taking this leap with him. Had he tricked me, fooled me like a sucker—a woman so desperate to be loved and noticed that she was willing to go with the first stranger who made her feel something?
I couldn’t deal with Silas now. I needed to focus on Irina.
“Keep telling me what happened,” I said. “You found the mushroom?”
“No. The Arrowroot mushrooms are located deeper in The Forest. I never made it.” Irina breathed heavily, her eyes closing for longer and longer periods of time. She alternated between bouts of wild screaming and utter, almost lifeless calmness. “I passed out, and he found me.”
I looked to Silas to continue the story.
“I brought her straight to you,” he said. “But on the way, she was very twitchy. Complained a lot about being thirsty, but I had nothing to give her. I had to set her down once because I didn’t want to hurt her when she lost control. A seizure, maybe?”
My mind raced. Excessive thirst, seizures, twitchy muscles. A quick exam told me that Irina might be dehydrated. That, plus the symptoms Silas had reported, all indicated she might have hypernatremia. Excessive salt in her body. I’d need a blood test to be sure, and aurine test, but I didn’t exactly have hospital grade medical equipment here.
Not to mention, hypernatremia wouldn’t explain the ugly black lines across her belly. Granted, I was pretty sure no modern medicine would be able to explain those. I wasn’t ready to call it magic just yet, but I was getting close—mostly because I had no other theories, and everyone here seemed so convinced it was all real. Millie’s sleight of hand with the rose had me wondering...
“Can you use any of this?” Millie asked, hauling a huge tub of equipment in.
Silas leapt to her side and picked it up like it was a deck of cards, maneuvering it over to me so I could peek inside. I let out a huge breath of relief to see things that made sense. Things like a blood pressure cuff and IV equipment.
“Get everything sterilized as fast as you can.” I greedily reached for the cuff. “Send the help in here as soon as they arrive.”
Sure enough, Irina’s blood pressure came back exceptionally low. The second I muttered the reading, her head turned to the side, and she slumped into unconsciousness. Which wasn’t a good thing if we needed to get this baby out. I would need her strong enough to push.
A minute later, a rustling sounded in the other room. I glanced up to see a woman around my age, give or take a few years, shuffling to my side. She was beautifulin a natural way, her hair with glints of gold streaking through the brunette, like little flecks of sunlight had embedded themselves into her strands. Her smile was easy and quick, genuine.
“I’m Lily,” she said. “The Mixologist. Tell me what I can do.”
I merely lifted up Irina’s shirt. “Have you seen anything like this before?”
Lily paled. “The curse.”
“I meant medically.”
“You’re new here,” Lily looked at me with a newfound appreciation. “You don’t believe in magic yet?”
“Yet?”
“I was like you,” she said. “I’m from St. Paul.”
