She arched a brow, lifting her chin. ‘You wouldn’t survive. You said so yourself—positively deadly.’
She ran her tongue over her teeth. He watched the movement, his eyes dark. A little thrill buzzed through her.
‘Ah, but with your tongue on mine at the very least I would die happy,’ he said, voice low.
Imagining such a prospect, her heart leapt.
‘I can’t have you dead yet,’ she replied, trying to get back to the topic at hand. Hadn’t she just said something about professionalism? And yet there they were, going back and forth. It was so easy—too easy—to lose herself with Xander. She cleared her throat. ‘Not before you’ve made a cure for Deeba.’
But the words lacked her usual bossy nonchalance. Her face felt flushed, and it must have shown, for Xander smirked.
She hissed at him, which only made him smile.
‘Come then, let’s get to work, my darling strictly business colleague.’ Xander motioned for her to follow him to one of thetables, where there were variously sized plant pots, as well as a variety of tools and bottles of ingredients: dried herbs, aloe vera gel, essential oils, infused waters.
Bisma had spent most of the night panicking about Deeba’s safety, but the freeze potion had held. Deeba would be safe while they worked on a cure.
At least, that was what she told herself whenever she felt her composure unraveling. She needed to focus on things beyond being worried: the cure, preventing more poisonings, not to mention discovering who was poisoning them.
‘What is all this?’ Bisma asked, lifting a bottle and smelling its contents. She wrinkled her nose—wormwood.
‘I’ve been testing different concoctions,’ he said, quickly paging through a journal. She didn’t focus on or read the exact words, but it was clear he was being very methodical.
‘Oh.’ She was a little impressed, really. Her process was so far from this.
‘You don’t keep notes?’ he asked, intrigued.
‘No, I do,’ she replied, then thought about it. ‘Well … not really.’
This seemed to both deeply alarm and fascinate him. ‘How do you keep track of your mixtures?’
‘I don’t really mix as much,’ she said. ‘I usually rely on my magic when I’m growing the plant, then just supplement it a bit?’
‘And that works?’ he asked, interest lighting his green eyes.
‘It’s kind of like cooking,’ she explained. ‘If you’ve got the main ingredient, like meat, or bread, or cheese, or potato, you don’t need to do much to make it into a meal?’
Her words sounded like nonsense to her, but he hung on to every word.
‘How fascinating!’ he breathed, genuinely interested.
She gave him a curious glance. ‘Why?’
‘As far as I know, most witches don’t operate in that way,’ he told her. ‘Even in Whitebridge, I met a few garden-witches who worked on potions, but most focus on mixing magic rather than growing magic. Going off your analogy, mixing is more like—you can grow wheat, but you still need to alter it a great deal before you can have bread. Whereas with growing, you’ve already got the flour and basically just need to add water and bake, and there you have your bread.’
‘Oh.’ She hadn’t realized there were different subsets of skills in garden-witchery. It really was fascinating. ‘You learned all this in Whitebridge?’
He nodded. ‘And from my mother and grandfather. Their focus was on mixing as well—same as mine. From what I’ve gathered, focusing on growing is rather rare because it’s more difficult.’
‘I’ve never thought of it that much,’ Bisma admitted. ‘I’ve just grown what I’ve needed or wanted.’
‘Yes, but how do you communicate that with your magic, with the soil? To receive the product you desire?’ He was practically buzzing with excitement, and she could tell he had a dozen questions to ask.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, feeling shy. ‘It doesn’t always work. Sometimes it takes me a few tries and modifications, but it’s just something Ifeel, I suppose. How do your lungs know how much to breathe in and breathe out? Or how does your heart know how long to wait between beats? It just does.’
‘You’re a marvel, Bis,’ Xander said.
She rolled her eyes; he was being superfluous.
