Chapter 30 - Rosa

I groan and push away from my workstation when yet another compound fails to take. Kaila looks up at me, putting a finger in her book to hold her page. Byron takes no notice, still staring down at his computer screen.

"What's wrong?"

"You know," I say, taking deep breaths to model good emotional control. Sometimes, it's exhausting to constantly have a tiny pair of eyes looking at you. "I'm just getting frustrated that this isn't going my way."

"You can do it," she says, encouraging me the way I would encourage her when she was surfing. "I believe in you."

"Thank you," I say, laughing at the true look of belief in her eyes. Her entire life, my work has been distilling essential oils out of the herbs I grow in our garden, making perfumes, and sending them out to sell at the farmers market. Now, seeing in a high-tech chemistry lab, she has no doubt I have what it takes.

Maisie is at the workstation next to me, and Gerard is across the room, his headphones on as he works.

"What are you reading?" I ask, spinning in my chair and focusing on her. Ever since I started trying to find the antidote for the serum, I haven't spent enough time focusing on my daughter. Maybe it's another sign that it's time for me to give up.

"It's ancient shifter folklore," she says, holding the book up so I can see the cover. "Bigby took me to the library so I can get it. Did you know that most North American shifters are estimated to have originated in Canada and Minnesota? That's where we are. It's really cool that Bigby is from a place with a history like that."

I stare at her, and it dawns on me all at once—other than that first week, when Kaila was really sad to have left California, she's been enjoying her time here. I think of her spending time with Araya, giggling as Byron and Olivia bicker, listening intensely as Bigby explains the rules of chess to her.

Kaila hasn't been miserable. She's far happier here than she ever was in California, living alone in that house.

Unaware of my sudden thought spiral, Kaila leans down, reaching into a tote bag by her feet and producing a different book.

"I also got this one. It's a mystery book. Bigby said it was one of his favorites when he was a kid. There's a red herring, but it didn't trick me."

I blink, my brain sticking to something she just said. Wordlessly, I spin back around in my chair, tapping something on my computer. I pull up the chemical compound of the serum again, staring at it. Jumping up from the seat, I start to pace back and forth, my brain moving faster than I can keep up with.

We only have three sample vials of the serum left, and one sits on my desk. I pick it up, holding it to the light, examining it. Something inside my brain clicks into place almost physically. I felt dopamine course through my body when I realized why.

"Maisie!" I say, coming over to her station, breathing hard, my heart positively pounding in my chest.

"Gods, what, Rosa? You scared me half to death," she says, putting her hand to her heart."

"I think the silver is a red herring."

"What?"

I'm aware that I look intense right now, and I flashback to the moment in college, with my chem lab group, when I realized the problem with our final assignment. The exhilaration of figuring it out, trying to get the ideas out of my head, and the wide-eyed stares of the people around me as they take it in.

"I was looking at the compound again, and I think the silver is meant to do what it does best—shine, sparkle, and distract you from what's important."

"I don't understand; what else in the serum is meant to be the active ingredient if it's not the silver?"

"Pull up the serum's chemical profile," I say, watching as Maisie accesses the program that stores the chemical analysis and finds the file for the serum. When it loads, I tap on her screen.

"Right there, isolate that element. The biochemical compound, right there."

Maisie glances up at me before quickly typing something into her computer, running the command for the computer to break it down further.

When the system finishes running the analysis, it flashes back with UNIDENTIFIED SUBSTANCE.

Maisie and I stare at it for a moment, then I take a sharp breath.

"Compare it to the other botanical substances in the database. Look for the plant with the highest match," I say, and Maisie taps away quickly as I speak. "This is what I think—I think that the botanical element in this serum isn't meant to raise its temperature or simply keep the silver in liquid form. I think the botanical element is the serum! I think that's what's affecting the ability to shift. I think the silver is a red herring."

A moment later, the closest botanical match arrives on the screen, and Maisie and I stare at it without mouths open. It's an 84% match—close enough to matter, far enough to be a cousin of the original plant.

Aconitum napellus.

Wolfsbane.

"Holy shit," I breathe, already walking back to my station. "It's a variant of wolfsbane. That's why the computer wasn't hitting on anything in the analysis. That's why neutralizing the silver did nothing to help—and, in fact, probably just further exasperated the effect of the plant."

I sit down at my workstation, quickly typing something on my computer, and pulling up a file. Maisie pops up, taking her turn to stand over me and watch what I'm doing on the screen.

"If we start with the current cure for wolfsbane exposure," she murmurs, as I bring up the formulation for wolfsbane ointment, "and adjust it for the variations in the strain of plant we're working with, we can create a viable antidote!"

Gerard looks up from his station, sliding off a headphone, and we fill him in as quickly as we can while setting up our stations to create several antidotes. We have to alter the formulation to be an injectable rather than an ointment, as we won't use it to treat a wound, but rather the substance in the shifters' bloodstreams.

A few hours later, we had several vials of what we believed to be the correct formulation. I hold the serum and the antidote together, side by side, examining them.

"Come on," Gerard says, opening the door to the holding room, and my stomach tightens. If this antidote doesn't work, I won't have a clue of where to start next.

I slip the vial into my pocket and follow after Gerard and Maisie. Several of the shifters in the holding room growl and shout at us, slamming their hands against the glass. Percy is sitting on his cot, his eyes glazed over.

"Percy," I say softly, as Maisie rolls in a cart with her equipment. "I have an antidote here. To test on you."

He stands, almost robot-like, and walks over to the glass, calmly setting his forearm in the partition as though he's been doing it his entire life. Maisie slides open the glass and disinfects his arm quickly, before injecting the antidote.

We all stand, watching him with bated breath. He stays on his feet, staring at his arm momentarily. Then, slowly, he raises his head and locks eyes with me.

"Where's your girl?" he asks, his voice low, almost impossible to hear. I swallow, my brain too far into the antidote problem, too hooked on seeing if this will work to understand his words.

And then, all at once, they sink in. I spin around, rushing back into the lab.

"Kaila?" I say when I see that both she and Byron are gone. My brain blanks into a white-hot kind of panic I've only ever felt once before in my life.

"Byron?" I shout, running out into the hallway. "Kaila?"

There's no sign of them. I sprint back into the chem lab, my voice getting more high-pitched and frantic with every step.

"Kaila? Kaila!"

I slam into Maisie, who rocks back but keeps her footing. She puts her hands on my biceps, trying to steady me.

"Rosa, take a breath, it's okay—it's nothing."

"The scent…" Percy says, his nose twitching. While his physical appearance is still frightening, there's a sense of clarity behind his eyes—a lucidity that I haven't seen there before. I don't have a chance to rejoice in the relative success of the serum, or take notes.

My daughter is missing, and the man who was supposed to be here with her, protecting her, is gone.

"Someone is here," Percy says, his eyes meeting mine. "From a different pack."

My stomach drops to the floor. My father.

My father is here in Rosecreek.

I turn on my heel and sprint out of the room, dropping my lab coat behind me on the floor as I go.