Chapter 110
"Strange brew, killin' what's inside of you.
She's a witch of trouble in electric blue.
Strange brew, killin' what's inside of you.
She's some kind of demon messin' in the flue.
If you don't watch out it'll stick to you…"
I sang the song by Cream as I regrouped my thoughts. Adalind wasn't aware we had figured out what she'd given Hank. She also didn't know that Nick and I hadn't fully bonded, so to say. At least I'd gained some information that was useful, although disturbing to find out. Right now I just wanted to get back to the spice shop and see how the antidote for Hank was coming along. It was going to take a while to make, and it was only a quarter after one by the clock in my car, so there was still much work to do.
My pulse quickened. Nick was probably back already. I tried hard to slow my heart back down. Oh, this was so hard to deal with. These feelings weren't real. That was obvious after the talk with the Bitch Witch, but the feelings were there, lulling me into a sense of love.
I could fight this. It was like an intense dose of Ziegevolk. There, that would help. Nick was just a very potent Blue Beard. Yeah, a Blue Beard. And I'd have to fend off his pheromones. You can do that, right, Renée? I gave myself the pep talk, attempting to block out the images of Nick with his shirt off… and those eyes coupled with that perfect, dark hair. Crap! I needed an antidote quick. Divinely in Love my ass. I was going to need divine intervention to get through this.
I pushed my thoughts toward Monroe. I thought fondly of our night in the woods. Our night of… mating. I shook my head. That wasn't helping either. I thought of everything else about him. Oh, Monroe. He was the one I loved. I kept those thoughts brimming as I continued to drive to the spice shop.
(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)
Rosalee was standing over a Bunsen burner as the jingle of the bells alerted them that I'd arrived. I shut the door with one foot, carting coffees and pastries in both hands from the coffee shop across the street. Nick turned quickly and tried to stand as I walked toward the back room, but Monroe grabbed his shoulders, thrusting him firmly back in his seat.
"Hold you horses there, pal," he said gruffly. "You're staying right here."
Monroe looked at me and I gave him a smile. Under my jacket I was wearing a button-down cream blouse with a caramel pencil skirt. Monroe seemed to appreciate my wardrobe change. He crossed the spice shop to the doorway where I was lingering with my arms full.
"So, did your lunch thing go okay?" he asked while helping me with the cups.
"Yes, it was… informative," I kept my face smooth. "How's the antidote for Hank going?"
"It's now an antidote for Hank and Sergeant Wu," replied Nick as he stood behind Monroe. Apparently he wasn't going to listen to Monroe at all.
"The sergeant? What did I miss?"
Monroe passed a cup to both Nick and Rosalee, as Nick told me more about the connection to Sergeant Boils-a-Lot and the Zaubertrank gone wrong. They'd determined that the pica he had was an obsessive side effect from the potion. This Zaubertrank caused the victim to suffer obsessive behaviors so great that the brain would eventually overload resulting in the physical body shutting down. So instead of curing just Detective Swagger, Sergeant Boils-a-Lot needed a cure, too.
I took a sip of much needed caffeine and turned to Rosalee. "What we did a few weeks ago… That didn't cure the sergeant?"
"No, we just treated the symptoms of the boils with the keim extract mixture," Rosalee stated, watching her flask of liquid intently.
"So, the same antidote for Hank will cure the sergeant, too?"
"It should, since he took the same Zaubertrank." She didn't sound as sure of herself as she normally did about these things. Hopefully she knew what she was doing.
"Do you know anything about a Zaubertrank called, 'Divinely in Love'?"
Rosalee looked up from her burner. "Where did you hear about that?" she asked as she turned to pull a large, black book off the shelf.
"I sort of talked to Adalind at lunch," I casually replied as the Fuchsbau, the Blutbad, and the Grimm all directed their eyes at me at once.
"You did what?" Nick and Monroe exclaimed in unison. Nick jumped up, almost spilling his coffee while Monroe almost spat his out.
"Renée, are you okay?" Nick bounded toward me. "Did she try to hurt you?"
I backed away from the 'Blue Beard' and instead moved over toward Monroe, sitting beside him and avoiding Nick completely.
"I-I'm fine," I stammered. "I needed some answers, so we had a chat over tea."
Rubbing my brown tourmaline necklace between my fingers like a worry stone, my heart fluttered in dismay. Nick looked heartbroken from my rejection. This was so difficult. I pushed hard on my practiced calm to curb my thoughts.
"Okay, so I'm confused here. How the hell did you know Adalind?" Monroe asked me as I let go of my necklace.
"She's the lawyer I have lunch with sometimes, and the same one who hosted the party I went to. I didn't know what she was though," I sighed. "Well, until this happened of course."
"So, you're telling me that all this time 'Miss Lawyer' was Adalind?" Monroe just shook his head, but didn't say anything further. I really had to stop using nicknames for people.
"And Adalind just willingly told you the name of the Zaubertrank?" asked Rosalee. She was back to reading through pages in the book she had open.
I nodded in her direction. "She seemed satisfied that we can't break the spell."
Rosalee went back to the book. "It has the right two ingredients," she noted as she double-checked the page with the sales log. "But like I said before, there are going to be others with the same ingredients that have a similar effect down to the marks on the tongue. If she's lying, then the wrong antidote could be fatal."
"I still have the apple tarts in my freezer. I can bring them by once Hank and the sergeant are okay, and we'll be sure."
Adalind wouldn't have a reason to lie to me, but I agreed with Rosalee. If she told me the wrong information, we could die. But if anything happened to us, however, then Mr. Royal Pain might kill her in retaliation. Although, it would be unlikely that our mistake would ever be traced back to Adalind. So yeah, to be sure I needed Rosalee to test the tarts.
"Apple tarts?" Monroe asked while scratching his beard.
"Yeah. I'm thinking these tarts she made for me at the party were laced with the Zaubertrank. No one else had any, and she was practically forcing them on me that night. She even sent them home with me."
"So, then what infected Nick?" asked Monroe.
Rosalee looked across the room over at Nick. "Do you know what you might have eaten?"
"Well, I assure you I've had nothing that she personally gave me," he replied quickly. His eyes widened as he seemed lost in thought. "The apple pie!" Nick exclaimed. "Renée, remember the pie?"
I recalled the night at Nick's trailer. Half the pie had fallen to the floor before we... "I remember," I replied softly. Oh, yeah. I remembered that night quite well.
"Someone had left it for me at the precinct during a potluck we had. It had to be the pie!" A perfect deduction. God, he was clever. "Thankfully I didn't eat all of mine either." He turned to me with eyes wide. "I was going to bring the rest home to Juliette!" He grabbed at his dark bangs.
"Oh, God. Nick…"
"If she had eaten it…" Nick shook his head.
"It may have been Adalind's plan for you guys to share it with Juliette and Monroe… to get rid of them," Rosalee replied.
"I wasn't even aware you had any tarts," said Monroe.
"It's a good thing you eat organic. I didn't offer them to you because I figured it was made with processed ingredients." Adalind had said Monroe might like them, and although he hadn't eaten any, Chloe almost had two. That damn witch.
"Well, thanks for not sharing, Renée," he breathed out. "But it looks like you two took a bite out of the wrong apples, dude." He sighed as he put his arm around me. "What is it with witches and apples anyway? I mean, it's such a hackneyed combo. Man, you'd think they would've evolved enough to, like, incorporate other fruits by now."
"At least her apples didn't put us into a deep sleep," I let out a short, yet awkward, chuckle as I stood and crossed the room, taking the book from Rosalee and sitting back down next to Monroe.
"Well, you know, I would've preferred you'd been asleep instead of doing the tonsil tango with Nick, if you ask me," Monroe mumbled.
"Right, because being knocked out would've been so much better."
My eyes glanced over the details of the 'Divinely in Love' Zaubertrank. A few ingredients listed were plain and simple. Others I had no clue about, which was probably for the best, since the ones we'd been searching for all night were less than desirable, to put it mildly. The last ingredient stopped me in my tracks.
"Blood from each of those to be bonded?" I asked aloud.
Oh my! Much like the Zaubertrank that Detective Swagger was poisoned with, this one required blood as well. I blanched at the thought. But how? How did someone get my blood and Nick's? It didn't make sense. Perhaps Adalind really had lied about which Zaubertrank she'd used. That Bitch Witch was devious.
"All spells of love this potent require blood," explained Rosalee.
"Well, that ingredient is organic," Monroe added with a grimace.
"I didn't bleed at any time I had lunch with her," I replied, but it was mostly for my own benefit. I looked over at Nick. "Have you bled recently where someone could've taken it?"
"We had our annual physical a few weeks ago. They took blood at the hospital."
"Hospital," I repeated. "Which hospital?"
"The Good Samaritan, why?"
My eyes widened. It was the same hospital I'd gone to after the attack from Miss Fireball the Daemonfeuer. I thought about Nurse Wretched. It was all making sense now.
"Nick, do you recall if your nurse had jet black hair?" I asked.
"Maybe so? But her hair was nothing like yours, which is so beautiful and…"
"Dude, just answer the question." Monroe cut him off.
"Uhh... It could've been. What are you getting at, Renée?"
I explained the trip to the emergency room the night of the Daemonfeuer and the nurse who did blood work. "That same nurse was at Adalind's party." I shook my head. "I'd be willing to bet she's the one who did your physical, too, Nick."
"Hank and I both had physicals that day," Nick replied as his gorgeous eyes widened. "So that explains how Adalind got Hank's blood, too."
How had Adalind planned on getting my blood if I hadn't gone to the ER that night? I didn't want to know.
"What else did Adalind tell you?" Nick asked.
"Well, it was a lot of things," I answered while the adrenaline rushed through my body.
The amount of info I had to process was too much. I told them about the rogue Royal that was in Portland and the Zaubertrank that was used on my parents. I delicately mentioned it was the same plan that was intended for me and Nick. Monroe growled at that information. The hardest part was telling Nick that Aunt Marie probably knew about a lot of this and that's why Mr. Royal Pain had plotted to kill her.
"Adalind doesn't know we're working on an antidote for Hank." I looked at Nick. "She also thinks that you and I… completed our Zaubertrank." I ran my fingers though my hair as I added, "Well, after I convinced her that we had… umm… bonded."
Rosalee glanced up at me with large, brown eyes. "So, you two haven't…"
"No," I squeaked out. My face flushed having said that. "But Adalind needs to let this Royal think his plans are coming together."
"Talk about some great hexpectations," said Monroe. "Creating Wesen hybrids with Grimms? What the hell is this dude thinking?"
I shook my head. "Fortunately we caught it before it was too late."
"Your situation would've been far more complicated if you had," Rosalee added, startling me out of my thoughts. "According to the book, there's no cure at that point."
"So, if we had, umm... If we hadn't come over here to the spice shop last night…?" Nick stammered out as he eyed Monroe, who was furrowing his brow at what we were discussing.
I nodded. "Yeah, pretty much we would be..." My words trailed off and my cheeks continued to burn. Maybe I did have the luck of the Waldgeist on my side.
"So, why Hank?" Nick asked. "What does he have to do with us being together?"
"Adalind said they want your key, Nick."
"The key?" His gorgeous eyes widened, shaking his head adamantly. "They aren't getting it."
"That's what I told her, too."
"Do they know what's on it? What we found?"
"I-I don't know."
Rosalee and Monroe exchanged baffled looks. "So you wanna tell us what this key is?" asked Monroe. "Or should we just guess."
"It's just something my aunt left me," Nick replied as vaguely as possible.
"Don't you think we've had enough secrets already?" Monroe argued with a huff.
"What it is doesn't matter, 'cause she's not getting it."
"These secrets my dad and your aunt kept… There's a bigger picture here that's more complex than we even realize," I said. "These Royal families are like players on one big chessboard and we're just pawns in their game."
"Bigger picture," Nick repeated. "That's the second time I've heard that today." He shook his head.
"Adalind said Hank will die if they don't get what they want. They must know you wouldn't let anything happen to your partner, so that has to be why they chose Hank."
"Maybe we oughta find Hank and bring him here before Adalind tries to do anything to him, or, uh, with him," Monroe suggested. "You know, before he gets the worst STD of his life?"
Nick shook his head. "And tell him what? 'Gee, Hank, your girlfriend is actually a witch. Oh, and you don't really love her. She gave you a love potion and now you need to sit here while a Fuchsbau makes an antidote.'?"
"Well, no, not like that, exactly," Monroe huffed back. "But, it's not so safe for him to be near her right now, man. I mean, especially if they're using him as a bargaining chip, you know?"
"They won't kill Hank if they think they can get what they want," I said. "That's the whole reason they're doing this. She's probably just awaiting orders from the Royal. Except… Crap!"
"What?" Nick asked quickly.
"She said she was making dinner for Hank tonight."
"Yeah. I'm aware of her dinner plans." Nick sighed heavily as he finally stopped pacing a hole in the floor and sat down near Rosalee, who was still concentrating on the flask under the burner. "She called Hank this morning while we were at the precinct to invite him over. I talked to her briefly, and she implied that there was a surprise with what she has planned for tonight."
"Man, that doesn't sound like a recipe I'd want to sample," Monroe added with a shake of his head.
"Crap, well that's what she's cooking up this evening. I wish I'd known she said that. I would've asked more questions," I muttered. Monroe's surprises were great, well usually. But Hexenbiest surprises? Well, those were not what anyone wanted to get.
"I think you did enough for one day." Monroe rubbed my back. He was withholding more lectures. I'd get those later, no doubt.
Nick turned to Rosalee. "How's the antidote coming along?"
"I'm about a third of the way done." She stirred more liquid into the beaker. "But if that Hexenbiest is planning on dinner with Hank, we need to get this to him before she does."
Nick cupped his chin. "There has to be more to this than just a key."
"I asked and she said the Royal just wants that key."
"And Adalind said this Royal lives here? Did she say that I knew him?"
"I asked that, too. She implied you'd met him, but I couldn't get her to budge on anything about him. She told me she'd rather die than tell me his identity."
"Well, that can be arranged," Nick said, wringing his hands as he stood and resumed pacing the floor.
"I tried that, too, but she was fine with dying and taking her secret to the grave."
Nick stopped briefly to look at me, crossing his arms. "What do you mean you tried that?"
"Oh…" I glanced down pressing my lips together. "Probably shouldn't have mentioned that part."
Monroe lifted my chin. "Aw man. What did you do, Renée?"
"Well, I kind of told her I'd poisoned her tea with a Zaubertrank." I decompressed my lips at the confession, but then added. "I thought turn about was fair play."
Monroe laughed all of a sudden, surprising me. "Only my girlfriend would trick a Hexenbiest into thinking she'd taken a Zaubertrank as a comeuppance."
"Irony is never lost on me." I turned to face him, but his laughter was masking his disapproval. He'd called me his girlfriend. I was happy about that, but Nick didn't seem too happy, though.
"So, does she think she's still poisoned?" Nick asked. He looked like he was trying to ignore what Monroe had said.
I explained the ruse of the antidote. I was getting good at faking liquids. I'd used the vial from Jack's Zaubertrank to disguise the Scope. Were they impressed by what I'd done or did they think I was crazy to be that reckless? Their wide eyes were hard to read.
"Renée, didn't we talk about this?" Monroe's brows furrowed and a flash of red passed his eyes. "You can't do these kinds of things!" Okay, so it was the latter of the two.
"She couldn't touch me. I was safe."
"But you didn't know that going into the situation," Nick chipped in. "Renée, I love you and you've got to be cautious!" Monroe shot a malicious look Nick's way, and he noticed it immediately. "I'm sorry, Monroe, but right now I do love her, and I don't want anything happening to her."
I tried hard not to reply to Nick. God, I loved him still. This was so difficult. Blue Beard, Blue Beard, Blue Beard. Maybe if I said it enough times in my head it would stick. Monroe held a low growl in his throat and was poised like he was going to jump up, so I held his hand tightly.
"You don't have to say it out loud," Monroe's voice boomed as both men glared at each other from across the room.
"Well, I can't stop these feelings. I'm sure you feel the same way, right?"
My heart caught in my throat. Was Nick going to make Monroe say it? Here? Now?
"Of course I don't want anything happening to her," Monroe declared indignantly, releasing my hand to cross his arms. "Why would you even ask something like that?"
He had avoided the question. Even Rosalee gave him a puzzled look. My heart remained caught in my throat so tight I could barely breathe. Did it mean he didn't love me anymore because of this, or did he just not want to say the words? Oh, God… What if he never loved me at all?
Nick scoffed as he smirked. "Well, at least I have no trouble saying…"
"Maybe you should at least call Hank," I interjected quickly. Nick didn't need to say it again. Monroe could only hold back so much. "Maybe you can talk him out of dinner."
Nick shook his head. "He's obsessed with her. He's not going to listen to anything I say right now."
"I know the feeling," muttered Monroe. "It's like talking to brick wall… Well, if a brick wall just happened to be, umm, cursed with a love potion."
A/N: So we're getting a heads up on the key for Hank bit. SO know we know (But I think most of you figured it out.) that the tarts had the potion for Renée and that mystery apple pie left for Nick had his potion. The nurse from the hospital is the culprit for getting everyone's blood for the Zaubertranks, too. (In my story at least.) A little more angst between Monroe and Nick. Monroe dodged that "L" word pretty quick... Aww...
2 more chapters to go today. Comments/thoughts? Hope you're still reading and enjoying!