“Fill a cauldron with water and bring it to me,” he ordered as he unstrapped his weapons and started laying his knives out on the floor around Lily. Juliet stared at him, rooted to the spot. “Move, Juliet,” he barked.
Spurred into action, Juliet began opening up cabinets even though she was quite sure they were fresh out of cauldrons. She ended up grabbing her mom’s biggest copper-bottomed stockpot and filling it while Rowan listed more things he needed to Samantha. It was mostly herbs. Juliet hauled the pot of water into the living room where Rowan had a small fire going in the fireplace. He glanced at the pot dubiously.
“It’s all we have,” Juliet said with a defensive shrug.
“Then it’ll have to do. Put it on the fire and open all the windows,” he directed, scowling, as he stripped off his blood-soaked shirt.
“This is insane,” Juliet said, but did as he instructed. As she pushed open the last window, Juliet saw an eerie pulse of light swell inside the room like an expanding bubble and turned to face the source of the light. Her skin tingled as it passed over her, membrane-like, and all sound in the room was muffled as if someone had stuffed cotton in her ears. At the center of the bubble was Rowan’s odd amulet. Juliet looked down and saw three jewels like Rowan’s winking at her sister’s throat.
“She’s so weak,” Rowan whispered. He knelt down beside Lily and began cutting away what was left of her clothes. “Samantha, burn the sage and walk around the room counterclockwise,” he said. “Juliet, start rubbing this salve on some of the lesser blisters. See if it helps.”
Rowan took a tiny glass jar of greenish salve out of a pouch on his belt and put it into Juliet’s hands. She started dabbing the stuff hopelessly on her sister’s skin.
“This isn’t going to—” she began, and stopped. She sat back on her heels. “Impossible,” she breathed. Where Juliet had put the salve, Lily’s blisters had shrunk away to nothing. Before her eyes, the broken skin was healed. Juliet looked up at Rowan, her mouth hanging open.
“It won’t do anything for the really bad burns, but it will soothe some of the pain,” he explained.
“How did you—?”
“Magic,” Rowan answered automatically. “We need to make a tent. Lily’s lungs are scalded raw and they’re filling with blood. She’ll drown if we don’t stop it. Do you have large sheets and a way to prop them over her?”
“Yes,” Juliet replied, and stumbled out of the room to the linen closet, dumbfounded by what she had just seen. No medicine worked that fast. Burned skin did not heal in a few seconds—if it ever really healed at all.
Juliet returned with the sheets and saw Rowan leaning over Lily. Tendrils of reddish-purple light emanated from the dark jewel at his throat and danced across Lily’s face. One of the tendrils snaked down Lily’s throat, and she gasped and sputtered. Rowan turned her head to the side and blood oozed out of Lily’s mouth. Juliet took a step forward to stop him. When he looked up at her his face was pale and strained with effort and his eyes were so frantic that Juliet checked herself.
“Hold that sheet over us. Keep the steam in,” he said weakly.
Juliet’s arms shook with fear, and the hair on her arms stood up at an uncanny frisson when she came near Rowan’s strange bubble of dark light. She threw the sheet over the three of them, including an edge of the now-steaming pot as she wrestled with herself. Juliet was a rational, sensible woman. She knew there was no such thing as magic—except she also knew, on some deep level, that what she was witnessing had no other explanation.
“Magic,” Juliet muttered, half out of her wits with anxiety and disbelief.
“Yes,” Rowan replied. “I’ve got to ease the blood out of her lungs before I mend the damaged tissue, but if I do it too quickly I could choke her.” He suddenly leaned forward, tilting his ear close to Lily’s mouth. “What? What are you saying?” Rowan whispered to Lily.
“Water, water everywhere…,” she replied, and then her eyes relaxed, half open and half closed, and her body went slack.