The door chimes clanged and two large men, carrying a third, burst into the tea shop.

Zoe jumped up and her fresh coffee toppled onto her lap. Hot. Hot. Hot.

“Where’s Olivia? We need her. Now.” The older of the two strangers ignored her dance of pain and struggled with the weight of the man he carried.

 “I aah...” She pushed her glasses up her nose, shaking out her wet shorts, and pointed to the curtain. “Put him on the daybed in the backroom.”

She grabbed her cell phone, and tapped her cousin's number.

Five...six…unanswered rings. Come on Liv, pick up.

“Help us,” the younger man yelled from the doorway.

With an uneven breath, she left the ice cream parlor décor of the front room and entered the exam room. Even before she approached the men, the overpowering stench of rotting fish made her stomach turn. She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.

 “You're both going to have to leave." The two glared, refusing to budge, and she gritted her teeth. “I can’t help him with you close by."

She pointed to the paisley curtain that divided the two spaces.

The men snarled, but obeyed. When they were gone, she took a deep breath and tried her cousin again. Please pick up.

“Hi, leave a message for Olivia’s Natural Herbal Remedies…” Damn, damn, damn.

The man on the bed moaned and Zoe took a tentative step toward him. His white t-shirt was torn, the fabric charred at the edges, but his olive skin seemed unscathed. He needed a doctor, not an herbal concoction. The people in this town were even crazier than the ones she’d encountered during her short stay in New York.

She should call his friends back and tell them, or better yet, dial 911. Zoe was about to do just that when she saw it. What the hell?

Under the man’s skin, a leach-like creature strained and writhed, making black web marks. She swallowed a scream and backed into the large cabinet where Olivia kept her herbs and tonics. She’d seen a lot of weird shit over the past three months, since coming to stay with her cousin, but this had to be the craziest.

Zoe glanced at her phone and cursed Olivia for leaving her alone. She didn’t know how to deal with this voodoo crap. Liv was the self-proclaimed healer. No matter how many times her cousin had tried to teach her to read auras and understand herbology, Zoe couldn’t wrap her brain around it.

What would Liv do if she were here? Probably chant some ritual prayer and make tea.

“Tea–” She could do that. Keeping a close watch on him, she put the kettle on to boil.

The man had gone still, his skin stark white in comparison to the inky lines that sketched over face, down his neck, arms, and chest. Zoe shivered. She took a few tentative steps towards the bed and knelt beside him.

She moved his matted bangs, and placed her palm to his forehead. He was burning up, but at least he was still alive.

“Where's Liv?” Large fingers clamped around her forearm.

The black substance seemed to enter her from where he held her in his vise-like grip, and her stomach twisted and cramped. Little pinpricks of light floated before her eyes, and something else, something much more intimate, mixed with the dark energy.

For a moment, time seemed to stand still. Ice and fire rushed through her, down her arms and legs, to the tips of her fingers and toes. A strange wind rushed through the room, causing her dark hair to whip around her face.

The kettle screamed for her attention. She flinched, but he didn't release her. His nostrils flared and his pupils dilated.

The man was handsome, if you ignored the slight crook in his once broken nose. The dark stubble on his chin and upper lip outlined high cheekbones, square jaw, and full lips. But it was the eyes that caught her attention, the lightest brown, with flecks of gold that seemed to flicker in the dim light.

“Who are you?” he growled between clenched teeth.

The energy between them increased until Zoe was certain the entire room would combust into flames. Fear overpowered the desire that swelled within her.

“Let me go.” The words caught in her throat and came out as a strangled cry.

He uncurled his fingers and thumped his head back on the daybed, groaning.

Zoe staggered back to Liv’s workstation and placed her hands on the counter. With steadying breaths, she prepared the tea the way she’d seen Liv do it a hundred times. She just prayed that she was using the right ingredients. There wasn’t anything in any of the tins that could make him worse than he already was–she hoped.

The man let out a roar of pain, and gripped the edge of the bed as his body seized and stiffened. The poison seemed to be expanding, tearing through his body like a predator consuming its prey.

She was close to panicking. No, she was already panicking. This was too much. She didn't have the skill or the knowledge needed to help him. She could barely read a damn aura.

Olivia would know what to do, but her cousin wasn't answering her fricking phone.

With trembling fingers, Zoe held his head and forced the hot liquid down his throat. After a gulp, he turned and puked out a black, rancid mass. 

Zoe dropped the cup and scooted backwards, the meager contents of her own stomach burning her esophagus. This was not what she signed up for when she accepted her cousin’s proposal to come stay with her. Hell, she hadn’t even known the woman existed until a few months ago. Liv was strange on the best of days, with her New Age ideas, and bizarre beliefs in the paranormal. But until today, her outlandish stories of healers and warriors had just been that–stories.

The man seized again, then went still. His forehead was damp with perspiration, his skin still streaked with black webs. The putrid smell of impending death lingered around him. A chill went up and down Zoe’s spine. She didn’t know how she knew the scent, but the knowledge seeped through her like an old memory.

“No. You are not going to die.”  She threw open the cupboard doors. A vast collection of colorful tins lined the shelves. Ugh. Licorice, sassafras, and dried mold. She glowered, compelling their auras forth, like Liv had taught her, but only shades of brown danced in front of her eyes.

He was going to die because she couldn’t find the right fucking tea.

“Dammit!” She slammed the door and it banged.

A rattling sound came from the man's chest. She’d never felt so helpless in her life. 

You know what to do. The words pierced her mind, sending a zing through her body. She closed her eyes and a flash of memory infused her. It was hazy, but there was power and knowledge in the vision.

The room started to spin and she had to grasp the counter to keep from falling.

You know what to do. The words echoed like a soft hum within her.

The man would die if she did nothing.

With a sharp intake of breath, she focused on the words that raced through her mind and drew from the strange energy that vibrated around her. She didn’t have time to think about how crazy the entire situation was. She just knew she had to save him. At her beckon, a small wind formed in her palms, then blew across the room, and entered the man.

The color drained from his face, his eyes went wide, and he inhaled sharply.

Zoe refocused and tried again. This time the lights flickered and a deep purple cloud materialized for a moment before disappearing. If she wasn't so focused on saving him, she would have been terrified.

She closed her eyes, centered like she’d learned in yoga class, and added a short prayer to the Goddess of Life. Help me save him.

Perhaps the prayer clinched the deal. The power within started with a buzzing in her ears. It bubbled up and surrounded her like an electric current. When she could no longer endure the pain, she screamed and fell back onto the wood floor.

She'd fired a shotgun once, but this discharge had a hell-of-a worse kick. A black-violet cloud of energy sizzled and snapped above her head in a wild frenzy. When it didn’t move, Zoe willed it forward to kill the poison in the man.

Suddenly, the conjured plasma zoomed around the exam room and lit seven colored candles. It went into the cupboards and rattled the tin cans until two fell off the top shelf with a clunk. The energy morphed and twisted into a sparkling tornado, hovered momentarily above the man’s bed, and disappeared into his body. Zoe was unable to breathe again until it reappeared with a dark shadow caught up in its spin.