By and large, the potion appeared to be made out of a ton of ingredients I’d never heard of before. Ilsen Root, eye of the Chloth, Serice tongue, nothing I’d ever seen or heard of before, except the last jar, which held the ingredient we’d used the most: Blood of the Child.

It hadn’t struck me as quite as odd before, but now that I was going back and checking all the jars, I was starting to think these weren’t codes used in the place of other names. Had we really dumped a kid’s blood into the pot?

I found Po nearby rummaging through some tall, thin bottles.

“Excuse me, Po?”

She barely even turned to look at me.

“I have about the potion we were making.”

“It’s the only way we’ll ever get to live normal lives again,” she said.

“Okay, but how?”

She didn’t answer.

“Granny?”

In a flash, she whipped around and had a hand at my throat, my back against the wall. She’d pushed me back so fast it had knocked the wind out of me.

“We need to be free.”

She bared her teeth at me, hungrily, full of rage. Her eyes seemed to glow brighter than usual and I thought I smelled a waft of pine needles come from her. And just as quickly, she was back to the wizened old woman I’d just met.

“I, I’m sorry about that, my boy. It’s late. We can use the potion tomorrow night. For now, I’m going to rest and you should do the same. You’ll find empty beds down the hall and to your right.”

She vanished into the darkness, leaving me alone with a bewildered Rachel.

We returned to the central room of the bunker, but Sara and Campbell were gone.