She’d expected Basil to be at the door of the strange apothecary. What she hadn’t anticipated was how harassed and panicked he looked. His hair looked like he’d run a hand through it more than once in the past few minutes, and there was a wide-eyed panic in his pale blue eyes that Sybella recognized only because she’d seen the exact same look on many of her patient’s loved ones who were concerned.

Before she knew it, Sybella was seized from behind the threshold and pulled into the apothecary. She barely had time to look around and tripped over the doorway as Basil explained the situation. From what she gleaned, he’d arrived at the apothecary to find his friend cranky and…coughing up blood. There was little mention of a trigger or what could have happened to cause his friend to cough up so much blood.

Sybella took in Macnair’s appearance, pale, nearly gaunt looking with his mouth stained a rusty red.

And Basil had mentioned experiments which caused her interest to pique. “What experiments?” She asked, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. “Show me.” She didn’t want to administer anything yet until she knew what she was dealing with.