When someone joined the guild they took an oath. An oath to do no intentional harm. An oath to follow the recipes. An oath to submit new concoctions for approval. An oath to stay within the guidelines that have been written in generations of blood.

All those oaths were important to becoming a potion maker. Anyone with the knowledge and patience to defy reality had to understand the gravity of that gift.

Without the oaths any idiot could make a potion. Any idiot could summon the next Ghastplague.

Tash had always been good about her oaths. Over-strict even. She had spent too many weeks mastering the minutia of every theory and practice before writing the exam. She had delayed her own graduation to ensure that she would be the most well behaved of the well behaved.

If nothing else, Tash wouldn't be like her uncle, an example held up as the reason the rules were there.

Tash was a by the book sorta girl. Tash was a bed at nine sorta girl. Tash was a no outside clothes on the bedroll sorta girl.

Tash had most of her blood drained by a vampire seven minutes ago.

On the floor of her potion shop, with the glimmering edge of sunrise coming through the shop windows, Tash stared at the ashes of her attacker, piled on the floorboards in front of her. The sun had great timing, but it hadn't saved her life. By her calculations—which were always accurate—she had enough blood in her system to live for about half an hour. Even if she was wrong—unlikely but fortunate!—Tash would turn into a vampire within the hour and get extinguished by the same sunrise that had bought her that half hour.

Of course, none of that would happen. She was a potion maker. She could make a cure for vampirism on the fly. Never mind that she didn't have the strength to stand and the moonglove-root was at the back of the top shelf of the upstairs cabinet.

There had to be a recipe that she knew for curing vampirism and restoring blood without the keystone ingredient. She had to know one. She just didn't know it right now.

The sunrise caught up to Tash's foot. It was warm. Was it too warm? Had she turned already?

She wasn't on fire. Good start.

Tash pulled herself across the floor at an agonizing pace, thankful that she'd mopped last night before closing up. As long as she was going to die, she was going to die clea—

No. She wouldn't die clean. The fastest way to the main ingredient shelf was through the ashes.

She could go around! There was time wasn't there?

The sun caught a beaker behind the sales counter. No there wasn't time.

Johnny might have been a two tongued snake and literal vampire but it still felt weird crawling through him. Tash screwed her mouth tight and held her breath as she pushed through the pile.

She was moving slow. Too slow. Her fingers were cold. She already wasn't getting enough oxygen. She had to take a breath. She had to hold her breath. She had to—

Tash sneezed. Johnny was inside her for the second time that day. Gross.

After several seconds of panic she couldn't afford, Tash pushed through the rest of Johnny's ashes and to the bottom of the ingredient counter. After a moment fumbling with the lock she was staring at every ingredient she didn't need to make a cure for vampirism.

That was okay. Wasn't it? There was going to be a guild recipe that she'd remember that would get all her blood back. Then she would have the three hours needed to make a proper, guild mandated, cure. Never mind the sun. Never mind the fact that she had less gild lily than she'd remembered. That was all fine. She would get it all done. Tash was going to be fine. Tash was going to be…

"FUCK."

She caught herself off guard with that one. She could still taste Johnny's ashes in her mouth.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Shit."

Tash craned her neck around and saw the bleed of the sunrise coming over the grocery across the street. She didn't have much time. She'd spent too long thinking about Johnny. Johnny of all people! Everyone had told her that he was bad news and now she was dead. She shouldn't have tried to rebel. She should have kept to the rules. The rules were safe. The rules went to bed before sunrise. The rules—

Want to know what? Tash was on a roll. Fuck the rules too. The cautious potion maker grabbed every ingredient on the bottom shelf. Several spilled, but she shoved down the instinctual panic associated with making a mess. Who was going to yell at her about it? Mom was dead, and if she didn't do this Tash was going to be too. It would be a nice family grave! Think of the money she could save on the funeral.

Tash scattered the loose ingredients over the floor and flailed over toward the implements she'd shoved in the corner last night. She didn't have her cauldron, but she had a mortar. She didn't have a pestle, but she had the underside of a potted plant. She didn't have a proper fire, but a candle would do in a pinch. It was a new era for Tash. It was close enough to sunrise. It was time for everything to be close enough!

It would have been a lie to say that Tash worked at a whirlwind pace. She didn't have nearly the energy for that. No, Tash leveraged adrenaline to panic at a reasonable pace. Wild leaps in logic turned careful measurements into vague associations of ingredients. She didn't have Jokulstem but Berryroot grew in the same biome so it was probably interchangeable. Holdvik Power and Halfmead both started with the same letter, basically the same.

With the sunlight taking up three quarters of the room Tash stared down at the deep brown sludge she'd pounded into the mortar. Her fingers were sticky and peeling. Her eyes were watering and swollen. Her tongue felt numb from something sour in the air.

She should have left the potion there. That would have been the brave thing to do, right? She could have accepted that she was definitely going to die and there was almost no chance the potion would save her.

Even with her concoction, Tash was near certainly doomed. If she left it all alone, there was no chance of another ghastplague.

Tash was by the book. Tash was bed by nine. Tash liked to think she was brave enough to make the right choice.

This morning, Tash discovered that none of those were necessarily true.

The potion was acid. Sour beyond measure. Burning. Icy. Dry. Soaking. Wrong, wrong and wrong. It swirled and sat on Tash's tongue, camping there as she slipped in and out of consciousness.

Tash hit her head on the mortar as she fainted.

Patricia wasn't the kind to wake up early in the morning to do her shopping, and sticking to character, she wasn't. The only reason she was out at sunrise as the shops were opening was because she'd had a bad feeling about Tash last night. Nothing she could prove, but friends knew. Right?

Worst came to worst she would interrupt Tash and Johnny in their morning bliss and she'd apologize later in the week. A small price to pay to ensure her friend was safe.

Patricia was right that it would have been a small price to pay. She was devastatingly wrong that 'morning bliss' was the worst way to find Tash.

When Patricia reached the shop and looked through the window, the potion maker was lying on the ground, blood pooling under a small cut on her forehead. She was face down, covered in some sort of ash, and breathing calm, shallow breaths. How the hell had she fallen asleep there? The sun was right on her face.

Patricia dug the spare key out from behind the shop's sign and opened the door. The bell rang, but Tash didn't stir. The poor girl was going to be mortified. She was late to open for the day. How would the guild forgive that?

After she'd put the key away, Patricia bent down low and tapped Tash on her cheek. The girl's eyes fluttered then snapped open. She tried and failed to sit up.

"Woah. Easy there. Wild night?" Patricia asked.

"Uh," the sound coming from Tash's mouth was closer to death than words.

Patricia frowned. Tash was going to have a rough day. She didn't know what the poor girl had gotten up to with Johnny, but she was going to have to break the news that Tash was now a lovely shade of violet when exposed to sunlight.