Potions Are for Pushovers

by Tamara Berry

  The mocking laughter on his face drops only to be replaced by a more earnest regard. I find myself recoiling from it, since I know what’s coming next. In an effort to stave him off, I fling up a hand. “No. Don’t.”

  “Eleanor . . .”

  “I don’t need your help,” I lie. “I still have plenty of money in my savings account from my ghost-hunting days, and I’ve been making a killing on those elixirs lately.”

  “A killing?” he asks. “Are you certain that’s the word you want to use?”

  As it’s been effective at stopping him from making an offer I have no choice but to refuse, yes, it’s absolutely the word I mean. Since I know he meant nothing but kindness, however, I tiptoe and reach to brush a kiss on his cheek.

  I mean to end the kiss quickly—and to escape the castle before our conversation reaches a heavier, more intimate tone—but his arms wrap around my waist to hold me pressed against him, my toes only lightly touching the floor. As if that weren’t enough, a slight turn of his head brings our lips into direct contact. As always, his kiss is firm but gentle, a polite request that could, with the right persuasion, turn into something more.

  Although I’d be happy to do some persuading in the ordinary way of things, I only allow myself a slight nibble and a sigh before pulling away again.

  “Thank you, Nicholas,” I say. “You’re sweet to be concerned about me, but I don’t need your generosity.”

  “Oh, it’s not generosity. I don’t want the people of the village thinking I can’t keep a woman properly, that’s all.”

  I laugh, more grateful than he realizes that he made this easy on me.

  “Don’t worry,” I say and indulge in one more embrace—this time with enough persuasion to leave us both wishing his mother wasn’t sitting and drinking tea upstairs. “I promise to parade through the streets dripping with jewels and furs at least twice a week. Three, if you promise to kiss me like that again.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Madame Eleanor, but I think I can oblige,” he says.

  And he does.

  Chapter 3

  “So now, not only am I not allowed to sell any of my potions, but my reputation is in tatters.” I throw myself onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling, where a watermark in the shape of a giant cross looks down on me. I’m going to need to get that thatch looked at soon, or one of these days, I’m going to wake up to a deluge overhead. “Half the townspeople are afraid I’m going to poison them while they sleep, and the half who aren’t—mostly Hartfords, by the way—don’t believe in witchcraft in the first place. I’m ruined, Liam. Ruined.”

  My brother, never what one would call a sympathetic man, sighs into the phone. “I told you it wasn’t a good idea to move there permanently, remember? It’s all that bad energy hanging about the place.”

  “Please. You don’t believe in bad energy. You just don’t like that I’m living my bucolic British dream without you.”

  “Your dream, huh? Is that the one that ends with you being run out of town with pitchforks, or the one where you get burned at the stake in the village square?”

  “Um.”

  “Exactly.” He pauses, his silence heavy with meaning. “You could move home, you know. There’s always room for you on my couch. And now that you don’t have to pay for Winnie’s care anymore . . .”

  Even though he can’t see me, I shake my head. The three of us were—are—triplets, which means he’s just as close to Winnie, genetically speaking, as me. But his relationship with her never went as deep.

  How could it? I was the one who was in the car with her the night she entered a comatose state almost twelve years ago. I was the one who became a fake medium to pay for her long-term health care bills. I was the one who suddenly started hearing her talk to me right before she died last year.

  And, you know, after.

  Winnie’s postmortem communication with me is neither regular nor predictable, but there’s a pattern to it I can’t deny. Most of the time, she comes only at night, her voice a cheerful backdrop that weaves in and out of my dreams. In other words, it could be written off as the natural nocturnal wanderings of the mind.

  The only problem with that theory is that whenever I’m stressed or in trouble—or, it seems, investigating a murder—she adds daytime visits to her repertoire. It sounds crazy, I know, but I can tell when it’s the real deal. Although Liam says he believes me when I tell him about some of the conversations Winnie and I have shared, I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m playing a few cards short of a full deck.

  “It’s nice of you to offer,” I say with sincerity. Cynic though he may be, my brother does love me. That much I know is true. “But, no. I’ve chosen to live here, and I intend to see this thing through. I refuse to run away while my honor is at stake.”

  He laughs. “What honor?”

  “My honor as a practitioner of the art of witchcraft, of course. Hang on a second, will you? I think there’s someone at the door.”

  I’d hoped that in tying up my cell phone for a long chat with my brother in New York, I’d avoid any pesky calls from Inspector Piper or anyone else in the village who might be envisioning my head on the end of a pike. I’d forgotten, however, that in a small town like this one, people are just as likely to stop by as they are to provide a fair warning via phone first.

  “Please enter,” I call as I reach the bottom of the stairs. “My domain is always available to those in need.” At Liam’s snort, I add, in a lower voice for only his ears, “Don’t be mean. What if it’s a paying client? I have to give them a show.”

  The back door pushes open a fraction.

  “No curse is so strong it can’t be lifted, no problem so vast it can’t be solved with the right approach,” I add.

  “Except for you running around town poisoning people,” Liam says. “Don’t forget to tell them about that part.”

  I hang up on him and hide the phone behind a potted fern just as a tentative head pokes through the opening in the door.

  “Lenora!” I cry as soon as I recognize the small yet resolute face peering in at me. “How nice to see you.”

  I don’t know that nice is the right word, but it’s the only one I can think of on the spur of the moment. The MacDougal girl’s braid is coming loose from its binding and she has a navy blue uniform jacket tied around her waist. With a backpack slung over her shoulder and a bike helmet in hand, the chances are high that she’s stopping by on her way home from school.

  “Do your parents know you’re here?” I ask.

  “No, of course not. They don’t approve of you.” She drops her backpack to the floor with a heavy thump. “Is it true you kidnap people’s babies and trade them with demons?”

  I bite back a laugh. “Not quite. You’re thinking of changelings. The fairies are responsible for that.”

  She pauses in the middle of dropping her helmet to the floor along with her pack. “Fairies? But I thought they were nice.”

  “That’s what they want you to think. Some of them are quite nasty. Is there, um, something you wanted? I’m not sure you need to take off your shoes. It’s not that kind of house.”

  “Oh, can’t I, please? They pinch my feet. I’ve been dreaming of taking them off all day.”

  The way she looks up at me, her little face so earnest and her eyes wide, makes it impossible for me to deny her request. Nor, apparently, am I able to stop her from continuing the sloughing off of the various items gathered about her. Shoes, the jangling contents of her pockets, the lanyard around her neck . . . I can only watch, bewildered, as she makes herself at home. She even goes so far as to put the kettle on and set about preparing an afternoon tea.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” she asks as she blithely continues setting items on a tray. “I’m always starving after school. One of the mums petitioned them last year to only serve vegetarian organics, so lunch is complete rubbish. My friend Meera smuggles in snack cakes most days, but she was out sick. Do you have any milk?”


  I gesture toward the miniature fridge.

  “Lovely. Now we can have a comfortable chat. Did you hear that Mrs. Blackthorne died last night? They took her to hospital, but she’d been poisoned, so there was no hope. I’ve never seen anyone get poisoned before. It was kind of gross, wasn’t it?”

  “It was very gross,” I agree. And, because I’m ostensibly the grown-up in the room, I add, “Do you need to talk to someone about it? I’m sure it was very upsetting, seeing—”

  “Oh, I’m all right—really I am. I was a little upset last night, but my brother, George, is always killing things like ants and flies and mice out in the fields behind our house. I see a lot of dead things.”

  “He kills mice?” I ask, somewhat alarmed. The ants and flies I can understand, but killing something with a pulse requires a whole different level of maliciousness. If there’s a line to be drawn in the sand, a functioning circulatory system is where I’d put it.

  “Well, he has to.” She bites into a digestive biscuit. “Ever since our cat disappeared last month, it’s his job to keep them from coming into the house. He’s good at it, too. By the way, the kids at school are saying you poisoned Mrs. Blackthorne, but I told them that you’re the good kind of witch, like Professor McGonagall. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  I blink. “That I’m the good kind of witch, or that I didn’t poison Mrs. Blackthorne?”

  She waves an airy hand. “Either one.”

  “Um . . .” I strain to think of a polite—and kid-friendly—way to close this conversation. The best I can come up with is, “There’s no such thing as a good or a bad witch. Just ones with ordinary human motives. And, no, of course I didn’t poison that poor woman. Was there something you needed, Lenora? I don’t mean to be rude, but—”

  “I’ve come to apply to be your apprentice.” She sets the completed tea in front of me with a flourish. For a girl who’s never set foot in my kitchen before, she’s done a decent job of it. There’s even a miniature sugar spoon I can’t recall seeing before. “It’s a school thing. We’re supposed to find a profession we’re interested in and then job shadow for the rest of the semester. Oona wanted me to apply at her office, but I hate all those crying kids.”

  “Oona?” I echo.

  “My mum—if you can call her that. So, can I?”

  “Well, actually . . .”

  “I’m a keen worker. You won’t regret it.” She blinks expectantly up at me. “You aren’t drinking your tea.”

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur. I obligingly lift the cup to my lips and sip. The tea is good—strong and rich, with just the right amount of milk to take the edge off.

  “See? And I make a smashing cuppa.” She leaps to her feet and drags her eight-ton backpack across the floor. After a brief struggle with the zipper, she reaches inside and extracts a piece of paper. “Aha! Here it is. The job-shadow form. You just fill in the top part, and then my parents have to sign at the bottom.”

  I see an easy out and latch on to it. “I’d love to have you, I really would, but I don’t think your parents will agree to this plan. Or, to be fair, your school. My profession isn’t exactly . . . academic.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t have to be,” she says, unperturbed. She pushes a pen toward me. “The Haldwell twins are going to shadow the guy who makes the cider for the pub, and he does it in his bathtub. Here.”

  When I hesitate once more, her voice adopts a wheedling note I find difficult to withstand.

  “Please, Madame Eleanor? I think what you do is so neat. If you fill it out, I’ll get my parents on board, I promise. I just know it’ll help me develop my interests in botany and folklore.”

  Botany and folklore are important things for a girl to learn, I’ll admit. They’re science and literature wrapped up in one witchy package. At her age, I’d have loved to be able to ask questions of someone other than the overworked librarian, who was far too busy unjamming the copier to care about my queries into the underworld.

  And to be honest, there’s no way Lenora’s parents will agree to this. Her mother loathes me and her father is the local schoolmaster. If anyone can halt a disastrous apprenticeship in its tracks, it’s Dr. and Mr. MacDougal. With only a niggling pang of guilt, I begin to fill out my portion of the page.

  Name of Profession: Dabbler in the Dark Arts.

  Years in Profession: Either eleven or an eternity, depending on your constructs of time.

  Education: School of Hard Knocks, twenty-nine years (see above on time).

  Licensing and Insurance: None, whatsoever.

  I sign and date the page with a flourish. If that doesn’t get someone at the school to take this poor, deluded child under his or her wing and direct her toward a more respectable position, I don’t know what will.

  Lenora takes it from my hand and giggles as she reads it over. “You’re funny, Madame Eleanor. What do we learn first? Can I start this afternoon?”

  As my primary plan for the rest of the day is to research the physiological effects of various poisons on the human system, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have a twelve-year-old sidekick whose parents may or may not be sending her to boarding school after this.

  “Why don’t we wait until your school gives the formal okay?” I suggest. At her crestfallen look, I add, “And for homework, you can, um, find out if there have been any changeling sightings in this part of England during the past hundred years.”

  She perks. “Ooh, can I? Would that sort of information be at the museum?”

  I think of the small, underwhelming village museum that contains mostly Roman pottery shards and Hartford family history archives and laugh. “Sure. Why not? Write me up a five-page report on all the instances of the occult you can find.”

  From the beaming way she leaps to her feet, you’d think I just handed her an all-expenses-paid cruise to the Bahamas.

  “I’m on it,” she says with a salute. She also begins the laborious process of returning all her belongings to her pack. Only the form doesn’t go back into the backpack—that she holds in her hands with a kind of reverence I’m starting to find worrisome. “I’ll come by tomorrow about the same time, yeah? Unless you want to meet somewhere else?”

  “How about the tea shop on the edge of the village?” I suggest. I don’t usually work from a remote office, but it seems wise to meet Lenora somewhere highly public. That way, if her parents want to murder and/or arrest me for the corruption of their minor, they’ll have to do it in front of an audience. “It’ll be my treat.”

  “Deal.” Lenora sticks out her hand and holds it there until I give it a perfunctory shake. It’s a very businesslike way to conclude our transaction—a thing I appreciate and fear at the same time. “And thank you, Madame Eleanor. You aren’t going to regret this.”

  “Sheesh. You can buy just about anything online these days, can’t you?” I turn away from my scribblings and address Beast, who sits curled at my feet. She likes to be near me whenever she’s in the house, but it’s rare that she comes close enough for me to pet her. She likes to keep the mystery alive that way. “Someone needs to take a serious look at what kinds of companies are shilling arsenic and chloroform to the masses. This can’t be legal.”

  I scroll farther down the helpful website I’ve found, which is most likely being flagged and watched by several government information agencies.

  D, Drip Drip: Seriously, Ellie. I think your bathroom is starting to flood.

  The sound of my sister’s voice doesn’t, as it first used to, frighten me. Back when I wasn’t sure who was speaking to me—or why—I’d had serious doubts about my mental state. Now that I know it’s my sister keeping an ever-watchful eye on me, I feel delighted. Her visits aren’t nearly as often as I’d like.

  “I put a pot in there,” I protest as I rise to my feet. “Two of them, actually. And you’d think the clawfoot tub would manage to catch the rest.”

  Winnie doesn’t respond. Beast, however, does. With a mewl of protest at being dislodged from her c
omfortable position, she arches her back and leads the way to the tiny room next to mine that just manages to contain a toilet, a pedestal sink, and the aforementioned tub.

  That’s another thing I should probably mention—animals appear to be able to hear Winnie, too. Either that or my sister has taken on the form of my cat and intends to judge my life choices from her comfortable feline perch. I haven’t been able to decide which option makes me sound less deranged, so I’m leaving them both open.

  “Oh, no!” I cry as I enter the bathroom to find that the thatch has sprung not one, not two, but three more leaks. The subdued patter of rain overhead might sound like a soothing evening backdrop, but the way the water channels in and soaks through the plaster is anything but.

  I dump my toothbrush out of its cup and place that vessel under the largest of the drips, but based on the rate of precipitation, it won’t last long.

  “There’s nothing else to do,” I say with a groan. “I’m going to have to dip into the last of my savings and have the roofer out. There’s just enough in there to eke out a down payment.”

  And by just enough, I mean literally that. I’ll have nothing left but the money Mr. Worthington paid me for Regina. Which means that unless the roof thatcher is willing to work for all-you-can-wear attraction elixirs, I’m going to need to seriously step up my investigation game around here.

  Of course, you could always ask your boyfriend—

  “Not you too, Winnie! You’re supposed to be on my side, remember?” I cross my arms and glare in a general upward direction. All I get for my pains is a drop of cold rainwater in my eye and the sound of her laughter echoing until there’s nothing left but silence.

  I know, without quite understanding why, that she won’t be back again tonight. I’d love a chance to brainstorm other financial options with her—taking on a roommate, perhaps, or starting an herbal medicine class for the locals—but her advice tends to be less than practical. I imagine it’s because there’s no need to earn a living where she is. She probably doesn’t even have to eat.