by Linnea West
“I don’t really see anything out of the ordinary,” Ned said. “Nothing is out of place.”
Esmeralda’s head snapped up and Maggie tried to look away before her mother could see that she had been watching her. Maggie knew she wasn’t fast enough, though. Esmeralda had definitely seen the look of pity on her face. She wanted to look back and smile, but she knew that would probably make it worse. So Maggie focused on Ned and tried to force a smile at him instead.
“Everything is here,” Ned was saying. “I set up all of these tables myself before the class. There isn’t anything that shouldn’t be here. Is there anything else you wanted me to look at?”
“Actually, yes, there is something I need you to look at,” Maggie said. “Follow me.”
Leading the way to the storeroom, Ned followed eagerly behind as Esmeralda brought up the rear. Esmeralda leaned heavily on her walking stick as Ned practically jogged behind Maggie. Their energies were totally contrasting and it made Maggie even sadder for her mother because Ned was definitely the older one of the two. She had a sudden thought that for the first time in her life, Maggie’s mother seemed old.
Pushing the door to the storeroom open, Maggie let the cold draft snap her back to reality. Ned gave her a confused look as she led the trio over to the secret tunnel. It took her a moment to find it. The only landmark was the tower of cauldrons by the entrance and honestly, there were piles of cauldrons everywhere so it took a couple of tries before she walked by the correct one.
“Are you sure this is where you want me to look?” Ned asked. “I honestly don’t know a lot about cauldrons.”
“There’s something else back there that we’d like you to take a look at,” Maggie said. “We might need a little light, though.”
Esmeralda’s hazel eyes looked at Maggie and for a moment, the sadness seemed to slip away as she winked at her daughter. In an instant, an old-fashioned lantern hung in the air next to each of them, illuminating their path. Maggie smiled at her mother and hoped the sadness would stay away for a while.
For now, Maggie turned and walked down the tunnel, making sure to go slowly enough to keep the lantern next to her. Even though she had already been down there once, it was creepy and if she walked too fast, the lantern would end up behind her, casting strange shadows on the floor in front of her. So she slowed, picking light over speed.
Finally, the end of the tunnel was there with the large bookshelf of creepy bottles. Maggie was almost glad to see it.
“Here is what we want you to inspect,” Maggie said, gesturing toward the shelf.
Ned’s mouth dropped open, his eyes wide. He rushed forward and thrust his arms out like he was about to grab everything but just in time, he thought better of it and stopped. Ned started picking up bottles one by one and holding them up to the lantern to inspect their contents.
“I had no idea this was all back here,” Ned said. “She wasn’t trying to run some sort of black market potion supply business, right?”
He looked back and forth between the witches, one bushy white eyebrow cocked high in the air. Maggie wanted to giggle, but Ned’s face was very serious. Instead, Maggie cleared her throat.
“No, at least not that we know of,” she said. “It appears that Linda just really liked making potions. Let us know if you find anything interesting.”
“Was this where you found the bottle marked poison?” Ned asked.
Maggie and Esmeralda both nodded. Ned stroked his beard as he inspected each bottle. Maggie was glad he was doing such a thorough job but as time ticked on, she started to get restless. Maybe bringing Ned here wasn’t a great idea. So far he hadn’t done anything to help, although he also hadn’t done anything to hurt the investigation either. She was trying to think of a way to get Ned to move a bit faster when a terrific crash from the opening of the secret tunnel startled her. Someone or something had knocked over the stack of cauldrons outside of the entrance.
Whirling around, Esmeralda and Maggie couldn’t tell who had caused the noise. Motioning to Ned to stay quiet and stay put, Esmeralda took the lead, creeping toward the end of the tunnel with Maggie close behind her. Maggie’s heart was pounding so loudly that she was sure whoever else was in the storeroom could hear it. Her mind was going blank, but Maggie practiced the magic word for her protection spell in her head so that she would be ready in case she had to use it.
At the end of the tunnel, Esmeralda stopped and let her skirts swirl around her as Maggie fell in beside her. Maggie wanted to ask what the next part of the plan was when a face suddenly appeared from around the corner. Letting out a scream, Maggie leapt backward and yelled out the protection spell.
“SALVUS.”
As the pink bubble flew out of her fingertips and formed around Maggie and her mother, Maggie realized that she knew the face that had launched her into a tizzy. Abby’s pale, confused face was staring back at her from the other side of the shimmery bubble.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Is everything alright?” Abby asked.
She put out one finger and poked the bubble that stood between her and the secret potion-making tunnel. The bubble depressed a bit but sprung back to full-strength.
“Maggie, you can let the spell go now,” Esmeralda said. She put her hand gently on Maggie’s shoulder. “It’s just Abby.”
Until that moment, Maggie had completely forgotten that she had been the one to conjure the bubble and even though she couldn’t really feel it, she was the one maintaining it. Shaking her hands out, Maggie let herself relax a bit and the bubble faded away.
Abby stared at the younger witch, her dark-rimmed eyes searching Maggie’s face until finally, Maggie turned away, too uncomfortable to keep looking at her. She looked down at the ground and awkwardly shifted her weight from one foot to the other as she tried to figure out what to say.
“Sorry about that,” Maggie said. “We didn’t know it was you.”
The generic apology was the only thing Maggie could think to say. Her heart was still pounding a mile a minute as she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t in danger and it could let her relax a little bit. Thankfully Esmeralda was not feeling the same way and she stepped into the role of the lead investigator with a small, comforting smile toward Maggie.
“We didn’t know anyone else was here,” Esmeralda said. “What are you doing here?”
Abby shrugged, not breaking eye contact with Esmeralda. She had an empty sort of look in her eyes that Maggie didn’t like.
“The same thing as before,” Abby said. “I just want to get this place cleaned up as soon as I can. I need to get the doors to the shop back open and prove to Mr. Brank that I can run this place better than Linda did.”
“But we still aren’t done solving the case,” Esmeralda said. “You can’t clean up until we have figured out what happened to Linda.”
Abby’s nose wrinkled up in disgust. She looked almost menacing with her pale face and dark red lips. Maggie felt a shudder go down her spine even as Abby’s face relaxed back into her normal expression.
“I figured it was done,” Abby said. “After Ned was cleared and you took Nancy into custody, I didn’t think there would be any more twists and turns in the case. I took it as a sign that I could finally get this shop back on track.”
“You seem awfully anxious to clean,” Maggie said.
This was the second time Abby had shown up when she thought the store would be empty claiming that she wanted to clean. It seemed strange to Maggie that she would be so enthusiastic to clean up.
“I just want to show Mr. Brank that I can do it,” Abby said. She scowled again, the edges of her dark red lips turned downward. “I’m a little afraid that after all of this, he will shut down the store for good and I’ll be out of a job.”
“Maybe I could finally sell cauldrons in my shop again,” Ned said under his breath.
Maggie shot him a look before she turned back to Abby. Ned just shrugged his shoulders, making a hand motion that Maggie
took to mean he didn’t think Abby could hear him. Apparently, Warlock Ned needed a hearing test.
“What would he do with this place instead?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think it really matters,” Abby said, staring hard at Maggie.
“Lou Brank doesn’t care what sort of business any of his buildings house as long as they make plenty of profit for him,” Esmeralda said. “He doesn’t care who works for him or how much they are paid so long as they keep paying him his share.”
“His share?” Abby scoffed. “More like everything. The one thing Linda and I agreed on was how much we hated Lou Brank. Of course, we had to be nice to him and do what he said so that he wouldn’t fire us. But the only good thing about him was that it was the only topic of conversation that Linda and I were in agreement about. In fact, sometimes we would start trash talking him just so that we could pass the time without bickering about something.”
What a sad sort of acquaintanceship that makes. It wasn’t that Maggie liked Lou Brank or even that she thought it was mean of them to trash-talk him. On the contrary, she believed that Lou got what he deserved in that aspect. But she just couldn’t understand spending so much time with someone and only being able to have a civil discussion by trash-talking someone else.
Abby started to ramble on about Lou Brank and how he owned the entire city and how much she hated him. Maggie started to zone out, staring into some point in the distance over Abby’s shoulder. She tried to think back through the case. The one thing she still couldn’t figure out was how the poison got into the potion. If Ned didn’t do it at the beginning and Nancy didn’t do it at the end, had Linda somehow put the poison in her own potion?
Of course, Linda hadn’t poisoned herself, but Maggie couldn’t help but wonder if there was a way that one of her ingredients had been switched with another laced with poison. She would have unknowingly put the poison in her own potion. That didn’t explain who had done it or why. It also didn’t explain why they couldn’t pinpoint the poison from the ingredients they had dissected out of the potion. Maggie wished she understood potions and magic more. It was hard to solve a puzzle when she didn’t have all of the pieces.
“I’ve got it!”
Maggie whirled around to see Ned holding something triumphantly above his head. He was shaking the object around so much that the lantern couldn’t keep up with him. It bobbed up and down, trying to illuminate whatever was in his hand. Apparently, Ned had gotten tired of Abby’s rambling too except he didn’t care about being polite. He had simply gone back to the task at hand.
“Got what?” Maggie asked.
Her head went up and down, following Ned’s hand as she tried to figure out what she was holding. Maggie felt like she was at a sideways tennis match as she watched.
“I figured out where the poison came from,” Ned said. “Or I think I did at least.”
“Ned, you’re going to have to show us what you actually found,” Esmeralda said.
Her voice was tinged with contempt, but Ned didn’t seem to notice. He still had a wide smile on his face as he strode toward the women. Holding his hand out toward them, Maggie could see an empty bottle in his hand.
“Ned, that bottle says Bramblewood elixir,” she said.
The label was plain as day and she wondered if Ned had forgotten how to read in all of the excitement. It seemed like something that Warlock Ned would do in a nerve-wracking situation.
“But you need to smell it,” he said.
He shoved the bottle closer to Maggie. She leaned over to take a sniff but before she could inhale, Ned snatched the bottle away, his eyes wide and wild.
“Are you crazy?” he asked, shouting at Maggie even though he was standing right next to her. “You never directly inhale a potion or the ingredients. It could kill you or maybe even kill your sense of smell.”
Esmeralda put her head in her hand and sighed at Ned’s backward priorities. Ned held the bottle in one hand and put his other hand over it as though he was trying to catch some invisible force coming out of it.
“You need to waft the aroma over to you,” Ned said.
He delicately fanned the top of the open bottle toward his nose. After a moment, Ned shut his eyes and took such a deep inhale that his nostrils fluttered and half of his gray mustache hair flew up his nose with the odor. Opening his eyes, his face relaxed into a smile.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said.
Maggie gingerly took the bottle from him and held it at arm’s length. She followed his demonstration for how to sniff a potion ingredient, but she toned down the inhale just a bit. Maggie didn’t want to inhale too deeply or she might discover mustache hairs she didn’t know she was growing.
As she inhaled, she couldn’t smell a thing. Maggie glanced at Ned, but before she could say anything, he reached out and grabbed her arm. Adjusting her elbow to bend more and bring the bottle closer to her nose, Ned nodded enthusiastically.
Maggie tried wafting and inhaling again. This time a very distinct aroma filled her nostrils. Surprised, she looked up at Ned. He was still nodding and smiling at her.
“Good, you smell it too,” he said. “Describe it to me please.”
Sniffing one more time, Maggie tried to figure out exactly what it smelled like. It was definitely not like bramblewood elixir, which she remembered smelling a bit like wet dog when she had added it to her potion during class.
“It smells like a mixture of raspberry lemonade and pine trees,” Maggie said. “I’ve never smelled anything like it before.”
“That’s probably because someone made this poison and they purposely used sweet, good smelling aromas to mask it,” Ned said. “I’m not exactly sure what sort of poison this is, but I can smell a very faint smell of licorice. That is what magical poison smells like. It’s a bit hidden in there, but this bottle definitely held the poison at some point.”
Maggie took one more whiff of the bottle. Sure enough, if she shut her eyes and concentrated, she could also smell the faint smell of licorice. Maggie hated black licorice, so in some ways, it pleased her to learn that was also what poison smelled like.
“Ned, I know the bottle is empty, but from what you can tell, was this made to look like bramblewood elixir?” Esmeralda asked.
Holding the bottle up toward his lantern, Ned studied it from all angles. Asking Ned to look at any sort of potion and talk about it was a dangerous game. It could be an hour before he surfaced from his investigation to be of any help.
Maggie looked at her mother, who was focused on Ned. Esmeralda seemed to have come around in regards to Ned. At this point, he seemed to be their only hope of solving the case. The older witch’s face was serene, but Maggie could see a few worry lines around her eyes. Something about this case seemed off and Maggie could sense it too.
Glancing at Abby, Maggie could see that the vampire was nervous about something. She was shifting from foot to foot, biting her lip with one fang. Perhaps she was worried about Lou Brank and whether he would actually allow her to keep running the store. Abby kept glancing around the storeroom. The number of cauldrons was staggering and Maggie wondered where Abby would even start.
“I’d like to start by saying that this is quite the baffling puzzle for me,” Ned said. He sounded as though he were about to start an incredibly tedious lecture, but Maggie hoped he would jump to the point. “There are only a few drops in here, but I think it was made to appear or perhaps it somehow was bramblewood elixir at some point. If you sniff the cork, safely of course, it smells like the musky wet dog smell of bramblewood.”
Ned threw a side-eyed glance at Maggie when he mentioned smelling things safely as though he thought she might rush him for the cork and stick it straight up her nose to smell it. She somehow managed to refrain, instead smiling at Ned in hopes he would continue on with his thesis on the empty bottle.
“The confusion comes in because this was not where I procured the ingredients for my class,” Ned said. “I brought e
verything with me from my store and had a trunk of extra supplies placed back here in case we did run out of something. I didn’t even know until today that Linda had these ingredients here and even if I did, I never would have trusted her to provide quality ingredients. Especially now that I’ve been witness to this confusing mess of poison.”
Shaking the bottle around, Ned scowled at the thought of using Linda’s ingredients.
“If you brought all of your ingredients, how did Linda end up with this in her potion?” Esmeralda asked. “And how did we not catch it when we dissected the ingredients?”
“And how did it end up in Linda’s potion?” Maggie asked.
“I’m not sure about those first two questions, but I can answer the last one,” Ned said. “Don’t you both remember when Nancy accidentally dropped the bottle of bramblewood elixir on the floor? I was going to get her some more from my stockpile up front but then…”
Ned’s voice trailed off. His eyes started to dart from side to side as his breathing picked up. Maggie wished now more than ever that she could read minds. Ned seemed to be on the right track, but he wasn’t letting anyone in on it.
“Then what?” Esmeralda asked, her voice urgent and frustrated at the same time.
“But then Abby brought her a different bottle of bramblewood elixir,” Ned said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ned’s voice shook as he pointed to Abby. The vampire was standing in the entrance of the tunnel, trapping the witches and Ned in the dark, creepy hallway. She stood with her hands on her hips and her fangs glinted in the small glimmers of overhead light that reached her.
“Linda’s bottle fell off of the table and broke,” Ned said. “Abby was the one to go get more for her. I sort of wondered where she got it because it looked a little different, but I was so busy trying to help everyone finish their potions that I sort of forgot about it.”
