Trouble's Brewing (Stirring Up Trouble)

by Alexander, Juli

  “Of course you do.”

  Christmas had exploded in the mall, with red and green decorations, and the nonstop Christmas music. Little kids waited impatiently to see Santa and to ride the tot-sized train.

  Mom and I found some delicious hand lotion at one of the department stores, and we agreed that the vanilla scent was perfect for the gift packages. Unfortunately, we didn’t accomplish much more, and I realized I had no idea what to get Jake.

  “I was thinking about Milo and his family,” Mom said. “I know Bill and Marjorie would love to have autographed volumes of Martin’s work on potions.”

  “Mom, you are brilliant! I know exactly which one Milo would like.”

  “If only everyone else were so easy,” she said as we walked to the parking lot.

  “I guess Finn wouldn’t want his own work. Maybe we should get him a vacation. Then he’d actually have to take a vacation.”

  “Maybe,” Mom said. “What he might like most is a friend.”

  “I can try to brew him one, but the Council will probably get ticked off.”

  “Not funny,” Mom said, but she was grinning. “I wish we could brew him a friend.”

  I wished I could brew her a date.

  On Thursday, I was sitting in class when it hit me. A stroke of genius. Well, maybe not genius. It started with the guy wearing the Vampire Weekend T-shirt across from me. Then I remembered Brice’s South Park T-shirt from this morning. Finn the potions master didn’t need anything. He had the resources to buy whatever he wanted. The Finn we should be shopping for was the nineteen-year-old, the young college guy that he appeared to be. Mom had helped him with his wardrobe, and he was working on behaving and speaking more like a teen. He needed the full pop culture education. He needed a season’s worth of South Park, Family Guy, The Big Bang Theory, and Sponge Bob. The DVD collections would be perfect gifts.

  In between classes, I texted Mom.

  She texted back before the bell rang. Brilliant!

  By the time I got home, Mom had already stopped by Target and bought the DVDs. She’d also picked up a T-shirt with Brian, the dog from Family Guy, and one of Stewie with his freakishly shaped head.

  “Want to help me wrap these?” she asked.

  “No. I want to work on the substitution tonight.”

  “Okay,” she said, scooping up her purchases. “I can’t believe we already got Martin taken care of!”

  Finn finally arrived on Thursday night, and I decided to reveal my surprise. I couldn’t contain my excitement any longer. “Finn,” I announced. “I’m only a couple of days away from perfecting the unicorn horn solution.”

  Finn didn’t look up from his laptop. “That’s nice.”

  “No, really. Finn, I’ve almost got it. Unicorn horn!” I said proudly.

  Finn looked at me this time. “Zoe, are you quite serious?”

  I nodded. “Yes! I wanted to wait until I had it complete, but I’m too excited. I’m so close. I think I’ll have it by the end of the week.”

  “Show me,” Finn said, not a hint of excitement in his voice.

  Did he not believe me? I wrinkled my brow in consternation. “Um, okay.” I took out all of the ingredients, and then got my favorite cauldron. “I used the limestone plus four cat’s meows, plus a few other tweaks on my original choices with the ingredients for the enlargement of inanimate objects potion.” I opened the back door and motioned to the giant flower pot on the patio. It was the size of a large trash can. “The potion should have yielded better results. The flower pot should have reached about ten feet tall and five feet in diameter.” I stopped to see Finn’s reaction. “It’s not perfect, but I’m close.” I was ready for the accolades now.

  “Oh dear,” Finn said, his expression solemn. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I only gave you permission to pursue the substitution because I thought there was no chance of you succeeding.”

  His words hit me like a punch to my gut. “You thought I couldn’t do it?”

  “I clearly underestimated your gift.”

  “You knew about the toad slime. Why would you think I couldn’t do it?”

  “I apologize, my dear. I have handled the situation quite poorly.” He sank down onto a stool. “Finding a substitution for unicorn horn is dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “Yes. The one potion ingredient with the most potential for weaponization is unicorn horn. Unicorns are scarce, and while witches have developed some terrifying weapons from the substance, they haven’t been utilized because of the cost and the tracking procedures for orders of unicorn horn.”

  “Weapons? Like guns?”

  “Like ultra-powerful nuclear bombs.”

  Oh. I sat down as the news sank in. A substitution for unicorn horn wouldn’t help cure cancer. It would destroy lives instead of saving them. And I had almost discovered it. “Why didn’t you tell me this in the first place?”

  He shook his head. “I can only apologize.”

  “You thought I couldn’t do it. So you just let me waste my time.” I thought about the hours I’d spent thinking, planning, experimenting. The wasted time over Thanksgiving with my desperation to get back to work. “I could have been working on something else!”

  “Zoe, you have to stop your experiments and destroy all your notes on unicorn horn immediately. You haven’t shared your findings with anyone, have you? What about young Milo?”

  “No. No one.”

  “Hey, guys,” Mom said, coming in from the garage. “How’s your session going?”

  “It’s terrible,” I said.

  “Not well I’m afraid,” Finn admitted.

  Mom set down her purse, took in our serious expressions, and pulled up a stool. “Tell me. How bad is it?”

  “Rather horrid.”

  “Mom! The unicorn substitution has been a waste of time. Finn didn’t expect me to succeed, so he didn’t tell me not to do it. He didn’t tell me that unicorn horn is dangerous and can be weaponized.”

  “Oh, Zoe,” Mom said.

  “Child,” Finn said. “I cannot tell you how incredibly sorry I am about this situation. I believe I have learned a difficult lesson, a lesson as difficult as the one you are facing now.”

  “I really doubt it,” I said.

  “Annie, why don’t you pour us each a glass of tea, and we’ll adjourn to the living room. There is something I haven’t told either of you, and I believe it’s time to ‘come clean’ as they say.”

  This did not sound good. I glanced at my mother. She didn’t have a clue either, and the whole situation was way too familiar. The last bad news an adult had shared had been my parents telling me about their impending divorce.

  Mom went to the refrigerator and removed the pitcher of tea. She pulled three glasses from the cabinet, and then she used the ice dispenser to fill each with ice. I watched her as if her actions were enthralling, but I needed something to focus on, something to cling to.

  Finn helped her fill each glass with tea, and then he handed me one. Mom placed the tea pitcher on the top shelf of the fridge, and Finn led the way into the living room. Mom took a seat on the couch, holding her tea glass tightly in both hands, and then gestured for me to sit next to her. I did, sitting as close as possible.

  Finn sat in the arm chair, and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “The decision to hide this from you wasn’t mine in the beginning. The Council covered this up decades ago.

  “Zoe, you asked me once about the margarine substitution. I gleaned from your questions and those of Milo that you suspected I had a hand in it.” He shook his head. “In fact I did not.

  “I described some of the more troubling aspects of the dead man’s toe experimentation. The crimes committed were not insignificant. The obsession involved was quite honestly terrifying. The work itself, however, was brilliant. As I believe we discussed, the contribution to potions science was the greatest of the century.


  “The witch involved, the brilliant potions master, the woman who made this revolutionary contribution…” Finn paused and gave me a pitying glance. “Zoe, the woman who stole body parts from hundreds, possibly thousands, of graves… was your great-grandmother.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  My jaw dropped. How could I be related to the woman who discovered the substitution and not have any idea? How could my mother not know? Did my grandmother know?

  “My grandmother?” Mom asked, incredulity in her voice. “That’s impossible.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Finn said. “As for Zoe’s gift, her incredible talent for potions, well the young lady comes by it honestly. Her great-grandmother had the same incredible instincts, although she had less control than Zoe. Celeste’s obsession drove her to abandon her family and toil over human body parts for nearly thirty years. She went days on end without sleeping, isolated herself completely for years at a time, and relied only on magic to meet her basic needs. She lost her humanity and eventually her sanity.”

  “What happened to her?” my mother asked.

  “She never returned to her family, to your mother. She died after many years in a prison for the insane. I am told she reacted well to a normal routine imposed by the prison. She began to function quite well and spent the last decade of her life reading. She was widely viewed to be quite content in her later years. Unfortunately, the doctors were beginning to consider a possible reunion with her family when she contracted cancer.”

  “I had no idea.” Mom set her tea on the coffee table and then slipped mine from my hands to set it down as well. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer. “Now I see why you’ve been challenging Zoe to prove she can stop and take breaks from her experiments.”

  Finn nodded.

  My stomach clenched in very real fear. I had some seriously bad genes. My great-grandmother was the one who discovered that fat-free margarine could be substituted for dead man’s toe. She had been brilliant, driven, determined, and innovative. She’d also been way creepy. She had stolen toes from dead men, cut them off, and spent hours working with them. She had stopped sleeping and ultimately gone mad. And I took after her. I had inherited her gift for potions. Had I inherited her scary tendencies as well?

  “You should have told me about this, Martin,” Mom said in a firm tone. “I’m her mother, and I should have this kind of information.”

  “Yes,” Finn said. “You are correct, Annie. I should have been honest with you. I should have told you the truth, not as a tutor and emissary of the Council but as a friend. I had planned to wait until Zoe was older, a year, maybe two.” Finn focused those brilliant blue eyes on me. “My dear, I am sorry to be the one to tell you the well-guarded secret of your tarnished pedigree.”

  “Mom! What does this mean? What do I do now? Mom, what if I shouldn’t be doing this at all!”

  “Zoe, no!”

  “My dear,” Finn said, “there’s no need to squander your talent.”

  “Sweetheart,” Mom said. “I don’t think you should worry. You are a strong, responsible, rationale girl. You have proven you can handle your potion substitutions and have a normal life. You have friends, a boyfriend, school. You have everything you need to live a long, happy life. I have no doubt that you can manage your gifts without too much trouble.” She grinned. “Maybe a frog here and there.”

  “I second that declaration of confidence in your judgment, Zoe.” Finn moved over to the couch to sit with me and Mom. “You have such potential. I never dreamed you’d crack the unicorn horn substitution so quickly and so effortlessly. It took me almost a year.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Finn had found the substitution already, but he’d hidden it from the world. He’d kept it a secret because it was too dangerous to share. Just as he was asking me to do.

  “Did you hear that, Zoe?” Mom asked, squeezing my shoulder.

  “Yeah. Finn already made the discovery. All I did was discover it again.”

  “No, Zoe. The most brilliant potions master in history told you that you found the substitution in a fraction of the time it took him.”

  “Indeed, I did,” Finn said. “Zoe, you quite definitively kicked my butt.”

  I couldn’t resist smiling at Finn’s choice of words.

  “Well, Martin,” my mother said, “you’ve given us quite a bit to think about.”

  “What about eye of newt?” I asked. “Can I give that one a shot, or is it also against the best interest of mankind?”

  “That’s my girl,” Finn said, his lips curving into a smile. “Eye of newt would be a worthy and commendable use of your time.”

  I went up to call Milo while Mom and Finn talked. Finn told me we could talk safely about the issue if we used the land line instead of our cell phones. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used the land line, but I needed Milo’s friendship right now so I was glad my mother had held onto it.

  “Wow,” Milo said after listening to me regurgitate the events of the evening. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “There’s a lot of drama here.”

  “First, I’m shocked by his lack of faith in you. How could he have doubted your abilities after you discovered the substitution for toad slime? Seriously. His lack of confidence in you was just plain rude.”

  “I know!” His outrage on my behalf helped untangle the muddle of thoughts in my mind. “He’s my tutor. He should have believed in me!”

  “True,” Milo said. “But I don’t think that will ever be a problem again.”

  He had a point. Even though I shouldn’t have had to prove myself to Finn, I would never have to prove myself again.

  “Second,” Milo continued, “I can’t believe we didn’t know that unicorn horn could be used to hurt people. They should have told us that. It’s not fair that the Council keeps so much from us!”

  “And you didn’t waste much time, Zoe. Not really. You found the substitution pretty fast.”

  I sighed into the phone. Yeah. I had managed to find that one in such a short time. And the effort wasn’t wasted. Not really. I had learned something about myself and my process.

  “The, um, great-grandmother thing is tougher to get a handle on,” he admitted. “I guess the idea that she had that kind of horrible obsession and that her life went so, um, wrong… I guess it must be hard to deal with.”

  It hadn’t sunk in. I guess the putrid burning in my stomach was related to the revelation about my great-grandmother. And the heart-stopping, lung-crushing fear of pursuing potions beyond the limits of my sanity.

  I nodded because I wasn’t capable of speech just then.

  “Well your great-grandmother didn’t have me. Or Finn. Or Annie. And if being surrounded by people who love and support you isn’t enough, there are a lot more medications out there now than there were when she was losing it.”

  I smiled in spite of my misery. “Trust you to tell it like it is.”

  “That’s what you keep me around for. The brutal truth.”

  “Not so much, but thank you. You always cheer me up.”

  We talked for a long time, and part of the time we didn’t even talk. We just stayed on the phone. I didn’t want to hang up yet, because with the phone line open between us, I didn’t feel quite so alone. Milo played along, and deep down, I knew he wasn’t willing to leave me until he knew I was ready.

  “You’re a great best friend, Milo,” I told him finally.

  “You too,” he said. “Call if you need me.”

  “I’m okay now,” I said. I kind of was. I could breathe normally, and the acid burn in my throat had subsided.

  My alarm kept buzzing, but I didn’t care. I had wasted weeks of my time. Dr. Finnegan’s lack of faith in me cut deep. The man was my hero. He’d been my hero since I was a kid.

  I didn’t like to whine. Really, I didn’t. I’d dealt with the whole divorce mess, my disappointment in my father, the horror that not
only were my parents human, but they weren’t anywhere close to perfect. Out of all the people in the world, I thought I could trust Dr. Finnegan to understand me, to respect me, and to help me grow into a potions master.

  Instead, he’d failed me. He hadn’t trusted my talent. By encouraging me to work on the unicorn horn substitution, he’d essentially lied.

  “Are you up, Zoe?” Mom asked on her way down the hall. “I have to be on the set in thirty minutes.”

  I got up and dressed on autopilot. I went to the bathroom and washed my face, brushed my hair, brushed my teeth. Mom came in to check on me before she left, and I honestly didn’t know what she was saying. I either couldn’t focus on her, or I didn’t care enough to focus on her. She left for work. I think.

  I went down to the garage to check for her car. Mom was gone. She had gone to work, and I was left here alone.

  On a normal day, I would have finished getting ready. I would have gone outside and waited for the bus.

  Today wasn’t a normal day. I was not going to school.

  I, Zoe Miller, honor roll student and good girl, had decided to skip school. The decision brought me no joy. I had no plans for maximizing my day. No scary movies, no loud music, no dancing with wild abandon.

  I walked past Jasmine in the kitchen, through the living room, and up the stairs. Then I walked into my room, kicked off my shoes, and crawled back into bed. With a sigh, I snuggled into the covers and waited for sleep. Sleep didn’t come. I pulled the cover over my head and stared at the floral print on the sheets.

  My cell rang, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to answer it. I was busy staring.

  When I heard my mother’s car pull into the garage hours later, I accepted the inevitable and climbed out of bed. She practically ran in from the kitchen as I made my way to the living room.

  “Zoe! It’s after four, and you didn’t answer your phone.”

  I sat on the couch and just looked at her.

  “You didn’t go to school, did you?”