Potion Problem: A Halloween Helper's Cozy Mystery

by Linnea West

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  At first, Norhand, Vinnie, and Diggy just sat around drinking their tea as the rain pounded on the entryway window. It was actually quite calming except that every once in a while, lightning would strike next to Norhand and both of the women would jump up off of their chairs, trying not to spill their tea all over the newly appeared furniture.

  “I apologize, but when you travel by thunderstorm, it gets a bit antsy and checks in on you often to see if you’d like to go,” Norhand said, not looking the least bit sorry. “I’ve gotten used to the frequent disruption, but there isn’t anything I can do about it.”

  Vinnie covered her scowl with her teacup as she lifted it up for another drink. It was like someone had taken all of the traits she didn’t like in people and formed them into Norhand. But her livelihood and her sister depended on her being able to work with him, so she needed to learn to control her emotions around him.

  Norhand drained the last of his tea and gingerly set it down on the tray. Vinnie couldn’t help but notice that at no time had he thanked them for the tea or the hospitality, which was just another strike against him in the long list of things Vinnie couldn’t stand.

  “I’m here to check on your progress,” Norhand said. “I understand you’ve gotten a suspect in the death?”

  “Yes, we do,” Vinnie said, trying not to wince at the thought that all of their clues were so flimsy. “Everything just keeps pointing to Thistle.”

  “Good, I just wanted to check,” Norhand said. “There is only one more hour until she will be transported to the Magical Universe Paranormal Prison to be imprisoned for life and I needed to make sure we have the right person down.”

  Diggy swallowed hard and Vinnie agreed with the sentiment. It was hard to imagine locking sweet Thistle up for life, but all of the clues kept pointing back to her. It was just hard to stomach a lifelong imprisonment because witches can lead extraordinarily long lives and if they had made a mistake, they may be dooming an innocent girl to centuries of jail time.

  “Next point, the coven leadership,” Norhand said. He sat back in his chair and folded his hands over his crossed legs. Vinnie tried not to stare at the yellowed nails on his long, skinny fingers. “Do you have someone in mind to appoint to be the next leader?”

  “Not quite, but we have narrowed it down,” Vinnie said, ignoring Norhand’s scowl.

  “Yes, we have a short list of five names that we will be working through,” Diggy said, jumping in to try and help Norhand’s grumpy expression.

  Norhand just hemmed and hawed a bit in his chair, smacking his lips in a disapproving way that only managed to enrage Vinnie and make her want to jump across the table.

  “What a pity,” Norhand said. “Your aunt always worked so efficiently and I assumed you would do the same. You really must learn to pick up the pace if you’d like to continue to be in good standing with the Witch Counsel.”

  “It’s our first case, you have to cut us some slack,” Diggy said.

  She slammed her empty mug down hard enough to make Vinnie wince. Mugs were one of Vinnie’s favorite things and if one of her favorites broke, it just might be the thing to send her over the metaphorical, emotional cliff that she felt like she was teetering on. Vinnie composed herself with a deep breath and calmly replied.

  “It would have been more helpful to leave Lavender here to help,” Vinnie said. “After all, she is one of our greatest assets. We would be much faster and more efficient if all three of us were together.”

  A small, creepy smile spread up Norhand’s face. It made his nose look pointier so that he almost resembled a rat. It was obviously not a smile of happiness, but Vinnie couldn’t tell what emotion was behind it.

  “Rules are rules,” he said. “It is just how things must be done to test your abilities. By the way, have you finished the potion?”

  “The potion!” Diggy cried.

  She jumped off of the loveseat she was perched on and flew away down the hallway and then thundering down the stairs to the basement. Vinnie could hear her banging around a bit and all she could do was hope that the potion was going alright. It was their one and only chance to get it right after all.

  Vinnie wondered if she should go down and try to help, but there wasn’t much she could do. Only witches could make potions. If Vinnie so much as tried to stir one, it would turn to black tar. When she was younger, Lavender would try to include her in on her magic lessons, but after ruining one too many cauldrons with the black tar goo of a non-magical witch’s touch, their mother forbid her from it.

  If Lavender was here, the potion making would have been done long ago. Vinnie longed to ask Norhand for more details about her sister and where exactly she was, but from the way Norhand was watching her, he didn’t seem like he was willing to give up much information.

  Just as Vinnie worked up the courage to ask about Lavender, Diggy reappeared. She was holding a small bottle triumphantly over her head, the green liquid inside sparkling despite the relative darkness of the room thanks to the thunderstorm currently parked over their house.

  “I did it!” she squealed. “I made our base potion! I wasn’t sure if you actually needed a little bit, so I bottled a little up for you to take with. The rest is downstairs ready to be transferred to our own bottles for use in all sorts of potions.”

  Diggy walked right up to Norhand and thrust the bottle at him, shaking it until he finally took it from her. He held it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger, as if it were something disgusting or smelly. He did not look pleased, which made Vinnie curious. She would assume that his job was to make sure they succeeded at doing their jobs. So why was he so set on unhappiness whenever they managed to take another step forward?

  “Yes thank you,” Norhand said. “I’ll take that with me.”

  He took a discolored, dirty handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped the bottle in it, shoving it back into and inside pocket of his robe. Then Norhand walked a few steps towards the door.

  “I really must be going,” he said. “Remember, you have one hour until Thistle will be transported. You also need to pick a coven leader as soon as you can. And I’ll be back with your second clue soon.”

  “Can’t you give it to us now?” Diggy asked as her face fell.

  She and Vinnie had both assumed that they would get the next clue as soon as they solved the first one, but apparently not. This would make it an even longer time until they could get Lavender back with them.

  “That’s not how this works,” Norhand said. “I will get it to you in due time.”

  Storm clouds rolled in and he was just about to zap himself away when Vinnie yelled after him.

  “Hey, what about your furniture?” she said.

  “I assumed you would want to keep it,” Norhand said with a sneer. “I figured you couldn’t afford nice furniture.”

  Vinnie could feel her hands rolling up into fists again, but Diggy jumped to the rescue.

  “Well we don’t want it,” she said, stepping in front of Vinnie.

  “That’s fine,” Norhand said. “I’ll just send it somewhere else.”

  With a snap of his fingers, the furniture, along with the tea tray full of mugs on top of the table, disappeared and the entryway was back to normal.

  “Hey, we said you could take the furniture, not my mugs,” Vinnie said.

  Norhand rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers again. The tray appeared floating in midair right in front of the women. Diggy reached out and grabbed it just as it started to drop, saving the mugs from being smashed on the stone floor.

  “Let me know when you’ve picked the coven leader,” Norhand said.

  A lightning strike lit up the entryway and the boom of thunder echoed off the walls as Norhand disappeared. The rain stopped tapping on the windows and the sun came out once again, bathing the entryway in light.

  “We still have a lot of work to do,” Vinnie said. “Let’s retire to the library.”

  Chapter Twen
ty-Three

  The library was probably Vinnie’s favorite room in the entire house. It was two stories tall with bookshelves on three walls and a big rolling ladder. The fourth wall was a large, curved wall of windows that looked out over the forest. It faced east, so Vinnie liked to come in to watch the sunrise in the mornings. One of the bookshelf walls had a small space for a fireplace that had another one of the magical fires from Lavender that never went out.

  Sitting in front of the fire were two large red velvet chairs with a table sitting in the middle of them. Vinnie and Diggy each took a seat, sitting quietly for a few minutes while they collected their thoughts. Vinnie wrapped herself in a soft gray blanket that had been tossed over the back of her chair. There were a lot of things to think about and they would have to do it fast. The main suspect was supposed to be collected and sent off to jail in an hour and right now, they didn’t even know where she was or if she was the one who had actually committed the murder.

  “What are we going to do about Thistle?” Diggy finally asked.

  “Before we decide that I think we need to figure out if she actually did it,” Vinnie said. “I’m still not convinced it was her. I think someone else did it and through a combination of deception and sheer luck, they are getting it pinned on Thistle.”

  Diggy nodded and then pointed her finger to the space next to her where a big, rolling whiteboard appeared. She stood up and grabbed a green marker, uncapping it and writing Thistle on the board. Then she made two columns underneath, one titled Guilty and the other titled Not Guilty.

  “I think there are two possibilities for why she ran away,” Vinnie said. “Unfortunately they are opposites which means they don’t rule anything out. But the first possibility is that she is guilty and somehow found a chance to run away so that she won’t have to pay for her crime. The second is that she isn’t guilty and she doesn’t want to be locked up forever for something she didn’t do.”

  “You’re right, that isn’t helpful at all,” Diggy said, rolling her eyes. As much of a help as Diggy was being in this case, Vinnie could really do without the teenage sass right about now.

  “But let’s start with guilty,” Vinnie said. “Write this down. She’s the potion keeper. She served the poisoned food. She had access to the kitchen and the potion room. She was at the top of the pack for who would be the next coven leader. Can you think of anything else?”

  Diggy screwed her face up and tapped her finger on her mouth as she thought. Vinnie ran down everything in her mind but she couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Okay, for not guilty there are a few things,” Vinnie said. “Thistle hated Plant, but so did everyone else. If someone brewed the potion and just meant to turn Plant’s heart to stone instead of her entire self, Thistle wouldn’t have made that mistake.”

  “I also don’t think she is guilty,” Diggy said, turning to face Vinnie “Thistle just seems so nice and she was so helpful. Would she be that nice to us if she was really guilty? She even helped teach me about using other energy to do spells.”

  Vinnie had to admit that Diggy was right about that. There was just something about her that made her seem like she wasn’t guilty. So either Thistle was a really good actress or someone was framing her.

  Diggy turned back to the whiteboard and started another list. This one she titled Other Suspects. She turned and shot a sly smile at Vinnie before turning back and writing only one thing under it: Everyone. Vinnie had to laugh because she was kind of right. No one liked Plant and no one was really mourning her. They were more upset that she hadn’t named a successor, but no one was sad that she was gone.

  “I think we should narrow it down a bit more than that,” Vinnie said with a smile.

  Diggy erased it and wrote Ivy and Willow below the title. Vinnie looked out the window watching the wind blow a few of the leaves off the trees. It was getting to be Vinnie’s favorite time of year, when she would go walking in the woods and it would be practically snowing leaves. The red, yellow, orange leaves would come softly floating down to the ground as Vinnie walked. It was so peaceful and beautiful.

  But this year it would be hard to enjoy. Fall and Halloween were the best, but Lavender wasn’t here to celebrate and if Norhand kept dragging this out, they might not get her back until Halloween and that was only if they were able to solve all four clues.

  “Who else should I add?” Diggy asked, snapping Vinnie back to reality.

  “Put down Vine, Rose, and Wisteria,” Vinnie said. “From what I heard, all of them were also at the top of the list for being the successor.”

  Diggy dutifully wrote all of the names on the whiteboard. It felt like it made things more convoluted. Maybe if they listed out the clues, that would help a bit.

  “Diggy, let’s do one more list,” Vinnie said.

  Spinning the whiteboard to the other side, Diggy wrote Clues at the top and started listing the things they had found so far.

  Evidence of potion on food

  Bottle of poison potion in kitchen

  Kitchen bottle of crushed limestone in potion room

  Potion book missing

  “Anything else?” Diggy asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Vinnie said.

  “So all we really know is that someone spent a lot of time in the potion room and the kitchen before Plant was killed,” Diggy said.

  It certainly looked that way, but what did it mean? Neither of those places were private or out of bounds. Any of the coven witches could have gone into those rooms even if they normally didn’t. The only thing Vinnie could think of to do was to figure out where Thistle had gone.

  “I think we need to head back to the coven,” Vinnie said. “There must be a way for us to figure out what happened to Thistle without raising suspicion.”

  “I think I know a way,” Diggy said quietly.

  Vinnie waited for the girl to speak, but Diggy bit her lip and stared at her feet like she was trying to decide if she should actually talk.

  “You can’t say that and then not tell me,” Vinnie pointed out.

  “Well Mom had this invention that she didn’t include in the instruction book because she wasn’t exactly sure it had all of the kinks worked out,” Diggy said. “But it’s called the Magical Impression Sensor and it is supposed to be able to track someone’s magical impression.”

  Vinnie puzzled over what in the world that meant. Diggy stared at her unhelpfully until Vinnie waved her hand in a sort of “keep going” motion that made Diggy jump.

  “Oh yeah, I guess I should explain it,” she said. “So Mom discovered that anyone who is paranormal leaves a sort of magical impression in a room and so if you can find it, you can track it.”

  “Will it work on Thistle?” Vinnie asked. “After all, she was under room arrest and could only do very limited magic. Plus we don’t know exactly when she left. Maybe her impression has disappeared.”

  “It should still work,” Diggy said. “She definitely did magic because she sent that letter to Norhand for us. And apparently the Sensor is supposed to be able to detect anyone paranormal, even if they haven’t done magic recently. It should be ready to use, I hope.”

  Vinnie hoped so too. But she had to trust that Lavender knew what she was doing. So far all of her other magical objects had worked the way they were supposed to, so there was no reason not to trust this one.

  “I think that’s about our only option,” Vinnie said. “Why don’t you run and get it and I’ll meet you in the entryway.”

  Diggy jumped up and ran out of the doors as Vinnie watched her. For a brief moment, she wondered what would happen if they couldn’t get Lavender back. Would Vinnie be able to care for Diggy like her mother? She had been doing much of the practical side of mothering for a long time and it wasn’t like Diggy was a small child who needed help going to sleep, eating, or getting dressed. She was almost an adult, but Vinnie feared that would make the loss much harder.

  Vinnie closed her eyes and tried her hardest to
send Lavender a message. As kids, they always tried to communicate telepathically. Some magical folks were really good at it but of course, Vinnie wasn’t magical. They had hoped that their twin powers would count for something, but they never really did. Still, Vinnie hoped that somehow Lavender would hear her.

  Lav, if you are out there I just want you to know that we are doing everything we can to get to you. I’m taking care of Diggy and so far she is being so strong. We will find you. I love you.

  Even if Lavender didn’t get the message, Vinnie felt better just having put her thoughts out into the world. It had to count for something, if only for peace of mind.

  She took one more minute to stare out the window and watch the trees dance and sway in what appeared to be a cold breeze. Vinnie was going to be like one of those big, sturdy trees. The wind hit them, but they didn’t resist or fight back. They stood tall and bent when necessary, never letting the wind tear them down. Vinnie was determined to weather these storms and come out the other side standing tall.

  Diggy was back in the entryway yelling for her, so Vinnie stood up and took a deep breath. She was not going to let Norhand or the coven tear her down. They were going to solve this once and for all. After all, they only had forty minutes left until Thistle was supposed to be transported.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Vinnie had started to just let herself fall once the travel orb spit her out. There was no use in trying to catch herself because that usually made it worse. She ended up stumbling into potted plants or launching herself at furniture as she came out. Simply allowing herself to slam into the floor was somehow slightly less embarrassing.

  No one was around when they arrived, so Vinnie and Diggy were able to slip into Thistle’s room unnoticed. It was still empty, but they searched it one more time, hoping Vinnie had somehow missed her the last time she had looked. But it was still just as empty as before.