Potion Problem: A Halloween Helper's Cozy Mystery

by Linnea West

  She cocked her head to one side, her eyes seeming to glow a faint red color. It made Vinnie’s skin crawl and she wondered if Diggy felt the same. Vinnie slowly turned so that she could just barely see Diggy out of the corner of her eye. The girl’s face had gone pale and Vinnie could tell that she was uncomfortable too. There was just something about Ivy that was off.

  “I’d like you to tell me how the search for coven leader is going,” Ivy said. “And then I’d like to tell you why I would be perfect for the job and why you are going to pick me.”

  If Vinnie hadn’t been feeling so creeped out, she may have snorted in that moment. Maybe this was just a trait of the high-achieving coven witches, but Ivy was crossing the line of tenacity and stick-to-it-iveness and was planting herself firmly into the realm of way too bold.

  “So, how is the search going?” Ivy asked, looking far too comfortable for someone being so bold.

  “We aren’t going to pick a leader until the murder investigation is totally done with and the suspect has been taken away,” Vinnie said.

  She tried to sit up a little straighter so that she came across as more professional, but her voice shook ever so slightly which didn’t help matters. Ivy stared at her, a slightly scary half smile pasted onto her face. She almost seemed frozen in time. Vinnie assumed that she was calculating how she should respond in her head.

  “Well, let’s just move on to me telling you why I would be perfect for the job,” Ivy said. “As I mentioned before, Plant was already leaning towards me being her successor before she tragically passed. I would have been named successor anyway. Also, I’m all around a good leader. I can’t say that I’m touchy-feely or soft and full of cuddles, but I’m not as cruel or hard as Plant was and I would help swing things back to the middle. I would also make sure we are able to start taking in new witches again. It is important for a coven to grow and for the last few years we have been stagnant because of Plant’s militant dictatorship that she was running.”

  Once Ivy finished her speech, she smiled. It all seemed rehearsed, like a politician’s stump speech. Vinnie wasn’t sure she’d given this speech in public before, but she got the sense that she had given it to her bathroom mirror numerous times.

  And it was tempting, in a way. Ivy was a charismatic witch who right now seemed to ooze charm. While the sleek dress she was wearing was out of place in the kitchen, it seemed right for someone who wanted to be the leader of the coven. The creepy feeling Vinnie had been feeling wasn’t exactly gone, but it was masked by the emotions rolling off of Ivy right now.

  “That sounds nice,” Diggy said.

  She sounded almost robotic and Vinnie turned to look at her. Diggy’s eyes were slightly unfocused like she was in a daze and her head was lolled over to one side, almost like she was trying to lie down on her own shoulder.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Vinnie asked.

  Vinnie gave her niece a shove so hard that it almost knocked Diggy off of her stool. It was enough to snap Diggy out of whatever trance she was in. Diggy shook her head hard, like something was lodged inside her skull that she couldn’t shake loose, but finally she stopped, breathing heavily, like she had just sprinted somewhere.

  “Are you okay?” Vinnie asked. She tentatively put her hand on Diggy’s arm.

  “I think so,” Diggy said. “I just felt really weird all of a sudden. It was almost like someone was trying to climb into my brain and take control.”

  A thought flashed into Vinnie’s mind that maybe Ivy was somehow putting an enchantment on them. All of a sudden it was very obvious to Vinnie just what an easy mark they were in a coven full of witches. A non-magical witch and a witch in training didn’t have much defense between the two of them. If someone wanted to somehow overpower them, it would be all too easy.

  “Isn’t the tea done steeping yet?” Vinnie asked.

  “Silly me, I’ll just go get it,” Ivy said.

  A big toothy grin appeared on Ivy’s face before she stood up and walked over to the pot where the tea was steeping. She was humming faintly, which gave Vinnie enough cover to whisper to Diggy.

  “Could she have done that?” Vinnie asked, jerking her head towards Ivy.

  “Yeah, but it didn’t feel like the person was doing anything bad, if that makes sense,” Diggy whispered.

  “A person took control of your brain and you think they weren’t going to do anything bad?” Vinnie whispered a little too loudly. Glancing at Ivy, she saw that she was still puttering around with the tea pot. “I think we need to be more careful.”

  “Tea’s ready,” Ivy announced as she brought the teapot over. She was still humming like she was in a state of utter bliss. It was a bit unsettling considering that there was no real reason for her to be so happy.

  Diggy nodded at Vinnie that she understood. They both needed to have their guard up now. It felt like they were in the homestretch. They were running out of time and they couldn’t let anything get in their way.

  Ivy poured tea into Diggy’s cup and then into Vinnie’s cup before she set the pot back down on the counter behind her and grabbed the tea cup she had already filled up for herself. She sat back down as she glanced at the watch on her wrist.

  “Oh my, drink up ladies,” she giggled. “There’s only ten more minutes until Thistle is supposed to be taken away. I hope you have a plan for what you’re going to tell the people who come to pick her up.”

  Vinnie almost choked on her tea. She had been assuming this entire time that they would find Thistle, but it was looking more and more likely that they wouldn’t. What would she say to the people that came to pick Thistle up? And who was going to come for her anyways?

  BOOM

  This time when Vinnie looked at Diggy, she looked confused. She must have heard the noise this time too. But what was it? And where was it coming from?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  BOOM

  There it was again. It didn’t happen often, but every once in a while, a thump would draw Vinnie’s attention. At first, she had been the only one to hear it, but now she could tell that Diggy heard it too. She just couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

  “Well, enjoy your tea,” Ivy said. “We only have about five minutes until the transport comes for Thistle.”

  Vinnie absentmindedly picked up the cup, lifting it to her lips. Just as she was about to take a sip from it, Diggy leapt towards her, hitting the cup from her hands.

  “Don’t drink it,” she cried.

  The delicate tea cup sailed across the room, smashing to bits on the stone floor as the tea seeped in every direction. Vinnie turned to look at Diggy, whose face was set in a determined look.

  “What has gotten into you?” Vinnie asked her.

  “It’s poisoned,” Diggy said. “Just look at my cup. She’s probably the one who killed Plant.”

  Diggy pushed her teacup towards Vinnie. Peaking into it, Vinnie noticed that the brown tea had a sickly green tinge to it, just the slightest amount. It was barely noticeable except for the fact that it seemed to sparkle slightly.

  Vinnie blinked a few times, wondering if she was seeing things. But the tea definitely had a green tinge to it. Even a terrible cook couldn’t screw up tea. This must be intentional. She looked up at Ivy, who had a slight scowl on her face.

  “You were just supposed to drink it,” Ivy said, taking a sip of her own tea. “See? My tea is fine. Well I suppose you can both just drink out of the same cup then.”

  “Are you insane?” Diggy yelled. “You’re trying to poison us. We aren’t going to drink this.”

  Ivy calmly stood up from her stool and put her hands on the counter, leaning forward towards them. Sometimes Vinnie read mortal magazines that she got from the library and this was one of those power moves that was supposed to help some look confident and in control, not that Ivy seemed to need the extra boost in those areas.

  “We are running out of time,” Ivy said slowly and calmly. “Don’t worry, it isn’t like you’re goi
ng to turn to stone like poor Plant. I made a different potion this time. I need each of you to take a drink out of that tea cup. Now.”

  Vinnie turned and looked at Diggy. So far Ivy was just threatening them with words, but she could easily overpower them with magic. Still, there was no way either of them was going to take a drink of that tea. If what happened to Plant was any indication of Ivy’s potion making skills, that meant that this potion would probably do more harm than good.

  “They will be here soon,” Ivy said. “When they arrive for Thistle, I’ll also tell them about how you appointed me coven leader, but unfortunately Thistle poisoned both of you first. Then I’ll finally be out of this stupid kitchen and all three of you will be out of my hair. But first you have to drink the tea.”

  Diggy stood up off of her stool and made herself as tall as possible. She stared into Ivy’s eyes as she picked up the tea cup. She lifted it almost to her lips, close enough that Vinnie almost jumped off of her stool to grab it away, but before she could take a drink, she threw that cup too.

  It sailed across the room, almost as if in slow motion, before it smashed against the stone wall. Tea ran down the stone of the wall as little colorful china pieces littered the floor underneath where the cup had exploded.

  “You nasty little witch,” Ivy snarled. “How dare you go against what I say! Don’t you realize that I am above you. You are still in training and judging by what I’ve seen, you’ve got a long way to go. It would be best if you learned to listen to your elders.”

  Ivy turned and studied Vinnie, who was still sitting on her stool. So far, she was trying to remain as calm as possible. A clear head meant a good plan. If she allowed the clouds of emotion to take over, they’d never get out of here in one piece.

  “And you don’t have a single ounce of magic in your entire body,” Ivy said to Vinnie. “Pathetic. You’re born into a powerful ancestral family and you can’t do any magic at all. The two of you together make quite the pair. Either way, you need to listen to me.”

  “We don’t actually have to do that,” Diggy said. She emphasized every word she said, carefully and deliberately. She wasn’t yelling, but she made sure each word hit with force like a punch. “We are the Halloween Helpers and our job is to help. We are here to clean up the mess you made and in no way does that make you our boss.”

  Vinnie looked back and forth between the two witches who were facing off. Ivy was still in her business woman clothes, but something about her resembled a sort of wildness, like there was a wild animal inside of her, desperate to come out. For a moment, Vinnie considered that maybe she was a werewolf, but thought better of it. Just what they didn’t need in this situation.

  Diggy, on the other hand, seemed to have aged significantly in this altercation. No longer was she the teenager that could pass for a pre-teen if she didn’t wear so much makeup. Now she looked like a full-fledged adult, ready to take on whatever challenges life threw at her. And right now, it was throwing a very dangerous witch at her.

  “Maybe if you both sat down, we could talk through this and figure out what we are going to do about it,” Vinnie said as evenly as she could. “Tensions are running high right now and good decisions are never made in times like this.”

  Ivy and Diggy both looked at her and, watching each other, both sat back down onto their chairs. Ivy perched on the edge of hers, looking very uncomfortable while Diggy sat and crossed her arms across her chest, watching Ivy through narrowed eyes.

  “That’s better,” Vinnie said. “Ivy, you’re right that we don’t have much time so why don’t we take a calming breath first.”

  Vinnie modeled taking a calming breath and Diggy joined her on the second one. At first, Ivy just stared at them in suspicion, but finally took a calming breath of her own. It felt like a breath of fresh air had swept through the dark kitchen. It was amazing what a simple breath could do.

  “That feels much better,” Vinnie said. “Now we can discuss without our haunches being up quite so high.”

  Without even looking beside her, Vinnie could feel Diggy wince a bit. She always said that her aunt used the weirdest expressions and phrases. Vinnie just liked to use things she read in books, but they didn’t always translate to modern times. This phrase apparently was one of them.

  The three witches sat around the counter and stared at each other, each wondering if she should be the first to say something. Vinnie quickly came to the realization that she would have to steer the situation. Diggy was too young and inexperienced while Ivy was obviously living somewhere other than the planet Earth if she thought witches would just drink tea they knew was poisoned.

  “Ivy, tell us what you did with Thistle,” Vinnie began.

  She folded her hands together on the table and leaned forward, hoping Ivy would tell them exactly where Thistle was.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  At first, Ivy didn’t say a word. She sat and scowled at Vinnie and Diggy, her hands folded in her lap and her legs crossed over one another. Every once in a while she would open her mouth like she was about to say something before snapping it shut again.

  Vinnie waited it out. Eventually someone would talk and she was determined that it wasn’t going to be her. She stared at Ivy, trying to make her expression as neutral as possible. She wanted Ivy to tell her everything.

  “I already told you that I helped Thistle leave her room,” Ivy said. “What more do you want from me?”

  “You did say that,” Vinnie admitted. “But I don’t think she left willingly. I’d like you to tell me more about that.”

  Ivy crossed her arms, tapping her finger on her bicep impatiently. The look on her face made it apparent that she not only considered Vinnie and Diggy to be below her on whatever status ladder she thought they were all on, but also that she thought they were both total and complete idiots that were only just barely worth the time of day.

  “Okay, so maybe I forced her to leave that room,” Ivy said. “Sometimes when you are the leader, you make a decision that not everyone will like and then you have to stick with it no matter what. I made the decision to get Thistle out of there and even though she wanted to stay locked up while she waited for you guys to come back, I told her she had to follow me.”

  The story was shifting, but Vinnie could only hope that it would shift enough that they would know the truth before the transport came. They only had five minutes or so to get Ivy to tell them the entire truth of the matter.

  “So you made her follow you,” Vinnie said. “Where did you bring her?”

  “Nowhere,” Ivy said, her eyes narrowing at Vinnie. “After we left the room, I told you that she just disappeared. Sometimes as a leader, you have to let someone go.”

  Vinnie couldn’t believe that through all of this, Ivy was still pushing to be the new coven leader. She was definitely persistent which Vinnie usually thought of as a good personality trait, but in Ivy it just lead to stubborn annoyance. Ivy was staring at her with an intense smile on her face like she was trying to dazzle her in a job interview.

  “So after you forced Thistle to leave the room with you, she all of a sudden was totally okay with leaving,” Diggy said. “She was so in favor of it that she then disappeared? That seems like a contradiction.”

  Ivy shot a glare at Diggy, who returned the look right back at her. Diggy’s brown hair had been twisted up into a bun, but the more upset she got, the looser it became. That just seemed to mirror Ivy’s style, which was a bit less put together than the other coven witches.

  “I don’t have to explain why she did what she did,” Ivy said. “I’m just telling you what I did and what I saw. A good leader tries not to jump to conclusions.”

  “Okay, then tell us about Plant,” Vinnie said. “You don’t have to assume anything with that story. All you have to do is tell us exactly what happened to her.”

  “I’m not exactly sure what happened,” Ivy said. She suddenly seemed to lose her spark, like the question had knocked her a few pegs down t
he ladder. “I know what I thought was going to happen. And it definitely was not that she would turn completely to stone.”

  “We know that you were trying to brew the Stone Cold potion,” Vinnie said. “And we know that you made a mistake.”

  “I had no idea that potion making was any more difficult than cooking,” Ivy said. Her face fell into a distraught expression as her voice went from confident leader to distressed whiner. “When you make soup, you can let that simmer as long as you need or want to. I didn’t know that potion making had to be so exact with things. I figured I was a good chef and so being a good potion maker couldn’t be much more difficult.”

  “Mistake or no mistake, what was your plan supposed to be?” Vinnie asked.

  “I just wanted to turn her heart to stone, just a little,” Ivy said. “We already joked that it was pretty frozen, but I figured that maybe if I froze it more, then she would have no emotions left to use. Then I could sneak in and since I knew she would be solely logical, I could give her all of the reasons I had come up with for me to be the leader and if I needed to, the reasons why any of the other witches should not.”

  Vinnie tried to think through the muddled mess of the plan. In a way it made sense, but it seemed much more convoluted than it needed to be. There had to be an easier way for someone to get to be the successor. She was about to say so when Diggy provided her assessment first.

  “That seems really dumb,” Diggy said.

  Vinnie turned sharply, giving her a little smack on the arm. Even though it was exactly what Vinnie was thinking, they had to be a bit more professional than that. Diggy rubbed her arm, trying to heal the bruise that might eventually form.

  “Ouch!” Diggy cried. “What I meant was that it seems like a really weird plan. There had to have been a much simpler way than all of that trouble.”

  Ivy’s face fell. She kept moving her face around, squishing up her eyes and wrinkling her nose. Vinnie was trying to figure out what she was doing when she noticed a tear falling down Ivy’s cheek. Apparently that was the face Ivy made when she was trying not to cry.