Witchy Sour (The Magic & Mixology Mystery Series Book 2)

by Gina LaManna

  “Yes, but it’s your first time attempting the harvest.”

  “Did the last Mixologist bring company into The Forest?”

  Liam remained silent. “That was different. He—”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t you dare say it was because he was a man.”

  “I was going to say because the last person to go inside The Forest wasn’t the real Mixologist,” Liam said, clearing his throat. “With only one Mixologist, we—the islanders, I mean—value your life highly.”

  “Everyone’s life is valued the same,” I said evenly. “I am not special.”

  Liam gave me a sad sort of smile. “My dear, you are young. I admire your optimism, but we must agree to disagree. Most islanders would give their life for yours. Myself included.”

  The thought made me uncomfortable. “Have you seen Gus today?”

  The change of subject was an obvious one, but luckily Liam was a gentleman and went with it. “I have not. Is he missing?”

  I nodded. “How’d you know?”

  “My dear, if you ask where someone is...typically you can’t find them.”

  I flushed with an embarrassed smile. “Sorry if I came off a bit snappish. There’s a lot going on, not that it’s any excuse.”

  Liam reached over and squeezed my hand. “I assume X is on the case?”

  I nodded.

  “Then don’t worry about Gus,” he said. “Gus will be found. Don’t forget, both he and Ranger X are impressive creatures. You need to focus on yourself. If you are truly going into The Forest today, you need to concentrate on getting in and getting out—alive.”

  “You’re not going to try and stop me from going?” I asked curiously.

  “What’s the point?” He sat back and took a dainty sip of his cappuccino. “If I fight you on it, you’ll just go anyway. I see the way you talk about your cousins. You’d do anything for your family, and a word of caution from me isn’t going to change that.”

  “You talk about family like you understand it.”

  He gave a tight smile. “More than you know.”

  “I thought your parents died when you were young. Is there more to the story?” I asked. The more I spoke with Liam, the more I realized he was a complicated man built from many layers. I’d barely scratched the surface of getting to know him. I understood now why Ranger X was hesitant to arrest him, regardless of whether he walked the line between legal and illegal.

  “In my line of work, I do the question asking, my dear.” The glint of sadness left Liam’s face. “You have a beautiful family, and I can see they love you as much as you love them. If you are going into The Forest then by all means, I’d rather have you be safe than stupid, and it’d be stupid of me to try and talk you out of it. Humans and wizards alike need to make their own mistakes and learn from them. I’d just rather have you be alive afterward in order to learn.”

  “Then tell me what I need to know.”

  Chapter 20

  Another hour and two cappuccinos later, Liam had given me the pep talk of a lifetime. He’d explained that anything slithering with a red body was not harmful at all. In fact, those snakes could be used for healing powers.

  However, the innocent-looking rabbits with the violet eyes—those, I needed to watch out for. One glimpse of violet eyes, and I’d almost certainly be dead in seconds. Trees with seven-sided leaves needed to be given a ten-foot radius, or they’d lure me in with their spell and lull me into a dream-like state of sleep, leaving me vulnerable for all of the other creepy crawlies lurking just beyond the darkness. And that was just the introduction.

  My head swimming with knowledge, Liam and I bid farewell when our final cappuccinos were drained. I feared sitting with him any longer would bring on a wave of emotions I didn’t want cropping up as I set off into The Forest. Between the excessive amounts of caffeine wiring my nervous system and the impending doom of disappearing into the darkness, I was already shaking.

  Instead of heading toward the Lower Bridge, the safest, most well-traveled route back to the West Isle, I took the beach path north. Intentionally, I took the scenic route, which wound its way around the shore of the East Isle. I needed some time to calm down and think. My hands shook with nerves while all of Liam’s information whizzed around like a sack of bouncy balls let loose in my skull.

  As I walked, the sand glittered under the sun and the waves made for a soothing background track. The advice from Liam began to sink in as I ran over his words again and again. By the time I reached the Upper Bridge, I was feeling nervous, but ready. As ready as I could ever hope to be for my first venture alone into The Forest.

  Unlike the Lower Bridge, the Upper Bridge was not scenic. There were no vibrant orange goldfish dancing, or dolphins and sharks circling as friends. Here, the water was dark and barren, as if even the fish had decided it wasn’t safe. The sunlight shone on only half of the bridge. The path in front of me lay buried in shadow.

  The coolness hit my shoulders, and I shivered the second I crossed from light to darkness. Simultaneously, a loud splash rang out to my left and I leapt to the opposite side of the bridge, watching in horror as a large, ugly fish that resembled the love child of a semi-truck and a pug—with fins—leapt from the water and snatched a butterfly from the air. My heart pounded, and I raced toward The Forest without looking back. If I didn’t continue now, I’d never go at all.

  A few steps into The Forest and the immersion into darkness was complete. This was a different world than the airy, vacationy portion of The Isle. The sun failed to battle its way through the thick tree branches, and the fresh lake air might as well have been miles away.

  Inside The Forest’s grasp the air was cool and heavy, damp with the weight of moss and dew. It was stifling. I struggled to take a deep breath as I hurriedly glanced around to make sure there were no seven-sided leaves nearby.

  It took a few seconds, but eventually my eyes adjusted to the dark, my breathing adapted to the thickness of the air, and I took a step forward. The hefty layer of growth over The Forest floor muted my footsteps, giving off the eerie sensation that I didn’t really exist at all.

  It didn’t take long before I could no longer see the bridge. Panic rose in my chest, and for a moment, I was sure I couldn’t take another step. Then, like a flashlight in the darkness, I remembered Liam’s words. Going into The Forest takes purpose. I forced myself to think about Poppy. Focus on the missing ingredient. Recall the instructions to harvest Dust of the Devil.

  I repeated these steps over and over again to myself.

  Under the branches of the trees in bloom…

  Everything around me was green or black. Leaves and moss grew everywhere except for the air, and the open spaces were seas of darkness.

  Then I noticed the scent. It started subtly, as if it’d begun seeping into my consciousness without my realizing it. I sniffed, and the smell grew stronger. The more I focused, the stronger and stronger it became, guiding my feet forward as if someone else had control of them. Before I knew it, I’d gone deeper into The Forest, and my surroundings began to change.

  I focused on that scent like it was the light at the end of a deep, dark tunnel. Continuing forward, I paused only when a crack in the distance or a rustle underfoot broke through my concentration. The seconds morphed into minutes as time itself turned into an elusive entity. Like Liam’s directions, I sensed that minutes and seconds and hours were but a fickle thing inside The Forest. Time moved lightning quick one second and as slow as molasses the next.

  My feet slowed of their own accord, and I couldn’t help but believe these trees were rife with magic. When I focused on the scent, it grew stronger. If for any reason my mind began to wander, I found myself stopping more frequently, looking around, starting down the wrong path. When I refocused, the scent pulled me along like a trail of breadcrumbs.

  “Here you are,” I murmured. “The mushroom!”

  I bent down, scanning the monstrous plant. It grew to my knee in height, whi
le the top was wide enough to be an umbrella for a dwarf. I stared at it, soaking in every aspect of the plant. It was like no mushroom I’d seen before. It looked like it belonged in Alice and Wonderland with its yellow and red and blue and purple color-scheme.

  I leaned further forward, examining the tie-dyed pattern, until something stung me on the nose so hard I stumbled back several feet and landed in a pile of soft moss. “Ow!”

  “Get away!” A teensy tiny thing—likely a sprite or a fairy—shook a fist at me from her perch on my knee. “Leave my home alone. I don’t go stomping into your house and peeking in your bedroom windows!”

  “I’m—I’m really sorry,” I said, enthralled by her tiny features. From the blond pixie haircut to the floral green dress, she resembled Tinkerbell with a bit more sex appeal. This fairy had big red lips and, from the looks of it, she was smoking something that looked like a cigarette, though it didn’t smell like tobacco.

  “Darn straight you’re sorry! This is my shroom.”

  “Can you tell me where I might find the blooming tree?”

  She scowled then pointed. “Open your eyes!”

  “My eyes are...” I said, trailing off as the fairy fluttered over and poked me right in the center of my chin. Before I could swat her away, she was already back on her mushroom, hands planted on her hips. “Sometimes it amazes me how long you non-Forest dwelling folks live. If I was as unobservant as you, I’d be dead in a second.”

  “This is beautiful.” I was too busy taking in the sight before me to respond to her sarcasm. The tree in question was laden with hundreds of thousands of blossoms the color of a blood moon. Orange swirled into red as flowers as big as a sunbonnet flapped with the slightest hint of a breeze.

  “Beautiful?” The fairy’s voice held a note of curiosity. “Yes, it’s beautiful.”

  “Why do you sound so hesitant?”

  “Because it’s also deadly.”

  “Deadly?” I swallowed. Liam hadn’t mentioned anything about the flower being deadly. “Are you sure?”

  “You don’t believe me? Go take a flower and we’ll see just how deadly it is.”

  I took a few steps toward the tree’s blooms and inclined my head toward it, breathing in the faint scent washing off the huge petals. “It smells nice.”

  “From a distance, maybe.”

  “What happens if I go closer?”

  “Try it.”

  “You look far too giddy for me to want to try that.”

  “You’re smarter than you look,” the fairy said with a frown. “You don’t wanna die?”

  “No, not really. Plus, you’ve lived here longer than I have, so it’d be stupid of me not to listen. Will it kill me?”

  She pouted. “It could.”

  “Which part of this is Dust of the Devil?”

  The fairy flew over and landed on my shoulder. Apparently, we were now friends.

  “They really are gorgeous.” She stared into the branches of the enormous, colorful tree, her mouth parted slightly in awe. “Have you heard the story behind them?”

  I shook my head. “I’m here to help a friend. It’s not for me.”

  A spark of recognition flashed across her face. “You’re the new one.”

  “The new what?”

  “The new Mixologist.”

  “That’s me. Did you know the last one?”

  She pointed a haughty finger over at the large mushroom a few paces back. “Of course I knew him! His first time here he trampled my shroom. Do you know how long it took me to re-grow my home? I suppose I was due for a remodel anyway, but honestly. He had huge feet and they just stomped all over my roof.”

  “How often did he come?”

  “I think I scared him away the first time,” she said thoughtfully. “There was a while he didn’t come back to visit me. I was nicer the second time. After that, he came back more often.”

  “Why can’t we grow these closer to the bungalow?” I reached for a flower, but the fairy pinched the skin of my shoulder so hard I yelped and leapt backwards. “What was that for?”

  “I just saved your life.”

  I rubbed the skin on my shoulder, a red welt appearing where she’d pinched me. “That hurt.”

  “At least you can still feel hurt. If you touch the petal, your skin will burn. If you hold on long enough, you’ll die.”

  I blinked. “How am I supposed to gather it, then?”

  “Have patience,” the fairy said in a dazed tone of voice. “That’s the biggest mistake you outsiders make when you come into The Forest. You grab, grab, grab, and you take, take, take. Maybe if you stopped for a second and smelled the foliage, you’d understand. Patience can save your life.”

  I stood still. As the fairy sank into some sort of dreamlike trance, her eyes grew large. She stared into the flowers, focusing on three spokes poking out from the center disk. “It’s beautiful.”

  Reaching out, I pinched the fairy around the waist and drew her back. I gave her the tiniest shake as I set her safely on her shroom a few feet back, planting myself on a nearby log. “Are you okay?”

  She shook herself. “I haven’t been that close in a while.”

  “Did I save your life? Why’d you go all dreamy on me?”

  “No,” she said with a scowl. After a long beat, she reconsidered. “Thanks for bringing me out.”

  “What is in those flowers that’s so powerful?”

  “They’re called Dust of the Devil for a reason,” she said. “A long time ago, a witch from the East Isle came into The Forest and she saw the beauty in these flowers. She became entranced by them, staring straight in their centers for hours upon end until finally, she tried to gather them up and bring a bouquet home.”

  “Did her skin burn?”

  “Many times. That’s the thing about these flowers. They draw you back over and over again. Even when her fingers had layers of blisters on them, she came back for more.”

  “Like an addiction.”

  “Yes.” The fairy glanced toward the tree with reverence. “After enough failures, however, she got it right. She figured out how to harvest some of the flowers without getting burned.”

  “What’d she do with them?”

  “She treated them like any old flowers and made the blossoms into a bouquet. Selfishly. She took all of the blooms—every single one—and the tree withered and died. Turns out, the tree needs its flowers as much as the flowers need the tree; there is no one or the other, they are symbiotic.”

  “Is this the same tree?”

  “Yes, but it took hundreds of years for it to return! You see, the more blooms there are on a tree, the faster they populate. To grow that first bloom takes hundreds of years. The second takes half that time, the third a quarter of the time and so on. A tree this full has been growing for thousands of years.”

  The reverence in her gaze made a bit more sense now. The sheer age of this tree gave it an aura of wisdom that commanded respect. “That’s the second part of the riddle,” I whispered. “Do not take it all.”

  “I’m here to guard it.” The fairy crossed her arms. “If you can give me a good enough reason why you need a bloom, then I’ll show you how to harvest it.”

  “You never did finish your story.”

  “Oh, that witch...that dreadful witch, she put her bouquet on display at her kitchen table. But what she underestimated about the Dust of the Devil was its strength. She thought she’d killed the blooms by removing them from the tree, but let me tell you this: The Devil’s Dust doesn’t go down without a fight. As the flowers wilt, they release a poisonous gas.”

  “If they’re going to die, they’re taking their destroyer with them.”

  “Exactly. To steal these blooms is to make a deal with the devil. You’ll get a brief flash of beauty and glamour—all of the islanders crowded by this witch’s house to see her wares. Day and night, visitors flocked to her living room. But in the end, all of the guests were gone, and the witch was left to suffer the consequ
ences. The blooms in that bouquet didn’t just go down fighting, they went down with a war.”

  I shuddered, trying not to visualize any of it. “I take it she didn’t survive?”

  “Let’s just say I wouldn’t make a bouquet anytime soon.”

  “If I take just a few, is that also a deal with the devil?”

  “Everything in The Forest has consequences. Taking something you don’t understand is dangerous. These plants haven’t survived thousands of years because they’re weak. Many are stronger than you.”

  “What would my consequences be of taking the Dust of the Devil?”

  “It depends on your intentions.”

  I explained about Poppy’s dilemma and how the side effects of not having access to Vamp Vites was wreaking havoc on everyone around her. That soon, her supply would dwindle to nothing.

  “You’re like him.”

  “Who?”

  “The last Mixologist,” she said. “He was a good man.”

  “The fill-in? The guy who worked here for the last two years?”

  Her eyebrows knitted in thought. “No, the one before. The real deal.”

  “You knew my grandfather,” I said, sucking in a breath. “What was he like?”

  “Kind. Respectful. If he wanted to rule The Forest, we would have let him. He didn’t want to, and that’s exactly why he would’ve been the best for the job,” she said, sighing with dismay. “We miss him, but we don’t have time to talk now. Darkness is on the horizon, and you don’t want to be caught out here at night.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid, lady, but it would be pretty stupid of you to stay here.”

  “Then how do we do this?”

  After some careful consideration and a long period of deliberation, the fairy nodded and led me back toward the tree. Very carefully, she demonstrated how to harvest the Dust of the Devil. It was simple really, but it’d be impossible to guess the process without a teacher. After she’d shown me three times on three different blossoms, she nodded for me to try on my own.