Potions Are for Pushovers

by Tamara Berry

  Which makes sense, since I’ve often seen her at the grocer’s accompanied by a tall, good-looking Scotsman with a pack of young children in tow. Lots of young children.

  “Have we met before?” she asks.

  “Not officially, no.” Since her fingers are currently holding her place in the middle of the form she’d been filling out, I forgo the handshake. “But I’ve always wanted to introduce myself. You have six kids, don’t you?”

  She blinks again, this time to reveal a look that’s a combination of recognition and wariness. In other words, she’s realized who I am, and she’s not happy about being accosted by a witch at work. To be fair, it’s a common reaction.

  “A lucky number, six,” I say, losing none of my smile. “It belongs to Venus, to lovers, to all things of the heart and home. Which makes sense, if you think about it. You wouldn’t have that many children unless you and your husband were doing something right.”

  Her wariness turns to a deep flush of color, but not in a way that signals she’s uncomfortable with the topic under discussion. If anything, that dusky pink is full of delight—and with a husband who looks like hers, it’s no wonder.

  “Gordon, Gary . . . I’m sorry. I don’t quite remember his name, but I believe it starts with a G.”

  “It’s Gavin,” she supplies. “But how do you—?”

  “Oh, I know many things,” I say. “Including that the two of you haven’t had a night alone together in ages. I know, I know—it’s almost impossible while the kids are so young, but a tree is only as strong as its roots. You can tend to the branches all you want, but unless there’s a solid base to hold them up, what’s the point?”

  “I’m sorry, but what—”

  “Does this have to do with me? Not much. But I do have one or two potions here in my bag that might be of use.” I make a show of rummaging around in my satchel for a theoretical supply of tonics. Unfortunately, all I have is the empty eye of newt bottle and the last of my lavender attraction elixirs. The eye of newt comes out first, causing Zahra’s eyebrows to raise, which is just as well because I need a second to knock the cork loose on the attraction elixir before I place it on the counter next to it.

  “I’m really not interested in any kind of hocus-pocus—” she begins again, this time with a distracted look at her paperwork.

  “No?” I’m careful to appear unoffended. “No worries. I understand. It’s not for everyone. But I am pretty close to Rachel Hartford and Lenora MacDougal—you know Dr. MacDougal’s stepdaughter, right?—and they were just telling me the other day that they’re planning on starting a babysitting service. I wonder if . . . No, never mind. I’ve taken up enough of your time already.”

  I make a motion for my bottles and am stopped short—predictably—by Zahra’s outstretched hand.

  “No, wait!” she cries. “Do you really mean what you said, about Rachel and Lenora? Dr. MacDougal never said anything about her daughter wanting to mind babies.”

  Given what I know of Lenora’s intellectual precocity, I imagine that minding babies is literally the last thing on earth she wants to do, but this is an emergency. Besides, she still owes me twenty pounds for bribing Benji at the museum. In a way, this is payback.

  “Well, Lenora is still so young,” I say. “I believe they thought doing it as a pair would be best, at least to start out, since Rachel just turned eighteen. They’ll take a tag team approach, as it were. Ideal for a pack as large as yours.”

  Zahra nods, her lips pursed thoughtfully. I can practically see all those possibilities of nights out on the town taking shape inside her head, an elusive taste of freedom on her tongue.

  “I could pass on your information, if you’re interested,” I offer. “They’re just building up their client roster, and I’m sure they’d love to add you.”

  The bait proves too tempting to ignore. “Would you?” Her hands flutter over her paperwork as she searches for a scrap piece of paper. “We—Gavin and I, I mean—would really appreciate it.”

  “Of course,” I promise and, when her attention is distracted with the piece of paper she’s finally located, I knock the lavender elixir over with my hand.

  I feel a pang of guilt for whatever medical records I’ve just destroyed with that floral scent, but only for a fleeting moment. Zahra is on top of things, whisking the important files out of the way as she jumps to her feet.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I cry, making a convincing show of regret. “I can’t think how I came to be so clumsy.”

  “It happens to the best of us,” she reassures me.

  Since I highly doubt she’d call me the best of anything if she knew my true motivations, I let that comment slide. I also stand back and watch as she shakes the pages off and mutters something about grabbing some towels. The less I intrude on her attempts to clean the spill, the better.

  “I’ll be right back, yeah?” she says. “Don’t go anywhere—I still want to get you my telephone number.”

  I solemnly swear to stay in the immediate vicinity of her desk. It’s a promise I keep, too, even after her long ponytail swishes out of sight. The filed medical records are technically within the immediate vicinity.

  Pausing only long enough to make sure the coast is clear, I duck behind the desk and hightail it straight for the middle portion of the alphabet. It takes me a few false starts before I locate the Ks, my fingers flying over the files as I locate the one I’m most interested in: King, Lewis.

  There isn’t time to make a copy before Zahra returns, so I’m forced to resort to good old-fashioned theft. With a solemn and silent vow that I’ll put the files back at the first opportunity that affords itself, I tuck them into my valise and scoot back to the other side of the desk.

  “There!” Zahra returns to clean up the spilled elixir and to press not just one, but two copies of her phone number into my hand. “No real harm was done. And I’m giving you two in case they each want one.”

  “I’ll make sure these get where they need to go,” I promise before apologizing once again for my clumsiness. I know it behooves me to sit quietly in the waiting room until Nicholas finishes his examination, but the files are burning a figurative hole in my pocket, so I escape on the pretense of needing to use the ladies’ room.

  “Okay, Lewis,” I mutter as I lock the restroom door behind me. It’s not the most secure location to peruse my stolen wares, since there’s one of those two-sided windows that you open to pass laboratory samples through, but I flip the file open and scan it anyway. “What medical condition do you have that would give you cause to bleed your poor old auntie dry?”

  I know, in my heart of hearts, that it would be too much of a stretch to hope for a diagnosis of lycanthropy or porphyria, both of which have been historically associated with werewolves. Lycanthropy is technically a mental disorder, yes, and the best that porphyria would explain is some of his excessively hairy patches, but there’s something about the idea of them that feels so fitting for this investigation.

  Imagine my disappointment, then, when all I find is a tendency to fall prey to the occasional bout of strep throat and an ongoing prescription for the treatment of hyperhidrosis.

  “He sweats a lot?” I mutter as I turn the pages this way and that. “That’s the mysterious medical condition that’s supposed to account for everything?”

  It’s as good of proof as any that Lewis King’s claims of medical necessity are invalid. Whatever else he might say, any and all money he got from his aunt went to line his own pockets and his somewhat shady schemes.

  Put a check in the guilty box.

  Unfortunately, that diagnosis also explains why he always looks so nervous. Excessive sweating is just his natural state—at least unless he’s been regularly taking his atropine, as the prescription form in his file tells him to.

  And a check in the not-guilty one, I guess.

  Fortune might not have been on my side for this part of my mission, but Zahra is nowhere to be seen when I return to the waiting ro
om, so I’m able to slip the file back in place without anyone being the wiser. There’s nothing left for me to do but sit and wait until Nicholas has finished working his magic with Oona MacDougal.

  And to be grateful that one of us, at least, has magic that gets the job done.

  * * *

  There’s just enough time to send Nicholas home to get some well-deserved rest before I have to meet my two protégées at the library. I’m finding it difficult to believe that all the other kids are this diligent in logging their apprenticeship hours, but Lenora is insistent that we meet every day.

  “Sorry I’m late, Madame Eleanor, but you won’t believe the day I’ve had.”

  Considering I coerced my law-abiding boyfriend to break several laws with me, I’m fairly certain I will. “Nothing bad, I hope?” I ask as Lenora settles into her chair.

  “Terrible.” She sighs and pushes a cloud of hair out of her face. “I don’t have the notebook anymore.”

  “You lost it? That’s okay. Mine’s in my bag. I’m sure Rachel can make another copy.”

  “What can Rachel do?” Rachel plops onto the chair next to Lenora. This morning was one of her internship days—her real internship, not this mystical sham—so it looks as though she’s arrived straight from the train station. “Whatever it is, I hope it involves snacks.”

  Lenora shakes her head. “I don’t have any chocolates today. Oona confiscated my stash. She confiscated everything.”

  “Even the Flakes?” Rachel asks.

  “Even the Flakes. After you left last night, she went through my room like a banshee.” Lenora casts her doleful eyes up at me. “A banshee is a spirit that—”

  “I’m familiar with their kind,” I interrupt dryly. “And I don’t think it’s a very nice thing to call your stepmother.”

  “But she sounded exactly like one!” Lenora protests. “We didn’t mean to let her see the notebook—really, we didn’t—but Rachel was over to work on it last night. My dad came into my room and asked us all these questions. He thought it was a great project, but then he told Oona about it. He tells Oona everything. He’s worse than George.”

  “Rachel was at your house again?”

  Lenora nods. “We wanted to start decoding it straightaway. But the second my stepmother saw it, she threw a fit.”

  “That wasn’t a fit,” Rachel informs her friend with a sad sigh. “My mum used to throw real fits. Potted plants tossed at people’s heads, teacups smashed on the ground, the whole show.”

  “That was a fit for Oona—believe me,” Lenora says. “She never gets mad in front of company. But you can tell when she gets all pale and quiet that the storm is coming later.”

  “Hang on a second,” I command the pair. The librarian is making her regular rounds through the stacks, so I lower my voice. “Your stepmother has a problem with the notebook? That’s strange. When I saw—”

  I cut myself off before I make the mistake of finishing that sentence. Odd though it is that Oona didn’t mention anything about the project while I was at the clinic today, I don’t want this pair asking me questions about my activities. The fewer people I rope into fraud with me, the better.

  “When I saw her in town today, she didn’t mention it,” I amend.

  “Well, I tried telling her it was for a code-breaking class, but she knows our school doesn’t have anything fun like that. She pretended not to care while Rachel was there, but she took it away the moment she left. And she took all my candy. And what was left of my allowance.”

  “Maybe you could earn some more money babysitting,” I offer by way of consolation. I’m about to inform her that I might have accidentally pledged her services already, but I’m distracted by the contents in my bag. Or, rather, I’m distracted by the lack of contents in my bag. “Huh. That’s weird. I could have sworn I had it in here last night.”

  I start pulling the items out one by one and placing them on the table in front of me. The two elixir bottles—both empty now—my wallet, several lipsticks in varying shades of red, hairpins, and a scarf are all part of my usual baggage. Lately, the Book of Shadows notebook has been in there, too, but it’s nowhere to be seen among the rest of the paraphernalia.

  “I must have taken it out without realizing it,” I say, mostly to myself. I can’t recall seeing it at the medical clinic, which means it must still be at home. “I guess that cuts our plans today rather short, doesn’t it?”

  “I bet she took yours, too,” Lenora says with a jut of her lower lip.

  I laugh. “She’d have to be a magician to have pulled that off.” Either that, or a witch. I don’t know how else she’d have managed to sneak inside my house and taken it without my knowledge. This bag rarely leaves my side. “Maybe it’s for the best that we take a few days off. You’ve been working too hard anyway.”

  “But we almost had it figured out,” Lenora objects. “There were only one or two villagers we couldn’t place. The ale one, remember, Rachel? That could have been anybody, though I still think it’s that Mr. Markham who makes the cider for the pub.”

  Rachel snaps her fingers. “And the one with all the poisons, remember? Unless that was your mum, since she’s a doctor.”

  I glance back and forth between them. “Villagers? Ale? What are you guys talking about?”

  Both heads turn to me as one, but it’s Lenora who speaks up. “The book, Madame Eleanor. Before Oona got her hands on it, we were almost there.”

  “Almost where?”

  “To knowing who each page was. Yours was easy, obviously, since you were assigned an upside-down pentagram. That’s black magic, because you’re a witch.”

  “Uncle Nicholas and Grandmother were easy, too,” Rachel supplies unhelpfully. “A rich man and a noble lady. Technically, we’re not noble, but most people assume we are.”

  “Inspector Piper was the scales of justice.”

  “And the general, of course. For war.”

  “Oh, of course. He had the most numbers.” Lenora turns to me with an expectant blink. “We never did understand the numbers.”

  I find it prudent to call a halt to their chatter. And to hand Rachel a pen from my bag. “Whoa, girls. Slow down. Tell me all that again, but with actual explanations this time. And a diagram, if at all possible.”

  Rachel seems wary. “I didn’t memorize the book or anything, Ellie.”

  I gesture at her hand. “Then paraphrase. It sounds as though you remember quite a bit.”

  She bites on the end of the pen and thinks for a moment, reminding me so much of her uncle that I have to laugh. I made a request, which means she’ll carefully and deliberately ponder it until she’s ready.

  “All right, so every page had one or two symbols on the top, right?” she eventually asks. “And then some of them had those huge lists of numbers at the bottom.”

  I nod. That much I recall. The numbers had been accompanied by Aunt Margaret’s symbol for wealth. Like dollar signs, in a way.

  Rachel makes an offhand sketch of an upside-down pentagram and taps the page with the end of the pen. “This symbol is how we figured out it was a book of villagers. It was the last entry in the whole thing, and the writing was darker, like whoever wrote it had gotten a new pen. So they added you when you moved here.”

  “Yeah, because the page before it was a cross and staff,” Lenora says. To me, and as one speaking to a particularly uninformed infant, she adds, “That’s Nigel, Vicar Brown’s curate. He moved here right before you did. He didn’t have any numbers, either.”

  “Not everyone did,” Rachel says. She draws the cross and staff for me. “Anyway, once we figured out that those two meant you and Nigel, we were able to start working on the rest. Whoever wrote all that stuff must have been living here for a while, because they knew just about everyone in the village. Each person was assigned their own symbol and page.”

  A spark of something is beginning to take shape in the back of my mind, but it’s an intangible thing, difficult to pin down.

&
nbsp; “Each page represented a villager?” I echo. “Some with a list of numbers and some without?”

  Rachel nods.

  “Who had numbers?”

  “General von Cleve, like I said already,” Lenora supplies. “And the lovers, which was another one we didn’t figure out.”

  I nod. That was the two snakes facing off for a showdown. It was the one I used to point out the book’s magical properties to Inspector Piper.

  “And the ale guy,” Rachel adds. “He had almost as many as the general.”

  “That’s it?” I ask. “Just those three?”

  “Oh, no. They were everywhere—those ones just had the most. There was another one that filled the whole page, but it had been crossed out. We thought it might have been a farmer of some sort.”

  “It was a farmer,” Rachel agrees. “I didn’t tell you, Lenny, but I was thinking about it later, and I decided it was Old Man Petersham. He died of a heart attack a few years ago, so that would explain why it was crossed out.”

  The dark, cloudy shapes in the back of my brain seem to be gathering speed. Are we talking about a Book of Shadows or something darker, more sinister? Like a hit list?

  “What about the one you thought might be your stepmom?” I ask. “With the medicines?”

  “Poisons,” Rachel corrects me. “One was arsenic, for sure, and I think another one was cyanide. That one didn’t have numbers, though. It was a clean page.”

  “That wasn’t Oona MacDougal,” I say, picking up the threads of their theory. None of this should be making sense, but it does. This village has always been at the center of this case—its people, its fêtes, its quarrels. This notebook and its strange catalog of residents is somehow a part of it. “My guess is that it’s Aunt Margaret. Rachel, do you think you can draw the ale one for me?”

  “Most of it, yes.”

  The pink tip of her tongue shows between her lips as she works. The image is more elaborate than many of the others, a triangle holding a half circle up like a chalice, with two smaller semicircles off to the side.