Potions Are for Pushovers

by Tamara Berry

  The Land Rover is parked at a semiawkward angle blocking the main road, but he doesn’t heed this as he turns to me and clasps my hands in his own. “You have nothing to prove to these people.”

  I open my mouth to reply, but he presses my fingers tightly. I feel that pinch as though he’s clasping my heart in his hand—it’s squeezing the air from my lungs with a grip that’s painful in its intensity.

  “You are not Sarah Blackthorne,” he says, his voice rough. “No, don’t argue. You might be able to convince Inspector Piper that your motives are self-serving and mercenary, but I know better. I know you. You couldn’t care less about selling your potions.”

  On the contrary, selling my potions is the entire point of all this. Without a means of income, I have no choice but to pack up and return to my former life. To the wandering and searching, the never-ending pursuit of entities I can neither see nor touch. If I want to stay in this village—and I do—I have no choice but to recoup what’s left of my reputation.

  “They’ll come around,” he says, his voice softer this time. One of his hands releases mine and comes up to cup my cheek, but it doesn’t lessen the vise-like grip he has on my heart. If anything, that gesture only tightens its hold. “They’ll see what I see when I look at you. They just need time, that’s all. It’s not worth risking your life over.”

  I snatch my hands away, surprised to find them shaking. “That shows how little you know about the real world,” I retort.

  For once, I’m not talking about the riches that set him and his family apart. Money is part of it, yes, but money is also something I’m used to doing without. Taking care of myself is an art form I have perfected. By hook or by crook—and I mean that literally—I’ve managed to scrape my way by in this world. And, my current difficulties notwithstanding, I know I’ll keep doing it.

  But Nicholas has always lived here. He was born not just into wealth, but into acceptance. Admiration, even. Nothing he says or does, short of murder, will lower him in the eyes of the village—these warm, weird, wonderful people who share so much history, so much of their lives.

  “Do you know what Penny Dautry thought after five minutes of conversation with me?” I ask. It’s not exactly the line of reasoning I planned to take, but it’s the only way I can make him understand. “That I was blackmailing her. That I was picking up where Sarah left off. Not because I’m a practicing witch, and not because I talk to my dead sister at night, but because she looked at me and saw a woman as miserable as Sarah had been.”

  Nicholas doesn’t respond, just firms his lips in a straight line.

  “She thought that because I’m exactly like Sarah Blackthorne.”

  Greedy. Lonely. Alone.

  And determined by any means necessary not to let any of it show.

  “I’m not doing this for me, Nicholas,” I add, softer this time. “I’m doing it for the village. Everyone has suffered so much at her hands, paid the price for just trying to get by. They deserve some closure after all they’ve been through.”

  I open the door and swing my legs out, glad to find that they’re stable. Glancing back, I offer him a tentative smile. “Lenora and Rachel will put up a fight, but don’t let them wear you down. Tie them up, if you have to.”

  “Eleanor—wait,” he calls one last time.

  I almost ignore him, afraid that to linger will only give him a chance to start squeezing my internal organs again, but I turn around. “Yes?”

  He looks at me for a long moment, his mouth hovering over his words. I don’t know what he means to say, but he settles for a gruff, “Be careful tonight. And come see me the moment it’s over.”

  “I will,” I promise and shut the door.

  I wait only until the engine kicks up and Nicholas drives off before heading into the vicarage. There are plenty of ways to spread news in a place like this, but none are as effective as the time-honored practice of a phone tree. With any luck, news of Lewis’s supposed death will be discussed over every dinner table. By dessert, I hope to have the entire village out by the evergreen crossroads so I can finally lay this case to rest.

  As to what will happen after, well, I can’t see that far into the future. And for once in my life, I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

  Chapter 18

  “There are more candles down in storage if you want them,” Annis says as she thrusts a box of votives into my arms. “They’re probably as old as this place is, though, so I can’t promise they’ll light. Especially if it rains during your vigil.”

  I glance up at the darkening sky, where the clouds are still holding themselves around the fringes of the horizon. The weather report is inconclusive regarding whether or not the moon will be visible tonight, but things are looking good for me so far.

  “This should be plenty,” I say. “And I’ll pay you back for all of them.”

  “Nonsense. I’m more than happy to contribute to such a worthy cause. This sounds exactly like what the village needs. Poor Lewis. Whatever he was guilty of, he didn’t deserve to die for it.”

  The box of candles easily weighs twenty pounds, so I brace it on my hip. It eases the weight in my arms but not in my heart. Annis had been so devastated to hear of Lewis’s death, so enthusiastically supportive of my desire to bring the community together in the middle of the night, that she’d started the phone tree at once. I can’t help but feel like a monster.

  Looking at her now, those kind eyes brimming with unshed and authentic tears, I know very well that I am a monster.

  “Annis, you know it’s not actually a vigil I’m planning, right?” I ask.

  “Memorial service, then.”

  “Not really that, either.”

  “Prayer circle?”

  “Um . . .”

  Annis smiles. It’s one of her most serene smiles, the kind that makes it seem as though nothing can touch her. “You’re going to have to give me something, Ellie. I was hoping to write those candles off as a charitable donation, but I can hardly put it down as a Wiccan orgy.”

  With that, any fears I might have had that Annis is unaware of my true intentions are put to rest. I have no idea how this woman is able to find so much good in every situation, but I find her nothing short of miraculous.

  “A pagan ritual is the best I can do, I’m afraid,” I say.

  “I might be able to work with that.” She nods as if in dismissal, but something about the way she holds herself gives me pause. I’m rewarded for my patience a few seconds later. “Will this be enough, do you think?”

  “I’m not sure.” Since I’ve already told so many lies to her already today, honesty is the only option I have left. “I should probably admit that only half of my goal tonight is to let those who were being blackmailed know that their secrets died with Sarah and Lewis. I’m also hoping to jolt the murderer into making a mistake or revealing a clue of some kind. I know you never imagined that one of your parishioners could do something like this, but I’m certain it’s one of them.”

  I hold my breath, waiting for her judgment.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she says. “What I was really asking is, will it be enough to finally make you feel like you belong?”

  I’m riveted in place, the candles growing heavier by the second. “What are you talking about?”

  “Maybe nothing.” She leans forward and presses a quick kiss on my cheek, careful not to jostle the injured side of my face. “But I think you’ll be surprised how many people show up tonight—and not just because this promises to be more entertaining than the time Randall Humboldt got his head stuck in the bike rack outside the general store. You have more friends around here than you realize. There aren’t many people who would risk their lives for the sake of the truth. Even fewer who would do it with such panache.”

  I can’t think of anything to reply to that, which is just as well because Annis releases a low laugh and waves a farewell.

  “See you at midnight, Ellie,” she says. “I can’t wait to see a p
agan ritual up close.”

  * * *

  If I’d realized that church candles weighed as much as a small child, I’d have stopped by Mrs. Brennigan’s house first. My errand with her is a much shorter—and lighter—one.

  “Oh, Madame Eleanor!” She appears on the doorstep before I have a chance to knock, though I do manage to set the box of candles down without straining my back too much. “Is that for me? I don’t recall . . .”

  “Ordering twenty pounds of wax candles?” I push the hair out of my face. I never did get around to putting it up in my usual braids, which means the long strands are flying in every direction. “I should hope not. These are for the ceremony tonight. Which, incidentally, is what I came by to talk to you about. Are you on your way out?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. Can it wait?”

  Not really, no. The candles will do a good job of outlining a circle around the evergreen crossroads, and the elderberry cordial I intend to spill all over the ground will serve a double purpose of glinting under the moonlight like blood and helping to spark a small, highly controlled bonfire in the center. The one thing I don’t have, however—and the one thing I need more than anything—is that blasted Book of Shadows.

  “This is going to sound like a strange request, but do you have any of those floral notebooks that Margaret Piper makes and sells at the Saturday market?” I ask. “She said you requested some to sell at the fête, but I was hoping you might have one or two lying around.”

  “Oh, Lord. Yes. Dozens of them. I don’t know why, but I always buy pretty stationery in the belief that I’ll write my magnum opus on it someday. Did you want them?”

  “Yes, actually,” I say and toy with the idea of telling her the truth. If she’s going to be present at the ceremony tonight, she’ll surely notice that the book I’m going to cast into the flames in an attempt to lay this blackmailing nonsense to rest looks suspiciously like the one I borrowed from her house.

  But she makes it easy on me.

  “Oh, perfect. If you’re taking donations in to Annis, you can add them to the heap. That will save poor Margaret from having to make more. They’re in the library. Do you think you can find them on your own? I’m terribly late as it is.”

  “Absolutely,” I say, feeling even worse about my falsehood now. Mrs. Brennigan has no real reason to trust me, but here she is, letting me into her house to snoop around as I see fit. It’s a fake psychic’s dream come true.

  “Thanks, love. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  I do. Most of it includes a long, carefree life free of lies, deceit, and dancing in the moonlight.

  It doesn’t take me long to locate the library. The Brennigan home is Edwardian in design and construction, which means it’s tall and skinny, most of the ground floor designed for looks rather than use. As such, the library is located near the front. It’s a dark and stately room, but the books aren’t the heavy, leather-bound tomes one would expect to find on the shelves. In true B&B form, it’s all creased paperback novels and travel guides—the kind of light reading that would appeal to guests on a repairing lease in the country.

  I find the notebooks stacked along a shelf behind a studded desk chair. At the sight of them, my heartbeat picks up, so similar in design are they to the Book of Shadows. Those twine spines, the delicate hand-pressed pages . . . The only difference is that they appear to be made mostly of violets and buttercups instead of those pink tea roses. If I were an attendee at the ceremony tonight—or, indeed, the murderer—I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

  Even though I highly doubt Mrs. Brennigan is hiding the real Book of Shadows in a library she just invited me to peruse at my leisure, I take a moment to flip through each one, holding my breath until I see the blank pages peeping back at me. Only one has any writing in it, and it appears to be the start to a cozy mystery set in Chicago in the roaring twenties.

  “If this is her opus, she needs to seriously consider finishing it,” I say as I chuckle over a few of the lines. “Poor Mrs. Brennigan. The one thing she’s ever suffered from is a lack of confidence. I’m going to make her a creativity tonic.”

  My promise thus made, I put the half-written mystery back on the shelf, along with one of the nicest-looking buttercup notebooks so she can keep going if she’s suddenly visited by her muse.

  “It’s not there.”

  I pause in the act of turning around, clutching the half-dozen notebooks to my chest.

  “I’ve already looked, but I’m sure you know that, don’t you?”

  “I wasn’t aware you were still in the village,” I say, struggling to keep my voice level. My pulse, having leapt at the sound of that voice, takes off in a skittering pattern.

  “It’s not in any of Lewis’s bags, either. I was just over at my aunt’s house, going through his things. How one man could have been so opposed to owning an iron, I have no idea.”

  There’s nothing for it but to turn the rest of the way to face the carefully shellacked hair and tight-fitting shirt of none other than Richard King. For once, he’s not smiling, all those shining white teeth of his tucked behind a deeply etched frown.

  “I was so sorry to hear about your brother,” I say, even though it sounds inane in the face of what seems to be alarmingly like a murder confession. “This must be so hard for you, coming on the heels of your aunt’s death as it did.”

  “I know he had it in his possession at one point.” Richard takes a step forward. He’s still far enough away that I could easily dodge around the opposite side of the desk, but I don’t dare move. “He told me as much the day he stole my car. But he misplaced it, he said. Misplaced it. Can you imagine that kind of carelessness?”

  Yes, I can, if only because it’s right on par with a young woman who recently suffered a blow to the head allowing herself to be trapped in a library with a man twice her size. I wish I’d thought to ask Mrs. Brennigan what kind of errand she was running. It would really help me to know what kind of a timeline I’m looking at here.

  “He reassured me by saying he thought he might have left it at your house.” Richard’s teeth finally make an appearance, his smile as eerily fake as his tan. “You don’t happen to have it, do you?”

  “Not anymore,” I say and, since it seems like the most likely way to get out of this alive, “I left it with Inspector Piper.”

  Richard releases an eloquent string of curses that could only come from a man who makes his living indulging in public discourse. I watch with a kind of detached wonder, almost as though seeing him from behind a pane of warped glass. When he lets the mask fall like that, his emotions coming through the careful television personality façade, he looks even more like his brother.

  Lewis is the rougher version, obviously, the uncut stone to Richard’s flashy diamond, but there’s no denying the similarities. In fact, when he runs his hand through his hair in a gesture of obvious annoyance, the resemblance is uncanny. Those same tufts of hair, that same cherubic face . . .

  He looks almost like the picture Rachel drew. The picture she showed to the train station workers. The picture they affirmed was the man who arrived last Wednesday, with plenty of time for murder of all kinds.

  I jolt where I stand, scattering the notebooks all over the ground. The sound of those pages flapping seems to recall Richard to a sense of his surroundings. Also to a sense of gallantry, since he comes forward to assist me in gathering them up again.

  But the gallantry is only a shield. Without bothering to scoop up the fallen books, he grips my arm with a strength it’s impossible to ignore. The hard press of his thumb is going to leave a deep bruise on my skin, but it’s not nearly as deep as the bruise to my ego. It’s a strange set of priorities, I know, but I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming. I’d been so sure that one of the villagers was the murderer. Richard is a little smarmy for my tastes, but he seemed so harmless.

  There’s nothing harmless about the way he yanks my arm, however, pulling me away from the desk and
across the floor.

  “If you gave the inspector that notebook, then you’re just going to have to get it back,” he says. The cultured accents of his voice are at odds with the menacing way he manhandles me.

  “I can’t take evidence away from a police station,” I protest. “Not when it’s already been logged and examined. I’m not a magician.”

  He halts. During that short pause, I think the wisdom of my remark is going to prevail, but he stares at me and shakes his head before uttering a low laugh. “No, but you are a witch. That’s the next best thing. Come on. We have to hurry before the Brennigans get home.”

  I’ve read enough books about kidnappings to know that my best chance of survival is to raise as much of a hue and a cry as I can while I’m still around civilization and can reach help. The moment Richard gets me in his car or out of reach of the neighbors, all hope is lost. There will be nothing to stop him from rubbing me all over with wolfsbane.

  That, therefore, is precisely what I do. Without waiting for him to realize my intentions, I open my mouth and release an earsplitting scream that Lenora would easily recognize as that of a banshee.

  Richard takes instant exception to this. With another of those eloquent bursts of profanity, he lifts his fist and prepares to silence me through any means necessary.

  “Not my stitches side,” I plead, but it’s too late. For the second time in as many days, my head is struck with a blow that leaves my brain rattling. This time, however, my brain decides not to fight back. The painful rip of my stitches bursting open is followed by a bright flash of color and, finally, darkness.

  Chapter 19

  Strangely enough, this isn’t the first time I awake to find myself kidnapped and bound by a murderer.

  There seems to be a profound lack of imagination exhibited by the killers in my life. When in a pinch, they resort to the most obvious means of restraint, which is to affix my wrists and then stand back and watch as I struggle to free myself.

  Though to be fair, Richard isn’t standing back. He’s sitting. And from the zooming sensation that’s making my head spin, I’m guessing we’re in a car.