Brewing Trouble

by Katherine Kim

  “I’ve been better,” Doc’s voice was thin, but carried a weight to it. A resignation was threaded into her words that scared Sarah. “The food’s surprisingly decent though, not that I can eat much.”

  “Well, we discovered a few things yesterday,” Sarah said. She reached out and grabbed Doc’s hand, reining in her impulse to squeeze. Doc had lost too much strength for such rough treatment. “Meg got shoved through the display case.”

  Doc’s eyes went wide and she gasped. “Oh my god, is she okay?”

  “Yeah, she needed a few stitches, but she’s mostly just shaken up. The display case is wrecked and a whole bunch of the dishes,” Sarah shook her head to dismiss the damage. “That’s not the important part, though. The guy who shoved her had a talisman. A bracelet that was heavily enchanted specifically to get him through our wards.”

  Doc’s eyebrows almost hit her hairline at that news, and Sarah felt slightly better to know that she wasn’t alone in her shock.

  “Yeah. That’s basically how we all reacted. Gabe got a pretty good read off it, and Angela Davila is behind the whole thing.” Sarah felt like growling herself, like Sebastian did when he got angry. With her entirely human anatomy, though, she had to settle for a snarling tone of voice instead of an actual snarl.

  “There is no way she could pull that off. She was never a particularly strong witch, if my memory serves, and our wards were partly implemented by your grandmother, who was definitely not someone to go against recklessly.” Doc’s resignation was being quickly replaced by the much more familiar determination, and Sarah almost laughed with her relief.

  “Yeah. And you’ve built on them since, and I helped. Then I reinforced them the other day, after you mentioned it.” Sarah frowned. “Did you know they’d be breached?”

  Doc shook her head. “No, I thought maybe someone had been trying to get in, and there’d be a clue. We’ve had to deal with so much recently, it seems foolish to not check when something happens.”

  “Like you getting suddenly sick enough to be hospitalized,” Sarah said. “Well, someone was trying to get in, and she did. Or at least her minion did. And then her inside girl paid the price.”

  “Meg’s no spy. She couldn’t act her way out of a wet paper sack,” Doc scoffed.

  “We agree. We think she’s just being herself and giving away secrets in the course of her chattering. She probably has no idea.”

  Doc turned and stared out the window for a long moment, her worry showing clear on her face. “So what now?”

  “I was hoping to try to break the hex on this end. There’s no telling where Angela cast her spell.”

  Doc shook her head again. “You can go ahead and try, but I think the best you could do is slow it down.”

  Sarah nodded and gathered the things she’d brought. With Doc’s advice and guidance, she tried several different strategies, but nothing made much difference. At one point, Doc said she felt her own magic stir for the first time in days, but that flicker of power was just that. A flicker, then it faded back again.

  After an hour they were interrupted by a nurse coming in, wearing a look of concern.

  “What are you up to in here?” she asked, bustling over to the monitors and pressing a few buttons.

  “Just talking and planning. There was an assault at my shop yesterday,” Doc answered.

  “Meg was hurt, but she’s okay now. There was some damage to the shop, though,” Sarah added.

  “That doesn’t explain the numbers coming out of the monitors.” The nurse frowned. “I’m going to send the doctor in when she gets here, and we might change out the equipment. It’s almost time for lunch, Susan, think you’re up for it?”

  Doc grinned. “I’m surprisingly hungry today. Tired, but hungry.”

  The nurse looked delighted at the news and smiled all the way out of the room. Sarah, on the other hand, deflated as soon as the door closed.

  “It was doing something. I’m close, but I can’t crack it.” She slumped in her chair and dropped her head to the edge of the mattress in defeat.

  “We knew it was a long shot, Sarah. And you did an excellent job of thinking through the likeliest techniques to try,” Doc brushed her fingers over Sarah’s head. “I think you’re on the right track. I’m just sorry I’m not more help on this one.”

  Sarah chuckled into the blanket. “Marcus said pretty much the same thing last night. I hope you don’t mind, but we left him to go through your journals. We thought there might be a clue.” She suddenly realized what a breach of privacy that was. What if there was more than just clinic reports in there? “Oh god, Doc. I’m so sorry! I should have done that myself. You must be so mad. I’m so sorry!”

  Doc was quiet for so long that Sarah started to wonder if the anger had rendered her speechless, or worse. When she pulled up enough courage to look up, Doc wasn’t glaring or red-faced or unconscious from rage. She biting back a laugh.

  “Doc?”

  “Sarah, you and the others are trying to solve a mystery. Your enthusiasm is actually something I’m pleased by. It tells me that you care about me, and that’s more helpful than you know,” Doc let the smile form now that she had her laugh controlled. “It’s obvious that Angela holds some sort of grudge against me, so looking into my past is an excellent idea. Yes, I wish you’d asked me first, but I don’t have any secrets written in my clinic logs. Well, not any of mine, anyhow. I trust Marcus’ discretion for the rest. I’m sure he’s already guessed, but do ask him to keep it to himself.”

  “You’re the mother that Elaine has never been,” Sarah felt shy admitting it, but the surprise in Doc’s face kept her talking. “Of course I care. I never really had family around me that supported me. Well, not after Dad died and Gran got cut out. I’m not letting any of you go without a fight.”

  “Well then. I suppose I’ll have to keep fighting here, too.” Doc answered.

  15

  Sarah stretched back and rubbed her eyes. She’d been pouring over Gran’s journals— again— since she’d back from her hospital visit with Doc and it was now… She glanced at her phone on the sofa beside her and squeezed her eyes shut. No wonder she felt so horrible. She’d ben hunched over Gran’s journals for almost ten hours, and she’d missed dinner. There was a cold, mostly full cup of tea on the table in front of her and no sign of anyone else in her house.

  “Well. I guess I should eat something, huh?” she muttered to herself. The spiral notebook thumped softly when she tossed it onto the table, and when she stood and stretched again, her back cracked about ten times.

  Groaning, she shuffled into the kitchen and put the tea kettle on. She glanced out the back window and smiled when she saw a coyote snout poke through the hedge separating her garden from the Los Gatos Creek trail.

  “Hello?” Kai called out when he opened the door.

  “I’m right here, no need to yell,” Sarah spooned tea leaves into the pot in front of her, then moved over to rummage in the fridge.

  “Sorry, Seb said you were deep into Miss Rosie’s journals when he left this afternoon. I said I’d swing by after my rounds of the kids— they’re all doing so much better, by the way— and see if you’d surfaced,” Kai dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. “Guess you have, huh?”

  “Just now, actually. I need food. And to not be staring at a book for a few minutes,” Sarah pulled out the leftover Chinese takeout and popped the top open. “Man I love Kung Pao Chicken. Anyway, there’s a ton of useful information in these journals, but none of it is in any kind of order. She just wrote down whatever she thought of that day. I’ve been taking notes on where everything is, as well as anything we might consider useful to help Doc.”

  Kai nodded. “Find anything very useful, then?” he asked.

  “Some,” Sarah grabbed the kettle and filled the teapot, which she brought to the table along with her leftovers and two mugs. “A lot of it’s—” The ringing of her cell phone interrupted her. Kai grinned as he recognized Elaine’s rin
gtone, and waved her off to answer it. Sarah sighed and went back to the sofa to find the phone before Elaine tried Gran’s landline.

  “Hey Mom,” Sarah answered, once she’d snatched it from under a throw pillow.

  “Sarah. I trust you’re well today? Have you given any more thought to my friend’s offer?” Elaine wasted no time.

  “What offer, Mom?” Sarah asked. “And I’m stressed out and tired, and in the middle of some things, thank you.”

  Elaine made a slightly exasperated noise, and Sarah thought it was interesting that her mother was thawing slightly now that she’d moved all the way across the country from the woman.

  “The office manager position. I told you about it the other day. They can’t hold it open forever, you realize.” Elaine made another small sound that Sarah couldn’t interpret. It was new, and that was very odd. “I know it’s not what you wanted to do with your degree, but it’s a good job with a good firm. It could be an excellent stepping stone to greater things, and you would be here where you didn’t have to worry about… about certain things.”

  Sarah’s patience for everything going on snapped.

  “No. I don’t need to think about it. I am not ever going to take another office job again, even if it means I have to live on the damn streets,” she snapped. Elaine gasped, but Sarah didn’t let her get a word in. “I hated my job, Mom. It was killing me to go into that god awful place every damn day. I never wanted a degree in anything even resembling business! If I’d had any choice in the matter, I probably would have taken at least a year off to come visit Gran. I could have seen her before she died! I’m an adult and still don’t know what I want to do with my life because you’ve been dictating my every damn move since middle school!”

  “Sarah, I simply—”

  “Yes, Mom. I know. We’ve been over it. You’re terrified of magic and the fact that I have any. You think it’s going to kill me somehow, like it’s some kind of curse. Well let me tell you, it’s done exactly the opposite. I finally feel like I’m living! I’m busy because I’ve been helping deal with a magical flu outbreak among the kids over at the Village, and you know what? No filing or schedule management I’ve ever done made me feel even half as accomplished as helping just one of those kids. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some more of my own life to live and other people to help. And I’m not doing it by ordering more damned office supplies or scheduling a meeting room!” Sarah jabbed her finger at the disconnect button and growled.

  “Old fashioned phones were so much more satisfying to hang up on someone with. I can’t slam my cell phone down the same way,” she huffed.

  “I have had that very thought myself, sometimes,” Kai nodded. “Makes me really appreciate my office phone.”

  “You okay?” Gabe chimed in. Sarah looked over and saw Gabe sitting at the table across from Kai and Sebastian pulling two sodas from the fridge.

  “When’d you get here?” Sarah blinked.

  “Right around ‘going to that god awful place every day.’ ” Sebastian put a can in front of Gabe. “Your mom, I take it?”

  “Yeah. She’s still on about that job I told you about. Ugh, why can’t she just get it in her head that I’m not moving back to New York to live the perfectly plastic life she wants for me?” Sarah huffed and flopped over on the sofa and squeezed her eyes shut. Not that she had a better idea with what to do with her life than her mother did, but she knew that going back into an office was the opposite of whatever it was.

  “I sympathize with the whole life-plan thing,” Gabe said. The frustration in his voice clear to Sarah. Maybe she was just sympathetic to it at the moment. “I mean, I’m off the streets. I’m not alone and in danger and afraid that I’m going insane anymore. I’m here now. I’ve got a pretty good life, thanks to you guys, but this one here—”

  “Hey!” Sebastian protested and Sarah smiled without looking over. She’d guess that Gabe jabbed a finger into Seb’s ribs, which he did pretty often now that he’d discovered Sebastian was ticklish.

  “This one here wants me to go to community college,” Gabe finished.

  “I just want you to know what your options are. You’re still young enough to do whatever you want with your life,” Seb protested. “It’s totally different from Elaine trying to run Sarah’s life for her.”

  “True. Still, it’s a pretty awful feeling to realize that I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, now that I’m basically a grown up already,” Gabe said. Sarah sat up and looked over in time to see him shrug.

  “Yeah. And I’ve got ten years on you, kid.” Sarah grinned over at him and Gabe rolled his eyes.

  “Anyway,” Gabe drew the word out, loudly changing the subject. “Sebastian and I measured the space and found a few possible cases to replace the broken one with. We were hoping you could take a look at them and give us an okay.”

  “Awesome you guys, thanks a ton.” Sarah got up and finally managed to pour out a cup of tea for herself. Steeped too long is better than not at all, she decided.

  “So, any luck with the journals?” Sebastian asked once they were all settled at the table. He’d grabbed a bag of tortilla chips and some salsa they’d made fresh from the garden. Sarah savored the moment before answering. That, the lemon balm tea, and the leftover Chinese food was an odd combination, but it managed to be perfect.

  “Some, yeah.” Sarah nodded. “The real problem is that Gran didn’t write them in any sort of order, you know? She just sat down to write and put down whatever was on her mind that day. Which I love! It’s like sitting at the table with her over a cup of tea,” Sarah held up her cup, “and listening to Gran chat about magic and how to use it.”

  The guys all smiled and nodded, and Sebastian rubbed her shoulder. Knowing that Gran had given her these gifts— the journals, as well as the magic itself— but she had been deliberately kept from it… She understood that her mother was scared of magic. Scared that Sarah would get hurt or killed by magic somehow, but it still hurt badly, knowing that she’d missed all that time with her grandmother just because of Elaine’s fear.

  “No wonder you’re always curled up with one,” Gabe said. The sadness in his eyes told her that Gabe understood losing half a life to someone else’s reactions.

  “Yeah, well. It’s great to pass time and feel her close to me, but for looking something up it’s honestly the worst ever,” Sarah sighed and shook her head. “I know there’s information in there, but I can’t remember it well enough to rely on it, and I have no idea where it is. And there’s something like twelve years of journals to go through.”

  “You said you’ve been making an index?” Kai asked.

  “Yeah,” Sarah nodded to the notebook she had left on the sofa “Which is actually slowing me down a little bit. I can’t just flip through them and find anything, I have to take a minute and jot down the subject and write a page number or the date of the entry and stuff.”

  “Well, we can help with that, for sure,” Gabe said. “If you don’t mind sharing your grandmother.”

  “Well, Kai and Seb already knew her, so I’ll introduce you.” Sarah stood and went to get the box of journals before going into the office to scrounge up a couple more notepads and pens.

  “Oh, I meant to tell you, I talked to Mom this morning,” Kai said, glancing at Sebastian as he grabbed a few books to hand over. They were all different, obviously bought on a whim whenever a new one was needed. Kai handed over a leather bound book with a Lord of the Rings quote embossed on the cover and a slightly smaller, thicker book that was covered in a dark blue floral print.

  “Yeah? How’s Dad doing?” Sebastian took the books and went to sit down on the sofa near where Sarah was working. She distributed the equally mismatched notebooks.

  “Better. He’s still blaming himself for Eric, but at least he’s not hiding from us anymore. He sends his love, too,” Kai handed Gabe his portion and settled in with a fresh cup of tea and a stretch. “I bring it up because I told Mom abou
t Doc, and what we suspect about this Angela woman, and Mom said that the name sounds familiar. Davila, I mean. The family name.”

  Sarah cocked her head and frowned.

  “Your mom went to school with Doc?” she asked.

  “No, and she wasn’t sure she remembered it right, so she was going to go look it up and call back.” Kai flipped the journal in front of him— dark green paper and a spiral binding so it lay flat on the table— and started in.

  Sarah explained to them how she’d been taking notes, by journal, then date if possible, then the subject of the entry. She’d go back later and compile a sensible index from all the notes later. The four of them worked quietly for a few hours, pausing every so often to read something out loud that was particularly entertaining or amusing.

  “Oh man, do you still have a lime green tea kettle?” Gabe asked at one point. Sarah laughed out loud and nodded, knowing what he was reading about.

  “Well, you might want to hang on to it,” he snickered. “Your grandmother enchanted it to play I’m a little teapot instead of just whistling like normal.”

  “I know. It’s totally off pitch, too. It’s terrible!” Sarah cracked up and went to dig it out to show them.

  A little while later, Kai piped up. “So are we basically believing in voodoo dolls now?”

  “I don’t see why we wouldn’t,” Sebastian said without looking up from his book. “I mean, considering what we are and all, it’d be a bit arrogant, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yeah, I don’t think that the resident demi-god son of an actual, literal, legend is allowed to debate the believability of other kinds of magic,” Gabe chimed in. “What did you find?”

  “It’s an entry about hexes, I guess? I don’t know much about witchcraft,” Kai sent a shrug to Sarah who just raised her eyebrows and grinned. “What? I don’t. Anyway, Miss Rosie wrote about casting hexes being easier with bits of the person being hexed. Like hair and fingernail clipping and things like that. She’s being pretty snarky about it all, talking down about it.” He laughed and smiled slightly. “I can totally hear her voice in my head, saying these words.” Kai adopted a conspiritorial, chatting-over-tea pose and started reading as if he was gossiping with them. “Now some witches— and I won’t say anything against them but if they really feel the need to use their magic as a weapon like this, I can’t speak to their moral fiber— but some witches cast hexes on the people they feel have acted against them. The easiest way is to get a small bit of the person being affected, like hair or something, and wrap them up in a pouch that represents the person.”