Potion Problem

by Linnea West

  “A little,” Diggy said. “I mean, Mom never really gives instructions for most of the things she invents, but I know it should detect anything magical in here.”

  She dropped her sack on the floor and rummaged around inside, getting further and further lost inside the burlap bag. Finally, Diggy stood up straight with a triumphant look on her face. In her hands was an object that looked like Lavender had made a divining rod from some knitting needles she had welded together and strung a string across the ends.

  “How does it work?” Vinnie asked. “Are you supposed to say something to start it?”

  Diggy frowned at the sticks for a moment before she shoved them into Vinnie’s hands, disappearing once again into the burlap sack. From the outside of the sack, it looked like two cats were fighting inside and Vinnie had to suppress a laugh. Once more the girl emerged from the bag, triumphantly holding a stack of stapled together papers in her hand.

  “Here are all of the instructions Mom left for her things,” Diggy said. “I’m sure it will say how to work this thing in there.”

  Vinnie took the stack of papers out of Diggy’s hand and started flipping through, more than a little impressed by Lavender’s inventions. She had always had a vague sense of how smart and inventive her sister was but here was the actual proof.

  The papers were page after page of instructions on how to use different gadgets along with tips and tricks for each one. Vinnie had always assumed that Lavender spent most of the time in her workshop just daydreaming, but here was proof to the contrary. Wiping away a tear from her eye, Vinnie reaffirmed to herself that she would rescue Lavender no matter what.

  Noticing that she was absently flipping through papers without actually looking at them, Vinnie snapped her attention back to them just in time. The page she was on said Magiscope in big letters across the top. She handed it over to Diggy who read through them, muttered a few words and held onto the end of the contraption while the string on the end glowed red.

  “How do we know if it is working?” Vinnie asked.

  “I’m not exactly sure we do,” Diggy said. “But it did say that the string would turn green if it was waved over something magical. So I guess I’ll have to test it?”

  She waved the Magiscope over the bag of magical objects on the floor and the string immediately started to glow green .

  “I guess it works,” Diggy said, happily.

  First, she waved it over the place setting on the table and the string immediately became green. Diggy looked at her aunt, the excitement clearly visible on her face. Vinnie had to suppress a smile. It was pretty obvious that Plant had been killed by magic, so of course the dinner was going to make it glow.

  “Why don’t you carefully separate everything out so that you can wave the Magiscope over one thing at a time,” Vinnie suggested. “That way we can test each thing and narrow down where the magic is coming from.”

  Diggy nodded enthusiastically and put on another pair of gloves that they had brought with them. As she started to carefully move the things around the table, Vinnie started to flip through the stack of papers one more time. This time, she wanted to be a bit more careful.

  There were pages upon pages of instructions on the gadgets, but that wasn’t what interested Vinnie. She was looking for something else. If Lavender had known she would be taken, she may have left something else to help them.

  Finally on the last page, Vinnie found what she had been looking for. While the rest of the book had been written in careful printing so that the instructions could be read, this last page was written in Lavender’s usual messy scrawl. It was so chicken scratch bad that most people couldn’t read it, but Vinnie had been reading it her entire life. She was used to decoding it.

  Lavinia-I have been getting the feeling that I will be gone soon and I’m not sure I’m coming back, although I hope I am. I do have a few things I’d like to remind you. 1)You may not be magical, but remember that you can still use magical objects. I’ve already put the magic in and it is waiting for you to use it. 2)Take care of Indigo. She’s in the stage where she is both a child and an adult. Love her like you always do but give her room to grow. 3)I believe in you. I’ve gotten the sense that my rescue will depend mostly on you. I know that you can do it and will never give up on me just as I’ve never given up on you. I love you and Diggy. Lavender

  Vinnie read the note through three times before she let it all sink in. For how much time Lavender spent with her head in the clouds, she could be astute sometimes. The anxiety about finding her was high, but knowing that she was at peace and simply waiting for them to find her helped.

  It also helped that Lavender had prepared all of those objects for them. She was right that Vinnie could use them, although Vinnie always forgot about that. As someone who was a non-magical witch, Vinnie still had the ancestral right to use magic when she could, she just didn’t have any of her own to use. But Lavender had already put pieces of her own magic into things for her. That was sister love.

  “What are you reading?” Diggy asked.

  Vinnie turned and read the note once more, this time out loud. Diggy frowned when her mother called her a child, but otherwise agreed with Vinnie that the note was helpful and it was nice to find out that Lavender knew she would be leaving.

  “Did you find what was causing the Magiscope to go off?” Vinnie asked.

  “Oh yeah, I’m pretty sure it was the turkey leg,” Diggy said with a shrug.

  She walked over to the table and demonstrated by waving it over each thing in turn. When it was over the plate of food, the string glowed a brilliant, emerald green color.

  “I guess it could be something else on the plate, but it seemed the strongest when it was over the chicken,” Diggy said.

  “So most likely, the chicken contains some sort of magic that killed Plant,” Vinnie said. “But how do we know what kind? It could be a spell or a potion or anything. Is there some sort of object for that?”

  Diggy shrugged and shook her head and Vinnie knew she was right. She had read the instructions for all of the magical objects and none of them could be used in that way. The women pulled out two of the chairs and sat down, trying to figure out what to do next.

  After a moment, Vinnie snapped her fingers. She was focusing too much on the magical aspect of this. What if she tried to solve it like a mortal would on one of those crime shows? Lavender always said if she got to the point where she was watching mortal television, that must mean she needed to find a new hobby. But it just might come in handy now.

  Chapter Eight

  The first thing that Vinnie and Diggy had to do was to canvas the area. It wouldn't be easy because the dining room was large. They would also have to look in the kitchen to see if they could find any clues in there. The two women decided to split up, Diggy with her Magiscope and Vinnie with her powers of detection.

  Starting at the big metal door that lead into the dining room, they both turned and went in opposite directions. The dining room was large and wood paneled, like the dining room in an old manor house. Plush carpeting covered the floor and in the middle of it was a large, solid wood table surrounded by tall-backed wooden chairs. Around the outside of the room were a few buffets to hold dishes that couldn’t fit on the table. The dining room was a complete contrast to the seating space that the coven witches were all waiting in, but Vinnie guessed that the dining room was more sacred and hadn’t been changed because of that.

  Vinnie walked slowly and carefully, scanning the ground as she went, ready to pounce on anything out of place and hope that it was a clue. She had hoped that there would be something almost immediately. In all of those crime shows, the clues practically fell into their hands one after the other. But if they didn’t find another clue soon, they would have to just start interviewing the witches and hope they learned something valuable.

  On the other side of the room, Vinnie and Diggy almost ran into each other as they looked for a clue. The perimeter of the room was clear, so
it was decided that under the table was the only place left in the room to look.

  First, they pulled out each chair just in case something was sitting on the seat of the chair or just underneath. Then they both got on their hands and knees and crawled around, looking for something, anything that would help their case. But after a solid five minutes of crawling back and forth under the massive table, they still didn’t find anything.

  Standing back up, Diggy snapped her fingers and the chairs all pushed themselves back in. She turned and grinned at Vinnie with a mischievous smile on her face. Vinnie couldn’t help but smile back at her. No matter how mischievous she was, Vinnie was proud of her.

  “Let’s check the kitchen,” Vinnie said.

  Diggy nodded but then they both stopped short, realizing that neither of them had any idea where the kitchen was. Vinnie slowly spun in a circle, inspecting the walls for some sort of hidden door. Sure, the coven witches could have magically hidden it, but it seemed more likely in this old-fashioned room that it was simply behind one of the panels.

  Squinting her eyes, she looked for any sort of clue that the kitchen was around. Diggy looked around too, but after only a moment, she walked over to the door behind the head of the table and gave it a slight push. It sprung open, opening out into a small, dark hallway. Vinnie was about to congratulate Diggy, but the girl shook her head.

  “I just figured the food would come out here because they feed the leader first,” she said with a shrug.

  Together, the two of them walked slowly down the hallway. It was a stark, empty hallway with no hiding places for any clues. The walls were filled with pictures and paintings of the coven’s witches that had come before and Vinnie thought it was an awful shame that the pictures were all hidden back here in this dark, dank hallway. She supposed that the current witches thought these pictures didn’t fit the ambiance they were going for in the seating area out front.

  The hallway stretched on a lot further than Vinnie thought it would and she imagined having to carry a tray of food from the kitchen all the way to the dining room, but then she realized that they probably used magic, not a big metal tray like she did. The kitchen had a big wooden door with a simple sign on it labeling it the kitchen. Vinnie cautiously pushed it open, not sure what kind of kitchen she would find on the other side.

  She was surprised to find a kitchen that looked a lot like the one she had at home. It was large and comfortable at the same time. There was a fireplace on the opposite end of the room and on one of the walls was a large, old metal stove that seemed to be a wood burning stove. A large cauldron sat on top, looking forlornly empty.

  A large island stretched down the middle of the room made of stone on the bottom with a large wooden top. All sorts of vegetables and fruits, loaves of bread, and even a full, cooked turkey sat piled on top. It was like someone had collected everything they needed to make lunch and then left.

  Vinnie remembered that this was a coven of witches. The food probably had a spell put on it so that it wouldn’t go bad. It wasn’t often that Vinnie wished she was magical, but that would be a useful spell to have in her arsenal. Maybe she could convince Lavender to make her an object that could do that for her.

  A sharp pain seemed to hit her in the gut as she remembered that Lavender wasn’t around to do that and it would be a while before she was back, if she came back at all. But Vinnie knew she couldn't’ dwell on that. Right now, they were looking for clues.

  Diggy was already scanning the kitchen with the Magiscope so Vinnie decided to poke around a little and see what she came up with. As a cook, she was also curious to see just how these witches prepared their food, although they probably used magic for most of it.

  A cupboard hung up on one wall and Vinnie went straight for it, pulling open the door to see what was inside. The entire thing was lined with small bottles with cork stoppers in them. Most of the bottles were blue, obscuring the contents inside. Some of them seemed to be spices and herbs for cooking, but others seemed to be more for potions. How strange that they kept the two together. That seemed like a recipe for disaster. Maybe something had just gotten mixed up and this death had been a horrible accident.

  Vinnie wondered if she should pull them all out to look at what they were, but she had never learned about potions so she had no clue what may or may not be used to make a potion to turn someone to stone. She turned, wondering if she dare ask Diggy how she was doing in her potions study when something caught her eye.

  The stove was raised up off of the ground just enough that something could roll underneath it and it looked like something had. There was something under there that seemed out of place. Vinnie walked over and reached out to grab it before she realized that she should put on a glove. She was pretty sure they weren’t going to use fingerprints to solve a magical murder, but who knows. It was still a good idea to be careful.

  Once she had her glove on, Vinnie reached underneath, careful not to push the object further under there. If it went back any farther, she wouldn't be able to get it out, although they could probably use magic for that.

  Either way, Vinnie picked it up and opened her hand. In the palm of her hand was a small, dark green bottle, just like the ones that lined the cabinet she had been looking in. Unlike the other bottles, this one was unlabeled which meant that it could have just about anything inside.

  Vinnie took out the stopper and looked inside, but it was empty. She was about to give it a sniff when Diggy yelled across the kitchen, startling her enough to almost drop the bottle.

  “Stop! Don’t smell it like that,” the girl yelled, rushing across the kitchen. “If it is something poisonous, the full smell of it could kill you. Here, do it like this.”

  Diggy took the bottle in her hand and used her other hand to waft the top of the bottle. As she fanned the air above it, she sniffed delicately once, twice, then a third time before she turned wide-eyed and looked at Vinnie.

  “I could be wrong, but this smells like a mixture of a few things,” Diggy said. “Maybe belladonna? And mandrake? A touch of wormwood. All very poisonous.”

  “Are you sure?” Vinnie asked. “We can’t just go accusing someone of mixing this thing up if we don’t actually know what the smells are.”

  “Mom was right when she said I should focus on potion making a little harder,” Diggy said with a scowl. “But it’s just so boring. It’s like when you make soup. You just have to stand and stir, but you can’t read a book or anything while you do it or things could go wrong. Boring.”

  “Hey, I actually like making soup,” Vinnie said.

  She thought of her kitchen and the soup she had been hoping to make that night. Vinnie had been planning a vegetable medley. Lavender had made her a self-cutting knife that would chop vegetables for her, but Vinnie actually enjoyed chopping veggies herself the non-magical way. With how slow this investigation was going they wouldn't have time even if she used the magical knife.

  “I think we can make the fair assumption that this bottle held the potion that killed Plant,” Vinnie said. “So now, we just have to figure out who used it on her. We need to go talk to Wisteria and start interviewing the witches.”

  The two women walked once more down the long, unfriendly hallway. It was eerily quiet with only the sound of Diggy’s high-heeled black boots clicking down the tile floor. Vinnie tried to focus on exactly what they were going to ask the women. She was much more comfortable at home, watching a pot of soup on the stove while she knitted pastel colored mittens. This job was going to push her much further outside of her comfort zone than she first thought.

  Chapter Nine

  When they got back to the dining room, Wisteria was waiting for them. She was looking around the room in disgust at all of the magical objects they had left strewn about as they swung the hidden door open once more.

  “Oh good, here I thought you’d cut your losses and run off and left us all of this junk to clean up,” Wisteria said.

  “This is not junk,”
Diggy said before she caught herself and put on a more professional tone of voice. “What I meant was that these are our investigative objects.”

  “Well they look like junk to me,” Wisteria said. “Now if you could tidy them up a bit. I already hated this room as it is. A big pile of junk makes it even worse.”

  “Why do you hate this room?” Vinnie asked. “It looks like a traditional dining room.”

  “That’s the problem,” Wisteria said. “I picked the wonderful modern interior design scheme that we used in the living room area, but Plant wouldn’t let me touch this room. She said it was sacred and needed to stay this way, even though it hasn’t looked like this since the dawn of time. The Sisters of the Beating Heart redecorated this room in 1820. I feel like after almost two hundred years, we are due for a change. I suppose now I can actually change things up. Of course, we will have to wait and see who is made the leader of the coven.”

  While Wisteria had been ranting about the design scheme of the dining room, Diggy had sneaked over and started to return the magical objects to the big burlap bag. Vinnie felt a twinge of happiness at this mark of maturity. Now if Diggy would only do the same to her room, which was located at the top of the tower and was so messy that it looked like a clothing store had exploded inside. Vinnie had tried to clean it up once, but Diggy hadn’t seen the issue when she demonstrated how she could just use magic to find whatever she was looking for.

  “If we could get back to the case please?” Vinnie asked. “We will need to start questioning suspects.”

  “Of course,” Wisteria said. “But if something was found to be wrong with the food, there are only three people you really need to question. Ivy is our chef, so obviously the kitchen is her domain. And Thistle and Willow were the servers last night. Each month, two witches are assigned to serve the others. Everyone else stays out of the way because honestly, no one wants to play the part of servant if they don't have to.”