by Linnea West
Diggy was standing in front of the shelves, her fingers wiggling in the air, her lips moving as she read the bottles. She was looking for something, but having trouble finding it. Finally, she grabbed a bottle off of the shelf and held it triumphantly in the air.
“Base potion!” she squealed. “But the bad news is that it is empty. Do you think Norhand will accept the empty bottle?”
“I have no idea because I don’t know what base potion even is,” Vinnie said, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe we could go back upstairs for some dessert and you can talk me through it?”
Diggy nodded and started back up the stairs, doubling back to grab the spell book too. Vinnie wondered if her niece thought she would need both to explain the base potion to her poor, non-magical aunt.
Once they were settled back in the kitchen with the last slices of apple pie, Diggy flipped through the pages of the book until she found the right one. At the top, Base Potion was nicely printed, but below that, the recipe was all handwritten. Vinnie could tell it wasn’t Lavender’s handwriting, but then whose was it?
“Base potion is what makes potion making easier,” Diggy said. Her eyes were dancing as she enjoyed being the teacher for once. “But it is also a family secret. So this is our family recipe for our base potion. If we make and use this, then we don’t have to be as careful and exacting with our magic in our other potions because the base potion takes care of most of it.”
Vinnie nodded like she understood and on some level she did, but that didn’t make much sense to her. It may have had something to do with her pathetic understanding of magic in general.
“So our base potion has lavender, peppermint, rain water, and white wine,” Diggy said. “As long as it is brewed under a full moon, our family base potion will make all other potion making like ten times easier.”
A scowl crossed Vinnie’s face for just a moment before she was able to pull it back. Even though she knew full well magic existed and even kind of used it when she deigned her sister’s magical objects actually useful, she couldn’t help but think things like this sounded ridiculous. So they toss together random ingredients under a full moon and then bottle it and it helps them cook other potions? Sure.
“Well, let’s write a quick letter to Norhand and see if he will accept the fact that we figured out it was the base potion,” Vinnie said. “You can try your hand at sending it to him using my energy if you’d like.”
Vinnie scrawled another quick note to Norhand, explaining their situation and signed her name at the bottom. She folded it up and carefully printed Norhand’s name on top. Then she handed it to Diggy, who excitedly held it in her out-stretched palm.
“Ready?” Vinnie asked.
Diggy nodded and closed her eyes. Vinnie closed her eyes too and pictured Norhand’s face. Each time she saw him in her mind’s eye, she couldn’t help but try to remember where she knew him from. But it was no use, nothing came to mind other than his appearance in their entryway a few days earlier.
A squeal from Diggy made Vinnie open her eyes. The piece of paper was gone and Diggy was doing a little happy dance in her chair. Vinnie reached over and gave her niece a high five.
“I think I did it!” the girl said. “I mean, I hope I did it. But it felt right. So we will just have to wait for Norhand to send us something back so that we know.”
The two women cleaned up their dishes and once again, Vinnie walked her niece to her bedroom. After another long hug, Diggy went in to her room and Vinnie retired to her own bedroom. After a day full of triumph, they felt so much closer to being done with The Sisters of the Beating Heart and getting Lavender back. Maybe they could do this after all.
Chapter Sixteen
Instead of being able to go to bed with the good feeling of triumph, Vinnie knew she needed to do a little homework. Even though they had solved the crime, they still had to help the coven pick a new leader and as someone who didn’t even understand her own ancestral witch family, Vinnie had absolutely no idea how that was done.
Thankfully, after rifling around in the pile of things on the Halloween Helper desk, Vinnie had found a book on coven witches that she took to her room for a bit of light reading. After she put on her cozy nightgown and tucked herself under a few quilts, Vinnie opened the book and started to read. She was surprised at how interesting it actually was.
The book started with a whole history of coven witches and why the covens had started to form. Apparently, non-familial witches used to struggle to find an ancestral family to adopt them but even if they could find one, the family was usually reticent to divulge all of the family secrets to someone who was still an outsider to them. So the non-familial witches started to band together to create their own families.
Vinnie was fascinated by the way covens had been set up in a very similar way to the ancestral families, with family trees based on how old and powerful a witch was. While birth order determined the family line, age took a back seat to skills when it came to covens. So someone who was second in command could feasibly be bumped down the chain if a younger, but more powerful witch came in and tested to take the second seat.
But the book didn’t go into much detail about what to do if the chain of power was disrupted. It simply said that if the leader felt they were coming to the end of their reign, it was their responsibility to name a successor. Apparently this seemed to be the one and only time a leader had died without doing that. That was just Vinnie’s luck.
The rain tapped on the window of her room and Vinnie glanced over. Their house was set up on top of a little hill so from her second story window, she watched the tops of the trees sway back and forth in the wind. It was calming and almost hypnotic, helping her to calm down the anxiety that was starting to brew inside of her.
Setting the book down on top of her quilt, Vinnie wondered how she as a non-magical, ancestral witch was supposed to delve into the power structure of the coven. They didn’t seem to like or trust her, except for Thistle who she had now basically doomed to death. It all seemed to be going wrong.
She realized her hair was still in two french braids and she started to comb them out with her fingers while she mulled over how she wanted to handle things tomorrow. Vinnie wondered if it would be wrong to ask Thistle for help when it came to the coven’s structure. She seemed to be the only one who would be of any help to them.
Vinnie had a bad feeling that everyone would be vying for the position of leader even though only a few would even be eligible and out of those, only one would have everything it took to be the leader. But if ever there was going to be a power grab, this was going to be the time.
Coven witches were known for being power-hungry and concerned mostly with positions of authority and superiority. Vinnie would have to weed through them and somehow rank all of the witches. Then, she would only have to concern herself with the top handful of names instead of all of them.
If someone killed Plant to take over the coven, they really hadn’t thought their plan through. Plant had died with no successor so at this point, anyone could take over. It would have made more sense to cozy up to her while she was still living so that she would name her successor and then kill her to take over.
Vinnie shivered. She didn’t like thinking about this too much, especially on a dark, rainy night like tonight. Instead, she tried to focus on the embroidery she was doing on a dress of Diggy’s. It was a dark gray dress and Vinnie was embroidering little black spiders around the bottom hem. She was trying to work on her handicrafts a bit more and she just knew Diggy would enjoy these cute little things.
She snuggled down into her quilts and focused on her work, humming to herself and stopping occasionally to sip her tea. Lavender had enchanted one of her tea cups so that it always kept her tea the perfect temperature. Too often, Vinnie would find herself drinking her evening tea cold because she got too distracted by her work. One day she had mentioned it to Lavender who had taken it upon herself to deem one of the tea cups her “Good Night Cup”
which meant her tea was always warm before bed.
Lavender had really done more for Vinnie than she had thought. For so long, Vinnie felt like she was doing all of the work around the house. And if she looked at all of the housework, she certainly was doing pretty much all of it. But Lavender had helped in her own way and found ways to make life easier for Vinnie. She hadn’t even realized until Lavender was gone just how many things Lavender had done. Vinnie was willing to bet there would have been more, if Vinnie wasn’t so stubborn about not using so many magical objects.
Once her Good Night Cup was drained, she folded up the dress and tucked it into the drawer of her nightstand before turning off her bedside lamp. Her room glowed with the light of the fire and Vinnie thought that if Lavender was here in the house, everything would be perfect. Soon, she assured herself. Soon they would all be back to normal.
Chapter Seventeen
The next morning over breakfast, inspiration struck and while Vinnie still had no idea what to do about appointing a new leader of the coven, she did know how to continue her investigation. There was still a nagging thought at the back of her mind that Thistle was not the one who had done this even if all of the evidence pointed towards her. There had to be something they weren’t seeing.
Thistle was not supposed to be sent away until later in the day, so Vinnie rushed Diggy through an unusual-for-them breakfast of cold cereal and milk before hustling them off to the coven headquarters via travel orb. Diggy was bleary eyed as she muttered the words to make them travel, but still managed to catch Vinnie before she fell over upon arrival.
Once Vinnie had her bearings, she rushed off to the room where Thistle was being kept while Diggy trailed behind her. The poor girl had been woken up so early that she had put her black sweater on inside out but since it was a homemade sweater, Vinnie was the only one who could really tell since she had been the one to make it.
Knocking on the door, Vinnie threw it open as soon as she heard Thistle tell her to come in. The poor witch was sitting on the bed, her head hanging down. She was wearing the same dress that she had been wearing the day before, but now it was wrinkled and made her look sad.
“I’m so glad you are still here because I have a few more questions,” Vinnie said.
She dragged the chair over to sit next to Thistle and plopped herself down into it. Thistle gave her a confused look which made sense considering Vinnie had been the one to accuse her of murder before.
“I wanted to ask you about the potions,” Vinnie said. “Before you said you are the only one allowed in the potion room, but is it kept locked?”
“I didn’t say I was the only one allowed in,” Thistle said. “I just said I was the only one who goes in there. Anyone can go in the potion room. It isn’t kept locked. If someone else wants to learn about making potions, they are more than welcome to.”
Suddenly it was like time stopped for Vinnie. She thought she had been doing such a good job investigating, but she hadn’t even been listening. She heard what she wanted to hear, not what Thistle had actually been saying. At this point, Diggy was slipping into the room to listen also.
“So you mean that any of the witches in the coven could have gone in and made that potion?” Vinnie said slowly.
“I suppose so, yes,” Thistle said. “I mean, they would have had to unless somehow they made it at home and brought it here.”
All of the evidence Vinnie thought she had to put Thistle away fro the murder was suddenly shifting. If anyone had access to the potion room, then anyone could have done it.
“The potion that killed Plant, is it hard to make?” Vinnie asked.
“I, I’m not sure,” Thistle stuttered. “Just because I’m the potion keeper doesn’t mean I’ve actually made all of the potions in the book. There are hundreds upon hundreds of them. I just pick the ones I want to make and go from there. I’ve never made that one.”
“Is the potion book still in the potion room?” Vinnie asked, standing up out of her chair. “We need to see the recipe for that potion.”
“It should be,” Thistle said. “But I haven’t been out of this room for a while, so I’m not exactly sure.”
Vinnie dashed to the door, whipping it open before she turned back towards Thistle and Diggy.
“Hold tight ladies, I’ll be right back,” she said.
Vinnie contemplated running down the hallway, but thought better of it. There was no need to arouse suspicion. Besides, she didn’t have time to make small talk about picking the next leader. Not right now when she had found a new thread to investigate.
The door to the potion room was cracked open when Vinnie got to it. She pushed it all the way open and saw that it was back to the same, small size it had been when they first entered it yesterday. That wouldn’t do. The potion book was kept wherever the table went.
Walking back into the hallway, Vinnie grabbed the first witch that went by, who happened to be Ivy. Dragging her by the arm, Vinnie brought her into the potion room with her.
“Make this bigger please,” she said, gesturing around the room and trying to look authoritative at the same time.
Ivy gave her an odd look, but a moment later the walls started to move and the table popped up out of the floor. Vinnie rushed over to it, but the tabletop was empty. The potion book wasn’t there.
“Hey, is there another place the potion book is kept?” Vinnie asked Ivy, but when she turned around, Ivy was gone.
With a shrug, Vinnie went to the shelf where Thistle kept her other books, like the one she had lent to Diggy the day before. Thumbing through, she saw plenty of magic books and even a couple of mortal fiction books, but the large, brown potion book was missing.
Vinnie walked out into the hallway, took a deep breath, and walked back into the potion room once more, but the book was still gone. It had been worth a shot. Vinnie just never knew what was going to happen with all of this magic stuff.
She looked around for Ivy, but the witch had disappeared. Vinnie hoped that leaving the potion room big and open was okay because she certainly didn’t know how to shrink it back down. She headed back to Thistle and Diggy.
When Vinnie pushed the door open, Diggy was excitedly telling Thistle all about her attempts and successes at using Vinnie’s energy in her magic the night before. Vinnie couldn’t help but smile. Diggy was quite the sight in her inside out sweater, long flowy black skirt, and today she had a black beret balanced on one side of her head. When Diggy had been half-awake, she had looked foreboding and even a little scary, but now she looked like an excited little girl playing dress-up as a witch.
Vinnie quietly walked in, but waited for Diggy to finish her story before she told them what had happened. Thistle looked confused, blinking several times as if she just couldn’t believe it.
“It can’t be missing,” Thistle said. “We have a rule that it must stay in the potion room. Each coven and family only gets one copy so if it goes missing, we are out of luck.”
“Diggy, yesterday when you went to borrow that other book, was the potion book still there?” Vinnie asked.
“I’m pretty sure it was,” Diggy said, her face screwed up in a scowl. “I don’t exactly remember, but I feel like I would have noticed if it was gone.”
Now things were starting to look a bit suspicious. Was Thistle being set up to take the fall for this murder? Vinnie was getting the feeling that someone had made that potion and given it to Plant, figuring that Thistle would be blamed simply because she was the potion keeper.
“Thistle, are there any other witches who have taken an interest in potions?” Vinnie asked. “I know you said no before, but really think about it. Is anyone really interested in what you do in there, even if you thought they were just asking to be polite?”
Thistle stared off into space for a moment, her mouth going slack as she seemed to drift off through her memories. After a moment, she seemed to come back into her body and she shook her head violently.
“No, no one asks abou
t potions at all,” she said. “And I don’t have many friends here. That’s why I was kind of glad I got the potion keeper job because that gives me something to do and a space of my own. Besides polite conversation, no one really bothers me in there.”
Another misfit. That’s alright, she could join the crew. The Daggerwood was a family full of misfits. Vinnie just hoped they could clear this misfit’s name and prove she hadn’t murdered Plant because the gut feeling that Thistle was innocent was growing..
“Thistle, we are going to do everything we can to help you,” Vinnie said. “I believe you. I don’t think you murdered Plant, but I do think that someone is setting you up to look like you did.”
“Why would someone do that?” Thistle asked.
“Well that brings me to the other thing I wanted to ask you about,” Vinnie said. “Plant didn’t pick a successor before she died, but I’m wondering who it would have been? What is the pecking order like here in the coven?”
“Plant tried really hard to not have an exact pecking order,” Thistle said. “I think she figured that gave her more power if no one quite knew where they stood. But I know that towards the top were Ivy, Willow, Rose, Vine, and me.”
The fact that the main suspects were all at the top of the list for who would take over from Plant came as no surprise, but it did mean that it would be harder to figure out who actually did it. Before, it seemed like it was just a cut and dry case where all of the clues pointed to one person but now it was becoming much more complicated than that. And while Thistle wasn’t the main suspect any more, Vinnie felt like she couldn’t totally rule her out.
“Well that just figures,” Vinnie grumbled under her breath.