by Elle Adams
“Right,” I said, having no idea how he expected me to respond to that one. “The job is… look, you’re probably best asking me in person, but let’s just say nobody has walked away from that position in a year.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “It’s cursed, right?”
I nearly dropped the phone. “It’s not a good idea to discuss confidential matters this way. But yes.”
“Cool. Count me in.”
The call ended, leaving me staring at the phone in confusion. “I think I just got called an old maid.”
Bethan looked at me. “Old? You?”
“Too old to deal with overconfident guys who think they’ll be the exception to Mr Falconer’s rule. You know, I’m starting to understand how he managed to dupe so many of them. People aren’t willing to believe things until it’s too late.” Even in the paranormal world, apparently.
Except now I had to explain to Mr Falconer that his new potential apprentice was a few degrees short of qualifying for the position.
9
Mr Falconer, shockingly, did not take the news well.
“Are you joking?” he growled into the phone, as my ability helpfully projected an image of his literally spitting-mad face at me.
“Wizards who aren’t grade five can learn wand-making,” I said. “You’ve taught them before, right? You must have. Otherwise there’d be no grade fives in the town left.”
“That isn’t good enough,” he said. “I will give this apprentice one chance, and if he’s not good enough, I expect a replacement to be at my office first thing the following morning. No excuses.”
And he slammed the phone down.
Poor Leopold. I hoped he knew what he was getting into.
What now?
Answer: do some breaking and entering. I’d failed to teleport into his shop, and it was probably protected against every type of spell. Even the fact that I was doing a job for him might not protect me from his over-extensive security wands, but I was backed into a corner.
Time to see if my potion-making skills were any better than my spell-casting talents.
Firstly, I armed myself with a textbook and the leaves I’d gathered when I’d been in the forest. Then I made directly for the classroom at the witches’ headquarters. I didn’t have a magic lesson tonight since I was supposed to be studying for the exam, so I took the opportunity to pilfer the cauldron and props and take them into an empty classroom.
I’d already triple-checked the ingredient list, but now I read through the recipe twelve times, step by step, muttering them to myself. If I passed the exam, my first potion-making lessons would start next week, so I wasn’t that far off schedule. Rita had said she’d start with basic recipes with simple steps, few ingredients, and minimal chances for disaster. This particular brew did not count as a simple by any stretch of the imagination, but if I was careful, hopefully I could avoid utter catastrophe.
Ten minutes later, I decided to revise that statement. So far, I’d cut three fingers, wedged a knife into the desk, and now I’d rested my hand on the work surface for all of two seconds and accidentally created an adhesive. On the plus side, the potion was right colour, simmering away on the stove, but unless I managed to detach my hand from the desk, it’d burn up.
I tugged at my hand, knocking several other ingredients aside in the process. That’s what I got for being rash and not telling anyone my plan. I gripped my wrist with my free hand and tugged again, and an empty jar crashed to the floor. At the same time, a familiar voice called from outside, “Is anyone in there?”
Nathan. I called, “Can I have a hand?”
He opened the door and looked at the desk. “It looks like yours is in need of attention.”
“Er, yeah, I’m kind of stuck.” I wished I’d already bottled some invisibility potion. Sure would come in handy right now.
“Let me see. I’m sure I can unstick you.”
He crossed to the sink and poured water onto a cloth. “This should work, unless it’s a stickiness potion.”
“I wouldn’t know how to go about making one of those.” I took the cloth in my free hand and rubbed it on my trapped one.
He yanked the knife out of the desk. “What are you making?”
I continued to rub my glue-covered hand. “My first potion. As you can see, it’s going swimmingly.”
Nathan smiled. “Did you find those mice?”
I shook my head. “Thanks for the other day… sorry my cat decided to derail things.”
“Not to worry,” he said. “How’s the studying going? That’s what this is, right?”
“Kind of.” In a few years, it will be, anyway. “I don’t know precisely what the questions on the test will be, so I guess I have to wait and see.”
“You’re intelligent. You can do this.”
Heat burned my cheeks. Since when did he have so much faith in me? “Oh, I forgot to thank you for the bubble wrap,” I said, averting my gaze and feeling even stupider for the state my hand was in. “I assume it was you, since the only other person who knows about my weird obsession is Alissa.”
He grinned. “You’re welcome. I thought you’d appreciate it, considering how stressful your week has been. How’s your job going?”
“Not great,” I said. “Unless you know what happened to the wand-makers a few decades ago?”
His brow furrowed. “Which wand-makers?”
“It might be nothing,” I added. “I got overly curious about why everyone else stopped making wands in the first place, but that probably has nothing to do with whoever’s grudge led me into this mess.”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “It isn’t my area of expertise. But it seems like they’re putting a disproportionate amount of pressure on you.”
“You might say that. I got a lot of use out of the bubble wrap.”
He picked up the bottle I’d dropped and put it back on the desk. “That’s invisibility. The potion. Right?”
I nearly dropped the damp towel. “How did you know?”
“I’m trained to see through disguises,” he said. “Like other tricks paranormals might use to hide.”
I’d underestimated him, apparently. “How would you go about seeing through it?”
“It’s not easy, but there are always signs. You still leave footprints for a start. You can’t quieten your breathing so you don’t make any noise. There are spells for that, but everything has its tells.”
A paranormal hunter would need to know. But would Mr Falconer?
“Is anyone helping you with this?” he asked.
“I made sure to check the recipe, don’t worry.” I’d freed three of my fingers, but his presence wasn’t doing anything to calm down my nerves, and half my hand was still glued to the desk despite the cloth.
“Have you managed to find anyone for Mr Falconer in the meantime?”
“A desperate graduate who’s not technically qualified. I all but told him the truth and he still wants to go ahead with it. So now I have that on my hands, too. Along with the glue. And I annoyed Ava’s granddaughter.”
“The seer?”
“You’ve met her?”
“Once or twice. How did you end up annoying her?”
“Ava tried to set up her own wand-making business once and Mr Falconer kicked up a fuss about it. Since the timing of her accident didn’t seem coincidental, I wondered if she or her granddaughter might be behind it. But I don’t have enough clues.”
“So you’re making that potion to spy on him?”
Guilty. “It’s that or break into Madame Grey’s top-secret room and look for information on the history of wand-making to see how he wound up being the only one left, but the curse took effect in the last year, and it probably is old Ava. I’m just too curious about how the whole business works.” I yanked my hand free and would have knocked a jar over if he hadn’t caught my wrist at that moment.
“Careful.”
“Ah—thanks.” He released my hand, but not before my whole body heated up. Whoa. Si
nce when had mild attraction bloomed into a full-blown crush? I ducked my head and went to wash off the sticky concoction, then returned to the stove. I peered into the cauldron at the simmering potion. “I think it might be done.”
“Are you sure?”
I really, really hope so. I gave the concoction one final stir. It was a luminescent green colour, which matched the illustration in the textbook. “I guess I have to drink this. Or tip it over my head, but I’m not really up for that.”
Nathan picked up the ingredient list I’d left on the side. “Nothing here is poisonous.”
“I know. Trust me, I know what precautions to take.” I carefully tipped some of the potion into a beaker, wincing when several drops splashed onto my wrist. “Ah…”
“Did you burn yourself?” he asked, taking a step forward.
“No…” I looked down at my wrist—which had gone see-through. “I’m not sure that’s supposed to happen.”
His brows shot up. “Look at your arm.”
“Oh no.” Now my hand was see-through, and my arm had disappeared up to the elbow. And the effect was climbing, fast. “I guess I don’t have to drink it, then.
He shook his head. “I can still see you. See through you. The outline of your body is still there.”
I looked down at myself. Now most of my chest had vanished and my legs were in danger of going the same way. “I’m supposed to be invisible.”
Before my eyes, my body disappeared, inch by inch. Yet the outline remained, like a shadow. I hadn’t gone invisible.
I’d gone transparent.
“I was supposed to drink it,” I said. “I barely touched it. What in the—?” I broke off, staring at him. “Er. Did you touch it?”
“No.” His feet had disappeared. Catching my gaze, he looked down, then up at me again. “I touched you, though.”
“Oh no. I think I might have missed a step, or…”
He turned back to the ingredient list. “I’m not the expert here.”
I’m not even a novice. “Er, this thing was meant to last for two hours max, but that’s if you drink a small amount. And I don’t know if there’s a counter-spell—”
The half-open classroom door swung open and a teenage girl walked in, staring between Nathan and me in confusion. “Are you supposed to be see-through?”
“No,” said Nathan, who’d vanished up to the elbows by this point.
“An accident,” I said, my face flaming. Wait, could a transparent person blush?
The girl looked at the cauldron. Sammi was one of Madame Grey’s many grandchildren, Alissa’s youngest cousin. “You look like ghosts.”
So we did. “It was supposed to be an invisibility potion.”
“I think you forgot the nettles,” she remarked, eying the green concoction.
“No, I definitely didn’t. They were the first—”
Or had I? I turned back to the desk… which had disappeared.
Oh no.
I looked at Nathan. Or through Nathan. Now the desk, the potion and the ingredients had turned transparent, too. “This is ridiculous.” I reached for the recipe list and my knee knocked into the desk.
The cauldron tilted.
“Ahh!”
My fingers grasped the cauldron, missed, and wetness drenched my feet as the potion spilled. Nathan caught my hand, and between us, we managed to steady to the cauldron before it fell.
Not before the floor had started to vanish, too.
The potion spilled across the floor. Sammi burst into hysterical laughter, at least until it reached her feet. Then she ran.
“Ah!” I hopped up and down on the spot, as cool in a crisis as always. Nathan ran and slammed the door shut, but the potion had already seeped underneath. “We can’t stay in here forever. We need the antidote.”
“The potion is all over our feet,” he pointed out. “We’ll spread it everywhere we walk.”
I looked through him. Then I burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. I really am. If it’s any consolation, there was supposed to be a time limit on it. Two hours.”
“Two hours for one dose or the whole cauldron?”
Oh… no. “Do you want me to say I don’t know, or the worst-case scenario? I usually have them memorised just in case.”
He shook his head, but looked amused. Or I thought he did, but the transparency made it a little difficult to read his expression. Maybe I hadn’t totally blown my chances. “Go on. Tell me the worst.”
“Two days,” I admitted. “That goes for the entire room, too. And whatever else it touches.”
“Ah.” He paused as a shriek came from the entrance hall. “I think it got her. I also think you’d better start rehearsing what you’re going to tell Madame Grey.”
I winced. “I’m dead, aren’t I? We need to stop it spreading.”
“Doesn’t it only work on living things?”
“Nope. Believe me, I wish I’d gone for that variation on the potion, but it’s way too complicated. Yes, I know this was, too, but I did just get corrected by a twelve-year-old. And I nearly got it right…”
‘Nearly’ wasn’t good enough, according to Madame Grey. Upon hearing her granddaughter’s shrieks, she’d had the presence of mind to cast some kind of shielding spell on herself and the rest of the building, so it was only the one room and half the entrance hall that had turned see-through. Oh, and her youngest most beloved granddaughter. To say I was in disgrace was an understatement.
On top of that, I was stuck in a transparent state for two days, which she reasoned was punishment enough for my stupidity. I wished Nathan didn’t have to be stuck like that, too, though. He’d only been trying to help me.
Finishing her lecture, Madame Grey said, “I can make what’s left of the potion vanish from your shoes, but you’re going to have to shower to clean the rest off.”
My face heated up again. “Er. I didn’t spill the potion on me. Just my shoes. Lucky I didn’t drink it either. Why did it affect my whole body?”
“Because it’s the way the potion spreads,” she said. “It works on anything it touches, and anything that’s already covered in the potion can spread it, too. But only within the first minute of touching it. You should be safe to walk home now.”
I don’t know about safe. I trip over my own feet even when they’re fully visible.
“Er…” I hadn’t exactly wanted to question her with witnesses, but this was the first time I’d got her alone since Mr Falconer had revealed that something downright odd had happened to the last wand-makers. “I had a question I wanted to ask you. But you weren’t around.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did it involve potions that are well beyond your skill level?”
Common sense told me I didn’t want to poke her right now. “Is there somewhere I can look up the history of wand-making?”
“Blair, I’d be concerned about ever owning a wand if you’re as competent with casting spells as you are with potions.”
Ouch. Guess I deserved that one. Still… she definitely kept history books in her office, and it wouldn’t be impossible to do some snooping around in my transparent state. On the other hand, going into work would be a disaster, Veronica would ask questions, and my attempts to keep the extent of my investigations from reaching Mr Falconer’s ears had thoroughly evaporated. How was I supposed to explain this?
Nathan laughed as I walked into the wall on the way out.
“Oi. I can’t see you, but I can hear you.” I backed up a step. “I’m not even going to try using these levitating boots in this state.”
“You’d think they’d be invisibility proof.”
“Ha.” I steadied myself against the wall to avoid tripping over my own invisible feet, realised I’d grabbed Nathan instead, and swiftly let go. And then tripped again. “I didn’t realise how much I relied on my sight.” Maybe it was best that I hadn’t achieved full invisibility. “This is hopeless.”
“If it’s any consolation, you did a spectacular job at your first attempt
at a transparency potion. And it’s better than the anti-solid potion, which really would turn you into a ghost.”
I pinched my own arm. Ow. Definitely still solid. This was going to be fun.
10
I walked into work the following morning, bracing myself for the backlash. I’d debated calling in sick, but after another restless night, I was in dire need of something to take my mind off the chaos I’d unintentionally caused. Madame Grey might even have told Veronica. I didn’t get the impression the two of them talked much, but surely word would spread beyond the Meadowsweet Coven. There wasn’t any way to hide the fact that I’d accidentally turned half the witches’ main headquarters transparent.
On top of that, I’d spilled what was left of the potion, so I didn’t even have the necessary ingredients to start from scratch. And there was no way I could risk going into the forest in this state. I hadn’t even been able to take advantage of being transparent last night, because it’d taken over an hour for me to walk home, tripping over every other step. Alissa found the whole thing hilarious, Sky was terrified of me, and there was still no sign of the bloody mice.
I’d thought things couldn’t get worse, but I was spectacularly wrong. I entered the office—after colliding with the door twice and being unable to find the handle—and an unfamiliar witch looked through me. Her expression creased in confusion.
“Are you a ghost?” she asked uncertainly.
A new co-worker. I really was spectacular at first impressions. The new girl had honey-blond hair and her crisply ironed clothes looked like they belonged on a catwalk. At least nobody would be able to see if I had my shirt on inside out.
“Blair?” said Bethan, staring at me. “Is there something you want to tell us?”
“I may have tried making an invisibility potion,” I said. “In my defence, it wasn’t actually that far off. I’m like this until tomorrow night.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. Long story.”
Bethan hid her face behind her files to hide her muffled laughter. “Sorry,” she gasped. “That’s possibly the most Blair-like thing you’ve ever done.”