by Emery Belle
“Wait a second.” I frowned at Monty. “If you died, then how come you’re talking to us right now?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “And why have you never mentioned a wife and kids?”
Monty paused, his brow furrowed, and gnawed on his bottom lip. “You raise two most excellent points, Wren Winters. Now that I think of it, perhaps I was the raving lunatic in this story, and the victim my stablehand.”
He shrugged—or seemed to, since he had no shoulders, but his chin definitely lifted up and down. “As I said, tomatoes, tomahtoes.” He sniffed the air hungrily. “Incidentally, do I smell bread baking? After that unpleasant incident, I quite lost my appetite for baked goods, but a few centuries of abstinence does a stomach—and a conscience—wonders.”
“Anyway,” I said, ignoring Monty and turning back to Garnet, “what am I supposed to do for money? I know it’s only two weeks, but I didn’t plan on missing a paycheck and I haven’t set aside enough to cover my bills.” I thought longingly of my bank account in the human world—granted, it wasn’t much, but at least I would have been able to eat.
“I’ll spot you,” Garnet said, reaching for her purse. “How much do you think—”
She was interrupted by a horrible hacking sound, and I spun around to make sure Pierre was okay—he had a nasty habit of choking on chunks of my regurgitated shoes—but the dog was sprawled out in front of my wardrobe, snoring so loudly that his jowls were fluttering. His paws were flapping frantically in the air as his dream-self chased after something; for most dogs, that something would probably be a squirrel, but for Pierre it was more than likely the poor hot dog vendor around the corner who’d had more than one memorable encounter with my familiar.
The hacking continued, this time followed by spluttering, and I soon realized the awful noises were coming from Monty, who was in the process of coughing up a gray velvet pouch. It landed on the floor with a thud, its contents jingling, and when I met the head’s gaze, my mouth hanging open, he gave me a mysterious smile.
“I’ve been keeping that for a rainy day, and it’s looking awfully cloudy outside this afternoon,” he said gently. “Go on, open it.”
I shot him another confused look, then carefully pulled the sleeves of my shirt down to cover my hands before kneeling on the ground and peeling open the pouch with difficulty, given that I had no intention of actually touching it with my bare skin. I gasped when it fell open to reveal dozens of gold and silver coins—enough money to keep me fed and clothed for at least a year.
“Consider it yours,” Monty said, swinging his chain around in a wide arc. “As a thank-you present for sparing a little space in your corner of the world for an otherwise homeless head.”
My eyes misted over and I reached for him—how does one give a proper hug to a head?—but he swung away from me before I could touch him. “Don’t be hysterical, woman. It’s quite unbecoming.”
As I flicked his chain, sending him wobbling around in a circle, Garnet stood up and swung her purse over her shoulder. “See, Wren? I told you it’ll all work out just fine. And before you know it, your two weeks will be up and you’ll be back on the job. Speaking of which…” She sighed. “I have an interview today with Lady Amabelle. She’s hiring a new front-desk secretary at Sparrow Manor, and I’ve applied for the job.”
I raised my eyebrows. As far as I knew, Garnet had, up until this point, been fully funded by her parents, who wanted her to focus all her attention on passing her exams. And for good reason—despite descending from one of the island’s original families that boasted a long and distinguished magical history, Garnet was easily the weakest of our little trio. Much to her embarrassment, Hunter and I—both of the human world—had bested her in every lesson so far.
But I knew better than to ask any questions, so I wished her luck and waved her out the door, then plopped down on the ground and began stroking Pierre’s fur. My eyes instantly began to water, courtesy of my lifelong dog allergy, and I had just let out a series of violent sneezes when someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” I called, tears streaming down my face.
“Hey, Wren, I was hoping—” Hunter stepped inside, then stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of me. “Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling beside me as I blotted at my eyes with a tissue. “What happened?” He gave Monty an accusatory glare, but the head merely stared back, licking his lips meaningfully.
“It’s nothing, just a little allergy,” I said, offering him a smile. “But thanks… and what can I do for you? Garnet isn’t here, sorry.”
Hunter stood up and shuffled his feet, then pushed his thin glasses up his nose. “Actually, Wren, I was hoping to talk to you.” He crossed his arms in front of his body, then dropped them to his sides, then raised them back up to run his hands roughly through his hair.
“What’s up?” I asked, frowning up at him. Hunter was awkward on a good day, but right now he looked like he wanted to disappear right through the floor. Monty, sensing his discomfort like an ogre sniffing out rotting flesh, stopped swinging on his chain and gave him a wicked grin, listening intently.
Hunter cleared his throat once, twice, three times, until finally he took a deep breath and said, “Would you like to go with me to the coven’s dance?” He cringed on the last word, as though the mere thought of going to the dance with me left a bad taste in his mouth.
I patted Pierre one last time, then climbed to my feet to face Hunter, whose cheeks were pink, and gave him an appraising look. “No, Hunter, I won’t go to the dance with you.” His face fell and he opened his mouth to speak, but I held up my hand to stop him. “Not because I don’t want to, but because I know I’m not actually the person you want to bring.” I smiled gently. “So why don’t you just ask her?”
He opened his mouth again, then let out a long sigh and closed it. “Because I’m sure she doesn’t want to go with me.”
I reached over and squeezed his hand. “You never know until you try, right? Do you really want to spend the whole night watching her with someone else and wondering what if?” Hunter looked so crestfallen at the thought of Garnet going to the dance with someone else that even Monty made a sympathetic noise, all snarky comments failing him.
“Just ask her,” I repeated, more firmly this time. “You’ve got nothing to lose, and everything to gain.” I gripped his hand tighter, and though he avoided my gaze, I could tell he was listening hard.
Finally he let out a long sigh and nodded. “Thanks, Wren,” he said quietly, then turned on his heel and slipped back out the door. I watched him go, hoping with every bit of magic in my body that Garnet wasn’t foolish enough to say no. But if nothing else, at least Hunter was taking a chance on love.
I only wished I had the guts to do the same.
Chapter 3
Glenn’s bouncing belly preceded him into the mixology lab the next morning, and as he rummaged through his battered briefcase to prepare for the day’s lesson, I slid onto the seat beside Garnet and Hunter and retrieved my textbook from my bag. I’d been hovering at the back of the room, pretending to be entranced by a jar of pickled eel hearts so that I could give Hunter a chance to pop the question to Garnet; instead, he’d spent the entire time boring her to tears with a painstaking description of the bell peppers he used to grow in his garden back on the mainland.
“…and you can use them for all sorts of recipes,” he was saying enthusiastically as I sat down, trying without success to catch his attention over Garnet’s shoulder. “Salads, stir fry, stuffed peppers…”
“Uh-huh, right, that’s very interesting,” Garnet said brightly, then turned and shot me a help me look as I tried to cover up the snort of laughter threatening to escape my lips. Hunter must have finally realized he’d been blathering on about nothing for the past ten minutes, because he fell silent and faced the front of the room, feigning intense interest in what Glenn was writing on the blackboard, though the tips of his ears had turned bright red.
And when Glenn finally turned around to face us, I
saw that his cheeks were red enough to match. “My favorite students!” he cried, opening his arms out wide enough to cause several of the buttons on his pink and green polka dotted shirt to burst open. “Isn’t today the most glorious day in the history of this marvelous world we live in?” He sniffed the classroom’s air with relish—it smelled like disinfectant and old shoes to me—before breathing out a happy sigh.
I studied his red face with a mild feeling of alarm—had he overdone it at the puff shop again? Glenn had a certain fondness for elderberry leaves, which, if not consumed sensibly, could cause such intense feelings of euphoria that if you weren’t careful you could dance right off a cliff, something that Glenn was in danger of doing on a regular day.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked him as he broke into a spontaneous jig that almost landed him on his bottom when his knees gave way. He straightened up, adjusted his orange top hat with a flourish, and grinned at me.
“Never in all my life have I felt better,” he said, almost feverishly. “Now then.” He stepped aside to reveal the single word he had written on the blackboard. “Today we will be exploring what is inarguably the most wonderful, the most stupendous, the most utterly magical word in all of history.” He sighed happily. “Love. It is a feeling like no other, and I, my dear students, my friends, my children, have recently found myself besotted with a new lady love.” He gestured grandly at us. “And I feel it is my gods-given duty to pass that feeling along to you.”
He folded his hands serenely over his belly. “As I’m sure you can understand, potions that manipulate others’ emotions, like love tonics, are strictly forbidden. This ban dates back to the fifteenth century, when a poor lad by the name of Wilbur Wiley accidentally poured a pint of sweetheart stimulant into his pet dragon’s water bowl instead of the object of his affection’s Sunday stew. When the amorous beast had smooched our most unfortunate Wilbur until every last inch of his skin was singed off, she rampaged through the town, doing the same to every man she could get her claws on, until the spell wore off and the river of tears she cried flooded the entire town, killing every last inhabitant.”
He clapped his hands together merrily. “But we could all use a little love in our lives, and so today we’re going to brew the next best thing—a cup of courage, specially designed for those of us who need a firm kick to the backside in order to start down the long, winding, and oftentimes terrifying road to love.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Hunter, who swung around and shot me a filthy look, as if I’d been the one to spill the beans about his feelings for Garnet when they were as plain as the nose on his face… to everyone except Garnet, that is.
“And with the coven’s dance coming up,” Glenn continued, “what better time than the present to act upon our heart’s most fervent desires?” He gave us a roguish wink. “Sparrow Manor is a vast place with many hidden cubbies perfect for a little private smooching. I myself will be taking part in a little one-on-one tickling session with my lady love, who has proven to be quite the little devil.”
He giggled, then brandished his wand with a flourish and pointed it toward the workbench. Three cauldrons sprang into existence, but instead of the usual pewter they were a garish shade of pink. “Ambience,” Glenn said wisely, then bustled around the cupboard in the front of the room, humming to himself as he pulled out jars of ingredients.
I snuck a glance at Hunter, who looked a little ill, then over to Garnet, who was humming along with Glenn under her breath, and tried to ignore the knot of worry forming in my own chest. Glenn always encouraged us to test out our own potions at the end of the class, and if mine turned out well, who knows what I might end up doing?
“Now, the key to making a successful cup of courage goes beyond merely adding ingredients to a pot and crossing your fingers,” Glenn said, handing each of us an empty corked vial. “Before you even pour the first dram of poppyseed oil, you need to tell the potion precisely what you’re seeking the courage to do.”
He indicated the vials. “You must uncork the vial and whisper your desires into it, then cover it back up immediately before your words can escape. And make sure you are far enough away from each other that your vials don’t get confused—otherwise we might have someone with a fear of public speaking making amorous advances on everyone in the audience.”
I stared down at my vial, my mind cloudy with indecision. There were so many things in my life I could use a shot of courage for—standing up to Sandrine, demanding to know why Lord Macon had it out for me, speaking to Sebastian without getting tongue-tied… but there was one that stood out above all others. Glancing over at Hunter, I saw him hunched in the corner of the room, his face set with determination, whispering with fervor into his vial. He was going to do it, I felt it in my bones.
And so could I.
I squeezed my eyes closed and spoke softly into my vial, then held my hand over the top until I managed to stuff the cork back in, careful to make sure none of my words escaped. Hunter and Garnet did the same, and when we congregated around our cauldrons once more, the air was charged with excitement and determination.
“What did you ask for?” I whispered to Garnet, hoping for Hunter’s sake that it had nothing to do with a man.
“The courage to perform my magic without second-guessing myself so much,” she said, uncorking her vial and pouring its invisible contents into her cauldron before adding the poppyseed oil and stirring vigorously until it began to froth. “What about you?”
“You’ll see,” I said mysteriously, trying to hide my grin. My heart skipped with excitement as I added my secret words to the cauldron before dumping in the rest of the ingredients. The potion immediately turned a deep shade of red, which I took as a good sign. As we waited for our mixtures to finish brewing, I kept sliding my gaze over to Hunter, who was pacing back and forth in front of his cauldron and running his hands rhythmically, obsessively, through his hair. When he caught me looking at him, I gave him a thumbs-up, which he returned with a wince.
“We’re going to do things a little differently today,” Glenn said after we added the final ingredient—a quarter of a four-leaf clover—and the potions stopped bubbling. He bustled around the workbench ladling the contents of each of our cauldrons into glass containers, then sealed them and passed them to us.
“Courage is like elderberry leaves—the more you use it, the less effective it becomes. Which is a downright shame,” he added, frowning. “And so rather than test your potions out now, I would encourage you to save them for when the time is right so that—” He stopped midsentence, and I looked around to see the source of the interruption.
It was Hunter, who had peeled the top off his container of courage and was guzzling it as fast as he possibly could. When he finished, he wiped his mouth and waited. After a few moments, he seemed to grow taller before my eyes, and I watched in mild alarm as he puffed out his chest, crossed the room toward Garnet in two quick leaps, and grabbed her around the waist, staring deeply into her eyes as she gaped at him.
“Garnet Moon,” he declared, his eyes shining, “you are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on, and I am tormented day and night thinking about you. Will you do me the great honor of accompanying me to the coven’s dance?”
“Hunter, I—I don’t know what to say.” Garnet looked around wildly, as though seeking an escape route, and I couldn’t exactly blame her—Hunter’s grip on her was so tight she was practically gasping for breath.
Hunter must have sensed her reluctance, for he immediately released her, his entire body visibly wilting as he stared down at the ground. I could see his mind working at a rapid pace as he tried to figure out a way to save face, and when he looked up again, he gave a little laugh I could spot was fake from a mile away. “Sorry, the potion must have been too concentrated.” He gave her a sheepish grin. “I was hoping you might want to go with me, though… as friends?”
Garnet hesitated for a fraction of a second and then smiled back. “Sure, why not?”
“A happy ending after all!” Glenn interjected, clapping Hunter on the back. “For a minute there, son, I thought I would have to whip up a brew for the broken-hearted, but a potion like that needs conviction, and I must admit I’m not the best man for the job right now.”
He let out a contented sigh, then rounded up our empty vials with a wave of his hand and stuffed them back into his briefcase. Then, with a little salute, he positively bounded from the room, his booted feet practically soaring into the air, his top hat bouncing on his head. I followed along after him, a little more sedately, but privately I was hoping against hope that I’d soon have the same skip in my step.
“Wren, welcome back!” Astrid’s smile was manic as she greeted me at the daycare’s door the next morning, a brownie clinging to each leg and a furry baby yeti in a diaper and bonnet looming behind her, sucking on a half-eaten rabbit carcass with gusto. “I think you’ve had enough,” she said, trying to tug it gently from him, but when he realized what was happening, his face crumpled up and he let out a roar that shook the rafters. When she gave the yeti a stern look and tried to yank the rabbit from his grip once more, he hurled it at her with as much force as he could manage, giggling madly when it squelched against her face.
The baby yeti turned and lumbered away, and Astrid let out a long sigh and wiped the rabbit pieces from her cheek. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said as I followed her down the hallway, cringing against the brownies’ high-pitched chattering. “Hattie’s late today, as usual, and I’m at the end of my rope.”
We reached a blue-painted door, again with no knob, and she tapped it with her wand and ushered me inside. “Can you handle the witch and wizard room today? We just had a new drop-off—a siren, gods help me—and all the werewolves are strutting around in front of her, flexing their muscles. If I don’t get back in there before she starts singing, I’m going to have a full-on war on my hands.”