Chapter 10

TEN

I returned to the shop while Dru went off to finish some more paperwork. I used the back door and left the dogs upstairs with plenty of water and food to sustain them until their evening walk, then I decided to take Bagley out for a bit and moved her into the kitchen.

I got an about time , and you better not leave me at the mercy of the squid , which of course meant I left her at the mercy of Tiny Kraken .

Brimstone was standing stoically behind the counter when I parted the bead curtain and entered the shop. A small family occupied the table by the window and two customers sat at the stools. One had their face buried into a mug of tea while they tapped their foot impatiently against the stool’s lower rung.

“ Everything okay?” I asked in a cheery voice. Brimstone didn’t usually look quite so…stonelike.

The closest customer spun on the stool and jumped right off. “ Hope !”

Surprise brought me up short. “ Natalia ?” The older teen was part of Hutton’s pack, and while she had helped with the tours during Halloween , she wasn’t exactly a staple in my shop.

She rushed up to me and whispered harshly, “ I need you to cancel the love spell.”

Yes , the last and only time Natalia had darkened my doorstep had been in the pursuit of a love potion.

“ Let’s go into the back.” I ushered her through the curtain and into the hallway.

Once the beads fell back into place, she scanned our surroundings, making sure no customers hid in the small bathroom or the stairs. Points for paranormal safety.

“ You need to cancel the love spell you made for me,” she repeated, still whispering.

Very impressive. I’d have to make sure Hutton knew to praise her.

“ I can’t do that,” I whispered back. Mostly because I had given her a placebo potion—you couldn’t do things that affected other people’s will to that degree without dark magic.

She crossed her arms. “ Then make a reverse love spell. A hate potion.”

I had an inkling this was one of those times when my customers needed good advice rather than magic potions. “ What happened?”

“ Mandy sucks!”

“ I see.”

“ She told me she wasn’t going to come to the cemetery tour because she was busy with her cousins, but Jules caught her going to the haunted house.”

“ That wasn’t nice of her,” I said soothingly.

Natalia glared. “ Seriously ?”

“ Kind of mean, actually,” I amended.

“ She went with Gavin . Gavin !”

I nodded in understanding. “ Gavin sucks.”

“ He does! He hooked up with Linda behind Mandy’s back, and then Mandy made out with Bethany to get back at him, and he broke up with her and she was such a mess, but I was there for her. But if she’s going to treat me like a rebound, then I want nothing to do with her, and I hope she catches something nasty from him because that’s what she deserves!”

Oh , boy. “ It all sounds awful.” Awfully complicated.

Natalia drew up to her full height, which was a couple of inches over me. Shifters tended to be the tall and handsome type. “ I don’t want to be her forever love anymore.”

“ Got it.”

“ Can you do something about it?”

I’d suggest simply not talking with this Mandy again, but that’d probably get me the evil eye, and then Natalia might go search for a real dark witch to craft a hate spell for her.

No , this kind of stuff had to be dealt with in-house.

“ Leave it to me,” I said with an edge of steel. “ Stay here. I’ll have your potion ready in a moment.”

“ You don’t need my blood?”

“ Not for this.”

She instantly deflated, her shoulders slumping as if the sudden relief was too much to bear. She nodded weakly and averted her face, but not before I caught a slight sniffle.

Ah , young love.

I went into the kitchen and filled a small glass vial with moon water and a drop of red food dye. After shaking the vial for a few moments, I awakened my magic and put a tiny ward on the glass. The small amount of magic would give the potion that extra touch of being the real product rather than an obvious placebo.

“ Here you go,” I said, returning to the hallway and handing her the vial.

She took it like it was the holy grail. Swallowing hard, she peered at me with sad, bright eyes. “ This will cancel the spell?”

“ Yes . Drink it and it will?—”

She had already pulled out the stopper and was in the process of downing the contents of the vial. After finishing, she smacked her lips and grinned, all traces of her sadness gone. “ Done .” She inhaled deeply, then produced a wicked smile. “ I feel so much better already.”

I tried not to laugh. “ Glad to be of service.”

She handed over the empty vial, then leaned in. “ By the way, how come you got that dude working here? Isn’t he famous or something?”

Sudden excitement filled me. “ You know his vlog?”

Natalia looked confused. “ His vlog?”

“ He runs some kind of food video blog, right?”

“ I don’t know about that. I’m talking about the boy band.”

My mouth fell open. “ The what ?”

“ The boy band. I heard he was part of one when he was a teen.” She snorted. “ Hard to imagine, right? I wonder why he needs a job?” She studied me with a measured gleam in her eyes. “ If you need more help, I’m free right now, you know. I have some experience waitressing.”

I tried to process the boy-band bomb drop. Had Dru known about this and hadn’t told me? Had Key ? “ Which boy band?”

She scrunched her nose. “ I don’t know. Six on something? Something on Six ?”

“ Do … Do you have a link?”

“ Nah . Just something someone told me.” She licked her lips. “ About the job…”

I touched her shoulders and gently turned her around. “ I’m good for now, but I’ll make sure to keep you in mind if there’s an opening.”

“ Meh . All right.”

I pushed her through the bead curtain. “ That’s the spirit.” To Brimstone , I said, “ Charge fifty on top of whatever she had.”

Conning teenagers from their money wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned when I took over the shop, but as the old saying went, they won’t believe it if they don’t pay for it.

Natalia sent me a grateful look and went to pay. As she did so, I took out my phone, finding it hard to look away from Brimstone . Fire mage, food video blogger, and possible teenage heart throb. Was there anything Key’s uncle couldn’t do?

I texted Dru a row of exclamation marks.

We literally just saw each other , was Dru’s answer.

Did you know about ? —

Someone cleared their throat. “ Excuse me?”

I looked up from my phone. The other woman sitting at the counter was studying me with cool blue eyes. She was dressed in jeans and a heavy sweater, and her chestnut hair was gathered in a bun at the back of her head.

Putting the phone away with a bright smile, I slid behind the counter. “ Yes ? How can I help you?”

“ You’re the owner, right?”

“ Indeed . Hope Avery , at your service.”

Her expression grew even more unimpressed. “ You’re the owner, but you’re not often in the shop?”

This line of questioning might seem rude and strange to the uninitiated in the ways of customer service, but for experienced veterans like me, it was par for de course. “ I had some errands to do this morning, ma’am. Brim — Jeremy here is very good at taking care of the shop while I’m out.”

Or so I hoped, anyway. Come to think of it, I had no idea what Jeremy did while I was out. Did he yell at customers? Spook them out with ghostly thunderstorms? Maybe it was time to install a nanny cam.

“ But he’s not the owner.”

I tuned up my smile. “ You never know—one day he might be! Life is funny that way.”

“ Then it wouldn’t be a witch shop anymore, would it?”

Ah , she was here for a potion. What a balm for the soul.

Genuine warmth filled my voice. “ I understand. I apologize for not being available until now.” Passing her a pad and a pen, I added, “ Please fill out your special order here.”

To maintain my customers’ privacy in the presence of others—and protect our secrecy with humans around— I’d come up with the idea of having them write down their orders on the pad if there were other customers in the shop. Then I’d either bring them into the back to ask more questions, or prepare the order if I had the potions at hand. It had worked great so far.

The woman wrote a few words in curt, no-nonsense movements that reminded me of Sonia .

I bet Sonia knew about Brimstone’s vlog and possible boy band days. What were the chances she’d tell me about them?

Probably about zero. Strike that. Double zeros joined together to signify an infinity of never going to happen .

“ Here .” The woman tapped on the pad. “ If you please?”

“ Of course.” I checked the order—a recall potion. It helped recall your own memories for a short time after ingestion and wasn’t that useful in the real world, so I only made them as needed. This was the first time anyone had asked for one. “ I’ll get this done for you right now.”

The woman studied me closely again. “ Thank you.”

I went into the kitchen and started getting the ingredients together. A sad reality of the business was that not all clients were going to be the fluffy, cuddly kind. I was bound to get cold, prickly ones from time to time. Just look at Hutton , for example.

“ Ah ,” Bagley said knowingly. “ A recall potion.”

“ Yup .” I finished lining up all the amethyst, moonstone, and lapis lazuli on the counter.

“ Do you even have enough magic to make it?”

Soft rumbling reverberated through the pipes, and Tiny Kraken’s tentacle peeked out to poke at the locket.

“ Oh , for heaven’s sake, not again,” Bagley exclaimed. “ Stop that, you ghostly beast.”

“ Takes one to know one.” Reaching over, I patted the tentacle. “ Thank you, Tiny Kraken .”

Happy gurgling came from inside the faucet, and I resumed my potion-making.

After mixing some of the herbs, then placing the rest in a circle with some clear quartz to help my focus, I filled the vial with moon water and the herb mix. I eyed the moon water container. I was running lower than I liked; I’d need to make a new batch soon. Hopefully , the weather would cooperate.

I sat on the kitchen stool, and, touching the vial, I allowed my magic to come out and used the energy emanating from the crystals to sharpen my power. After the spell was done, I allowed my body to sag, glad I’d taken Dru’s advice and gotten a stool for potion making. It did feel a lot safer than risking my legs losing all semblance of solidity after doing my spells.

More happy gurgling came from the pipes, and I patted the wall. “ Thank you, Tiny Kraken . I’m proud of myself too.”

“ Yes , at least this time you stayed upright,” Bagley commented. “ There might be hope for you yet.”

“ I wasn’t named Hope for nothing, you know.”

“ Please , someone save me.”

“ True salvation comes from within ourselves, for we are in charge of directing our fates.”

Speaking of which… I brought out my phone and sent Ian a heart emoji and a hope you’re on the road soon!

If we were in charge of directing our fates, nothing said we couldn’t nudge them along.

After a few fortifying breaths, I closed the vial with a cork stopper and checked my legs would support my weight. Happy with the result, I made to return to the shop.

“ You know,” Bagley said in a thoughtful voice, “ I bet whoever ordered that wants an immunity potion next.”

I harrumphed. Immunity potions were some of the most powerful and complicated potions a witch shop could legally offer. After drinking it, it reduced the harm of any other ingested potion for a short span of time. Anything above that needed Council approval and an expert in those kinds of wards or potions. Besides , witches tended to craft immunity potions themselves rather than buying them, and there was little use for it outside drinking it before trying new potions on yourself. The chances of anyone wanting one outside that scenario were about nil.

A couple of new customers had come in while I was busy preparing the potion and were now occupying the second table. I nodded in satisfaction while I went behind the counter and presented the vial to the woman.

“ Here you go. You’ll get a discount if you return the bottle for the next order.”

She picked up the vial and inspected the contents, swirling the potion this and that way. Taking off the stopper, she took a delicate sniff, then plugged the vial again. “ Looks good.”

Pride filled my chest. “ I think you’ll be very satisfied.”

“ We’ll see. I have another request.”

“ Oh ? I mean, sure.” I passed her the pen and pad again.

She wrote something down, then slipped the pad back. I blinked at the order. Immunity potion.

Interesting .

“ This will take a couple of days to make,” I told her apologetically. The amount of power required would take me down for a few hours, so I wouldn’t be able to make it until tonight.

“ I’ll come back for it the day after tomorrow. Will that be enough?”

“ Yes . Absolutely ,” I assured her.

“ Good . How much is this?” She gestured toward the vial and her empty mug of tea.

I rang her up and watched her exit the shop and walk away.

The moment she was out of sight, I ran back to the kitchen.

“ How did you know she was going to order an immunity potion?” I asked Bagley .

Bagley chuckled. “ Oh , my. They haven’t changed a bit.”

“ They who?” I poked her. “ Is she one of your cronies?”

“ You could say she’s one of yours.”

“ What do you mean? I have no cronies.” I was nothing like Bagley . I had friends and not… A gasp escaped me. “ You mean the Council ?”

“ It’s good to know they’re still doing the same tests after all these years.”