Chapter Ten

In a small stroke of luck, Henner wasn’t busy working on his gadgets or out on a date with Darla when I called him, and he said he was more than happy for me to drop Finn off for a movie night.

Henner might have been Betanya’s grandson, and his own gift of technomancy was really useful, but he wasn’t a full coven member, and he seemed pretty happy keeping it that way.

As soon as Finn was safely ensconced inside the old Tayir mansion, I threw myself back into the Jeep and hightailed it over to the coven house. Thank goodness Taliyah was out of town on police business, because that gave me a chance to try and clean this mess up before she got back and threw the book at me. Last time, she’d threatened to use an actual book.

The coven house was a communal living space, though not many members used it as their actual permanent residence. I’d put the call out that I needed to speak to everyone, pronto, so the driveway was just about full by the time I wound my Jeep down the road.

My hands were shaky when I threw it into park, and all the while, I had to keep reminding myself that everything that had happened was fixable. At least, I hoped it was all fixable. There were only two bottles of Memento Mori unaccounted for, and the effects wouldn’t last forever. And thank God for that—at least the memories of whoever got their hands on it would get softer and blurrier, as time went on.

I let myself into the coven house and headed straight for the main room, where everyone who was available had already gathered. I took a deep breath as everyone turned to look at me, and I noticed someone had lit the fireplace—the flames were doing a good job of filling the room with dancing light and keeping a bit of the evening chill out of the air.

As soon as I stepped into the room, a snooty faux British voice piped up from one of the armchairs, “well, look who decided to finally grace us with her presence.”

Wanda turned towards me, not even glancing at the black cat whose nose was stuck up into the air. “Shut up, Hellcat. No one asked you.”

“No vun ever asks him,” Olga added.

Hellcat, Wanda’s familiar, hissed at her before leaping to the floor and then paused to give her one last put down before he stalked towards the stairs. “I don’t have to take anything from any of you, you ungrateful, mealy-mouthed wenches. Enjoy your latest nonsense.”

Wanda was an old hand at ignoring her irritable familiar and that was exactly what she did as she turned all her focus on me instead, her hands on her hips. “What’s going on, Poppy? I’m sure you had a reason for calling us all here?”

“Yes,” I answered with a quick succession of nods as I tried to catch my breath.

“Well, spill.” She then looked at her nails with faux interest. “I had to cancel a spa trip to a nymph grotto for this, so someone had better be dead or dying.”

There were suddenly a lot of sets of eyes on me. Not just the witches of the coven, Wanda, Imani, Betanya, and the German witch, Olga, but also their familiars. Olga’s racoon, Franz, in his little lederhosen, gave his eerily high-pitched laugh. Meanwhile Betanya’s familiar, Willie-Ray, a skunk in a sleeveless plaid shirt, seemed unimpressed with everything where he sat at his witch’s feet.

I took another deep breath and let it out. It made me feel a bit better, but the look on Wanda’s face told me that any more stalling was going to end in some unpleasant curses being flung around, and frankly, things were bad enough as it was.

“I sold a memory enhancing potion called Memento Mori to an old woman,” I started.

“Ah, ya,” Olga nodded. “I know zat vun vell!”

I looked at her and nodded, before looking back at Wanda. “And, well… I’m pretty sure her teenage granddaughter gave it to other kids at Haven High as an illicit study aid.”

“So, what—the kids are doing better on their tests?” Wanda asked, looking irritated. “What’s wrong with that?”

I shook my head. “No, that’s not why I’m upset.” I took another breath because I felt like I was going to pass out. “There are only three bottles that I brewed and I kept one of them.”

“So, two are unaccounted for?” Imani asked.

I nodded at her. “Normally I’d write it off as kids being kids, except…”

Oh, boy. I drew in another breath, and then spoke all in one big rush, just trying to get the words out as fast as I could. “Except that it seems to be bringing back people’s memories that had been altered by the Council, and now all the supernatural things they’ve seen are coming back to them. And they also seem to be remembering that they were charmed to forget.”

“Wonderful,” Wanda said as she sighed and shook her head.

“That sounds like quite the conundrum,” Betanya said.

I nodded. “The main problem is that the two vials are unaccounted for and… well, I have no idea how many people have used it,” I finished.

There was a moment of drawn-out silence, and everyone was just staring at me with varying levels of disbelief and horror. Then the babble of voices started up, and that was actually worse. I stood there, watching the others argue, feeling like a big screw up. I’d just been trying to help Niamh, but somehow everything had gone completely wrong.

“Okay, okay, wait.” Wanda held up her hands. It took a couple seconds and a glare from her, but the others eventually fell silent. “Poppy, I know you’re good at what you do,” she started as she faced me and started drumming her fingers against the top of the sofa. “You brew potions better than some witches I know. But how in the world would a memory potion undo the kinds of enchantments we’ve created? Do you even understand the amount of magic and effort it takes to undo that sort of magic?”

It was a good question, and it was one I’d been thinking about on the drive over. Wanda was right; potions could be very powerful, but they tended to be limited in their power. Something to ensure that a person had good dreams and easy sleep wasn’t the same thing as a blood bolt, or a hex that dragged a ghost back into a living body. It just wasn’t the same. So, how was it possible that my potion could have ripped through a serious enchantment, one that effectively rewrote someone’s memory? Yeah, it didn’t seem possible. And yet, here we were.

I grabbed the end of my braid and tugged on it, just to give me something to do with my hands. Suddenly, being the focal point of an entire group of witches and their familiars was kind of uncomfortable. But I owed them an answer, and they weren’t going to be able to help me put this djinn back in the bottle if they didn’t have all the information.

Wanda’s eyes narrowed as I pulled at my hair. Right. No more stalling.

“I’m pretty sure people are remembering things they shouldn’t,” I started and then told them about the woman in Imani’s shop who seemed to recognize me. It wasn’t that she’d recognized me—it was that she’d remembered something about me that she shouldn’t have. “When I was making the potion, things went a little… strange.”

There was a beat of silence before Betanya’s eyebrow quirked into an absolutely scathing arch. “Strange?” she asked.

As if on cue, blood rushed into my face, and my ears pulsed with a blush, feeling hot.

“While I was brewing the potion, I was in the graveyard and there was this…” I started and then cocked my head to the side as I tried to find the right words to explain exactly what had happened. “This… well, surge of magic.” I didn’t even know how to explain it. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever done or experienced before. “The power just suddenly boiled up and over, and into the potion. I didn’t think it meant anything, or that it could super charge the potion or something.”

“A surge of wild magic?” Imani took a step forward, her dark eyes concerned. “Are you okay, Poppy? You aren’t hurt?”

“I’m fine,” I answered, shaking my head.

“Where did this power come from?” Betanya asked.

And that was the part I wasn’t looking forward to explaining. Wanda’s eyes had already narrowed into dangerous slits and I noticed she hadn’t said a word. Anyone else would have thought it was anger, not worry. But I knew her well enough to know it was actually a combination of both, but heavy on the concern.

I let out a long, gusty breath and moved towards one of the plush armchairs further into the room. It wasn’t helping anything, lingering in the doorway like that. Not to mention I felt like a kid called to the principal’s office.

The velvet creaked just a little as I sat down on it. Olga followed suit, taking a place on the loveseat and shaking her long skirts out around her legs. Betanya chose another armchair across from mine, all the while watching me carefully, like I might explode at any moment.

Only Wanda stayed standing. Her arms were folded across her chest, and the toe of her heeled boots started tapping against the rug in a way that told me I’d better get on with it.

“This magic I experienced—this burst of power, really, well… it wasn’t something that happened around me .” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, even though I knew it wasn’t going to help. “It actually came from me .”

“From you?” Olga blinked and glanced around at the others. Confusion crinkled the skin of her forehead as she looked at me again and shook her head. “I do not understand. You are not a vitch, so you do not have magic.”

Okay, that stung a little, even though I knew Olga didn’t mean it like that. Regardless, she was right, I wasn’t a witch, and I didn’t have witch powers. But that didn’t mean I didn’t have magic. I did. It had passed down through my family, to me, and even though I wasn’t about to go around summoning lightning from the sky, that didn’t mean my magic was any less real.

“I’m not a witch,” I agreed quietly. “I am, however, in a… coven.”

Understanding flashed across Betanya’s face and she breathed in abruptly, immediately looking at Wanda. “The joining. The spell that bound our magic together. It must have linked our power.”

Wanda did nothing but nod.

Betanya, meanwhile, got a faraway look in her eyes, her nails drumming against the arm of her chair. “We didn’t fully consider how mixing a Blood Witch’s unstable power into a coven ritual might affect our non-witch members.” She took a breath. “Not to mention a Blood Warlock’s.”

“How could we have considered it?” Wanda snapped, finally breaking her dangerous silence. “No one’s ever formed a coven with non-witches before. How were we supposed to know the joining could do anything like this?” Then she turned that snapping dark gaze on me. “How long has this been going on, Poppy?”

The conversation was giving me whiplash. I struggled to keep up. “How long? I only made the potions a few days ago–”

Wanda made a slashing gesture with one hand, cutting off my words. “How long have you been having this… problem with your magic?”

I grimaced. I’d really hoped we wouldn’t have to go there tonight, but trust Wanda to get right to it. Maybe she’d been playing vampire for too long—it had taught her to go right for the throat. Well, there wasn’t any getting around it, not when she was clearly in a mood. But it was still a struggle to look at her instead of ducking my head to stare at the carpet. I couldn’t quite manage the anger in her eyes, so I fixed my gaze somewhere around her left cheekbone.

“Since the binding ceremony,” I admitted quietly.

“Since the ceremony?” she repeated, and I could hear the shock and hurt in her voice. And her hurt made sense because I’d never told her what had happened. I’d kept it to myself.

I nodded. “In the beginning, the change to my magic wasn’t much—I mean, I barely even noticed it. And I wasn’t sure what was happening or if anything was happening. And by the time it started turning into a bigger problem, I think I was too embarrassed to ask for help.”

Imagine, a woman in her forties, losing control of her own power. It was mortifying.

Wanda cursed, and the sound was foul enough that it should have peeled the wallpaper up in curling strips. “You should have told us, Poppy. Immediately. You should have told me .”

“I know,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry. It just felt like it was nothing, right up until it was… well, something.”

“I think this might be one of those, one problem at a time, situations.” Imani shot me a sympathetic look. “What are we going to do about the failing memory charms—I think we should address that first, no?”

Wanda let out a breath that sounded more like a hiss than anything else. “That’s a very good question.” Then she threw her hands into the air. “Spell if I know. How would we even begin to track down exactly who might have taken this super charged potion and had their memories altered? We can’t just go door to door asking.”

Betanya hummed, watching the flames that crackled in the grate. “If you can track down the people that have taken the potion, and there can’t be that many—I mean, how much could a single bottle hold—then re-doing the charm might be enough. As long as more potion isn’t applied, then the charm should hold. It’s finding who needs a re-cast that’s the struggle.”

There was a knot in my stomach, and it pulled tighter with every word. There had to be a way to fix things. I worried my lower lip, thinking hard. It was then that a thought came to me, even if it was a long shot. But a long shot was better than nothing. “What about the Council records?”

Wanda blinked at me, looking startled. “What now?”

It was a struggle not to pick at the chair’s arms, but the wrath I’d have faced from Wanda for ruining the velvet wasn’t worth the relief that fidgeting would bring. “The Council records? Taliyah is always after us to write down reports of all incidents, right?” Everyone in the room nodded in unison. “So… maybe the names of the victims, for lack of a better word, are in the records?”

The names should have been there, for all rights. Taliyah was a real stickler for details when it came to things like that, and as soon as she’d joined the Council, she’d insisted on new rules. The reports from before her time might be a little shoddy, especially since Ophelia seemed mostly interested in covering things up.

Still, it was a start. And it was better than standing around here, wringing my hands and hoping the damage wouldn’t be widespread and lasting.

Wanda tilted her head to the side, considering. “The names just might be in the records.” She sighed. “What’s more—it’s the only plan we’ve got, so we might as well start there.”

She tossed her hair back over her shoulder with a practiced motion. “Good thing Taliyah is out of town. What she doesn’t know, won’t hurt us. Let’s head for–”

Whatever she was about to say was cut off by the unusually loud chime of both of our phones going off at the exact same time. It was strange enough that Wanda actually paused, before fishing her cell out with a frown. I did the same, and what I read had my stomach plummeting towards my feet like a lead weight.

Henner had set up a group chat for all the Council members. It was a good way for us to keep up to date with things and give each other the heads-up on situations between the monthly, in person meetings. I’d avoided mentioning this whole potion problem in the group chat, hoping it was something the coven could mop up, and then I could explain what had happened once it was already taken care of. But it looked like that chance was well and truly gone.

Because there was one new message in the chat, from Henner himself. All it said was, ‘we have a problem.’

And then there was a link to a video.

Wanda and I exchanged a grim look before hitting play on the video. The other coven members gathered around, watching over our shoulders as the tinny, distorted sound from both phones echoed through the room.

The second the introduction credits started rolling across the screen, the knot in my stomach turned into nausea. ‘We have a problem’ was a bit of an understatement, Henner.

There were panning shots of graveyards, old and abandoned houses, and an overgrown drive-in movie theater, all with the bright white letters of ‘Chasing the Paranormal’ blazoned across it.

When the music died down, the video turned to a closeup shot of a young woman who was standing in front of a brick wall. She was in her mid-twenties, her light blonde hair pulled back into a high ponytail. Her makeup was dark and dramatic, her smirk carefully outlined in a wine-red lip stain.

“Hey there, everyone,” she chirped, and I thought Wanda was actually going to wretch at the painfully fake cheeriness. “Kenzie Chase here, with Chasing the Paranormal. And have I got a fun treat for you all today.”

She eased the camera back, until I could see more of exactly what was going on in the background, and I slapped a hand over my mouth so I didn’t make a truly upsetting sound.

Because I knew that brick wall. It was part of a building I’d left just over an hour ago. Kenzie Chase, who was infamous for her expose videos on the supernatural, was standing in front of the Haven Hollow Hospital.

“That’s right, Chasers. I’m back in Haven Hollow, the small town with the spooky reputation.”

“It only has a spooky reputation because of you,” Wanda said, frowning.

Kenzie had blown into town a few months back, trying to expose some kind of gold curse. It wasn’t a curse at all, just a bully of a teacher who got a bit of the wrong potion on his hands and ended up Midas-ing his way through town. That had been partially my fault, too, come to think of it. I was going to have to start getting Wanda to approve of all my potion making at this rate.

Kenzie had launched a reign of terror in Haven Hollow as she attempted to get proof of everything paranormal that was going on in our town. And all of us, meanwhile, had just been trying to figure out who was turning everything into gold, while also trying not to get caught on camera. Meanwhile, Henner was scrambling to keep Kenzie from uploading anything too damaging to the internet. Scrubbing her digital footprint hadn’t exactly been an easy feat.

Kenzie returning really didn’t bode well. But what would she be doing at the hospital?

“After my last visit, where the signs of a supernatural curse was being actively repressed by the people in power here in Haven Hollow, I decided to stick around. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the next thing popped up, and look at that, I was right.”

Kenzie’s smirk nearly took up the whole screen.

Olga huffed. “I vant to slap zat face. Vhat a rude child.”

Kenzie tossed her head, making her ponytail flip. “So, what’s going on this time, you ask? From my initial investigation, we might be looking at paranormal events, hidden magic, and a cult that might even be erasing people’s memories.”

All of us exchanged a horrified look before my eyes were dragged back to the video playing on my phone.

“It sounds crazy, I know.” Kenzie grinned at the camera. The flash of white teeth reminded me more of a hunting hound than a smile. “But I’m at the local hospital, looking into the stories from one girl—stories that the hospital staff seem to think are just the rants of someone unwell. Or could she be telling the truth? This fifteen-year-old girl is telling anyone who will listen that she was attacked by a witch, and then had her memories stolen from her.”

“A Magicless, not a witch,” Wanda snapped at her phone. “Goddess, it’s infuriating enough that Kenzie’s here again—but get the facts right!”

I was so horrified my lips felt numb, because Kenzie was at the hospital to interview Alicia. But what was more concerning was that Alicia had seen Finn face down a Magicless. She’d seen him save his whole class, and then Miss Rose, too, for that matter. And that meant she knew his secret—would Alicia tell that secret to Kenzie?

“So, get ready, Chasers,” Kenzie chirped with another fake smile. “I’m going to head in, and then I’ll be live streaming as I try to get to the bottom of all of this. It will give the conspiracy less time to try and shut me down or mess with my devices like they did last time. So, until we meet again, I’m Kenzie Chase, with Chasing the Paranormal.”

Wanda groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Hell fires.”

My mind was reeling—busily dragging up ideas, plans, just to toss them out immediately. Driving to the hospital to confront Kenzie wouldn’t do any good, and I knew it. But I didn’t know what else to do.

Haven Hollow was our home. Finn and I had built a life here, and I wasn’t about to let that all get torn away. And if the supernatural got exposed to the rest of the world, then would anywhere be safe?

But I didn’t know how to stop Kenzie. She didn’t seem to be the kind of person who listened to reason, only to likes and subscribers. Just asking her to stop wasn’t likely to get us anywhere.

Another message popped up in the chat from Henner.

I can disrupt the livestream for now, but you need to figure out how to fix this. Like yesterday.

I took in a long breath and held it until the panic started to ease down, then I let it out in a slow trickle.

Wanda looked grim as she slipped her phone back into her pocket. “Let’s get to work, then.”