Chapter Two

In spite of the semi ruined date the night before, I woke up feeling positively chipper.

Not that I was normally a gloomy Gus or anything like that, but there was a lightness in my heart that had me humming softly to myself as I bustled around the kitchen, pulling together breakfast for Finn.

Normally the first meal of the day was cereal, or toast with peanut butter. But this morning, I was in the mood to make it a little more special. By the time Finn dragged his sleepy, bed-headed self into the kitchen, the waffle iron was working away, and I was slicing up the last of the strawberries.

His eyes wide, Finn sat down at the old wooden kitchen table, and I slid a plate of hot, fluffy waffles in front of him. The rest of the fruit was already on the table with the syrup and butter, and I grabbed my own plate before joining him.

By the time I sat down, Finn already had a mouthful of waffles drenched in syrup (which was now dribbling down his chin), the rest of the waffles vanishing in a way that only a hungry teenager could manage.

“How was it?” I laughed.

“Mmm,” he said around his next mouthful. “You should definitely go on more dates with Andre.”

I laughed, trying to ignore the heat in my face. “We’ll see.”

Things were quiet for a few minutes, with Finn concentrating on getting as much sugar and carbs into his stomach as possible, while I tried to sneak more fruit onto his plate. He inhaled that too, and realizing he was still hungry, I got up to make him another waffle.

He looked a little rough this morning, the poor guy. His hair was sticking up in blond spikes, like he’d run his hands through it too many times. His cheeks were pale, the freckles standing out like drops of sepia ink, and the bags under his eyes were an alarming dark purple. Hmm, maybe bacon and eggs would have been a better choice for breakfast, for more protein.

I poured myself another cup of coffee, and sat down, watching him demolish his second plate. When he was scraping the last of the syrup up with his fork and finally looking somewhere close to sated, I asked, “rough night?”

He pushed his plate away with a groan and stretched his shoulders until something popped in his back. “I was just up late, studying.”

“Studying for what?”

“We’ve got this big test coming up, and the teachers are making a huge deal about it.”

“A test?” I frowned, a memory nagging at the back of my head. “Oh, right, the school wide one.”

Finn nodded and took a big sip of orange juice, draining half the glass in one go. “Yeah, it’s some state-wide thing. The teachers are all going nuts over it like it’s the most important thing to ever happen to us.”

“Hmm, it’s not the SAT?”

“No, I forget the name of it, but they keep telling us we absolutely have to do well on it. I think it has something to do with the school getting some kind of funding?”

I frowned and added a bit more half-n-half to my coffee. “That seems like a lot of pressure.”

The shrug he gave me was so very teenage boy that I had to hide my smile with my mug. Actually, it was less of a shrug and more a jerky rise and fall of one shoulder.

“Everyone is really stressed out about it,” he admitted, chasing a few crumbs around with his fork.

“Are you stressed about it?”

He cocked his head to the side. “Not really. I’m just going to do my best, but some of the kids are getting really worked up about it.”

“Worked up?”

He nodded. “Yeah, like they’re worried they’re going to fail, or something. I’ve been doing what I can, but it’s still a lot.”

My hands tightened on my cup, and I forced myself to take a breath and relax my grip. It was just reflex at that point. I knew what Finn meant when he said he was doing what he could. My son was very special, and I didn’t just think that owing to the fact that he was my son. Sure, I loved him to the moon and back and he was frankly the best thing that had ever happened to me, but it was more than that.

Magic tended to favor women in general. No one was sure why, but for every warlock in the world, there were over a hundred witches. Even in my own family, while my grandmother, my mother and I could all brew potions, my uncles and other male relatives tended to have little gifts but nothing more. Quirks, almost. One uncle could sniff out mushrooms, for example. Finn had already been unusual because his quirk was pretty powerful, in that he always knew when someone was lying.

But back when Andre had first blown into town, I’d found out that my son had magic. Real magic. He was a Magician, like Andre. But while Andre had really only come into his power as a young man of eighteen, Finn had already mastered dozens of tricks before his fourteenth birthday.

Of course I was proud of him. He had a gift, and he was eager to use it. Magicians used their powers to spread hope in the world, after all. And what mother wouldn’t be proud of their child wanting to help people?

The trouble was, once Finn started, he had trouble stopping. There had been a few really scary moments when he’d passed out from over using his magic. At that point, I’d tried to shut it all down, telling him he could make the choice about whether or not to follow this path when he was older. But the trouble was that Finn was maybe a little bit too much my son, which meant he’d inherited his mom’s stubborn streak. Mine didn’t come out often, but when it did, no one was going to convince me to do something I didn’t want to do.

And when Finn started visiting Ouire, Andre’s sentient grimoire that acted more like a friendly dog than a book, to learn more magic behind my back, I’d had to take a good look at my anxiety.

The fact was that Finn had a gift, and it was a gift that had to be trained. Whether I liked it or not, Finn was a Magician. I could stomp my feet and ground him until he was eighty, but I couldn’t stop him from being who and what he was. And Finn learning from Andre, who I trusted to have my son’s best interests at heart and who could help him when he got into trouble, was a lot better than Finn mucking around in his dreams with Ouire unsupervised. Ouire was a kind book (which sounds beyond odd), and from what Finn told me, the book wouldn’t even let him peep at the spells and tricks that were too powerful for him, but Ouire was still just a book. What a sentient book thought was safe wasn’t necessarily what I thought was safe.

Regardless, I’d forced myself to take a step back. Finn was growing up—he was now fifteen—and as hard as that was for me to accept some days. In a few short years, he’d be an adult. I had to let him start making some decisions for himself.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from worrying. Not even a little.

If Finn was helping his classmates out magic wise, as well as pulling late nights to do his own studying, he was going to need a bit more TLC than usual.

I got up to grab more orange juice and refilled his glass. “Just remember while you’re worrying about your classmates, that you need to take care of yourself, too,” I said, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible. “Maybe grab a couple more snacks for your lunch.”

Finn gave me his usual sunny smile, only this time it was a little wilted around the edges. “I will, Mom. Promise.”

Anxiety was still twisting in my stomach, but I did the only thing I could and took him at his word. That didn’t stop me from brushing a kiss across his forehead before I stood back up, though.

I felt a bit like I’d won something when he didn’t even make a face.

###

It was a quiet drive to the school as I dropped Finn off. He closed the door after a quick, “Bye, Mom. Love you.”

Then I watched him trudge towards the building, his backpack pulling at his narrow shoulders, and forced myself to take a breath. Finn had promised to take care of himself, and he hadn’t given me any reason to doubt him. And besides, he’d been getting better at regulating himself, and pulling back when he was scraping the bottom of his well of energy. I had to trust him. I still gave myself a few seconds for a quiet freak out before putting the Jeep back into gear and heading to the shop.

The day had started out nice, but about an hour after I’d opened, the clouds had rolled in, and the rain had started. It wasn’t even a big, dramatic thunderstorm. Just a gray, relentless drizzle that made people want to stay indoors. It made me grateful for my cozy sweater and my cup of tea.

Of course, the day when all I wanted was to be distracted from my fretting, and it was so quiet, the shop practically echoed. There was only so much tidying and dusting I could reasonably do, even with the number of shelves in the store. So, growing tired of cleaning, I started going through all the potions and candles I had on display, taking inventory of what I might need to make more of soon. And when that only ate up about an hour, I moved to going through all my oils and ingredients to see what I might be running low on.

Time crept by so slowly that sometimes I worried there was something wrong with the display on my phone. Eventually, I found myself just standing behind the counter, running a cloth over the surface completely absentmindedly. Shaking myself awake, I was tempted to nip across the street to pop into Wanda’s Witchery just for a distraction, but I remembered at the last second that Wanda wasn’t working days anymore. In an attempt to get the vampires of Portland off her and Lorcan’s backs when they were insisting he finish her turning, Wanda started pretending that she’d fully changed into a vampire. Not much had changed really, and the coven was in the know about what was really going on, but it meant that she was essentially nocturnal these days. I wasn’t sure how long she was going to be able to keep it up, but things were quiet for a while, at least.

I wasn’t even sure who would be working over there now. Normally, Maverick handled the daytime hours of the store. But recently Imani had been helping out too. Regardless, I wasn’t in a social enough mood to want to see either of them. So, I just continued to busy myself with what I could in my own store.

I was close to being reduced to checking that all the lightbulbs in the fixtures were in good working order, when I caught sight of two figures making their slow way down the sidewalk. The chance that they might come into the store sent a pathetic little thrill of hope through me.

I did some quick calculations in my head. They’d already passed Sweeter Haunts, the Halloween themed candy store on the corner block, and there wasn’t a whole lot further down. Well, there was Stomper’s Creamery on the other corner, but with the chilly rain, it didn’t feel very much like an ice cream day, at least not to me.

It was hard to see anything past the huge umbrella they were both walking under, but the shorter person seemed to be making their painfully slow way with a cane. As they reached the door to my store, the taller person reached for the handle, and I almost clapped. Then I realized how unnerving it would probably be for them to step inside and find me staring at them, so I snatched up the cloth I’d been using and went back to polishing the old wooden surface of the counter, only looking up and pretending to notice them when the bell over the door tinkled.

I gave them a minute to get themselves sorted and gave them a little smile. They were both women, one quite elderly if her silver hair was anything to go by. She had most of it under a kerchief, and her long black coat protected her clothing from the rain, but her dark shoes were spattered with water. Her face was lined with dozens of wrinkles, and her back was bent like a crooked finger, but she made her way into the store with only a little help from the wooden cane in her hand.

The other woman, well, she was more a girl really, couldn’t have been older than sixteen. She also looked a bit miserable, her long blonde hair misted and curling in the rain that the umbrella hadn’t caught. She was also in a jacket—this one a pastel purple that cut off at the waist and didn’t look very warm at all. She glanced around, her mouth in a sulky line, and even all the way from the door, I could see her rolling her eyes.

“Good morning,” I said in my second most chipper voice in deference to the weather. “Welcome to Poppy’s Potions. Please let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”

The teenager didn’t scoff, but she might as well have. That didn’t stop her from taking the older woman’s arm and escorting her slowly across the floor to the counter, though.

“Good morning, m’dear,” the woman said, her voice cheery for all that it was a little rusted with age. The faint hint of a brogue reminded me a little of Lorcan. “I’ve been meaning to come in since you opened, but I’ve never quite gotten around to making the trek.”

I felt the overwhelming need to hurry out from around the counter and help the lady to a chair. Maybe get her a cup of tea. But sometimes that made people uncomfortable, so I held myself back, figuring she had her granddaughter there to tend to her, so she didn’t need me.

“I’m so glad that you made it out to visit.” I physically couldn’t stop myself from adding, “Would you like to sit down?”

“Oh, no, dear. Thank you, but no need to fuss.”

The girl scowled, but her voice was mild when she said, “Nana.”

The older woman gave her a look, but heaved a sigh and relented. “Alright, aye, then. A seat would be very welcome, my dear.”

I hurried around the counter with the stool I kept back there (making a note to myself to also get some chairs on hand, because a stool wasn’t the greatest for an elderly person) and helped the girl get her grandmother settled before I drew back.

“Thank you, dearie.” She sighed in relief as she settled, placing the cane between her knees with her hands folded over the handle. “That’s very kind of you.”

“Of course.” I had to be careful. She reminded me so much of my own grandmother that I was going to start getting teary eyed if I didn’t focus on something else. “What brings you in today?”

“Well, I was rather hoping you could help me.” She rolled her lips around as she thought, like she was trying to piece together what she wanted to say.

The teenager, her granddaughter most likely, maybe even great-granddaughter, pulled out her phone and started scrolling, seemingly checked out of the conversation.

“My name is Niamh,” the older lady said suddenly, like she was remembering herself.

I couldn’t help but smile. “Nice to meet you, Niamh. I’m Poppy.”

She chuckled. “Aye, I figured. I was hoping you might be able to help me, Poppy.” Then she paused for a moment and her eyes glossed over like she was no longer here any longer. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “My own grandmother, she used to brew potions when we were back in the old country. She could make marvels, she could. People would come from leagues and leagues away for one of them.”

“Your grandmother was a potion maker?” A little tingle of excitement flickered up my spine. I didn’t often meet people with the gift, even in my own family. Aside from my grandmother, I didn’t know of anyone else in my family who had the gift. Recently, I’d met my cousin Lydia, who had her own sort of magic, but it wasn’t my type of magic. “Do you?”

But that little hope was dashed when Niamh shook her head regretfully. “Nay. I never had the gift for it. Though, I am uncanny lucky when it comes to finding small lost things. Such gifts ran in my family.” She paused and then looked over at me with a glint in her eye. “We’re of Traveller stock.”

The excitement was back, stronger than before. Traveller stock. Not many people even knew who the Scottish Travellers were. But I did. Because I was one of them. Niamh might not have been a potion maker, but if she was a Traveller, that meant she had her own form of magic. And no amount of a teenager rolling their eyes could tamp down the joy bubbling up like champaign in my blood. She reminded me so much of my own family.

“Then I’m twice as glad to meet you, Niamh.” I paused. “I’m a Traveller too.”

“I know,” Niamh grinned at me, and her teeth were all a little to even and perfect to be real, but her eyes were warm before they nearly vanished into a nest of wrinkles. “It said as much on your website.” Then she paused and took a deep breath. “My Gran, she made all manner of things to help people. But there was one potion in particular that I was hoping you might have.”

“Of course.” I couldn’t help but lean forward a little, eager to help. “What were you looking for?”

She shifted a little on her stool, resettling her cane. “I’m in my nineties, now. My memory isn’t what it used to be, I’m afraid. But I’d like to be able to write down our family’s history before I can’t any longer, in case any of the younglings ever take an interest.”

The last bit seemed pointed, but the girl was still engrossed in her phone and not paying any attention.

Niamh shook her head with a little snort. “Still, I’d like to be able to pass it on. Even if my grand children and great-grandchildren don’t have any interest in our history.”

Apparently, the girl was paying some level of attention, because she rolled her eyes at the comment. I had a feeling that it was old ground being walked over again.

“What was the name of the potion you were looking for?” I asked Niamh.

“It’s a potion called Memento Mori ,” Niamh answered when it was clear she wasn’t going to get any real reaction from her granddaughter.

“ Memento Mori ,” I repeated as my heart sank. I so hated to disappoint her, especially after she’d come all this way, but not only didn’t I have the potion, I’d never even heard of it before. Families tended to hoard their recipes, so it wasn’t the kind of thing you could find online. In fact, I got all of my potions from the book that had been passed down from my grandmother and hers before her.

“Yes, it helps keep the memory sharp,” Niamh continued. “Sometimes, it can even let people relive certain memories in dreams. It would certainly help clear a bit of the fog out of this old head of mine. I was hoping you might have a bottle.”

“I’m so sorry,” I told her, and I really was. “I don’t carry anything like that. I wouldn’t even know how to go about brewing it.”

“Ah. I was afraid of that.” She sagged a little, the lines on her face starker, and her eyelids drooped like her disappointment was weighing her down. She rolled her lips again, thinking, before glancing up at me tentatively.

“I don’t suppose…” Niamh hesitated before forging ahead. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to try and make it? If I gave you my grandmother’s recipe, that is? It’s just that I don’t know anyone else who has the gift.”

“Of course,” I told her, thrilled that not only did she have the recipe, but she was willing to share it. That, in and of itself, was rare. And at the thought of learning another potion recipe? I was beyond thrilled, actually. “I’d be honored to!”

Just thinking about a new recipe, especially one that sounded so useful, had me almost bouncing on my toes. I could certainly use something to sharpen my own memory. I wasn’t anywhere close to Niamh’s age, sure, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t use a little help keeping things in order.

“Lovely!” She beamed at me, tapping her cane against the floor in her excitement. “Do you have something I might write the recipe on?”

I grabbed a pen and a bit of scrap paper from under the desk and passed it over, and Niamh leaned forward just enough to painstakingly write the steps out for me.

Her granddaughter finally looked up, her face an uncomfortable mix of disgust and concern. “Nana, you’re not really going to spend your money on this, are you? A magic potion? Really?”

Okay, that stung. I was used to people thinking potions were a little silly, or outright junk in some cases, but they usually didn’t say so in my store or to my face. Not only that, but teens in general seemed to be the ones who were the most open minded. I’d started brewing a whole line of teen related potions for things like studying, or banishing acne, and on more than a few girls’ request, I even had added Flower Oil for Attraction which helped bump the wearer’s charms to the opposite sex.

Niamh spoke without looking up, her voice firmer and sharper than it had been a moment before. “You mark my words, Jenny, my girl. There’s real magic in the world, sometimes in the smallest places. My gran had the gift, as sure as the sun rises, and I’ll not hear another word about it.”

Jenny didn’t look close to being convinced, but she apparently knew arguing further with her grandmother wasn’t going to get her anywhere. With an extremely put upon sigh, she went back to scrolling through her phone, which was just as well, because I didn’t have any interest in hearing more about how silly my potions were.

With fingers that shook ever so slightly, Niamh held out the recipe to me. Her handwriting was spidery, but easy enough to make out, and I glanced over the list of ingredients and then the directions.

All of the ingredients were things I already had on hand, so that was lucky. The timing was a little precise, but it I knew it wouldn’t be a problem. I tucked the directions away carefully before giving Niamh an excited smile.

“I can definitely do this for you,” I told her with a quick nod. “I’ll have it ready in three days. Would you like me to call, or do you just want to come by and pick it up then?”

“Wonderful, wonderful.” Niamh smiled, tapping her cane against the floor again. “I’ll have someone come round to pick it up for me, deary. These old legs of mine don’t walk as far as they did once upon a time.” She paused then and gave me a large smile. “Thank you again, Poppy.”

“Thank you for coming in and for sharing the recipe with me. I’m really excited to brew it for you.” All the little details would take some time, yes, but there was nothing in the directions that seemed too complicated or arduous. Some potions required particular moon phases or strange ingredients, and that could make keeping them in supply difficult. “Take care.”

And now that I had the recipe, Niamh could just call in an order when she needed more Memento Mori . Who knew, maybe I’d even start carrying it regularly—memory potions were always good investments. An anointed candle might be a nice touch, something to burn through the night so people could relive fond memories in their dreams. Maybe a little touch of Sweet Dreams potion, just to make sure the memories were nice ones.

I watched the pair duck out of the store under their huge umbrella and waved once before they made their slow way out of sight. Just before they crossed past my window, Niamh lifted one wrinkled, spotted hand in a wave.

And then they were gone.