Chapter Eight

Trying to focus on work that afternoon was like trying to balance spinning plates on sticks.

I was sure some people with amazing skills could have managed it, but I was just going to end up with a mess of cracked china and frustration.

Anytime I managed to push thoughts about that woman’s expression upon seeing me at the hair salon to one side, it was replaced by worries about something going on at Finn’s school. And then, of course, there was the ever-present concern that Andre was going to be up and moving to Las Vegas. I couldn’t seem to keep my attention on anything, and I had a load of half-dusted shelves, partially arranged displays, and two scorched potions to show for it.

I tried putting on a Zest potion, but it just left me distracted and with jittery hands. Finally, out of desperation, I dabbed on a little more Memento Mori , trying to recapture some of the good memories from my freshly done hair, or even seeing Finn this morning at breakfast. Instead, I got slammed in the memory banks with a vivid mental picture of finding that darn letter on Andre’s dresser.

Couldn’t I have been reminded of how wonderful the night had been before that? But no—instead, my brain had to bring up one of the three main concerns it wouldn’t stop stressing over. Then again, my evening with Andre when we’d had, ahem, the best sex of my life, probably wasn’t something I should have been thinking about at work anyway. A little heat climbed into my cheeks, at the thought that someone passing by the store would know exactly what I was thinking about.

Of course, in a place like Haven Hollow, it might have been possible. Right. I quickly banished any X-rated thoughts from my head, just to be sure. But that left me with the feeling that my stomach was a lead balloon with how fast it dropped when I remembered seeing the casino’s letter head. I couldn’t get the stupid image out of my head.

My phone buzzed, and I gave up the pretense of working in order to check it. My heart did a complicated little pulse when I saw Andre’s name come up. I felt something somewhere between excitement and nervousness, like my heart couldn’t decide which way to feel.

There’s a play in the park on Saturday, Andre texted . Something about a man who eats too many pies and then becomes one. It looks fun and funny. Do you think Finn might want to check it out? We could make an afternoon of it, bring some blankets and a picnic lunch? Miss you.

I read the text twice, a little smile curling my lips. He still wanted to make plans with me and us. That was a good thing, right? It had to be. He wasn’t just ghosting me since we’d already had sex. Maybe that sounded like a reach, but it had happened to me more than once in the past. But Andre was different.

Right. You already knew he was different , I reminded myself.

And proof was right there—in that text. He still wanted to do things with me that included Finn. That was promising. That was something I could use to bludgeon back the intrusive thoughts that kept insisting he was going to ditch us and move to Las Vegas. Thoughts that further insisted that everything between Andre and me had somehow just been a long con.

I gave my head a shake. Andre wasn’t like that. He’d proven that a dozen times over. He’d always looked out for Finn, from the first moment he’d blown into town. Plus, he was literally my soulmate. And soulmates didn’t just use you for sex.

But did soulmates up and move when their jobs warranted it?

I thought about that for a few moments, before shaking the thought out of my head. I figured Andre would tell me what was going on when the time was right. And until then, I needed to do my best not to think about it. So, I texted him back.

That sounds good to me! Let me talk to Finn tonight, just to make sure he doesn’t have plans, but I think we can both make it.

It did sound fun. The amateur theater in Haven Hollow could be a little hit or miss, but it was always entertaining, that was for sure. And we could make a little picnic out of it, with plenty of cozy blankets in case the weather took a turn for the nippy.

And what was more—this had to be proof that Andre was setting down roots in town, that he was looking to build a life in the Hollow—right? I was just being silly and overreacting, and there was really no reason for it.

I chewed on my bottom lip, the memory of finding that letter crowding into my head again. That sickening lurch in my gut, like I’d missed a stair on the way down and was suddenly in freefall, hit me like a truck. Because Andre had kept the letter. He hadn’t thrown it away. So, did that mean he was considering it? Why wouldn’t he get rid of it, otherwise?

Of course, he was considering it! I railed at myself. He’d be a fool not to consider it. It was a huge offer, a big deal, a life-changing offer!

I had no idea how I was ever going to bring it up to ask him about it, either. If he’d meant to talk to me about it, he would have already, wouldn’t he? Or maybe he was still planning on bringing it up? In which case, it was probably better if I didn’t, right? So, what was the plan, then? Was he just going to blow town without even talking to me about it? What about Finn? The whole thing left me feeling adrift, unhappy, and a little sick.

The entire day felt like it was set up to aggravate me, and the few customers I had didn’t help in the slightest. I tried to explain to one man that there was no potion that would make him irresistible to women. And then wracking my brain for a polite way to tell him that maybe if he laid off the body spray a smidge, he might have better luck failed.

By the time I assured him for the third time, that no, I didn’t have anything that would make his ex-wife love him again and pull her away from her current boyfriend, he reluctantly shuffled out. I was left standing there in the middle of my store, feeling dizzy and there were black spots flickering across my vision. My lungs hurt from holding my breath, but if I’d kept smelling that spicy, cloying, gym locker room stench, I would have gagged, and then I would have choked on our mutual mortification.

What was a little blacking out between shop owner and customer? I still hadn’t quite gotten my breath back when the bell over the door chimed, and a group of giggling teenagers spilled into the store.

Now, I always tried not to judge a book by its cover, or by its publication date if I could strain the metaphor to its furthest point. But teenagers tended to come into the store in order to laugh about the fact that I sold potions. It was a lot of picking up delicate things and putting them back in the wrong places, damaged merchandise, and sometimes asking a whole lot of questions they really didn’t want to know the answers to. None of them ever bought anything, which was fine, but sometimes bottles got broken and candles got dinged on the shelves, which ended up being a loss. So, seeing a whole crowd of them coming in my door had me letting out a sigh before I slapped on my customer service smile.

“Hi, guys. Let me know if you need any help.”

“Um, yeah. We, like, wanted to buy a potion?” The dark-skinned girl with her hair in a halo of curls around her face glanced back at her posse with a nervous giggle.

I tried not to let my surprise show. “Well, you came to the right place. Did you have something specific in mind?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s called… hang on.” She and the other girls (and one boy) converged, talking in not quite a whisper as they had a conference about exactly what potion it was they were trying to get.

A blonde girl with braces screwed her face up with effort. “Was it… Momentum ?”

A kid with a fake leather jacket and his hair shaved short on the sides and spiked on top shook his head. “No, Momentum is from physics. Isn’t it?”

“But it starts with an M, right?” The ringleader looked to the others for confirmation.

Another girl in a pink sweater and pleated skirt was typing away at her phone. “Hang on, I made a note.” She read it over, her lips moving soundlessly. “ Memento Mori , that’s what it’s called.”

The kid in the leather jacket shrugged as surprise rang through me. “Sounds about right. It makes you remember stuff, right?”

I blinked, taken aback, because the potion wasn’t out on the shelves yet. I hadn’t even advertised it at all and it wasn’t like I’d talked about it with anyone, save for Niamh. Heck, other than the bottle I’d kept, the only ones in town were the two I’d made for Niamh, so how in the world had these kids even heard of it? For that matter, why would teenagers need a memory potion? They had young brains with plenty of elasticity, or whatever it was that kept memories fresh. They shouldn’t have needed potion supplements for at least another thirty years.

“ Memento Mori ?” I dug out my order book and made a show of turning through the pages like I was looking up my inventory or something. “Where did you hear about that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

The kids all gave each other cautious looks, which meant I hadn’t been as subtle as I’d hoped.

The blonde girl just looked a bit confused. “Why? Does it matter?”

Be cool, Poppy.

Talking to teens was like trying to coax a wild bird into my hands. If I came on too strong, I knew I’d spook them, and they’d take off. Teens that felt pressed too hard retreated into their shells, fast, and it would be all shrugs and one-word answers, with nothing gained.

I shrugged, and turned the page of my log book without looking up. “Not really, no. I just like to know how people hear about things in the shop. It helps me to understand if advertising or word of mouth works better, you know?”

I was making things up with both hands, and just hoping that I didn’t start to sweat. My fibbing abilities weren’t very good at the best of times, and living with Finn, who knew any time I told even a smidge of an untruth, meant that I’d never really bothered with lying (well, with the exception of my lie about my date with Andre). In general, though, what was the point in lying? But I was feeling my lousy skills then, and just hoping it was enough to muddle through.

The ringleader shrugged, but her eyes were steady. “I don’t know where we heard about it. Around. Someone at school, maybe.” Hmm, maybe Niamh’s granddaughter had mentioned it? It was the only thing I could come up with. But I wasn’t even sure that she went to the high school. I’d never seen her before.

I dragged my finger down a column of oils I needed to restock sometime in the next month. “I’m afraid we’re all out of that potion. It’s not one of the more popular ones, so we don’t keep many in stock.”

The ringleader looked suspicious, her eyes narrowing. “Do you know when you’re going to have more?”

“I don’t.” At least I wasn’t lying now. I really didn’t know when I was going to get a chance to stock the Memento Mori . I hadn’t thought there would be much demand for it, especially so soon. “It needs to be brewed on a certain moon cycle, so it might be a month before I have anymore.”

There were some disappointed groans, and some muttering, but I guess they found it plausible that magic potions needed specific moonlight. Which was good, because some of them did. Still, I was so curious about what kids were going to do with a memory aid. But asking outright probably wasn’t going to get me anywhere. So, I tried for subtle.

“I’m surprised it’s so popular.” I made a show of putting the book away. “It’s usually the older crowd that’s interested in it, since they have trouble with their memory in general.”

There was a ripple of shrugs through the crowd of teens, and none of them seemed interested in meeting my eyes, except one kid. The only boy. All the while, he’d been quietly watching me, a little wrinkle between his brows. Finally, his eyes went wide, and he pointed.

“Wait a second, that’s the woman from my dream!”

I stared at him, not sure how to react to that. The other teens immediately burst out laughing, teasing the kid while he slowly went scarlet from mortification.

“Not like that,” he stammered, but his eyes were still fixed on me and suspiciously—like it was my fault I’d showed up in his dream (if I really had). “But seriously, I had a dream about you,” he continued. By now, I was listening, because I’d never seen the kid before and from the sound of it, he’d never seen me.

“You did?” I asked, frowning.

He nodded insistently. “You were standing in the street, and you had fire wrapping around your arms, but it wasn’t burning you at all. I think you were controlling it.”

“What?” the ringleader asked, frowning at him.

“Isn’t that weird?” he asked her with a little, embarrassed laugh—like he’d realized how strange he sounded.

“Yeah, super weird,” one of the girls answered.

It took me a second to force any kind of response out of my mouth, because I’d frozen in horror at what he was describing. Because, the thing was, that sounded a lot like my Fiery Command Oil . I’d used it pretty publicly when I’d first come to town, when a Wendigo had decided to go on a murder spree in Haven Hollow, and I’d been trying to slow her down enough for the Council to take care of her. The whole situation had been pretty big, and showy, and it had taken a lot of work to make sure that the less magically inclined residents of the Hollow had their memories altered in order to keep the peace.

That had been back when Ophelia, a Night Hag, had been in charge of the Council, and while she also turned out to be inclined to going on murder sprees, she’d been a real stickler for keeping the supernatural and the mundane citizens entirely separate. Heck, she hadn’t even wanted to sell homes to non-magical people by the end of her reign. No way would she have allowed some human kid to remember me, wreathed in fire, duking it out with an eight-foot, antlered, shaggy monster in the middle of Main Street. Unless this wasn’t just a normal, human kid? But when I studied him, he looked and felt normal.

The kids were staring at me by this point—like they were wondering if I really was some sort of weird, fire-handling entity, so I forced a laugh out from between lips that had gone numb. “Yeah. That’s a weird dream for sure.”

That seemed to be good enough, because the crowd turned and started drifting towards the door, all the while teasing the kid about finally meeting his ‘dream woman’ who also happened to be old enough to be his mom. I decided to forcibly ignore that last bit, which wasn’t hard considering I was still stuck on the fact that this kid had somehow seen me all those years ago.

When the bell over the door rang to signal they were gone, I grabbed my hair with both hands and tried not to freak out. But seriously, what the heck? How could that kid have known that? Had it really just been a dream that had visited him, and I was panicking about nothing? But then, why would he have dreamt about it—something he’d never even witnessed. Was he maybe a budding supernatural, and having some kind of reverse-prophetic dreams? Was that even a thing? Dreaming of the past sounded like kind of a let down where supernatural gifts were concerned, but that didn’t mean that his running his mouth to his friends wasn’t going to cause problems.

It was just dumb luck that none of them seemed interested in asking him more questions in favor of busting his chops about dreaming about some mom in the potion store. But that could change at any moment. Right, good point. I needed to call Wanda. Then I needed to figure out what was going on. But before all of that, I needed to take a full breath before I passed out on the floor.

Before I had a chance to get myself really worked up, my phone pinged. I almost ignored it, but I didn’t get a lot of texts, and there was a limited number of people that it could have been, and I cared a lot about all of them. Somehow, I managed to fumble my phone out of my pocket without dropping it, which was bigger magic than any potion.

It was a text from Finn.

Mom?

I frowned, worry creeping in for a whole different reason. It was still school hours, and Finn shouldn’t have been on his phone. He should have been in class, paying attention to whatever he was learning.

Come to think of it, what had those teenagers been doing outside of class? Never mind, three problems or less at a time.

I was just typing up a response, when Finn called me. Apparently, I hadn’t answered quickly enough.

“What’s going on, buddy?” I immediately asked, but when there was no immediate response, I continued, “what’s wrong?” I tried to keep my voice even, to not let the unease I was feeling creep into my tone. He wouldn’t have called for no reason. He knew better than to use his phone in school.

“Mom?” The tremor in his voice made him sound years younger.

“What’s going on, Finn?”

He took a shaky breath and let it out. Static crackled across the line. “Mom, Alicia collapsed in class. She just dropped on the floor, and no one could wake her up. They had to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital.”

Listening to the hiccup of my son’s tears over the phone line, when I had no way to hug him or give him any real comfort, was agonizing. The phone creaked in my grip, my fingers squeezing tight like I could crawl through the receiver to get to his side.

Alicia was one of Finn’s classmates and one of his, newest but soon to be closest, friends. They spent a lot of time together and Finn had been overprotective of her, ever since he’d had his showdown with the Magicless that had been targeting his class. The woman had been doing her best to torment the kids, to suck all the hope out of them and turn Finn into a broken Magician like her, and she hadn’t cared who suffered as collateral damage in her wake. Alicia had been hurt pretty badly in the process. She still suffered panic attacks and couldn’t be alone in the dark to this day, from what Finn had told me.

“It’s okay, Finn,” I promised, although I had no way of knowing if it was okay. My chest hurt. What a terrifying thing to see. And that poor girl, I wished she could just have some peaceful days and a chance to recover. “Everything is going to be okay.”

Finn snuffled across the line, his voice thick. “Can… can you come and get me? Please?”

“I’m on my way.”

And I was. Everything else was forgotten as I grabbed my purse and my keys. Within seconds, I’d locked up and was on my way to the school to pick up Finn.