Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

The next day, after lunch, Robbie and I walked down the hall together, like two high schoolers, heading for our next class. I kept catching him glancing in my direction as we moved, like he had something to say, but nothing came out. My heart fluttered in my chest, and I played with the straps on my backpack.

"So, we need to find the right opportunity to talk to Ms. Ingow when we can," I told him, trying to ignore whatever is being left unspoken between us.

"What for?" he asked.

"Ms. Ingow is the potions teacher, so if there’s anything useful we can learn from the broken pieces of the potion bottle in the courtyard, she should be the one who can tell us about it."

"Think it’ll be that easy?" He lifted his brow.

I sigh. "Probably not, but we’re going to approach all of this with a good attitude and hope for the best."

We paused outside the classroom. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. After a minute, he said, "We should hurry, or we’ll be late."

"Late, right," I said, and headed through the door.

The atmosphere in the classroom was frigid when Robbie and I walked into Ms. Ingow's class. Heads turned, eyes narrowed, and whispers trailed off into a thick silence that hung over us like a storm cloud. Even Ms. Ingow, with her flower-crowned blond hair and usually warm demeanor, gave us a look sharp enough to cut through dragon scales.

"Take your seats," she ordered frostily.

We found a spot at the back of the classroom, the only table with two empty stools beckoning us to settle into the chilly atmosphere. Today's task was right on the blackboard.

Voice-Altering Potion .

Alicia glanced back at me.

"Should be fun, right?"

She seemed to bounce on her tiny feet, her short blonde hair moving with the motion. "Yeah, because we’ll probably use voice-altering potions a lot when we’re out in the world, helping people." There was a touch of sarcasm laced with her quick words.

I grinned. "All the time."

Marcus looked back at me from beside Alicia, running his fingers through his dark hair. "We should probably focus on the potion…"

I almost stuck my tongue out at him. The man had all the charm and grace of an angry snake. I kind of hoped, if there was another problem at the fairy godmother academy, he was caught square in the middle of it, so I could be a giant turd about him.

Ms. Ingow’s soft voice cut through the classroom chatter, quieting the students. "As you can see, today you’ll be creating a voice-altering potion. We’re doing this because this spell is actually the basis for many transformation spells. If you can get it down, it’ll make the more complicated spells easier to follow." She moved between the aisles, looking at each of us as she spoke. "Not only are the ingredients on the board, but the steps are written out too. Remember to do everything exactly as the board says, and be careful, the potion is really strong."

With that, she returned to her desk and sat down. She pulled out a bowl, and a pile of papers, and seemed to completely forget that we existed. Great, so we wouldn’t be getting a lot of help from that direction. We’d have to figure things out on our own.

"Dragon scales, fairy needles, fox fur..." I read from the list of ingredients scrawled in chalk. We set to work, me measuring out the ground eye of newt while Robbie carefully plucked a maple leaf from our supplies.

"Maple leaves in fall colors." He held up a leaf that seemed to shift from red to gold as he turned it in his hands. "Just like your hair in the sunlight."

I grinned, even if the rest of the room might as well have been an ice cave. "You're laying it on thick, aren't you?"

"I can't help it." He smiled back at me. "Life's pretty dull without you. All that investigating we did. It gave my days some excitement. "

"Miss me, did you?" I said, dropping the newt's eye into our cauldron with a little plop.

"More than I expected," he admitted, then added more seriously, "It was too quiet back home."

My heart swelled. He missed me. I don’t know if I’ve ever had someone truly miss me before, besides my daughter. It was a nice feeling.

"Quiet can be good." I stirred the potion and watched as it bubbled a vibrant blue. "But I get it. This place, it's something else."

"Something else indeed." Robbie glanced around. "Though, I could do without the cold shoulders."

"Let's just focus on not turning our voices permanently into chipmunk ones." We shared a laugh that gave a small spark to the chilly room.

"Wouldn't be the worst thing," Robbie said. "It might lighten the mood around here."

"Or get us kicked out of class," I said, but his easygoing nature was infectious, and for a moment, the chill from the others didn't seem to matter.

"If your potion is now bright blue, and you followed the steps correctly, your potion should be ready. With extreme care, put one drop on your palm, everyone," Ms. Ingow said over the chatter.

I glanced at Robbie, who nodded, and we both let a single drop of our potion fall onto our hands.

"Go on then, say something," she said.

"Something," I said, and out came a squeak that could have belonged to a cartoon mouse.

Robbie snorted next to me, his own voice sounding like he'd inhaled a balloon's worth of helium.

"Ridiculous," he gasped out before both of us burst into laughter. The voices lasted mere seconds, but it was enough to set off a chain reaction of giggles throughout the room.

"Enough," Ms. Ingow said as she marched over to us, her long blonde hair swishing around her shoulders. "This is serious. You need to pay attention. Potions are delicate, you can't be?—"

Her lecture cut off when her hand came down hard next to our cauldron, causing a big splash of liquid to fly onto her arm. Her eyes widened, and when she opened her mouth again, a high-pitched tirade spilled out .

Robbie bit his lip, trying not to laugh, and I covered my mouth with my hand, my shoulders shaking. Ms. Ingow seemed to inflate with rage, her face turning the color of boiled beets.

"Class dismissed," Mr. Bently suddenly said from the doorway, and the room erupted as students scrambled to leave and try to contain their laughter.

"I’m sorry, Ms. Ingow," I said once I managed to compose myself. This was probably the worst time ever to ask her a question, but I wanted to keep going with our investigation. "Could we talk to you for a second?" I asked, my voice still wobbling back to normal as she glowered.

She fixed us with a look that could sour milk, her voice still a few octaves too high from the potion mishap. "What is it?"

"It’s about a bunch of glass pieces we found in the courtyard," Robbie said.

She narrowed her blue eyes. "Of course you two would start nosing around."

"Was it from one of your potion bottles?" I ignored her glare.

She let out a sigh that seemed to take all the remaining air out of the room. "Yes, it was from one of my bottles. And yes, I'm researching it." She waved a hand dismissively toward a cluttered corner of her desk where papers covered in scrawling letters were stacked beside a small bowl filled with more glass fragments.

"Is there any potion residue on them? Can you tell us anything about it?" Robbie said.

"Absolutely not," she snapped, her voice still betraying her with its helium-induced pitch. "This is not your responsibility. The hunters and the teachers do not require your help in figuring it out."

"Thanks anyway." I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear in frustration as we turned to leave.

Robbie and I rushed to dinner to meet up with Jessie to tell her what little we’d learned. The dining hall buzzed with conversation and the clinking of cutlery, but our table was an island of conspiracy.

"We talked to Ms. Ingow," I whispered across the table, leaning in so only she and Robbie could hear. "She confirmed the glass was from her potion bottle, but she wouldn't give us more than that. "

Jessie's eyebrows shot up in interest.

"I'll find out what it is, somehow," I said. My fork stabbed at the greens on my plate, though my appetite had waned with the mystery gnawing at me.

Robbie nodded in agreement. "We saw some notes on her desk. I think we should sneak back into the classroom in a couple of days. See if we can get a closer look."

Brilliant. "It’s time for some more sleuthing."