Potions Are for Pushovers Read online

  Oh, yeah. He definitely took a good, hard look at my garden. “You said you have a cat,” he replies.

  “I do have a cat.”

  He makes a show of looking around him. “Where?”

  I follow the path of his gaze, skimming over all of Beast’s favorite spots—curled in front of the AGA stove, perched on the windowsill, staring ominously from the doorway. “Huh. She wasn’t outside?”

  The inspector shakes his head and reaches for his interior coat pocket. He stops halfway with an inward curse.

  “Here.” I slump my bag on the table in a gesture that would do Lenora proud and dig around until I extract several packages of gum. We had to buy something in all those gas stations we stopped at, and it was the only thing I could afford. “Try these.”

  He takes one of the cellophane-lined packages and stares at it.

  “It’s sugar free. Same great distraction, none of the calories.” When he still hesitates, I laugh and start gathering the tea things. “I could make you some artisanal water, if you’d prefer, but something tells me you’d just end up sending it in to be tested.”

  With a shrug, he opens the gum and pops a piece in his mouth. Although he drops the wrapper to the floor in a move I swear is designed to irritate me, my plan works. Almost immediately, he relaxes, his shoulders coming down and another of those appraising looks cast around my kitchen. “What’s its name?”

  It takes me a moment to register his question. “The cat? Beast. She should be around here somewhere—I leave the window above the sink open so she can come and go as she pleases. Take this and waft it around the house, will you?”

  He accepts the half-opened can of tuna with a grimace.

  “It’ll draw her out. It’s like luring spirits, except she’ll bite you instead of haunt you. Did you find any poison in the garden, by the way? Am I the murderer?”

  He hesitates. “You should talk to my Aunt Margaret.”

  “Why? Is she the murderer?”

  He releases a chuffing sound that might be a laugh. He also wanders into the living room, holding the can of tuna out in front of him. A light switches on, and there’s a long pause that I assume is a thorough—if not very secretive—search of the room’s contents.

  “You’re wasting space out there,” he eventually says. “Rosemary should always be planted next to sage. Fennel should be far away from everything. A ring of marigold will keep most pests away.”

  I poke my head into the living room. That sounds an awful lot like helpful advice. “You seem to know quite a bit about gardens.”

  “My Aunt Margaret knows quite a bit about gardens,” he corrects me. “Is there a reason your living room looks like you’re plotting a werewolf takeover in the middle of a rainstorm?”

  I laugh and finish putting the tea things on the tray. There’s not much food left since the advent of Lenora and Rachel into my domain, but I find a sleeve of mildly stale biscuits and place them in the middle.

  “I assume you’ve heard that Lenora MacDougal is my apprentice?” I ask. Without waiting for an answer, I add, “Behold the evidence. She and Rachel have decided that we have a werewolf on the loose.”

  When I walk into the living room, it’s to find that Inspector Piper has given up on the can of tuna and is crouched among the haphazard pile of books and papers that Lenora hadn’t been able to squeeze into her backpack. There’s quite a few of them, so she must be running out of space in there.

  Inspector Piper pokes through the slog with the tail end of his pen, taking a moment to shake off the water that’s been collecting through the roof in my absence.

  He twists his head to peer up at me. “You told them about the wolfsbane?”

  “Of course not.” I place the tea tray on the middle of the coffee table and pour out two cups, ignoring the drip of ceiling water that lands in one. “But between the dead pig and the fact that teenage girls love a good underdog story—see what I did there?—this is what happens. If you know of some way to quash their youthful fervor without sending them off on an attempt to trap werewolves by the light of the full moon, I’d love to hear it.”

  His answer is a grunt and a return to his paper poking. He bypasses the scattered copies of Horse & Hound and raises an eyebrow at the tranquilizers before lifting the cover of the leather-bound werewolf book. Reading it only long enough to ascertain that it’s museum property, he moves on to the smaller, pamphlet-style notebook next to it.

  “What’s this one?” he asks.

  I can’t recall seeing it before, but that doesn’t mean much considering how many books Lenora lugs around in the general way of things. Picking up the smaller tome, I notice that it appears to be a hand-bound collection of beautifully pressed pages, all tied at the binding with a strong, reedy twine.

  “Turns out Lenora is really good at finding useful old books,” I say as I open the cover. “To be honest, she’s kind of a wizard at it.”

  “A wizard?” he echoes doubtfully.

  “A dab. A prodigy. A genius. Not everything has mystical ramifications, you know.”

  He leans closer. “It doesn’t have the museum’s sticker on the inside. They’re usually good at cataloging their collections.”

  “Maybe she picked it up from a bookstore. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

  “And everything in it is handwritten,” he points out.

  “Does that matter?”

  “It does when the first page looks like this.”

  He takes the book and shows me the page in question. There’s nothing on it but a sketch of a pentagram—and a terrible one at that. The line segments are all of unequal length, as though the artist couldn’t be bothered.

  “Well, that’s just silly,” I say. “Why draw a pentagram if you aren’t going to take your time with it? It’s supposed to be the golden ratio, beloved of mathematicians and Satanists alike.”

  “So you recognize it?”

  Soft laughter escapes my lips. “Yes, Inspector Piper. I’m familiar with what a pentagram looks like. As is almost everyone who’s ever watched a horror movie.”

  Interested now, I take the book back and begin flipping through the pages. The tome looks, at first sight, to be exactly what the pentagram and worn cover promise: a handmade notebook filled with various witchy scrawls. Pentagrams, pentacles, and ominous markings of all shapes and sizes—it’s basically the same type of thing I carved into the outside of the box that once contained Mr. Worthington’s pig-binding elixir.

  In other words, complete malarkey.

  “What does this have to do with werewolves?” Inspector Piper asks. His breath is warm on my shoulder, his head mere inches from my own as he examines each page with me. The scent of stale cigarettes and strawberry gum makes for an interesting mix.

  “It doesn’t,” I say. “In fact, if I had to take a guess, I’d say it’s a Book of Shadows.”

  “A Book of Shadows?”

  “It’s not as sinister as it sounds, I promise.” When the only response I get is a kind of wary disbelief, I add, “It’s basically a journal for witches. I have one, too. It’s where I take notes on the potions I make, track the cycles of the moon, that sort of thing. See this marking right here, the one that looks like two line snakes facing off for a showdown?”

  Inspector Piper has to tilt his head a few times before he sees it. “Sure. Why not?”

  “Well, it’s a pretty common symbol for unity between lovers. It signifies a strong relationship or the perfect couple. I might use it if I was working on a love spell.”

  “So it’s a spell book?” the inspector asks.

  I glance down again, a worry snagging at the back of my mind. “Well, yes and no. Take this page, for example. It’s written in all the traditional magic symbols, the way you might write a spell, but it’s not like any I’ve ever seen. There are no ingredients or instructions, not even a chant or two. There’s just this curved symbol here and a series of numbers. I have no idea what it means.”

  �
��And you say this notebook belongs to Lenora MacDougal?”

  Given how interested the girl is in witchcraft, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that she’s been playing around with a Book of Shadows on the side. I had one at her age, too, though it contained fewer pentagrams and more doodly hearts around different boys’ names.

  I’m no snitch, however. I shrug. “Probably. I asked her to look into all instances of the occult in this area, so there’s no saying who it belongs to. I wouldn’t be surprised if she borrowed it from Aunt Margaret.”

  “I would,” the inspector says. At my questioning look, he adds, “She’s an herbalist, not a witch.”

  I laugh. “That’s what we all say.”

  My laughter, though honest, is short-lived. For one, all these visits from Inspector Piper are starting to make me nervous. It would be one thing if he was asking my advice or filling me in on the details so I can provide a helping hand with his case. But he’s examining me—he’s questioning me. That means he’s no closer to finding the real culprit than I am.

  For another, the can of tuna is still sitting untouched on the coffee table. Solving Sarah Blackthorne’s murder is important, yes, but so is finding my cat. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember the last time I saw her. She wasn’t around when I got home from the fête planning committee yesterday, and she wasn’t in the room while the girls were going over their werewolf list, which is strange for her. There’s nothing that cat loves more than to preside over a coven at work.

  “It’s not like her to stay away for so long,” I say as I pick up the can and give it a tentative sniff. It’s fishy enough to tempt the most feline of palates. “I wonder where she could be.”

  A huge drop of water falls onto the inspector’s forehead, beading down the line of his nose. With slow, methodic carefulness, he reaches into his pocket and extracts a handkerchief.

  “Maybe,” he says as he wipes the drip away, “she found somewhere dry to take shelter for the night.”

  * * *

  “Here, Beastie, Beastie.” I stand crouched at the entrance to the garden, the tuna in my hand and a crooning note in my voice. “Come out, Beastie, Beastie. I promise not to watch you eat this time. Word of a witch.”

  The only sound that greets my ears is the whisper of wind rustling through the gate behind me. As soon as Inspector Piper left, I came out here with the full expectation of finding Beast playing a trick on me.

  She loves this garden. During the daytime I can often find her sunning herself by a leafy frond or two. At night, she’ll sometimes perch on the top of the wall so she can keep a vigilant watch over the cottage and all its contents. It’s part of the reason I’m so sure there’s a piece of Winnie in her somewhere. Not because I’m being sentimental, but because that cat sees things. She knows things.

  “The temperature is going to get close to freezing tonight, you silly creature,” I call, trying not to let the panic creep into my voice. “And I’m not getting up at three o’clock to let you inside once you finally realize it. I mean it this time.”

  Still nothing. Just wind and rain and a moon creeping toward its full luminous height. Three days, I told the girls, until the werewolf power is at its peak. Three nights, and that glowing orb will contain all the power of the universe.

  “It’s just a myth,” I say, my voice wavering. “Werewolves aren’t real. Regina’s death was just a fluke.”

  The comforting words don’t help, especially once I recall one of my first conversations with Lenora, when she told me all about how her brother traps mice from the field out back of their house because their own cat went missing about a month ago.

  During the last full moon.

  A chill that has nothing to do with the night air moves through me. I wrap my arms tight around my midsection and try not to think of missing cats and slaughtered pigs and women poisoned in church basements.

  Beast can survive anything. That cat doesn’t have nine lives—she has ninety.

  As if to prove it, I catch sight of something moving in the distance, near the peak of a hill that slopes gently out of sight of the road. At first, I think it’s nothing more than my worry and imagination working in tandem to play tricks on me. It wouldn’t be the first time—you’d be surprised how much influence a spooky setting and a feeling of hysteria can have over the mind. It’s a thing I’ve relied on more times than I care to admit, trading on atmosphere to make people believe in the impossible.

  But the blur of movement passes over my peripheral vision once again, and I turn sharply toward it. “You silly cat,” I mutter as I start moving that direction. “You scared the bejesus out of me, disappearing for so long.”

  It’s just like that animal to put me in a pucker, frolicking about without a care in the world. Like Winnie, she’s off in a world of her own making, where murders and werewolves are nothing more than an evening’s entertainment.

  Before I make it halfway up the hill, the wind picks up in a sudden cool burst, carrying with it a familiar tang. A few weeks ago, I might not have thought anything of it, but a few weeks ago, I hadn’t spent quite so much time steeped in that scent.

  Sharp. Metallic. Bloody. And underneath it all, an undeniable animal musk.

  I pick up the pace. Instinct warns me to take cover and approach from the side, taking care to hide myself from whatever creature is carrying that scent, but I force myself to ignore it. It’s probably just a mouse caught in Beast’s fangs, a gift in exchange for all the care and food I lavish on her. Cats are weirdly generous that way.

  But as I approach the site where I first saw the movement, I realize I’m not stumbling upon a mouse. Nor is the kill this time the least bit fresh.

  I gag, my hand over my mouth, as I reach yet another body left decomposing for all to see.

  No, not all, I think. Just me.

  I’m not sure whether to be proud of myself or not as I immediately identify the animal as a cat at least two days gone, deposited at the hill’s crest in its current postmortem state.

  “Beast?” I ask, my voice wavering. My heart thuds heavily in my chest, a wrenching feeling not unlike the one I experienced at the loss of my sister threatening to take over. “Beast, are you—?”

  My answer comes—not from Winnie and not from beyond the grave—but in a blue collar that I know, in an instant, doesn’t belong to my cat. The initial wave of relief this realization brings is quickly brought to rest when I realize that another dead animal, this one almost on my back porch, is hardly good news. Especially since that blur of movement I saw couldn’t have been caused by this animal moving on its own four feet.

  Something—or someone—is on the prowl. And something—or someone—is determined that I be aware of it.

  I whirl, my eyes narrowed as I try to make out the huddled lumps and dark blotches in the distance, but I don’t see sight of anything moving. At least, not unless you count the tree branches swaying heavily to and fro and the gentle shimmer of a cloud moving over the moon.

  “I’m not scared of you!” I call, even though the prickle at the nape of my neck feels an awful lot like fear. “I’ve seen worse than this before. This one isn’t even ripped open. I bet it still has its heart and everything.”

  Though true, I’m not all too keen on having decaying carcasses thrown onto my property, especially considering how recently Inspector Piper stopped by unannounced. He’d take one look at this poor animal and assume I’m adding sacrifice to my regular rituals. Since I have nothing but love for creatures of the four-legged variety, I say a quick chant over the body and make a mental note to bury it first thing in the morning. I also take one last lingering look over the darkened landscape, hoping against all reason and likelihood that Beast will appear to put my alarm to rest.

  She doesn’t.

  The best I can do is take a deep breath and say, “Watch over her for me, will you, Winnie? That cat will probably be back tomorrow without a lick of fur out of place, but it’s always better to be careful. Even w
ith an animal as indomitable as that one.”

  I’m not sure whether the words are meant for me or my sister, but it doesn’t matter. As a howl sounds in the distance, mournful and so unnerving it sends a shiver down my spine, neither one of us seems to have anything to say.

  Chapter 10

  There’s only one person in the village I trust to tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when it comes to neighborhood gossip.

  “Eleanor!” Vivian is alone in the castle, sequestered in her bedroom against both the cold and any outside invaders. Her room has always been the warmest place in the castle, as it contains one of the only working fireplaces. Today is no exception. She’s celebrating the warmth with a tropical muumuu-style dress and a bottle of my elderberry cordial that I assume she had Rachel pinch from the cottage during one of her frequent visits. “What are you doing here? I thought you were busy investigating Sarah’s murder.”

  I allow a note of apology to creep into my voice. “I am. In fact, that’s why I’m here. I hate to be a bother, but I’m in something of a bind.”

  “And you want my help with it? Oh, dear.” She reaches for the bottle, her hands fluttering with the cork. She’s perfectly capable of opening it on her own—her actions are meant to convey both an air of fragility and an inability to follow through with any gestures of hospitality.

  “None for me, thanks,” I say. I’m familiar with the script. “I just had a huge lunch. I couldn’t possibly eat or drink anything else.”

  My confession has its intended effect, which is to quell any fears Vivian has that she’ll be expected to play the role of hostess. She’s still wary about that whole being-in-a-bind situation, though, so she continues to act like a bird released from its cage for the first time.

  “It’s always nice to see you, dear, but I don’t know how I can help.” She sighs. “Everyone seems to want something from me lately. Vicar Brown has been badgering me to help fund the new bell tower, and I’ve received I don’t know how many visits from life insurance salesmen who seem to think I have one foot in the grave. Those would be bad enough on their own, but then Penny came by with one of her cakes this morning.”