Potions Are for Pushovers Read online

  “What’s on the agenda today, my pretties?” I ask. “Besides Maltesers, that is.”

  I mentally prepare myself for another lengthy discussion of werewolf characteristics and how Lewis King fits the bill, which is why I’m so surprised when Lenora jumps right in with, “So, I called the Animal Control Service this morning, right?”

  “You did?” I blink at her. “How did you know?”

  “Know what?” Lenora asks, blinking at me.

  I open my mouth to tell her about the warning I received last night—and then immediately shut it again. I might not be a good influence over this child, but even I know better than to add a dead cat to her already fertile imagination.

  “Nothing,” I say. “It’s just that I don’t remember asking you to call Animal Control.”

  Rachel grabs one of the candy bars and rips it open. “You didn’t. But I had dinner at Lenora’s house last night, and her brother, George, came in holding this huge dead field mouse he caught out back.”

  Lenora pulls a face. “It was so gross, Madame Eleanor, you don’t even know.”

  On the contrary, I have a rather good idea of just how foul something like that can be, but I keep my mouth shut. Regarding that topic, anyway.

  “You ate at Lenora’s?” I ask, looking back and forth between them. “Without an invitation?”

  “Dr. MacDougal didn’t care at all,” Rachel promises. “She said I’m welcome to join them anytime I want, and she even helped us with some of our research.”

  “Oh, she did, did she? I wonder why?”

  My question is a rhetorical one, since I already have my answer. A hint—it rhymes with pillionaire.

  “Calling Animal Control Services was her idea,” Rachel says. “She said you can tell a lot about predators in an area based on what sort of animals they have to clean up off the side of the road. Only there aren’t any in England.”

  “Dead animals?” I ask. On the contrary, my life seems to be teeming with them lately.

  “Predators,” Lenora says. “Except for foxes and badgers, but they’ll only kill small things the same way cats and George do.”

  “Don’t forget birds,” I offer.

  “Birds?” Rachel echoes.

  “Yeah. Ones like hawks and owls.” Which, according to Dr. MacDougal, will pick up entire pig hearts. For a woman who wanted me not to feed her stepdaughter tales of werewolves scavenging for parts, she seems to be taking an awfully keen interest in this whole predator/prey theory. “But I imagine they fall under the ‘small things’ category, too. I don’t see a hawk picking up something the size of a cat.”

  Or, to be fair, leaving it on a hill for me to find in the dead of night.

  Rachel leans across the table, an air of excitement hanging around her head. “But that’s the thing, Ellie. According to the woman Lenora talked to this morning, they’ve had a larger than usual number of cats go missing this past week.”

  “A larger than usual number?” I echo.

  “And you know who else has been here for a week,” Lenora supplies with a knowing look at Rachel. Rachel’s response is a convincing wolf howl that draws a deep shushing sound from the front desk of the library.

  “We don’t know that for sure, you guys,” I protest, more for form’s sake than anything else. I can’t help remembering that musky scent underlying the tang of blood—or the way Lewis looked this afternoon. “I didn’t see Lewis until Friday, remember? That’s the earliest we can place him here for sure.”

  Lenora pushes the railway timetable at me. For the first time, I note that there’s a bright red circle around one of the times. “Nope. We can place him last Wednesday.”

  “What?” I grab the paper and examine it, though there’s not much to see. You can pick these up at almost every train station. I think we grabbed this one on our tour yesterday. “How do you know? We asked, but no one remembered seeing Lewis.”

  “I know, but that’s because we didn’t ask the right way.” Rachel reaches into her own backpack, which is starting to rival Lenora’s in terms of size. She extracts two images that I recognize at a glance as her own work.

  Her sketch artistry skills have come a long way since the last time I used them. I take both images in my hands, examining first one and then the other. The image on my left is Lewis as we almost always see him—unkempt, bedraggled, in desperate need of rest. The image on my right is Lewis as he appeared after he shaved and showered that day at his aunt’s home. The hair has been removed from his jawline and some of the exhaustion wiped from his expression, but that cherubic face is unmistakable.

  “No one remembered seeing the hairy Lewis,” Rachel explains as she taps the first picture. “But this one—the normal guy? I went out while Lenora was at school today and got two separate confirmations. He definitely came down on Wednesday. Before Mr. Worthington’s pig was killed.”

  “Yes, but—” I begin, but I should have known better than to have an opinion around these two. Or any semblance of authority.

  “He’s getting worse,” Lenora says. “We saw him in the village center yesterday, and he looked terrible. Even my dad said something about it, and he wouldn’t notice if I dyed my hair black and pierced my nose. It’s because we’re getting closer to the full moon. He’s transforming.”

  Rachel nods as if this makes perfect sense. “And he’s hungry. You’d better lock up Beast, Ellie. There’s no telling where he’ll feed next.”

  I take a deep breath, more out of an effort to give the impression that I’m frustrated with the pair of them rather than because I am. In truth, this revelation is far more helpful than either of these girls realize. Arriving on Wednesday wouldn’t only give Lewis enough time to slaughter that pig. It also places him well within the timeline to have killed his aunt.

  “I’m going to keep these, okay?” I ask and, without waiting for an answer, fold the pictures in half and pull them close. “And I’m officially pulling you two off werewolf duty from here on out. No—don’t argue. I know it’s unfair and stupid and the same boring adult treatment you’d expect from your parents, but I mean it. You can’t keep going around asking questions and not expect Lewis to hear about it. If you get any closer, your lives could be in danger.”

  Lenora stares at me with wide eyes, but she doesn’t speak. It takes Rachel to put into words what she’s thinking.

  “You mean he really is a werewolf?” She reaches for Lenora’s hand, the pair of them taking comfort from one another in a gesture that clenches my heart. Once upon a time, Winnie and I were like that, too. “You think he might attack us if we know the truth?”

  “I think it’s best that you two stick to a tight curfew from now until the full moon,” I reply, neatly sidestepping the question. “And I think you should start researching something else.”

  “Like what?” Lenora asks. “Werewolves were the only thing I could find, remember?”

  I have to think fast. Under normal circumstances, I’d be all too happy to train Lenora in my myriad other mystical skills. She could help me grind herbs and boil flowers, maybe even dry sage for my smudging bundles. But I need to focus my attentions on this murder investigation—and I’d like to do it with her as far away as possible.

  She needs something safe. Something academic. Something that has nothing to do with Sarah Blackthorne’s murder or her nephew’s strange condition . . .

  “I know,” I say with a snap of my fingers. This time, it’s my turn to reach into my bag. Unlike the backpack twins over there, I carry a vintage medical valise that looks as though it’s been used to remove a limb or two. It’s just as covered in mud as I am, but the layer of dirt only adds to its appeal.

  The inside is as dry and safe as ever, so the pentagram notebook is none the worse for my little adventure with Lewis.

  “Why don’t you focus on this?” I toss the notebook on the center of the table, watching as it spins in a perfect 360-degree rotation before coming to a stop in front of Lenora.

  Rache
l eyes the book with suspicion, but Lenora greedily snatches it up and starts flipping through the pages. “Smashing!” she cries as she lands on the lopsided pentagram. “Did you make this yourself?”

  “Well, no.” I glance back and forth between the two girls. “You brought it to my house with all the werewolf materials, remember?”

  Rachel keeps her hands firmly under the table, a wary expression settling in her violet eyes. Lenora is equally suspicious, but her emotion takes the form of a questioning tilt to her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen this book before in my life.”

  “But it was in the pile with everything else,” I say, my own suspicions mounting. “That’s where I found it.”

  Rather, that’s where Inspector Piper found it. Or so he said.

  “Ellie, we would have mentioned something like this straightaway,” Rachel says. “It gives me the creeps, to be honest. Why is everything written all scratchy?”

  I lift the notebook from Lenora’s hands and study it anew. Once again, I’m struck by how homemade it looks—both the book itself and the notations. “You’re sure this didn’t travel with your stuff? It’s pretty small. It might have gotten mixed in with the werewolf materials.”

  Lenora makes the motion of an X over her chest. “Cross my heart, Madame Eleanor. I’d have noticed something this cool. Is it written in code or something?”

  “Yes,” I say, somewhat hesitant. Now that I’m unsure about the notebook’s origins, it feels almost ominous in my hands. “It’s a kind of witch code, actually. Most of what you’re looking at are traditional magic symbols. They’re pretty universal, so I was thinking you might be able to look them up online and try to decipher them—see if they make a meaning of some sort.”

  Lenora breathes out a long and excited exhalation. “I love cryptography and word puzzles. Can we start working on it now?”

  I don’t hand it over right away. For some reason, I can’t seem to shake the idea of Inspector Piper planting this in my house. But what I don’t know is why he’d have done it. Is it a clue he wants me to solve? Evidence he plans to use to arrest me? The man lives to thwart me, certainly, but I don’t see him going that far to frame me for a murder I didn’t commit.

  “Rachel, do you think you could make an accurate copy of this?” I tap the front cover with my forefinger. “That way, I can keep the original while you two try to figure out what it means.”

  “I could,” she says, reluctance in every line of her bearing. “But are you sure I should? What if writing this stuff down gives it power?”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her that the only power a book like this has is whatever nonsense you infuse it with, but I don’t. It’s good that she’s wary of the unknown, that she believes in the power of something greater than herself. It means she’ll be that much more careful as she ventures out into this wide, scary world of ours.

  Then again, I do still want her to copy it, so . . .

  “Ad hominem,” I chant. “Mea culpa. In loco parentis. Casus belli.”

  Lenora’s starting to give me the side-eye as I recite a list of common Latin phrases, so I finish by making a motion of the cross over the top cover of the notebook.

  “There. That should do it. The safety charm will last until sunset. Will that give you enough time to get it copied?”

  Rachel takes the book in careful hands. “Yes, as long as I get right to it. Lenora, you’ll help?”

  “You know it. I have an empty notebook somewhere in my backpack.”

  Thanks to the vast clutter of Lenora’s backpack, the search for her notebook occupies a good five minutes, during which time Rachel delicately leafs through the pages, her brow growing more and more wrinkled as she goes along.

  “Rachel, if you don’t want to, it’s perfectly fine,” I say. “I can just as easily go through it myself. It seemed like something Lenora might like to do, that’s all.”

  “That’s not it,” she says, and in a voice low enough that Lenora can’t overhear. That’s when I know she’s serious—these two have been joined at the hip ever since this whole investigation started, their excitement and their appetites feeding off one another. For her to show concern for the younger girl speaks strongly of her current state of mind. “I think I recognize this book.”

  My glance is sharp. “You do? Whose is it?”

  “Not the writing or any of the stuff in it,” she amends. “But the literal book. I’m pretty sure you can buy them at the Saturday market from that nice old lady who makes the soap out of sheep’s milk.”

  My heart stutters. “Aunt Margaret?”

  Now Rachel’s the one with the sharp look. “You have an aunt named Margaret?”

  I flutter my hand in an attempt to wave her off. “She’s not my aunt. She’s Inspector Piper’s. Rachel, are you sure you’ve seen her selling these?”

  Her brow furrows even more as she turns the notebook over in her hand once more. “Not this one specifically, but I remember she had something similar last summer. A whole stack of them, actually. I thought one would make a nice sketchbook, but the next time she had her stall set up, she was all sold out.”

  “And he said she was just an herbalist,” I mutter. “That scrounging toad. If you can’t trust law enforcement to tell you the truth, who can you trust?”

  “Who’s just an herbalist?” Lenora asks, her attention caught.

  Me, if I don’t start piecing some of these clues together. It might be the only option I have left. If I want to get back to selling my potions—and I do—I need a lot more than the eerie suspicion that Lewis King is a werewolf and that Inspector Piper knows more about this murder investigation than he’s sharing with me.

  “No one, sweetie. Did you find what you were looking for? Good. I need you two to finish that up as soon as possible.”

  “Why?” Lenora asks.

  Because even though I hate to do anything at Inspector Piper’s instigation, it seems I have one last visit to pay in my mud-spattered glory.

  * * *

  “Why, it’s a Book of Shadows, love. Surely you, of all people, must know that.”

  I accept a cup of tea from Aunt Margaret but don’t drink. I also don’t bite into the gorgeous piece of pound cake she’s placed in front of me. I’m not saying I’ve been poisoned, but that cake of Penny’s is weighing pretty heavily in my gut by now. Perhaps I needn’t have eaten the whole thing.

  “I do know it,” I reply. “What I don’t know is where it came from. It’s not yours, is it?”

  She releases a trill of laughter that sounds like puppies and rainbows. If I’m the Wicked Witch of the West in this strange thing that is my life, then Aunt Margaret is Glinda in a pink apron instead of a ball gown.

  A woman less like Inspector Piper I have yet to meet. Oh, there’s the slight physical resemblance, yes, but she shows no sign of habitual tics as she moves easily around her living room to arrange her chair across from my own.

  Liam, Winnie, and I never met our grandmother, but I like to think that if we’d put our collective heads together and conjured one up, she’d look exactly like Margaret. Puffs of silvery hair dance around her ears, where giant pearl earrings dangle like fishing tackle. She has a matching pearl necklace, which is layered over a sprigged cotton dress that looks like springtime. High heels complete the ensemble, even though she is, from all appearances, home alone. I imagine she goes to bed every night in a frilled nightie with feathered slippers on her feet.

  “My dear child, I haven’t kept a Book of Shadows since I was in my twenties, and even then it was more of a little black book than a spell book. It’s how I kept track of all my lovers—I had quite a few in my day.”

  “I bet you did,” I reply. There are dozens of pictures of a smiling woman in that same strand of pearls on the mantel above the fireplace. In each one, the dishy young Margaret has her arms around a different—and equally dishy—young man.

  If I didn’t like this woman before, I’d
adore her now.

  But I still have to ask. “You do sell these notebooks, though, right? My—uh—friend recognized it from your market stall.”

  “Oh, yes.” Margaret finally completes her arrangements with the chair and takes a seat. She sits daintily, her bottom perched on the edge and her legs crossed at the ankle. In my mud-spattered attire, I feel downright slovenly. “I press all the pages myself using flowers from my garden.”

  “Do you know who you sold this one to?”

  She blinks at me over her cup. “Of course not. I sell at least twenty dozen of these a year. They’re quite popular with the tourists. You wouldn’t believe how much I get away with charging them.”

  Hmm. I turn the book over in my hand, wondering just how much work goes into making something like this. Surely it can’t be much more difficult than vodka-based perfumes? Perhaps it’s time for Madame Eleanor to branch out.

  “That one was sold sometime in September, if it helps,” Margaret offers.

  “How do you know?”

  “Those are my hybrid tea roses.” She taps the page with one perfectly sculpted pink fingernail. “They never bloom until summer is almost over. Most of the tourists have long since packed up by then, so it probably went to one of the local ladies. They’re my second-best customers. Mrs. Brennigan has been after me to make a dozen for the spring fête.”

  Mrs. Brennigan again? “When did she make this request?”

  “Oh, a few days ago. Who can tell anymore? Time stops being absolute once you reach my age.” She sets her cup down and examines me, those kindly eyes a little sharper and shrewder than they were a moment ago. “Peter said you’d be stopping by to ask me about my garden. Did you want to see it?”

  It takes me a moment to register Peter as Inspector Piper, since I’m not in the habit of referring to him by his given name. However, I’m more than happy to light on him as a topic of conversation, since he’s the reason I’m here in the first place.