Love Charms (48 page)

4:
Potion Problems

Color started coming back to my vision
about five minutes later. Hallow turned in circles on top of the glass case as
though he were any other ferret. My dad knelt beside me. I was back in Mom's
chair.

"I thought I'd lost you there for a
minute." His voice was cracked and strained.

The chair creaked as I sat up straighter.
"What happened?"

"You put on the headband, and Hallow
came up to you, and then you started falling backward." He reached for my
hair. "I tried to take it off, but apparently it's just like when your
mother wore it. Only you can remove it."

I reached up for the metal band. At first
it resisted, but after a tug, the circlet came free. Hallow stopped his
incessant pacing and looked at me. "You're going to want that on."

I laid it on the table. "Dad, did
the ferret just — talk?"

He turned to look at Hallow, who began
sniffing at a green jar. "He might have squeaked or something." His
eyes locked back onto mine. "Did you understand him?"

"Did Mom ever mention it?"

He stood up and leaned against the desk.
"No. But she did talk to him, and to Shadow, the ferret she had before. I
assumed it was a cute quirk of her personality."

Why couldn't Mom tell him?

Hallow jumped in my lap. "Put it
back on — NOW."

"Okay, okay," I said. I lifted
the headband back into place.

"Okay, what, love?" Dad asked.

"I was talking to —" My
words turned into a mumble. My lips were stuck as tightly as my hands had been
a few minutes ago.

"What was that, Sweetpea?"

My lips would not unseal. A lesson. Don't
talk about the ferret. Got it.

My mouth popped open. "Nothing,
nothing. Just a strange day."

"Indeed."

Now I needed Dad out of the room. If I
could talk to Hallow, maybe he could help. "Show me the recipe for the
potion, and I'll get started."

"It's a spell," Hallow said,
jumping up on the desk. "Don't call it a bloody recipe."

Dad glanced at the ferret, and I thought
maybe he understood. "Poor little guy. Is it upsetting to be back
here?" He ran his hand down Hallow's furry back, then returned to the Book
of Shadows.

"Dad, what did you hear?" I
asked.

"His squeak was a different pitch
than normal. I hope he's not ill." Dad flipped another page.

So bizarre.

Hallow settled onto a fuzzy round pad
near the book. "Are you really going to sleep now?" I asked the
ferret.

Hallow shrugged his tiny shoulders and
closed his eyes.

"What was that, love?" Dad
looked up from the book.

"Never mind."

"Ah, here it is." He smoothed
the page down. The handwriting was unmistakably my mother's, a thin spidery
scrawl.

I read a few lines. Hair of a redheaded
virgin. First-laid eggs of a newly adult toad. Good grief. "How am I
supposed to find these things?"

Dad turned the page. "There are
notes here. They are already in the case." He walked over to a lighted
cabinet where colored bottles were lined up on glass shelves. He opened the
door and pulled out a clear plastic sleeve.

"Hold this up to the light." He
flipped on a desk lamp.

I took the sleeve, illuminated by the
bright bulb. Three auburn hairs curled together inside it. At the bottom was a
sticker with the initials RHV. "Redheaded virgin?"

He nodded. "There are receipts from
a number of stores if we run out, although none of them are familiar." He
rummaged through a drawer. "Ah, here." A sheaf of loose papers
fluttered to the desk. "Hopefully we can track them down."

The pages were mostly written out by
hand. Pea spider, $4000, paid in cash. The virgin hairs had been $180 per
strand. "This is a racket!" I said.

"I'm sure that's why your mother
needed the money."

"How did she get caught up in
this?"

"I wish I knew. I wish she had told
me." Dad leaned against the wall, looking worn and tired.

"Why don't you go fix some tea? I'll
see what I can figure out here." I glanced at Hallow, who was sleeping.
Not for long, little minx. I needed info, and fast.

"All right. You settle in." He
smiled, an expression more sad than anything. "The band looks good on you,
like your mother."

I could barely swallow. "I'll do my
best."

"I know you will." He turned to
the door. "Call me if you need me."

I waited to the count of three before I
snatched the ferret from his little bed. "WHAT is going ON?"

Hallow squirmed in my hands until I let
him loose on the desk again. His red eyes bored into me. "First your
mother marries a Brit, then she births a bloomin' nix. And you're supposed to
save us?" He snorted.

I dropped my head to the desk. "I
have no idea what you're talking about."

"Enchanters have bloodlines. Your
mother had to traipse off to London, fall in love with a bloke, and as a
result, you are a nix."

"Nix?"

"Null and void. Nixed. No
powers."

"But I understand you."

Hallow stepped back onto the pad and
circled until he found the spot he liked. "Nixes understand magic. You
just can't do it. You're an outcast, the worst kind, the dangerous kind."
He stretched out and tucked his white head on his paws. "There is no way
to save a nix."

"But I have to! Dad expects me to do
this!"

Hallow closed his eyes. "So he files
bankruptcy. Big deal."

I snatched the ferret up again.
"You're going to help me."

Hallow sighed. "I guess there's no
sleep for the familiar."

"Familiar with what?"

He smacked his paw on his forehead.
"Set me down."

I put him back on the desk, and he walked
over to a sculpted pewter bowl, its edges fluted out like a flower. Despite all
the dust in the room, this silver surface had a highly polished shine that
reflected his tiny head as he peered over the edge.

He tapped on the side. "Hellooooo?
Anybody in there? Someone needs to relieve me of this nix."

The surface of the bowl fogged over, like
a cloud had passed, then cleared again.

Hallow looked up at me. "No help for
a nix. Them's the breaks, kid." He dropped back to all fours and scurried
to his pad. "You can mix that potion all you want, go through another
small fortune in supplies, but at the end, if the words aren't there, nothing
will happen."

I flipped the Book of Shadows back to the
list of ingredients. Virgin hair. Toad eggs. Two black fairy mushrooms picked
under a full moon. One drop newborn tears. Four stems of glasswort, dried and
crushed. Two drops sea foam from the shore of Aphrodite. One web of the pea
spider, freshly spun. I glanced up at the green bug. This didn't seem too
impossible. Only one last thing. Urine of a blue-eyed rat.

Uggh.

I stood up and paced the room for a
moment. What sort of world was this? How could I not have known? The lighted
cabinet stood open. Glasses clinked as I sorted through its contents. The
labels revealed nothing, OMS, BS-4Y0. A pale blue bottle held just a few drops
of something marked NBT. Newborn tears? I checked the Book of Shadows. Mom's
notes confirmed that the tears were on the top shelf in a baby-blue vial.

Might as well mix the potion, despite
what the ferret said about my being a powerless nix. I dragged Mom's pewter
bowl across the desk. I didn't see any other obvious place to pour the
ingredients.

Hallow leaped from his bed, his white fur
all puffed out. "Don't pour anything in there!" He pushed against the
bowl, moving it back to its spot.

"Why not? It's a bowl."

"It's a portal, you silly nix!"

The movement made the surface fog over
just like before. This time I caught sight of something, a dark green swath of
fabric, undulating like a skirt. No, a robe. It was a person, someone in a
green robe!

I leaned over it. "Hey! I need
help!"

The green filled the surface of the bowl,
distorted along the waves of the fluted sides. The figure moved, shifted, and I
made out a neck, then a face. A man. A young man.

A very handsome man.

I shifted away a bit, as our faces were
too close. "Can you hear me?"

The boy looked at me, soulful, serious.
His dark hair curled around his arresting face. Eyes very much the color of
mine, an unusual turquoise blue, heavy eyebrows, full lips.

"You can't hear me, can you?" I
asked.

The boy watched me as if I were on
television and there was no point in talking back. He seemed worried as he
glanced around the room, pausing on the blue bottle, then back at me. "I
don't understand how you can be my match," he finally said.

I clutched the bowl. "I have to make
a potion. I don't know what to do!"

"Helping a nix is forbidden."
He turned to look over his shoulder. "Just don't mix the potion. It's
wrong. Your mother did it wrong. It's a powerful spell." He frowned, those
matching eyes full of concern. "I have to go. I'll come back if I
can." He backed away. "Your mother and my mother were friends."

The pewter fogged over. I picked it up,
shook it. "Hey! Hey!"

Hallow crossed the desk. "Told
you."

I set the bowl back. "Who was
that?"

"Somebody who's going to get his
powers hijacked if he isn't careful."

"I don't understand any of this. Why
won't you help me?"

He curled back onto his bed. "Mainly
because I'm lazy."

I riffled through the receipts.
"Maybe someone at one of these shops could help."

Hallow opened a single red eye.
"They won't sell anything to a nix."

"Then I'm just going to have to
figure out how not to be a nix."

"Good luck with that." He
closed his eyes.

Rotten little rat. "Don't you feel
any loyalty to my mother? Weren't you her pet?"

"Familiar. The term is familiar. And
I am my own ferret now. If I return to service, I don't get the perks of being
a free spirit."

"So you were going to let me blow
myself up? Like mom? Were you here when it happened?"

Hallow twitched, his little mouth turning
down. "That was a very bad day."

"She loved you. She took you
everywhere."

Hallow sighed. "Look, the potion
can't blow up, because you don't have the power to make it work. I don't know
what she did wrong. There were several versions she tried." He pointed a
paw at the Book of Shadows. "If you were going to start somewhere, go back
to the previous formula, see what she changed. Make a different change."
He dropped his head back to his paws. "But I can't turn a nix into an
enchanter. No one can." He opened one eye. "And don't bother Googling
it. All you'll find is a bunch of paranormal fiction."

I pushed the pewter bowl, watching the
fog come forward, then recede, over and over again. If I didn't have any power
at all, I wouldn't be able to hear the ferret talk. Even I could see that. And
I'd be willing to bet Dad had never seen the bowl portal work. I would have to
tell him about it. My lips puckered and sealed together again.

Ha! I knew it.

The situation couldn't be hopeless. I
could hear the ferret, and I could see the portal. I'd figured out the code on
the potion bottles, and the headband had found me.

Maybe the mysterious boy would help. He'd
called me his match, and that had to mean something. I could try and find out
who my mother's friends were and locate him.

I could still picture his face, those
eyes. I'd never seen anyone with my color, not even my parents. And while I
wasn't normally one to believe in love at first sight, something about him had
gotten to me. Even now, I felt unsettled, edgy, like I couldn't be set right
until I saw him again.

So I would find him.

5: The
Search

The lip-sealing bit was a pile of
rubbish.

"Here, I'll get you a napkin."
Dad left the table to rummage through a drawer.

Tea dribbled down my chin for the third
time during the conversation. I could only blame the headband. If I even
considered talking about Hallow or the bowl or the green-robed boy, my lips
clamped together like a bloody vise.

Probably just as well it didn't let me
yammer on. If powers could be hijacked, like Hallow said, I couldn't afford to
make whatever magic the headband possessed be lost. Besides, I already had what
I needed from Dad — the names of three of Mom's friends with sons the
right age.

"Here you go." Dad passed over
a kitchen towel. "Do you plan to go calling on them? They might be rather
blinkered on the subject of magic."

"I'll be careful what I say." I
sopped the front of my shirt. Not like my lips would let me go all balls-out
anyway. They only let go when I formed my thought ahead of time. "I won't
mention enchanting unless I'm sure."

"Here. I'll give you an excuse to go
there." He opened a high cabinet and pulled down an array of casserole
dishes. "They all brought food over in the weeks after the funeral. I
never could bring myself to return them."

"I'll do it." The mother of the
boy I was interested in was bound to have photographs of him around. And if I
were really lucky, I'd find him in person.

I formed my next question in my mind
ahead of time, checked my lips, then continued on when I was certain they
weren't locked again. "Dad, did Mom ever let on that marrying you wasn't
— well, wasn't in the best interest of her power?"

He shook his head. "All she ever
said was that enchanters were allowed to marry humans. Her mother did. Your
grandfather was human."

"But she knew I might end up without
any power."

"Marrying a human weakens an
enchanter's children, sometimes back to human." He looked down at his cup.
"You do know she was already pregnant when we got married, right?"

"Yes, I know. Are you saying she HAD
to marry you?"

"No, no. Just that what was done
couldn't be undone."

Suddenly I remembered the boy's comment
about a match, and his eyes. I looked at my dad's eyes, a cool gray, not a
match for my mother's. Not that it mattered. He was human.

I wanted to ask about the term nix, but
my lips froze up again. Ridiculous. Dad stared out the window at the snowfall.
Time was so short. I had only five days to make the potion. They couldn't take
our house, surely, the place where Mom's memory was still so pure, and the
location of her lair. And this was the only home I'd ever known. But then,
maybe a fresh start for Dad wouldn't be so bad.

I leaned over and squeezed his arm.
"We should get a tree," I said. "It's Christmas."

He nodded. The snow drifted down,
settling on the fence and trees like sparkles. Dad needed to move on in his own
time, and I would see that he could choose, not be forced by some arsehole
who'd tricked Mom into borrowing money for his overpriced love connection. How
was that fair?

In fact, he'd better watch out. Because
if THIS nix ever got her powers, I'd be making that passion potion, and
something with a little more kick on the side.

* * *

The first house on my dad's list was only
a few blocks away, so I snatched up the casserole dish marked "Mavis"
and trudged along the snow-blanketed sidewalk.

I didn't figure Mavis could be the one,
since she was too close, and I was pretty sure I could remember her kids
— two hellspawn worthy of a permanent lip-sealing spell.

Sure enough, one of them opened the door,
a girl a couple years behind me in school. She cocked a hip, smacking a piece
of hot-pink gum that matched her punked-out ponytails. A nose ring winked from
the flashing light of the bling-deluged entryway that pulsed with holiday
overload.

"Your mom here?" I held out the
dish. "I came to return this."

She stared at me a minute, and I could
almost hear the "For real?" in her head. Good for her that she didn't
say it out loud.

"Mom ain't here."

Bollocks. I needed to get inside, check
out that brother of hers to see if he was my mystery boy. "Could I use
your bathroom?"

Her penciled eyebrows drew together.
"Hey, you're that girl whose mother blew up, right?"

Okay, never mind. If the boy was as
wretched as his sister, it didn't matter anyway. I turned to go.

She snatched at my arm. "Hey, sorry.
I mean, she was all right. She came here all the time."

I pulled myself together before spinning
back around. "I heard they were friends."

She stepped back a few paces. "Come
in for a sec. I think Mom had something for her. Well, I guess, for you."

The front room was an explosion of
Santas. I mean, an army of red velvet. Short, tall, small, fat, laughing,
serious. They covered the Christmas tree, dangling at every angle. They lined
the walls and filled the mantel and surfaces of all the tables, clustered
around every chair leg.

"Wow, this is really
something."

The girl kicked at one, laughing when it
HO HO HO'd to the ground, its mechanical mouth opening and closing. "It's
a freak show. You're Jet, right?"

"Yeah. Sorry, I don't remember your
name."

"Mom calls me Harrah, but I go by
Rah."

"Okay, Rah."

We stood awkwardly in the room another
moment, the Santa doll winding to its jolly conclusion.

"Oh, yeah, that thing." Rah
tapped her forehead. "What was it? I could text her."

"She's working today?"

Rah tugged a phone out of her jeans
pocket. I realized her sweatshirt, cut at the shoulders so it exposed her upper
arm, read "F*ck the Establishment." Classy.

"She's a nurse. Always shift
work."

I looked around for family pictures to
see if I could speed this visit along. A portrait over the fireplace was
partially obscured by Santas. As Rah fumbled with her phone, I walked over to
it.

Mavis was like I remembered, stout,
friendly, sporting too much floral. The dad looked sort of tired, thin, worn
down. The picture was a little old, as Rah was still dressing like her mom in a
flowery dress and a big rose in her hair.

The boy was all wrong. Blond hair, lidded
eyes. I didn't need to see the color to know he wasn't my mystery man. Now I
just needed out of there.

"She has some crystals,
apparently." Rah shoved her phone back in her jeans. "Mom is into
some weird healing shit."

Now that was interesting. "Did your
mom and mine use the crystals together?" Hallow had mentioned a coven. I
knew next to nothing about what that meant, but I assumed it involved witches
— enchanters — whatever, that got together. Mavis could be one.

"All the fucking time. She got
totally torked if we tried to go in there while they were arranging colored
rocks around."

I couldn't imagine Mavis getting
"torked." "Tell your mom to call me, and I'll come for them
later. I'd like to talk to her, maybe learn about what they did together."

Rah smacked her gum as her hip went to
the side again. "I never pegged you for a freak, being a college girl and
all."

She was calling ME a freak. "Thank
you for your help." I headed for the door.

Rah didn't follow. I gave her a little
wave and stepped out into the cold. I felt more optimistic that I might learn
about my mother's world after all.

Now I had to find the next mother on the
list. Genevieve. That sounded like a proper name for a witch.