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“Does this spell use alcohol?” Jocko asked hopefully as my mother and Violet gathered the ingredients for the spell and set them on the counter. They quietly conferred, ignoring the rest of us.

“Mally,cher, I don’t suppose you feel up to pour me a little drinky-poo?” Jocko said once he realized he wasn’t going to get a response from the other two witches. He eyed a bottle of cooking sherry near his bowl.

I ignored him too as I slid onto a barstool at the island. Etienne

He made a noise of frustration, followed by the sound of bubbles. I didn’t even have to glance at the fishbowl to know what he was doing. He’d gone underwater to pout. Good place for him.

“Okay, we’ve got everything,” Mom said with a nod.

“Is this going to hurt?” I asked, trying to see what they had laid out on the countertop. “Or make me puke?”

“I can guarantee no pain, but I can’t take puking off the table,” Violet said with a regretful look.

Mom focused on adding a concoction of herbs in her well-worn mortar. She used her pestle to grind the dried leaves and flowers together. Then she added some sort of oily liquid. And something that smelled so awful, I threatened to gag. But quickly, the smell seemed to grow less noxious and became almost pleasant.

Then the oven timer dinged.

I rose up slightly off the barstool to get a better look at the magical mixture. “Does it have to be blended an exact amount of time?”

Mom frowned, her pestle pausing. “No, why?”

“The timer,” I bobbed my head toward the oven.

“Oh. No. That’s just my bread pudding.” She dropped the pestle in the mortar and hurried to the oven. She pulled open thedoor, and the smoky scent of burnt bread joined the other smells of the kitchen.

Tristan graciously suppressed a cough.

I groaned quietly and whispered, “Pray for us.”

Etienne masked his laugh with a cough of his own. I fought a giggle. Violet and JR both shot us warning looks

Mom plunked the pan on the stove top. Clearly, we hadn’t covered out amusement well enough. She turned and fixed us with a stern look, her hands clasped together in front of her like a disapproving school marm. Although my mother was a stunningly beautiful blonde—so she looked more like a disapproving angel.

“Alright. Time for the grown-ups to take over,” Violet said, clearly trying to score points after Mom hearing her earlier comment about her cooking.

“Since when did you become the grown-up?” I asked.

“Neither of you sound like grown-ups to me,” Mom said, nudging Violet out of the way to return to her mortar and pestle. She gave the herbs a couple more stabs, then looked around at ingredients she had laid out.

“Darn it,” she finally said. “I used all my dried rosemary in the shrimp creole. And fresh rosemary doesn’t work as well for this spell.”

My stomach lurched at the mere mention of her dinner offering. Welp, there was another meal checked off my list of favorites.

“I think I have some.” Violet unzipped a crossbody bag she still wore since her abrupt arrival. She started rooting through the small purse. She pulled out a lipstick, a compact mirror, and a small change purse. Following those expected items, she dug out three bottles of hand sanitizer. in there, plus a harmonica and what looks like a tiny cauldron.

“What are you going to do, disinfect me to death?” I asked, reaching across the island to inspect one of the bottles.

“It’s a habit of working in medicine,” she stated, then began pulling out more items. A harmonica and small cast iron cauldron.

I blinked. “But why a harmonica?”

Violet shrugged. “You never know.”

Finally, she produced a sprig of rosemary stored in a plastic baggie. She handed it to Mom, and we all watched as she laid the dried twig on a plate and drizzled the oily herb and flower mixture of it. Then Mom and Violet joined hands and said an incantation of the whole mess.

Mom nodded. “It’s ready.”

Violet pinched the sprig between her forefinger and thumb and came around the island toward me.