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SEVENTEEN

On the first day that Walls didn’t come over, Thorn found herself behaving like an ancient damsel in modern distress.

“What does this button on the microwave do? Perhaps I should ask Walls.”

“Do I have to unplug the electric kettle to turn it off? I could call and ask Walls.”

“Which do I pour into the bowl first, the milk or the cereal? Walls would know.”

Bandit found this entertaining. From the mantel, he watched with amusement, but by the morning of the third day, that had evolved into annoyance.

That afternoon, Thorn said, “How is your foot, Bandit? Maybe we need to take you back to get it checked.”

I’m finer than you are. Bandit leaped down and dashed for the door.

“Did you forget Walls has the good food?”

Bandit paused, one paw holding the cat door ajar. He weighed the pros and cons. The vet visit is cumbersome but acceptable. But I can’t bear listening to you for one more second. Not until dinnertime.

He turned to look at Penny. He couldn’t get to her inside the enclosure, but still she hopped over to the side of the tank farthest from Thorn.

“Ribbit,” she said in agreement.

Frog, you should have surrendered to my claws weeks ago. This —he glanced back at Thorn— is worse than any fate I could mete out on you. With that, he disappeared.

“Don’t go near the roads!”

But Bandit’s cattitude was the wake-up slap Thorn needed.

She had let her singleness and Madam Maude get into her head.

Walls was the only man she had consistently interacted with in decades—or centuries, depending on how she viewed it—and he was intelligent and kind.

It was inevitable she ended up looking at him that way by default.

She wasn’t actually interested in Walls.

She opened her spell book on the table and scribbled down some possible tweaks to the Shape-Shifting potion to eliminate its growth effect.

But everything in her cottage made her think of Walls.

The coir doormat reminded her of his beard.

The long shadows at dusk and dawn, his lanky legs.

And, well… the walls, of course. She averted her eyes down to her paper, only to find that she had doodled a hot bean pole of a bearded man.

She tore the page off, balled it up, and tossed it away.

She took a deep breath. She needed to go on another date.

With any man other than Walls. She resumed writing in her spell book.

She did have to tear out more pages, not because of Walls doodles but because tweaking the potion turned out to be a challenge.

But she stayed the course, and it wasn’t long before the Shape-Shifting potion became her sole focus.

She didn’t even get annoyed by any of the tourists or guides who came through the cottage that week. She was operating on autopilot.

On the afternoon of the seventh day that Walls didn’t come over, after the tours were done, she had a jittery feeling that she was close to a breakthrough with the Shape-Shifting potion.

Cold sweat dappled on her forehead. Her heart raced.

Her stomach rumbled. She was mistaken. She wasn’t close to an epiphany, then, but to passing out.

She needed to eat something. She got up.

And then she floated out of her body and watched herself stumble around the cottage. Or at least, that’s what she felt like she was doing.

She was familiar with the scene before her.

Thorn must be so hungry and sleep-deprived that her mind was dredging up this memory from when she was nine, shortly before Rose died.

The sisters were sitting in the corner, plucking every fourth leaf of the clover they had gathered.

For the past few weeks, Mother had become even more furious in her quest to concoct the Forever True Love potion.

She hardly ate or slept. She didn’t take one step out of the house.

It was horrifying how much paler and gaunter she had become in such a short time.

She couldn’t even get from the table to the cauldron without stumbling several times.

Bandit was sitting on the windowsill watching the suspicious raven perched on the dead fig tree when he heard a thump behind him.

Witch! He hopped off the window and rushed over to Thorn. She was slumped on the ground among balled-up pieces of paper.

Thorn opened her eyes to find Meg hovering over her and yelling, “Bandit was about to eat your face!”

I have a much more discerning palate than that.

Bandit, perched at the foot of the bed, swished his tail with annoyance, but he hadn’t left Thorn’s side since she’d gone limp like a rag doll.

“Bandit, there is indeed another witch.” Thorn was too exhausted to attack the other strange woman kneeling by the bed draining her blood. “Hey, you, modern witch. What am I being sacrificed for? A month of rain? A month of good harvest? A baby boy?”

“How is she”—Meg emphasized the next word for Thorn’s benefit—“Doctor?”

The doctor pulled the needle out of Thorn’s arm. “We’ll have to wait a day for the blood test results, but she seems dehydrated, malnourished, and exhausted. The IV fluids and vitamins I gave her earlier will help, but she needs to take it easy for the next week or so.”

“Rest up, Thorn,” Meg said, tucking Thorn’s arm under the blanket. “I’ll cancel your tours for the next two weeks.”

“Aren’t you going to drink the blood?” Thorn asked as the doctor slipped the full test tube into her medical kit.

“If she continues talking gibberish, call me,” the doctor said.

As Meg saw the house-call doctor out, Thorn recalled the moments before she fainted. It had been similar to what had happened to Mother. Except Thorn had lived.

Bandit walked on top of her, softly kneading his paws as he made his way. He curled into a croissant above her chest. His body rose gently up and down with her breathing. He was making a soft trilling sound. No words, just sounds.

Thorn couldn’t believe how reckless she had been.

She had become like Mother, so obsessed with brewing a potion to find true love that she’d neglected everything else.

Maybe this was what Madam Maude had been warning Thorn against. There was never going to be a perfect potion that would solve all her problems.

If Thorn died, Bandit would be all alone. Just like Mother left Thorn all alone at nine years old.

That was why she didn’t move Bandit from his spot on her chest. And why, when Meg shut the door and returned to her side, she said, “Make me a princess.”

“You must be confused,” Meg said kindly. “You’re the one with magic powers.”

“Not with magic. I meant like in The Princess Diaries . Give me a makeover.”

“Do modern physicians also do the beautician’s work?” Thorn asked as she climbed out of Meg’s car. It had been three days since her brush with death.

“Some of them,” Meg said as she led Thorn to the waiting room. “But that’s not what we’re here for. When you mentioned a Youth potion, I thought I could understand that. Who doesn’t want to be all taut and wrinkle-free? But there are side effects.”

Several days ago, when Meg had landed at the airport from her third honeymoon, she had opened an email from Janet about a young lady who had taken over Thorn’s role for a day.

Meg then logged into the town’s online forum, where there was a post about a giant running through Thimble Park, accompanied by a very blurry photograph that most of the commenters dismissed as fog.

But a user named noah_the_king had commented that it was the witch of Covenstead.

Although the other forum members seemed to think noah_the_king was joking, Meg had to be sure.

She created a fake male Darling app profile and trawled through the women’s profiles, only to find a Thorn Scarhart who bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain actress.

Thorn shook her head. “For the Youth potion, your tongue just feels tingly for about an hour. Oh, and you also grow a teeny-tiny tail that you have to chop off with a cleaver every night.”

Meg looked like she was about to hurl all over the leather seats of her car.

Thorn laughed. She couldn’t help but think that Walls would have taken the act even further and asked whether the tail was furry like a dog’s or smooth like a lizard’s. “The tingly tongue part is true.”

“Turning yourself into a whole other person is a change that I’m not sure is easy to come back from. I’d like to show you a few simple, modern techniques for looking and feeling good. As a forty-nine-year-old woman, I have some expertise in that.”

Thorn gasped. “Aren’t you in your mid-thirties?”

Meg smiled. “Since the seventeenth century, there have been advancements in skin care, from sunscreen to facelifts.”

“Facelifts?”

“A surgery where they peel your skin, muscles, and fat off your bones and pull them upward.”

Thorn was wondering just how macabre this princess makeover book Walls read to his seven-year-old niece was when the doctor stepped into the waiting room.

“Thorn Scarhart?”

Thorn shot to her feet. “I’m ready! Peel off my face.”

The doctor reread the chart in his hand. “I have you down for a comprehensive health checkup.”

Meg smiled apologetically at the doctor and guided Thorn toward the consult room. “If you decide on surgery later on, that’s fine. But we should start internally. Being healthy inside goes a long way in making you look good outside.”

“But I feel perfectly fine inside.”

Except forty-five minutes of poking and prodding, three blood and urine tests later, the doctor declared that Thorn’s body was thirty-nine going on sixty-five.

“I have to take all these pills every day?” Thorn asked, staring in horror at the bottles in the paper bag. After the doctor’s, Meg had taken her straight to the pharmacy.

“They’re supplements,” Meg said, starting up her car. “Iron. Vitamin D. Plenty of women have to take them. I do. And that one’s for your joints. But the doctor did tell you to start exercising.”

“If I ever go back to the seventeenth century, I’ll have to tell all those dukes and princesses to get out of their carriages and walk places.”

“I admit I’m not so great with exercise, either. You’ll have to ask Walls about that. He kickboxes and hikes and does all that other sweaty stuff. He’s thirty-five going on twenty.”

Thorn noted that Walls was four years younger than her.

She had seen a number of older women with younger men in this modern time, and most people didn’t seem to bat an eye, but perhaps this was the one modern convention she couldn’t adapt to.

Another excellent reason Walls was unsuitable for her.

And upon making that decision, she was relieved, because she could stop thinking of him that way. But it also made her a bit forlorn.

“What’s the next step of our makeover?”

“Your hair. Something to make you look younger.”

Thorn shook the bag of pills. “Won’t these turn my hair dark like yours?”

“This”—Meg flicked her brown hair—“is Emilia’s magic.”

Thorn’s eyes widened. “So there is another modern witch!”

“No. Emilia’s my hairstylist. And after that, let’s tackle your wardrobe. I bet you’d look good in jeans. And when all of that’s done, we’ll sign you up for speed dating!”

“Let’s do it!” Thorn said, so enthusiastically that Meg got even more excited. But the person Thorn was really trying to psyche up was herself. Once she was fully made over and found another man, she could get Walls out of her mind.

“So how fast is speed dating, anyway? And this Jean’s going to loan me her clothes?”