Page 26

TWENTY-ONE

The New-and-Improved True Love potion would have been the answer to Thorn’s prayers. Too bad the vampire parrot was long extinct, and she still couldn’t figure out a way to substitute for that feather.

But there had to be other potions that would help, even if they didn’t carve as straightforward a path to marriage.

Thorn paced around the cottage as she tried to come up with a list. But after dinner, the paper was still empty.

And a swish swish sound kept distracting her. It was coming from her crotch.

“Jean’s stupid pants!” she said, stripping them off along with the rest of her modern wear. “They’re too noisy! And tight. These shoes aren’t nearly curly enough, and this blouse is too bright! And my face feels all caked up.”

Once she had scrubbed her makeup off and settled back into her witch garb, ideas flowed into her head. It wasn’t long before she whittled down her options to three: a Charming potion, a Bubbly potion, and a Ha-Ha-Ha potion. The recipes and names were a work in progress.

“I think the Charming potion is the one.” Thorn scribbled furiously in her spell book. “What say you, Bandit?”

As long as it doesn’t involve stealing my charm. He yawned and curled into a croissant on the bed.

He looked so soft and cuddly that she put down her pen and crawled in next to him. “I’ll finish it tomorrow.”

Bandit had positioned himself on the side of the bed closer to the wall, and she couldn’t bear to move him.

She contorted her body to spoon him without falling off.

Feeling the rise and fall of his chest, breathing in his funky yet addictive smell—a cologne of roast chicken, freshly cut grass, and autumn sun—she drifted off to sleep.

When she woke up the next day, it was late morning. The first thing that came to her mind was that it was strange that Bandit wasn’t already yowling about wasting away from abject hunger. Where was he, anyway?

The next thing she thought about was Walls. This time, it wasn’t the fault of her wandering mind, but a text.

WALLS: I have a question. How do you make the ends of your shoes so curly?

THORN: Curly Shoes potion. A drop on each shoe tip lasts a year.

WALLS: May I have two drops?

THORN: Sure. You have pretty big feet, so I’ll give you half a bottle.

Her batch from the seventeenth century had curdled. Maybe she should tell him she’d get to brewing a new batch once she was done with the Charming potion.

WALLS: Thanks! But it’s for Charlie. She’s seven. Her feet are tiny.

THORN: Are curly-toed shoes finally back in fashion?

WALLS: They will be in three weeks’ time, on Halloween. Every year I help Charlie make her costume for trick-or-treating. This year she wants to be a witch.

THORN: I can help. I have some experience with making that “costume.”

WALLS: Want to come over? Charlie is at my place, two blocks from my clinic. She’s heard all about you from Meg and would be thrilled to meet you in the flesh. I just asked Meg, and she said it’s fine as long as “Thorn doesn’t steal Charlie’s soul or even a hair. And no weapons or anything sharp.”

Thorn looked at the table, where she had laid out the ingredients for her Charming potion last night, all ready to be brewed.

THORN: I’ll be there in an hour with the potion.

“Bandit, I’m going to help Walls.” She got out of bed and saw that Bandit was nowhere to be seen.

It was unusual for him to miss breakfast, but not unheard of.

He sometimes missed meals to gather ingredients like lizard’s tail for her.

He would never admit as much because it suggested a level of attachment, but he took his role of familiar seriously.

She peered out the kitchen window. The raven wasn’t at its usual spot on the fig tree.

“Maybe Bandit’s out spying on the spy.”

She prepared his breakfast of scrambled eggs over dry cat food and placed it next to his water bowl.

She then got busy brewing her Curly Shoes potion. It only took half an hour. Afterward, she packed some of her witchy accessories into a shopping bag. She got changed into a fresh black dress and striped stockings. While in the bathroom, she caught sight of the makeup kit Meg had bought her.

At first, Thorn thought she shouldn’t bother, because Walls was never going to be her man. “But I have to practice putting on makeup. For my other dates.”

A while later, she put on her hat. Right before she left the cottage, she added a couple pinches of shredded cheese into Bandit’s bowl.

Another little while later, she was looking into Walls’s eyes as the two of them stood at the door of his town house. “I’m glad you could come,” he said.

“Me too.” She said that so earnestly that it unnerved her. More for herself, she added, “After all, you’ve helped Bandit so much.”

Walls was about to reply, but he was interrupted by a big block of a yellow dog’s head popping out between his knees. “Muffin, say hi to Thorn.”

Muffin squeezed his way out and proceeded to dance all around her as if she were his long-lost mother. While his human was a cool cucumber, Muffin’s energy was chaotic good.

“That’s not a witch.” A little girl peeked out from behind Walls. “That’s a clown.”

If Charlie weren’t Meg’s kid and Walls’s niece, Thorn might have turned her into a little frog for the comment.

But she was. So instead, she took off her hat and used its wide brim to shield everyone from being further visually assaulted by the handiwork of a makeup newbie. “May I use your restroom?”

“First door on the right,” he said as she barged past him.

In her desperation to get to the restroom, she crashed into a wall, squashing the tip of her hat further.

Later, when Thorn emerged from the restroom, her face scrubbed raw with hand wash, Walls was waiting with a fresh towel. “She’s only seven and still learning about mind-to-mouth filters. She’s getting better.”

Thorn would have just wiped her wet face on her sleeves, but she took the towel. “Were you not going to tell me?”

“I would have. It’s just that the first thought I had was I was glad to see you.”

Thorn tried not to read into his comment too much. At Sunday markets, many customers had greeted her with that, as well. Then they would head straight for the potions on her tables. She fished out the vial of Curly Shoes from the shopping bag. “Obviously. I’ve got the goods!”

He smiled. “I mean you.”

Thorn didn’t know what to do with that information, or with this person who wore his feelings on his sleeve like this. All she could do was stand here staring at him like she’d taken a Petrified potion.

“Tea?” he asked.

“Only if you have milk,” she said.

“Coming right up.” He turned to go to the kitchen.

“Milk,” Thorn muttered to herself. “What are you, Thorn, a newborn babe?”

“I like your hat,” Charlie said from the living room.

She was drawing witches in her sketchbook.

Meanwhile, Muffin dashed to and from the kitchen and the living room before settling for drooling at the bag of chicken jerky on the coffee table.

He could easily grab the bag, but he controlled him-self.

Thorn sat down on the rug next to Muffin. She tugged her hat back into shape. “I can make a smaller hat for you,” she said to Walls’s niece.

“Can you make my shoes curly like yours, too?” Charlie grabbed the shoebox under the coffee table. Inside was a pair of shiny black boots with pointed ends. “Uncle Walls said these looked like what you wear, but he’s so wrong.”

From the kitchen, Walls called out, “That was the pointiest I could find in your size!”

Thorn tapped her bag. “Don’t worry, Charlie, I have just the thing in here. But let’s wait for Uncle Walls.”

“?’Kay.” Charlie resumed working on her art.

Thorn looked around. The interior of the house reminded her of Walls’s clinic—bright, clean, and uncluttered.

“Why is your name Thorn? Are you prickly?” Charlie asked without looking up from her crayon witch.

“I am.”

Charlie’s eyes widened with delight. “Really?”

“Sometimes I get cranky. Like when I’m tired.”

Charlie nodded with empathy.

“But I have a sister who’s a year older, and her name is Rose. I like to think that I was named to be a part of her, just like thorns are part of a rose.”

“Guess how I got my name.”

“Charlie is probably short for Charles. I read about a twenty-first-century king named Charles. Were you named after him?”

“Wrong. I have the same name as Uncle Walls.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mom named Uncle Walls. His name’s from a boy in a book. Mine is from the same boy, because that boy has two names.”

Walls walked in carrying a cup of tea. “ A Wrinkle in Time . That’s the book.

It’s about a girl who time-traveled.” He smiled at Thorn with a twinkle in his eyes that told her this was a special moment of shared secrets.

She realized that Charlie probably had no idea where Thorn had really come from.

“That girl’s name is Meg,” Charlie said.

Walls placed the cup of tea on the coffee table and blocked Muffin from licking it.

“My parents actually named my sister after our grandmother. But in any case, Meg loved that book. And the Meg in the book has a brother called Charles Wallace. Our Meg named me Wallace because back then, she thought I looked more like a Wallace than a Charles.”

“What potion did Meg use to travel through time?” Thorn asked.

“She didn’t use a potion, and I don’t think Meg is a witch. But there are three witches in the story.” He fed Muffin a piece of chicken jerky. “Come on, I’ll show you. Take your tea with you, or you’ll be drinking Muffin’s slobber.”

“How are Ella and Tux and Toffee?” she asked when they entered a room filled with shelves of books.

“They’re slowly getting better. Unfortunately, I still don’t know the cause.

But I might be getting closer, thanks to you.

I found out that all the owners of the affected cats, including from the other clinics, are straight men who use the Darling app.

Those men sent me a list of the names of all their dates in the last month, but they can’t really tell me what perfumes or essential oils those women might have used.

I was going to reach out to those women to get the information, but then I realized there’s one common name that appears on all the lists I’ve received so far.

I’m still waiting for one last owner to send me his list, but that woman is probably the one wearing a fragrance that’s toxic to cats. ”

He reached for a book on the top shelf, and Thorn noted that it’d be very convenient to have him around the cottage to help her grab things from the top shelf and top drawer.

“Stop being an idiot,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, I was talking to myself.”

“You’re not an idiot. Here’s a copy of the book I mentioned. I’ve had this since I was a kid.”

The book was dog-eared, and the pages were yellowing. It had been well loved.

Don’t break his heart , a little voice said.

Thorn looked around to see a cream-colored cat with a dark brown mask snuggled in a cleared nook among the books. “What do you mean?”

“Noodle, what did you say to Thorn?” Walls asked.

You’re the first woman he’s brought home in three years. You’d better not break his heart.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Noodle,” Thorn said. “There’s nothing between us. And really? That long?”

“I don’t know what my cat is telling you,” Walls said in mock panic. “But she’s lying.”

I sense the lust you have for my servant. I will allow it if you treat him right. Noodle jumped off the shelf and rubbed herself against Thorn’s legs. She purred, But if you break his heart like the last one did, I will devour your face.

“Isn’t she the sweetest cat?” Walls asked with pride.

“I guess you could call it that,” Thorn said, strategically positioning the book between her face and the cat. A flat, transparent piece of plastic slipped out of A Wrinkle in Time .

“My old bookmark,” he said.

She picked it up and gasped. It was a laminated feather, white and red-specked. “This is the feather of a vampire parrot! Meg said they went extinct. How did you get this?”

“My old cat, Pirate. He had it in his mouth when we first found him at the picnic.”

“But that was thirty years ago. How is this still intact?”

“It’s laminated.”

Charlie crawled into the room with Muffin following her. “But Mom said you found your first cat in Thimble Park.”

“That can’t be,” Walls said. “I don’t remember where the picnic was, but thirty years ago, Thimble Park was still a forest.”

Charlie rolled onto her back. “She said you and her and Grandma and Grandpa took a little rowboat down the river and stopped at the banks for a picnic.”

“I guess that’s possible.” He went over to the mahogany desk at the corner and turned a picture frame around. It was of a little boy who was obviously a young Walls hugging a black cat with two eyes, and on the top of its head, a tuft of fur that stuck up like a fuzzy mohawk.

Thorn grabbed Walls’s arm. “Didn’t Pirate have one eye?”

“He had his eye removed soon after we got him, so it must have been injured. I remember the vet kindly explaining it to me because I was worried about Pirate. That was what made me want to be a vet.”

“Thorn, you look like you just swallowed a frog,” Charlie said, sitting up.

Thorn braced herself against Walls. All these years, she’d thought the black panther must have eaten Turnip when it attacked Rose. It was entirely plausible that such a small cat would be devoured whole by such a beast.

“Charlie,” Walls said. “Would you give Muffin another chicken jerky? He looks like he’s dying of hunger.”

Charlie crawled away to the living room with Muffin excitedly running alongside her.

Walls let Thorn hold on to his arm. She was trying to make sense of everything.

“Do you know why I named my cat Turnip?” she asked.

“You found him in a basket of turnips.”

“I did, but that’s not why. His head looked kind of like a turnip with leaves sprouting out of the bulb. Like…”

Walls turned to the picture of himself and his old cat. “Like Pirate’s permanent bedhead.”

After Turnip disappeared, Thorn had scried for him, but the basin of water remained clear. She knew a familiar could only be out of their witch’s scrying range for two reasons: magic or death. But it turned out there was a third reason: time travel.

“Pirate was Turnip,” Thorn said. “He traveled through time.”

Walls eyes widened, even bigger than when Thorn had tried to take his soul.

Thorn didn’t dare say it aloud, but she wondered: Could Rose’s grave have been empty for the same reason?