Page 3

THREE

“Wart of spider, beard of goat, mole of rat…” Thorn plopped the ingredients for her New-and-Improved True Love potion with one hand and stirred the bubbling cauldron with the other.

Weaving disparate elements together to conjure up new possibilities put her in her element.

This was one of the moments she loved most about magic.

When she was crafting potions, she was still alone, but it didn’t matter, because she felt like this was why she was here. It was her place in the world.

But because it was one of those days, someone was at the door. The first three knocks jarred Thorn out of her reverie, and the toenails of rat pinched between her fingers missed the cauldron.

This was a first. In thirty years, aside from the lover she’d had in her early twenties, no one else had come to the cottage.

The trek through Thimble Woods was long and dark, swirling with rumors of a man-eating black panther.

It was inconceivable that any customer would walk three hours through the forest instead of simply dropping by her stall in town on Sunday.

She had always believed that once inside her cottage, she was safe from her customers’ unreasonable demands and idle chitchat.

Her instinct was to yell at whoever it was to go away or be cursed with the decay and detachment of a body part. But if she pretended no one was home, the intruder might give up.

Except they didn’t. This time, instead of knocking, they pounded on the door. Maybe it was Madam Maude. She was so against the True Love potion that she might actually make the journey just to give Thorn another lecture.

“Bandit,” Thorn whispered as she scooped up the toenails of rat off the floor. “Go see who it is.”

From his warm perch on the mantel, Bandit opened one groggy eye, then closed it. He was in a lamb stew coma.

She tiptoed to the kitchen window at the side of the house. As silently as possible, she pulled the shutters together before stealthily making her way to the other end of the house and carefully shutting the window over her bed.

“I know you’re in there! There’s smoke coming out of your chimney!”

Thorn recognized the whiny voice. Darkening her doorstep was the penny-pinching seamstress, the one who had demanded two pence off a hex ball and when refused, had hurled the ultimate insult of spinster , thereby setting off this most recent chain of events with the blacksmith.

“I’ll be at the Sunday markets!”

Thorn tiptoed back to the fireplace and tossed the toenails of rat into the bubbling brew.

She did not like interruptions when she was brewing potions.

Actually, she hated all interruptions, but being wrenched out of her magical state of mind was the worst. Even if she was the strange kind of person who loved unexpected guests, her True Love potion had to be stirred consistently, and the ingredients had to be added swiftly one after the other in the correct order.

Any deviation would result in a concoction that could have any myriad of effects except the intended one.

“I will not wait,” the penny-pincher yelled over her own pounding on the door. “I need it now!”

“One tooth of dragon, one skull of snake, one pinch of salt,” Thorn whispered, trying her best to focus on her brew.

But the next second, she had salted her feet instead of the cauldron, because the shutters banged open.

A ghoulish face stared at her. The penny-pincher held up her oil lamp right next to her face, casting unnerving shadows.

Thorn rued all those decades she’d procrastinated installing locks on the windows.

“I just risked my life to come out here and find you. I could’ve been devoured like that little girl.

I even forked out three whole pennies for this to protect myself from the black panther.

” Penny-Pincher dug under her petticoat and fished out a small handheld mirror. “A magic mirror to defeat the beast.”

Never mind that no one had actually seen a single panther in these woods in the last thirty years.

Or that the person who’d kept the panther rumor alive these past few decades was probably the same crook who’d sold Penny-Pincher the mirror.

Thorn grabbed more salt from the jar, ignoring her uninvited guest. “One pinch of salt.”

“It’s an emergency!” Penny-Pincher shouted.

Thorn stormed past the wall of drawers toward the wall of shelves. She passed over the flasks, jars, and vials filled with colorful potions and stopped at the right corner. On a shelf at her eye level was a wicker basket containing a few tiny balls of twine.

“Not a hex ball. I need whatever potion you fed to the blacksmith. You must have used magic to bewitch him.”

Thorn stormed two steps to the left and reached for a vial containing a dark red concoction.

She hadn’t planned on selling her True Love for a Day potion, but she really needed to get back to her cauldron.

Besides, this was the weak version that had failed to capture the blacksmith’s heart for more than a few hours.

“Thank you so much! You’re a lifesaver.” The girl smiled. “And since I’ve made the arduous trip through Thimble Woods to find you, would you mind taking off a penny?”

Thorn’s fingers froze a hair’s breadth away from the vial with the dark red potion. Then they dipped down toward the bottom shelf and snatched up a flask filled with a neon-green brew.

“That looks absolutely potent,” Penny-Pincher said. “Does it taste vile? How long before the man I love loves me back? And how much does it cost? How about two pennies off?”

“For you, it’s free of charge. But this isn’t a True Love potion. This is Croak.” Thorn uncapped the flask and splashed it at Penny-Pincher. The young woman was cut off mid-scream by a POOF! of green smoke. When the last of the green tendrils cleared, there was no one at the window.

Thorn leaned out and looked down. The oil lamp had toppled and extinguished itself. Nestled within the folds of a dress on top of the mirror stood—or rather, squatted—a frog. “Ribbit.”

The potion had worked perfectly. But Thorn had no time to bask in her own success.

She reached down, her ribs digging into the window frame, and scooped up the mirror, the dress, and the slimy green creature.

Penny-Pincher croaked loudly as Thorn scurried around the room looking for something to put the frog in.

In a rush, she dropped her into the water jug.

The tall, narrow spout would be a challenge to escape.

“Don’t worry. The potion wears off in about ninety days, and you’ll return to your true form.

The only downside is, you’ll retain the memories of your fly-eating days. ”

With the frog safely sequestered and Penny-Pincher’s dress and mirror stashed in the wardrobe, Thorn returned to her potion. Stirring, she added the last ingredient: one feather of vampire parrot.

“Seek your true love,” she whispered, and willed the words to sink into the brew.

The concoction bubbled up orange, then blue, then purple, and finally red.

This was it. Thorn could feel it in her bones.

This New-and-Improved True Love potion would help her find her husband and her happily ever after.

To be honest, she’d felt this confident after brewing the previous True Love potion, too, so her intuition wasn’t always right.

But one of the prerequisites for successful witchery was an almost grandiose belief in one’s own skills.

It was often the only thing that kept a witch going when dealing with the nebulous nature of magic.

She heaved the cauldron off the fire and hung it on a tripod stand to cool.

She lined up several empty vials on the table and got ready to portion out the potion.

Each vial should hold the eligible bachelor’s affections steady for a month, and as long as he was fed a monthly dose, surely Thorn could eventually get him to utter those three words.

Then his love for her would last forever.

But before that, she’d fill a basket with flasks of No Sweat and Bouffant Hair, and tomorrow morning, she’d pay Madam Maude a visit. She’d get on her knees and beg Madam Maude to pair her with another suitable man. The matchmaker might have to look into prospects in the next town.

“Two bribery baskets might be needed. And maybe a goat from the butcher,” Thorn murmured. “What do you think, Bandit?”

But the cat was no longer at his spot on the mantel. She looked around. He was on the table, standing on his rear legs, a paw deep inside the water jug. She was only mildly annoyed about having to drink fuzzy water until she remembered what the jug contained.

“Stop! That’s—” Thorn shouted at the same time an awful ribbit echoed out of the jug. The earthenware then leaped sideways off the table, taking with it Bandit, who couldn’t get his paw out in time. It smashed into smithereens.

The damage that came next was worse than if Thorn had flown around on her broom indoors blindfolded. Ten empty vials, several vials of Liar Liar potion, six flasks of Bouffant Hair and two of No Sweat, and a few flasks of Hiccup Stop potion, all broken. And Thorn’s favorite teacup was next in line.

She lunged. Both feet off the ground, arms out, body parallel to the floor.

The cup landed softly in her palms. She, on the ground with a thud and a cuss.

While she was fit for stirring and casual broom flying, this sort of athletic leaping was not in her repertoire.

She would pay dearly for it later. But what mattered was that her favorite cup was safe.

“Bandit, stop chasing that frog—er—woman!”

The cat paid no attention to his witch and yowled excitedly as he darted around after his prey. Croak, frog!

The frog replied, “Ribbit!”