“Can you at least tell me how to brew a potion? Can I just use a saucepan or what?”

Arching her back, Jade yowled. A saucepan? For a potion?? Have you lost your mind?

“Well, what then?” I replied testily.

An exaggerated sigh echoed through my head. You need a cauldron. Celeste kept one in her kitchen cupboards.

“Oh! Well…that makes it easy, then.”

After scanning the small list of ingredients, I closed up shop briefly and ran home to try the potion out. I found Grandma’s old cauldron under her kitchen sink. It was made of solid pewter, with legs that perfectly aligned with one of the electric burners on the stovetop.

I boiled some water, then added the Essence of Wolfhound Nose and Lemon Rind that I’d taken from the apothecary. The potion turned the recommended soft blue color, but looked a little gooier than it should have.

The potion fit perfectly in one of Grandma’s ancient Tupperware, so I took it back to the shop with me. Before I could do anything, though, a customer came in. I suppressed a groan as the older lady meandered through the shop for close to an hour, hem-hawing over the cooking herbs on display.

She paid and left at last, so I turned my attention to my phone. The spell on WitchNet instructed me to dip the paper into the potion, then say the incantation.

“Here goes nothing.”

It took some prodding to get the paper to go under the surface of the potion goo. When I got it under, I took a deep breath.

“A secret message there afloat, tell me true who wrote this note.”

The spell said that a sort of holographic image of the person who’d written it would rise up in the steam from the potion. I watched, fascinated, as the steam gathered above the Tupperware. Maybe I’d even solve this mystery today!

As the picture materialized, however, my hopes crashed. Not only was the picture fuzzy and indistinct, probably due to something I’d done wrong with the potion, but it was also just a picture of a laptop. Because it had been written on a computer, it only showed the computer, not the owner.

Before the image dissipated, I was able to see that it was an expensive model, the kind of laptop that could hinge outward and become a tablet, so whoever owned the laptop had money.

Still, without the identity of the owner, it was a pretty useless clue. A soft laugh sounded in my head. I turned furious eyes on Jade.

“What, you think you can do better?”

She let out a purr as she settled on the countertop and tucked her tail beneath her body.

You don’t have your grandma’s gift for potions, that’s for sure.

Ignoring her, I turned my attention to unpacking some of the new apothecary ingredients I’d ordered. Between customers and inventory, I practiced my spells. I managed to put another strong barrier of invisible protection around the shop, as well as healing a burn I’d gotten while cooking a few days ago.

As I ate lunch with Jade, my mind wandered to the door in the basement. I knew I needed to get down there and try again, and that I was stalling, but something about that door just freaked me out. I hadn’t had anymore nighttime intruders, but I still felt uneasy about going down there.

The afternoon seemed to crawl by as I alternately psyched myself up to try the door again, then chickened out. Closing time came, but I wasn’t sure I was happy about it.

“Come on, Jade, time to go home.”

Jade trotted out from the back room while I shut off the lights and gave everything a final check. When I got home, I knew immediately that something was wrong. The shield on the house had been compromised. It wasn’t gone completely, but it felt as if someone had chipped a small hole in it.

“Not again!”

I circled the house, stopping and closing my eyes every few feet to use my mind’s eye. The hole came into view as I walked along the side of the house. Someone had used powerful magic to blast a hole through the protections.

Opening my eyes, I looked at the spot. I was facing a tiny basement window, surrounded by a metal window well. Frowning, I knelt and peered through the window, but it was completely black inside, as if someone had covered it with blackout curtains.

I sat back on my heels, trying to remember the layout of the basement. The stairs ran along the wall on the opposite side from where I sat. The cellar doors that swung up and out were around the corner to my left, facing the backyard.

With a frustrated growl, I tried to remember the placement of all the windows. There were two on the front end of the house, with similar metal wells surrounding them, but I couldn’t remember a third.

Then it hit me. The window was inside the sealed off part of the basement! Crawling forward on my hands and knees, I reached out a hand to lift the window up, but I met the same strange wall of resistance that protected the door.

What’s going on?

I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of Jade’s voice. With a glare at her, I let out a huff of breath.

“I’m going to put a bell on you so I know you’re coming from now on,” I muttered. “Stop sneaking up on me!”

Jade batted my arm playfully. But it’s just so fun to see you jump. Seriously, what’s going on?

My gaze drifted back to the window. “I’m about ninety percent sure that this window leads to that sealed off room in the basement. It’s got a magical barrier over it and possibly some kind of darkening spell on the windowpanes.”

Jade moved closer to the window, her little kitty nose twitching. She recoiled as she got close to the window, swiping at her nose a few times with her paw.

You’re right. There’s magic on it, and it’s pretty dark magic.

My heart began a slow, hollow pounding in my chest. “What do you mean?”

I can tell that someone with vindictive intent cast this spell. When you pour your emotions into a spell, it can strengthen it, but using emotions like hate and anger all the time can twist a person into something truly horrible.

I stared at her, my eyebrows drawing together. “You can tell someone’s intent from the spell they cast?”

Yes. It’s a sort of witchy talent. Some witches are good at knowing when people are telling the truth, or what the weather will be like, that kind of thing. I can sense intent, and whoever did this was feeling some pretty intense hatred.

Her words sent a shiver of fear from the top of my head down through my body. Though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I knew I had to get down to the basement to see if the intruder was still there.

“Jade…will you come with me?”

My voice sounded so small, so scared, that I wondered if Jade would make fun of me. She didn’t, turning silently to walk back around the house to the front porch.

Chapter Eighteen

We crept slowly down to the basement, every one of my senses on high alert. I twitched at every tiny noise, every bug flying past, every dust mote. My fingers trembled as I pulled the cord for the lightbulb.

No one was there.

I felt equal parts terror and relief. Had they even come into the house? My invisible wall should have prevented that.

Then again, were they inside the secret room even now? A slender person could have climbed in through the window. The thought made me shudder.

“I don’t know what to do, Jade. That person could have gotten inside the window. They could be in there now.”