With lots of blinking and a deep breath, I managed to keep the tears at bay. I looked up at him, surprised to see that his eyes were filled with intense sympathy.
“It’s okay. It happened a long time ago.”
He shifted on his feet, wearing an uneasy frown. “I didn’t know your mom personally, but I’ve heard a lot about her. They say she was very kind.”
I wondered who “they” were, but I decided against asking.
“She was.”
An awkward silence settled between us. Jo wandered along next to the shelves, examining the bottles.
“Have a lot of people come in here for potion ingredients?”
I grinned. “Yeah, it’s my main source of income. I’ve even had people come from out of state to buy.”
He picked up a bottle of Alligator Teeth, examining the razor-sharp points.
“Has anyone else asked to see the apothecary?”
I instantly sobered. “No, but someone tried to follow me in here yesterday. I think she was trying to steal from the apothecary because she wore some sort of invisibility cloak or coat.”
A shadow of worry crossed his face. “So the culprit is after potion ingredients.”
Jo stared into space, deep in thought.
“What do you mean?”
He turned his eyes back to me. “There have been a lot of weird things happening around town. Witches have complained to me about break-ins and missing potion ingredients. Whoever took Theresa has been making a lot of potions and seems to have a hard time getting hold of certain ingredients.”
That made sense. Some very rare potion ingredients were almost always out of stock on WitchNet.
“What has the intruder been stealing?”
“Rhino Horn, Ram’s Horn, Gorilla Hair, Grizzly Talons, things like that. I could tell that the barrier you’d put around your house had been tampered with, and those ingredients make a lot of ramming potions.”
My mouth fell open. So I had been right that the potions were being made to destabilize the barrier!
I frowned at Jo as another thought occurred to me. “You could sense the barrier, so you knew even back then that I was a witch. Why didn’t you say anything?”
He shrugged. “I figured you knew.”
With an exaggerated sigh, I turned back to the shelves. My eyes caught on the extra bottles of Essence of Chameleon that I’d ordered. Theresa hadn’t been lying when she said it was expensive, so I hadn’t bought very many.
“You know, now that I know that you know about magic, I can tell you a little more about Theresa.”
Jo’s head shot up. “You can?”
“Yeah. I met her when she came in here looking for Essence of Chameleon. I thought she was crazy or on drugs because I didn’t know then that witches were real.”
He looked at the shelves. I watched his eyes scan the bottles until they came to rest on the essence.
“Why did she need it?”
“She said it was for a disguise potion.”
A confusing mix of anger and sadness crossed his face. For the millionth time, I wondered what he was thinking.
“Yes, she probably would have needed that.”
He didn’t elaborate, so I let it drop.
“She seemed worried, like someone was after her.”
Jo pursed his lips, his eyes on the floor. “Someone was after her. But the question is…who?”
Knowing I wasn’t going to get much out of him on that subject, I changed tack.
“You mentioned ramming potions before. When the intruder tried to follow me into the shop, I figured she was trying to get potion ingredients to weaken the barrier. I found a potion that can weaken an entire invisible barrier and make it crumble all at once. It had some of the ingredients that you mentioned.”
He nodded, rolling his hand in a “go on” motion.
“You might have noticed that there’s a door in my basement with a similar barrier on it.”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that.”
Again, I wished he’d said something. If I’d known he was a witch back then, we might have had this whole thing solved weeks ago.
“I’ve tried since I moved in to get rid of the barrier. I feel like whoever keeps breaking into my house is after whatever is in that room. I wanted to use the potion on it, along with a spell I found, but I know next to nothing about potions.”
