Page 2 of Potions and Proposals
“Lucinda, of all the days you might’ve chosen to get back at me,” he muttered, fidgeting with his M cufflinks as he lowered his sleeves. He still remembered the smell of burning rubber when he’d melted her bike tyres the previous week. He felt justified in his vandalism, considering she’d parked it behind his car while he was getting groceries in Duncan’s Market. Tit for tat – this was how they’d worked for as long as he could remember. He wasn’t sure they could stop trying to get under each other’s skin.
Back at the reception desk, Suzy nudged him as he finished checking in a new family. Benedict looked up from the computer to find his mum staring at him.Just when I thought this morning couldn’t get any more exhausting.
“Benedict, what the hell is going on?” Gwendoline – his mum and right hand to their High Priestess – stood by the revolving doors as visibly upset guests left with their bags. Benedict’s jaw nearly dropped when he realised she was bare-faced, and her usually slick bob was a wavy mess. She never left the house without her lipstick or hair out of place. Someone must’ve called and woken her. Benedict was well able to handle whatever the Manor could throw at him, but whenever there was a crisis, Gwendoline sprang into action; she spent her life putting out the fires of others. Ironic, since the Matherson bloodline was gifted with fire as their element.
Her scowl reminded him how similar they were: the same piercing blue eyes, dark eyebrows and angular features, on which was stamped the Matherson scowl. People used to slander his family, though it was now considered magically incorrect, by saying that a Matherson’s hair exposed the darkness of the magic they conjured. There was nothing darker than raven black. Generations of his family had indeed used all types of magic, never believing one type was darker than another, because magic always came with a cost. During the war between the Order and magical folk, his ancestors had fled to Foxford, where some older practices of magic were restricted so Foxford could keep its neutrality. Then again, he’d never particularly wanted to sacrifice an animal or resurrect the dead.
“Nothing – a misunderstanding,” he said, trying to reassure her. Unfortunately, the lobby told another story. Trying to look casual, he turned to gather his morning messages from the front desk, his black tie threatening to strangle him. It had been his mother who taught him that those with tainted pasts must always look after their appearance, because they will always be judged more harshly.
“Piranhas in the fountain, butterfly teacups,” Suzy told Gwendoline. Benedict glared at her, but she merely shrugged.She’d seen him go through his awkward teenage years, so his moods hardly phased her now. She’d worked for them for years – ever since she’d turned up in Foxford as a newly changed vampire with little to no memory of how she’d got there.
“Ben, please tell me this isn’t another damn prank! I thought you and Lucinda had left this nonsense behind you. You aren’t schoolchildren anymore. You’re both pillars of this town, and need I remind you that she is to inherit her mother’s position? You don’t want to be at odds with the leader of our town in the coming months.”
Coming months?He hadn’t heard anything to suggest Wilhelmina Hawthorne was thinking of retiring. Then again, since his mum and Wilhelmina had been best friends for years, it made sense the High Priestess would confide in her.
Benedict opened his mouth to speak, but she arched her dark brows, daring him to come up with excuses. She was right; Lucinda and Benedict had spent most of their lives making each other miserable. Despite being in his late twenties, when it came to Lucinda, Benedict knew he became irrational and irresponsible. She was the bane of his existence, and today not only had she embarrassed him and disrupted his morning, but she’d diminished the hotel’s reputation and startled the guests. That wouldn’t just harm him, as she’d probably intended, but the town she was set to lead. He clenched his jaw to stop a smug smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Lucinda was in trouble, and for once, she had no one to blame but herself. Thankfully, it seemed that his own part in their latest antics was still unknown to his mother.
“Whatever is going on between the two of you, I want you to fix it now.” Gwendoline’s hiss snapped him out of his thoughts. “We’ve had to work too hard to claw our way back into the good graces of this town, and I won’t have meaningless, petty pranks damage our reputation.”
Benedict started to back away to the revolving door before his mum learnt that the breakfast china she’d only just imported was ruined.
“I’ll talk to Lucinda,” he promised, glancing around the lobby filled with complaining guests. He didn’t want to even guesstimate the cost of the complimentary stays. Hopefully they’d recoup the cost in the coming weeks, since they were booked solid between now and the Autumn Festival.
“Go now, or I’ll call a meeting with the coven and get to the bottom of this,” Gwendoline warned, narrowing her eyes. “I’m beginning to wonder what caused Lucinda to do such a thing. Perhaps she was provoked?”
“I’ll get right on that, and I can assure you that Lucinda and I will be on our best behaviour from now on,” he promised, crossing his fingers behind his back.
He clicked his fingers and found himself outside the town’s library, which had been converted to look something like a grand gothic cathedral. The very woman he was looking for, wearing enough colours to stop traffic, was tending to the flowerpots lining the stone steps. Completely unaware of the chaos ensuing across town, she watered flower after flower.
Benedict rubbed his jaw, astonished by how innocent she appeared. Just a good-natured, doe-eyed librarian watering the daisies – but there was a vengeful streak behind those gold-rimmed glasses, and his petrified guests testified to it.
Lucinda glanced in his direction as though she sensed he was close.
“You were probably waiting for me to appear, right?” he asked her, though she was too far away to hear him, and the trees surrounding the town square shielded him from sight.
Dried leaves crunched under his feet; he watched her tuck a strand of chocolate brown hair behind an elaborately pierced ear while she searched through her bag. The jewellery glitteredin the sunlight, and she wore her bright personality on the long sleeve of her yellow dress. Lucinda couldn’t help but stand out; even in a crowd of people, he always seemed to focus on her. It irritated him beyond belief, because he did everything in his power to blend in, to be accepted. The darling of Foxford never had to worry about acceptance;shedidn’t carry any shameful family past.
Benedict stepped off the curb across the street, readying himself to confront her about the piranha and butterfly incident. He’d almost crossed the road when an idea hit him.
If he confronted her, they’d undoubtedly argue, and the cycle would continue. But if he didn’t… He smirked to himself as he watched her open the library door. Ignoring her prank would probably drive her crazy. She’d obsess over why he hadn’t confronted her, why he hadn’t retaliated and why he was ignoring her actions.
Benedict tucked his hands in his pockets, deciding to fix her mess before the coven of founding families heard about the chaos. As overseers of the town, they made sure that nothing offset the delicate balance between the magless and the magical folk. If word got back to them and the High Priestess, neither he nor Lucinda would escape the next coven meeting unscathed.
Besides, the idea of her spending each day wondering what he might be up to put a spring in his step.
Deep within the library, hidden away in the archival vault, Lucinda Hawthorne – or Lucy, as she was known to her friends – ran her fingers over the aged pages of a grimoire, trying to figure out if a potion ingredient translated to ‘dragon’s blood’ or ‘dragon scales’.
The text could mean essence of dragon, and the caster could use either to complete the banishing potion,she thought, tapping her pen against the glass desk. Even with her Master’s in potions, some concoctions listed on the worn pages were far more complicated than she had ever studied – probably due to her ancestors having access to far more ingredients and the ability to use them in ways that would be frowned upon now.
She wrote ‘dragon’s essence’ into a new red leather-bound grimoire with crisp cream pages.This is the best I can do. It’s not like those in the Vatican archives will brew such a potionanyway… and its overall purpose or effect should remain the same.She stretched her arms over her head and let out a yawn. The only thing keeping her awake was her multiple cups of tea and the awful fluorescent lighting in the ceiling of the temperature-controlled glass vault.
“Are you still translating that musty book? I thought you went home to get ready for the coven meeting,” Rosie said, appearing in the doorway to the vault with her amber eyes narrowed.
“Bark or something – you scared me to death!” Now she was no longer distracted by her work, the room felt darker and colder, telling her the day was long over. The autumn was truly here, and though she missed her summer dresses and sunny days, she loved crunchy leaves and Halloween candy.
“I’ll ignore that comment,” Rosie said amusedly, stepping into the room filled with grimoires and artefacts too dangerous to be kept on the walls of the catacombs.Everything in the vault was glass—the shelves, the desk—so nothing could be taken or concealed.
“I’m still down here with this musty book because I’m three months late in getting it back to the Order,” Lucy said, waving the letter she’d picked up from among the scattered papers and reference texts on the desk.
