Potions Are for Pushovers by Tamara Berry

Author:Tamara Berry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2019-10-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

“Wait—I don’t understand. You ate the entire cake? By yourself?”

“Don’t judge, Liam. If you tasted this masterpiece, you’d understand what drove me to it. It’s almost animalistic, the things this cake makes you do.”

A sigh sounds through my phone. “You mean, like forcing otherwise reasonable women to consume fifteen thousand calories in one sitting?”

“Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of slaughtering pigs and cats for no discernible reason.”

The sigh becomes a heavy pause. At least, I assume it’s heavy. I’m currently slogging through yet another muddy lane on my way to the village. Part of it is for exercise, since those fifteen thousand calories of cake are no laughing matter, but I also have to meet up with my apprentices for yet another afternoon of questionable supervision.

The wind whistles around me as I walk, the afternoon gloom filled with the sounds of Mother Nature wreaking her vengeance. I envy her that.

“Do you feel a sudden compulsion to murder animals, Ellie?” Liam eventually asks. “Because if that’s the case, I think you should double-check that whole poison thing. Don’t bath salts make people get weirdly violent?”

“Why do you think I ate the whole thing?” I ignore the bulk of his commentary, since its sole purpose is to frighten me into giving up England and going back to New York to roost on his couch. “If I left any lying around, Rachel and Lenora would have sniffed it out. I was saving them from an untimely death.”

“A true hero.”

“You’re missing the point. It’s a good cake. Penny knows it, which is why she only bakes one when someone is dead or she wants something. She’s like a postapocalyptic kingpin hoarding all the water reserves.”

“England is making you weird.”

“I hate to break it to you, brother dear, but I was weird long before I jumped across the pond.”

He uses my confession of oddity to segue into what’s really bothering him. “Have you, uh, heard from Winnie lately?”

Unlike my brother, I don’t need an excuse to draw our sister into the conversation. She’s a topic I would happily discuss to the ends of the earth and back again—which, to be honest, is what this walk is starting to feel like. “No, and I’m freaking out about it. She hasn’t said anything since Beast went missing.”

“Your cat is missing?”

“Yes. I’ve searched everywhere, but she’s disappeared—run away, or been kidnapped, or . . .” I trail off, my voice wavering as I try to quash the image of last night’s carnage. Beast couldn’t have been killed the same way. I’d feel it if she were. I’d know it. “I didn’t make the connection right away, but I can’t avoid it now. I think Winnie’s either gone to watch over the cat, or, and I know this sounds strange, she is the cat.”

Another weighty pause greets me from the other end of the phone. For about twenty seconds, I’m afraid I’ve lost my cell phone connection—a thing that happens in these parts much more often than I’d like—but Liam eventually speaks up.

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