“Are you… are you feeling okay?”
“I do feel a bit strange…” she admitted. She pressed the backs of her spindly fingers to her cheeks. “A little warm, I guess. My skin is a little flushed. My heart is beating too fast.”
“Why don’t you go sleep it off, and we’ll grab coffee and pastries sometime soon?” I suggested.
She considered this. “Sure, that sounds lovely. I have all kinds of fun gossip I gathered during the potluck, and I’ve been dying to share it. See you!” She lifted her arm like she was going to wrap it around my shoulders before she stopped herself and let it drop to her side.
“Bye.” I smiled tightly and fluttered my fingers at her.
She gave me one last wistful but confused look before she exited with the white-haired wolf following closely behind her.
Tandor stood up from his stool. “Gods almighty are you popular today!” he declared, stretching his shoulders and rolling out his neck. His muscles bulged beneath his tunic at the motion. “I better get going, in case you need to entertain more visitors.” He dropped his arms and looked at me intently. “Are you sure you’re alright? Do you need to visit Velline? I can carry you there.”
I blushed at the suggestion, but I flexed my arms, legs, and neck to be sure. My aches were minor—nothing that a simple healing potion wouldn’t fix. The ringing in my ears was more annoying than painful. “I’m okay. Really. Thank you, though, for checking on me.”
He stared at me for a moment longer before nodding reluctantly. “I’m glad you’re alright. You gave me a fright there—don’t do that again.”
“Yes, sir. I promise you won’t find me unconscious on the floor again. Well, I can’t actuallypromise, but I will try very hard to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
He hesitated for a moment, looking like he might argue. Conflict clouded his gaze. “As long as you promise. See you later, Kizzi.” He strode out of the shop and pulled the broken door shut behind him. It immediately swung back open. “Uh,” he stammered. “I’ll fix this.”
I brushed him off. “I’ll have Redd fix i, that vampire will have it done in a blink. Don’t worry about it.”
Looking bashful, he nodded again before departing, pulling the splintered door as closed as it would go.
The sound of hammering echoed through the shop as Redd repaired my door with fresh wood. The tall, brown-haired vampire looked disheveled and slightly dirty, as if I’d pulled him from another project. “Why did Tandor kick your door in?” he shouted over the noise. “You should have just unlocked it. This oak wood isn’t going to match.”
“I obviously didn’t want this to happen. It’s a long story,” I answered drily. “But he thought he was saving my life.”
“Saving your life, huh? Do I want to know?”
“Probably not,” I answered honestly. “But I’ll tell you anyway. So, I was making a potion, but the sprites fucked it up, so it turned into this awful sludge. I didn’t want to clean the cauldron, so I just shoved it into the corner. Long story short, the cauldron exploded and tossed me across the shop and knocked me out. And that’s when Tandor showed up.”
The hammering stopped and Redd turned to stare at me, his expression slack jawed. His fangs caught the light. “Kizzi, you can’t just tell that story like it’s something nonchalant.”
I shrugged. “Just another day as Moonvale’s favorite apothecary witch.”
He sighed in exasperation. “Fiella’s going to have a field day with this one.”
“She already knew about the cauldron, so she probably won’t be very surprised when she finds out that it blew up in my face. Literally.”
“Oh, I meant the part about Tandor kicking your door in and finding you on the ground.” He turned back to the door.
“That part? That’s the less interesting half of that story. He was just checking on me after a weird situation we had last night.”
He simply hummed in response, but I swore I saw his eyebrow quirk and a knowing smile tug at his cheek. He finished the rest of his work in comfortable silence as I flitted about the shop gathering ingredients. The sprites watched me, perched around the shelves as though they were happy to just watch me conduct my mundane activities. It was nice.
I appreciated how Redd never tried to fill silence with unnecessary words. If he didn’t have anything to say, he simply said nothing at all. It was refreshing.
When Redd eventually slipped away after a brief farewell and only accepting more of Fiella’s blue-hair tonic as payment, I made my rounds, checking the shop before going to bed.
Just because I was glad that the sprites were back didn’t mean that I trusted them… I knew they were still menaces.
The chili recipe was still sitting out on the counter, so I grabbed my fae-iron key, mumbled the unlocking spell, and pulled the cabinet open. I tucked the recipe inside, but I couldn’t fight off the nagging feeling that told me something just wasn’t right. I stared at the open cabinet for what felt like hours, trying to figure out what was out of place.
And then it hit me. My stomach dropped to the floor beneath my feet and my palms broke out in a clammy sweat.
Something was missing. And not just anything… The love potion was missing.
