I sat down hard on the edge of my bed, watching Auggie try to console a sobbing Therese. I felt horrible for her. I would fix this. I just didn’t know how yet.
I pulled Mother’s potion book from my cloak.Shecouldn’t have gotten it wrong. She was very exact and triple-checked her work. The mistake had to have been on my end. I flipped to the page for the potion and scanned it, careful to take my time, focusing on the ingredients for the potion. But it looked the same. “Hmm … I could repeat the recipe. Maybe she just needed more of it?”
“Do you have enough ingredients for another dose?” Freya asked.
I nodded. “Yes. Yes. Moonbeams from brackish water—Lexi gathered those for me. Hangman’s toe. I only needed part … of it. I still have …”
Freya sensed my concern. “What is it?”
I flopped back onto my bed. “I suppose it’s possible that the man in the Ember King’s realm hadn’t been hanged. I mean, he was hung, but if he didn’tdieby hanging, it might not meet the requirements of the potion.”
Freya nodded slowly. “Okay. So, we do it again, but this time we use a real hangman’s toe.” She turned to Therese. “You hear that, Therese? We figured out what went wrong, and we’re going to fix it as soon as we can.”
“Everyone is going to point and laugh at the monster girl!” Therese bawled.
Narcissa butted Therese’s leg with her head. “But just think, you still have your frog legs. I bet you can jump as high as before, but as large as you are now, it’ll be like magic.”
Therese wiped a hand across her face to dry her tears. “Do you really think so?”
Narcissa sat on her haunches. “Of course. Look at those legs. Slender, strong.”
Therese tested her legs by squatting. Her legs were a little longer than a human’s and seemed like they could launch her well enough. Perhaps Narcissa was right.
“I want to try it,” Therese said.
Auggie frowned. “I thought you didn’t want people to see—” He held his hands up as Freya glared daggers at him. “Of course. Let’s see what you can do.”
Freya led Therese out onto the deck. It was mealtime, which was probably a good thing, as most of the crew was below deck. The few hands on deck stared for only a moment before returning to their duties. Above us the sails, full and bloated, tugged the ship toward America.
“Now just jump straight up,” Freya instructed. “We don’t want to have to fish you out of the water.”
Therese nodded, then squatted. Her face set, she sprung upward, catapulting into the sky. She leapt much higher than the tip-top of the sails before crashing back onto the deck with a wet smacking sound.
“I did it!” Therese announced, giggling. “It’s almost like flying.”
I felt some of the panic in my chest abate. At least she wasn’t soul-crushingly upset about her in-between state anymore. This was a temporary reprieve, but so long as Therese wasn’t miserable, and there was hope to quickly remedy my mistake, I could focus on getting Auggie to his destination, and we could all move on.
Therese leapt into the sky again, laughing gleefully, and Narcissa joined her, encouraging her to jump higher and higher, meeting her in the sky. After several jumps, Therese seemed to be tiring, which was probably for the best.
Narcissa settled onto the deck beside me and cocked her head. “You know how much I detest the water, but I have to admit that it has some very interesting qualities.”
“Yeah?” I asked, hardly paying attention as I watched Therese stretch her legs.
“Oh, yes. I didn’t know water could glow green like that.”
“Green?” Auggie asked beside me. “The water’s glowing green?”
I frowned, my attention shifting to my familiar. I didn’t see the water growing green around us. “Where is this?”
“Just ahead,” Narcissa said. “We should arrive at it soon enough, then you can see for yourself.”
A bell began to sound overhead, and a man shouted. “Pirates ahead! Pirates ahead!”
If it came to battling pirates, I could certainly make sure this crew remained safe, with the help of Freya. But what did that have to do with green water?
I pulled eye of newt from my cloak, as well as a sprig of holly, ectoplasm, and tarantula pus. I added them to a bottle of water and shook them vigorously before swallowing the concoction, its effects nearly immediate. The orb at my chest only depleted slightly, still mostly full despite the potion-making for Therese. I focused ahead and my eyesight seemed to traverse the water, where indeed, the ocean glowed an eerie green. From a pirate ship populated by ghosts.
I sighed. “I was hoping this voyage would be uneventful. I suppose you can’t have everything.”
