“I’m always doing the watching thing.”
“Yeah, but he said you’re doing the serious version.” Sandy positioned himself beside me and looked at the panel with the studied concentration of someone who’d decided to be helpful and was going to commit to it entirely. “Which one is the one that matters?”
“Define matters.”
“The one that feels off.”
I looked around the room, starting with our panel. Roy, eating up the attention. Donny, polished. Tessa, genuine. Then I glanced at the audience where Nadia, Malcolm, Ivan, and Beckett sat. “All of them, in different ways.”
Sandy nodded sagely, like this confirmed something. “Ivan hasn’t blinked very much. He looks like someone who’s been storing something up.”
“He’s had a difficult few days,” I said.
“Mm.” Sandy sipped his coffee. “The thing with his growler.”
“Exactly.”
The panel wrapped up with polite applause and the moderator’s reminder that the brewers would be available for the mix and mingle afterward. The crowd began shifting, some people moving toward the brewers, while others drifted toward the exit.
“I need to go talk to them,” I said.
“Separately or together?”
“Separately. And I need you to do something for me first.”
Sandy straightened slightly. “Yes.”
“I have most of the brewers in here that I need to talk to, but can you scope things out and see if there’s anything else I need to be aware of?” I wanted to ask the brewers if they noticed anything unusual about the contest, but we might get lucky and find some new clues about the hex bag found at Ivan’s.
He was already scanning the room. “On it.”
Chapter Nine
The Magical Scientist
Declan
“Get back! Get back!” Elwood shouted, nudging me back until my ass hit the kitchen counter. It was just in the nick of time, too, because a heartbeat later, a dazzling purple cloud erupted over the kitchen table with a loud whoosh.
Then Elwood was back at the table again, with George chattering excitedly on his shoulder.
“Okay, come on,” Elwood waved me forward.
Before tonight, if someone had asked me to describe my grandfather, I would’ve said Elwood was a hippie with a strong connection to the earth and nature. But now? Seeing him with his long hair hanging around his face in a tangled mess from all those whooshes, smudges of soot on his cheeks, and weird navy-colored stains around his fingernails, I’d have to add that he had mad scientist tendencies.
The only things Elwood was missing were a lab coat and protective goggles, which, given what we were doing and howmany things had whooshed, he really should be investing in. I made a mental note. It was never too early to think about Christmas presents.
Elwood grabbed a clear stone from the table and shoved it into my hand.
“Now, it’s your turn. What can you pick up?”
Inching closer to the table, I curled my fingers around the quartz until the jagged edges dug into my palm. Elwood insisted I use it. He said it was supposed to enhance my abilities, but I didn’t feel anything change. I swore I got a better reading on the growlers without all the purple sparkly clouds and crystals.
The growler—this one had belonged to Donny Pace—lay on its side in a large glass baking pan. Last week I used it to make a batch of brownies. This week, it’d been seconded to scientific and magical experimentation. Had Elwood used all his pots and pans for stuff like this?
I didn’t want to ask, but I was definitely going to buy my own equipment tomorrow. No one wanted residual magical gunk in their cake.
The purple cloud was settling over the table now, and soon it’d wink out of existence. I had to act quickly. I reached forward and, using my hand with the quartz, I stirred the cloud over the brown glass bottle. My magic poked and prodded it.
