Get with the Potion Read online

  Get with the Potion

  Pacific North Witches Mystery #2

  Samantha Silver

  For Mikayla

  You lived more in your twenty-two years than most people do in a lifetime, but it still doesn’t make it right that you only got twenty-two years.

  #livelikemiki

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Also by Samantha Silver

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  When I woke up that morning, I really didn’t think giant squirrels were a thing I was going to have to deal with. And yet, there we were.

  It had all started less than ten minutes ago, when I still thought today was going to be a completely normal day. Well, mostly normal, anyway.

  I closed my eyes, trying to pretend I was somewhere else, anywhere else. “How on earth did I let you talk me into this?” I asked Grandma Rosie.

  “Because you owe me,” Grandma Rosie replied. “If I hadn’t saved you up on that mountain a couple of weeks ago, you would never have been able to collect that check for half a million abras.”

  “You’re just jealous that I figured out who the killer was before you,” I shot back, my eyes never leaving the cage full of squirrels in front of me. Little did I know these normal-sized creatures were about to become a way bigger issue. Literally. “Now, do you want to tell me what we’re doing here, and why there are rodents in front of us?”

  We were in the middle of the forest. Why was there a cage full of squirrels here?

  “Well, the thing is, I was at the salon the other day,” Grandma Rosie started. “This hair doesn’t look this good by itself, you know. And I was speaking with Steffi Blumenthal. Did you know her daughter moved to Europe to be with a lover over there? I certainly didn’t. I looked like an idiot. Then, Karen Voss tells me Stella Sandoval has been stealing from her job, and her employer doesn’t know.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “All very interesting, but I don’t understand where the squirrels come into all this.”

  Grandma Rosie threw up her hands. “Don’t you get it? It was embarrassing. How am I supposed to assert my authority among the senior citizens in this town when I’m behind on the gossip? How are they supposed to see me as their superior when I don’t know what’s going on? I need all the prime information, and I need it before they get it.”

  Oh. So this was about Grandma Rosie trying to be the alpha witch among the elderly here in town.

  “I still don’t understand why there are squirrels,” I said quietly.

  “I’m going to get information from them, obviously,” Grandma Rosie replied. Great. I was witnessing the very moment that my grandmother was going senile.

  “Sure, of course you are,” I said in the kindest voice I could manage. “That sounds like a good plan, Grandma. First of all, why don’t we let them all out of their cage so they can be free to listen for information for you?”

  Grandma Rosie crossed her arms as she looked at me. “Don’t treat me like I’m some senile old witch,” she said. “I know what you’re doing. I need your help; I want to cast a spell that will allow the squirrels to listen for information in town and then pass it on to me.”

  I wasn’t sure what was actually scarier: the idea that my grandmother was going senile, or the insanity of her actual plan.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Of course I’m not joking. It’s the perfect setup. Squirrels are everywhere, and nobody ever suspects them of eavesdropping on conversations, so everyone in town will happily chat away while the squirrels listen in, and I get all the information.”

  I covered my face with my hands. “And how exactly do you plan on getting the squirrels to listen in for you? I can’t think of a spell that could possibly do what you’re trying to do. Probably because it’s equal parts ridiculous and insane.”

  “You young people today, you have no creativity, that’s your problem,” Grandma Rosie chided me. She pulled out a bag filled with what appeared to be cat collars. “I was going to get you to put all the squirrels I caught earlier to sleep. Then we can put these collars on them. The collars have microphones attached that send audio files to my phone and computer back at the cottage. I’ve always prided myself on how good I am with technology.”

  “Don’t you think people are going to notice that these squirrels are wearing collars?” I asked. “That’s not exactly subtle.”

  “That’s the next thing. I need you to cast a spell to make the collars invisible. Oh, and probably also smaller. They look like they’re probably going to fall off the squirrels.” She frowned as she looked at the cat collars while I wondered what on earth I must have done in a past life to deserve this one.

  I placed my head in my hands while I thought this over. “Alright. How did you get the squirrels in the first place?”

  “Cunning,” Grandma Rosie replied. “I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, you know.”

  “Wow, congratulations on outsmarting a bunch of rodents,” I replied. “This must be a really proud moment for you.”

  “Where did I go wrong in life to end up with an impertinent granddaughter like you? Now, are you going to help me or not?”

  I sighed. “What happens if I say no?”

  “I try and cast the spells myself.”

  “Fine,” I replied, horrified at the thought. “I’ll help.”

  It wasn’t that Grandma Rosie was a bad witch. Apparently, back in the day, she could cast a spell with the best of them. But the problem was as she got older, her dexterity and concentration began to drop, and now whenever she cast a spell, the results were…unexpected, at best.

  Yet Grandma Rosie always denied that fact and insisted that she had always meant to hex the microwave to yell insults at anybody who walked past.

  To be fair, though, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure she was lying about that one.

  However, in the interest of self-preservation, and of the preservation of the poor squirrels who had gotten into my grandmother’s trap, I figured I’d help. After all, I knew she was going to do this anyway. My helping just meant it would be done right.

  “Good,” Grandma Rosie smiled.

  “Let me start by helping out these poor creatures,” I said, looking at the squirrels. They scampered around the cage, obviously stressed by their current situation. I pulled out my wand—a plain black one with a single red stripe around the top—and started the incantation. “Rhea, mother of the gods, lull these squirrels to sleep.”

  The chattering stopped as the squirrels in the cage all immediately fell into a deep reverie.

  “Finally. They were getting annoying.”

  “Gee, I wonder why,” I muttered as I grabbed the bag of collars from my grandmother.

  “Did Renee ask why you needed to buy twenty cat collars at once?” I asked, referring to the owner of the local pet store here in town.

  Grandma Rosie shook her head. “I went to New Occult, to one of the big stores there where no one would recognize me.”

  “Did you ever stop to think that maybe if you have to go to one of the biggest paranormal cities to do your shopping anonymo
usly, you’re not doing the right thing?” I asked, but Grandma Rosie shook her head.

  “Of course not. It’s just that the closed minds here wouldn’t appreciate my true genius.”

  “Yeah, that must be it,” I muttered.

  “Now, are you going to keep complaining about my actions, or are you going to help?”

  “I don’t see why I can’t do both at once,” I said. I made my way over to the squirrels, opened the cage, and gingerly picked one up. He was snoring lightly, which was absolutely adorable. I had never imagined squirrels would snore.

  The cat collar was definitely way too big for the squirrel, so I pointed my wand at it.

  “Rhea, mother of the gods, take this collar and make it smaller by half.”

  Immediately, the collar shrank to half the size it had been. I tried again. This time, when I made the collar as small as possible, it was just the right size for the squirrel. I slipped the collar onto it, and Grandma Rosie nodded. I was pleased for the squirrels’ sake that she had bought the kind of collar that snapped off if it caught on something. That was probably safer.

  “Good, now pass him over to me so I can attach the microphone to the collar.” Grandma Rosie pulled out a second bag, this one containing a handful of small microphones, kind of like the ones people on TV wore attached to their shirts. I watched dubiously as she attached the microphones.

  “I’m really not sure this is going to work.”

  “That’s your problem, Althea. You’re too negative. You never believe anything can work.”

  “Your problem is you’re insane,” I said, taking the squirrel back from Grandma Rosie and carefully casting an invisibility spell on just the collar—I didn’t want to make the whole squirrel invisible, after all.

  When I was finished, the squirrel looked completely normal. I smiled at him before waking him back up; he was pretty cute. As soon as I reversed the sleeping spell, I lowered the squirrel down to the ground and he ran into a nearby tree, chirping away with the sound of alarm I knew all too well.

  I made my way back to the cage to get to work on the second squirrel.

  This squirrel was smaller than the first, and when I slipped the collar over it, it was still too big.

  “Great,” I muttered. “That’s not going to work.”

  “I got it, don’t worry,” Grandma Rosie said happily, pulling out her wand.

  “Grandma, don’t!” I shouted, but it was too late. My grandmother had already cast an incantation, and the spell hit the squirrel.

  I gasped as the squirrel began to grow in front of me. It was like someone was blowing up a balloon. A balloon that grew to be about thirty feet tall before it stopped, and worse, whose eyelids were beginning to flutter. I had to rush backward to avoid getting crushed by the squirrel as it grew, and in doing so, I dropped my wand, which was immediately absorbed underneath the body of the growing squirrel.

  “Great,” I said. “Just great.”

  Chapter 2

  There was a popular question that made its way around the internet a few years ago: would you rather fight one horse-sized duck, or one hundred duck-sized horses?

  At that moment I was sure of one thing: I did not want to fight one elephant-sized squirrel. And yet, that was exactly what was about to go down.

  “I knew this was a bad idea. I just knew it.”

  “See? It was your bad juju. If you’d been a little more positive about everything, maybe that spell I cast would have ended better.”

  “How is this my fault? Why were you casting a spell, anyway? Isn’t the whole point of me being here so I can do the magic?”

  “I got bored,” Grandma Rosie replied with a shrug, and I shook my head, incredulous, then turned to focus on the way bigger issue: the giant squirrel that was just waking up.

  I steeled myself as the squirrel came to. I didn’t have a lot of options here.

  “Grandma, give me your wand,” I ordered. Grandma Rosie was about fifteen feet away from me, and she hurled her wand toward me like a javelin, but it still fell about five feet short. I dove forward to try and grab it, but before I was able to reach it, the squirrel stepped in front of me, blocking my path, and I fell headfirst into his giant furry leg.

  He screeched at me, and I darted away as fast as I could, adrenaline rushing through me. The squirrel looked down, then stepped toward me. If I had to guess, I would have said he was trying to crush me. That wasn’t ideal.

  “Grandma, run,” I shouted. She didn’t need to be told twice. Grandma Rosie made her way toward the trees with a dexterity that surprised me, given her age and usual shuffling gait, but there was no time to be impressed by my grandmother’s athleticism.

  Meanwhile, I was about to go toe to toe with a squirrel, one of nature’s most agile animals. Hopefully an adolescence spent playing way too much Dance Dance Revolution on a human-world video game system Willow got for her thirteenth birthday was about to come in handy.

  The squirrel tried to step on me again, and I darted to the left. The whole time my focus was on the wand, which was now about thirty feet from me. I not only had to get to it, and fast, but I had to get there without the squirrel stepping on it and crushing it. In the confusion, I had lost track of where my own wand was.

  I began running around in circles, doing my best to be unpredictable. The squirrel struggled to keep an eye on me, constantly trying to step on me but always missing. It seemed as though he wasn’t so used to his larger size, and a couple of times, if I wasn’t mistaken, he even came close to losing his balance.

  Was that the key? If I could make him fall over, then I could grab the wand.

  I decided that was the plan that was least likely to end with death by squirrel. I had to survive this simply on the basis that being crushed by a cute woodland creature was way too embarrassing a way to go. I’d never live it down. Or whatever the equivalent was when you were already dead.

  I darted from side to side as quickly as I could, and around the back of the squirrel, trying to keep him on his toes, trying to make him move his feet and his head until he finally toppled over.

  He came close a few times, but it wasn’t working.

  “You’re not going to outrun him. You’ve never run more than a mile in your life,” Grandma Rosie called out from the woods.

  “Thanks, Grandma, super helpful,” I shouted back. “I need to confuse him into falling over.”

  “Oh, well why didn’t you say so?” Grandma Rosie replied. I darted away from her at the same time as she grabbed a small rock off the ground and hurled it toward the squirrel. Sure, now she had a good arm with solid aim. Where was that skill when she was throwing me the wand?

  On the bright side, the throw worked. Surprised, the squirrel spun around to see what had hit him, and in doing so completely lost his footing.

  “Timber!” I called out with a grin, rushing toward the wand as the squirrel went crashing to the ground. I immediately cast another sleeping spell on the giant squirrel before a second spell quickly brought him back down to size.

  “Good, now you can fix up that collar and we can get going on the third one,” Grandma Rosie said with a nod, as if nothing at all had happened. I looked at her incredulously.

  About fifteen minutes later, we had managed to get collars and microphones on all the squirrels, and I was starting to hope there had been a mix-up at the hospital when I was born and that I actually shared zero DNA with Grandma Rosie. She was now fidgeting with her phone, trying to sort out the feeds she was getting from all of the microphones.

  “How do you know your squirrels are going to hang out near town, anyway?” I asked. “There are thousands of squirrels in the Mt. Rheanier area. Maybe all you’re going to get is the sound of leaves rustling in the wind and whiskey jacks calling out.”

  “Give me more credit than that. The squirrels I captured all came from the birdfeeders around the coffee shop, which means they’re used to eating from there. They’ll go back there for more food, which means I’ll
get all the gossip then.”

  Alright, I had to admit that was pretty good thinking. The Magic Brewmstick was a prime location in town for paranormals to get together and gossip, which meant Grandma Rosie would probably be able to establish her dominance among the older witches in town fairly quickly.

  “What are your plans for tonight, anyway?” Grandma Rosie asked, and I shrugged.

  “I don’t really have any.” I had been feeling a little bit lost lately. A few weeks ago, I had lost my job due to no fault of my own, and after solving a murder, I had gotten a half million abras from the grateful family. I had initially planned on saving half the money to buy my mom a better house—one of my ultimate goals in life—and to split the rest between my own savings and something to live on for the six months until I could retake the test to become a magical fixer. But two weeks in, I was finding that the idle life wasn’t for me.

  I was bored, basically.

  Unfortunately, there weren’t all that many jobs I was qualified for. Due to my tendencies as a teenager to enjoy myself rather than study, my mark on the final witch’s exam wasn’t fantastic, which meant that I was only qualified to do low-paying jobs that didn’t require advanced magical skills.

  Grandma Rosie shrugged. “You’ll figure something out. I wouldn’t worry too much about your career right now. I know your mother wishes you had your life sorted out already, like Leda does, but you don’t and that’s fine. In five months you’ll probably pass the exam, and then you’ll be a magical fixer.”

  “Thanks,” I said to Grandma Rosie with a smile. That might have been one of the sanest things I had ever heard her say. It wasn’t that I had no ambition. I actually had quite a lot of things I wanted to achieve in my life. Only, a combination of my laziness as a teenager and the tendency for my mouth to get me in trouble kept on getting in the way of my achieving them. I really hoped she was right.