Trouble's Brewing (Stirring Up Trouble) (14 page)

My mother stirred on the couch.

“Mom, are you awake?”

“Hi, sweetie. I’m awake.”

I set my backpack in the foyer and moved closer. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said, pulling herself into a sitting position. “What time is it?”

She looked better. She must have showered and washed her hair. And of course, the absence of the rooster comb helped. “Three-forty.”

“Two more hours,” she moaned.

“For what? The healing potion?”

She nodded. “I can take it at five-thirty.”

I started to say that it wasn’t too much longer, but her expression made me wary of saying anything encouraging. “Are we going to be able to have Milo and his family come? How far behind are you?” Mom kept a detailed schedule of things like holidays and planning for company. No telling how many “to do” items had gone undone in the last three days.

“We’ll make it work, Zoe. Finn already brewed the potion. I’ll take it, and then I’ll go to bed. By tomorrow morning, I should be back in action. I had to cancel the housekeeper today, but she thinks she can come late tomorrow afternoon. What about you? How did your test go?”

“Okay. I have to finish the chemistry paper tonight. Tomorrow I should be able to help you get things ready. I can skip school on Wednesday if you want me to.”

“Nice try,” Mom said. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“If we can get everything done tomorrow night, do you think I’ll have time to work on the unicorn horn substitution? I didn’t get to talk to you about the breakthrough Dad and I made. I’ve been dying to get some limestone and try it out.”

“Limestone?”

“Yeah. It’s what most chalk is made of.”

“Well, don’t forget you have tutoring tomorrow after school.”

“I won’t.” I glanced at her table full of supplies. “Can I get you anything?”

“No,” Mom said. “I’m going to go upstairs to bed until I can take the potion. Can you order pizza?”

“Sure.” Pizza sounded good. “Should I wake you up at five-thirty?”

She stood clutching her blanket in one arm and the pillow in the other. “Please.”

“I’m sorry about this morning, Mom.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault, hon. It was mine.”

“I should have checked.” She rubbed her head.

“No harm done. Well, no long-lasting harm.”

After watching Mom stumble off to climb the stairs, I set up my laptop and everything I needed for my paper. Then I ordered my pizza.

My chemistry teacher had assigned the paper to be nice. Seriously. She thought she was being nice. Most of the kids in the class had low grades on the tests and some had trouble with the lab work too. I had almost a perfect grade, and if I wasn’t careful, this stupid paper would wreck it.

I had all my sources, and I had written the paper. I needed to finish the citations and the bibliography—my least favorite part. I thought it might take me four hours, three if I was lucky. No matter how hard I tried, I always forgot to write the page numbers down on at least one source.

The doorbell rang. My tummy was rumbling. I had picked at my lunch. Mom hadn’t given me any money to use, so I grabbed some cash out of the Papa Smurf cookie jar that my mother kept hidden in one of the cabinets. She didn’t hide it because of the money inside but because she didn’t want Papa Smurf marring her designer kitchen.

The pizza guy was about forty and pudgy. He handed me the pizza, took his money, and left.

My cell rang, and I saw that it was Dad. “Hi,” I said.

“You don’t sound very happy.”

“It’s been a rough day. I’ll tell you about it when I can.”

“Is your mother okay?”

“No, but she will be soon.”

“This should cheer you up. I was able to find some powdered limestone.”

Limestone. I grinned. “Already? When do I get it?”

“Not tonight,” Dad said. “But I’ll get it to you soon.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“You’re welcome. Tell me if I need to help with Annie.”

As if he could do anything. “I will. Thanks.”

After scarfing down a couple of pieces, I stuck the box on top of the fridge and checked the time. I had thirty minutes before waking my mother.

After sitting on the couch, Mom poured a small amount of soup into a coffee mug and added the potion. “Here goes nothing.”

Please work.

She chugged the whole cup down, and then slammed it onto the coffee table.

I stood there, watching her closely.

Mom sat, head cocked, waiting.

“Well?”

She reached up to her head and then to her throat. “I think it worked. My headache’s gone, and my throat stopped hurting. I still feel like crap, but after the day I’ve had, I think that’s probably normal.”

“You want some pizza?”

“I guess I should.”

I walked toward the kitchen to fetch the pizza box. “Should I nuke it?”

“Nah. Just give me two pieces. Then I’m going to bed.” She took a piece and asked, “How’s the paper going?”

“It’s going.”

“Was this the chemistry paper?”

“Yes. It was interminable.”

“You know you’ll get an A. You could settle for less than perfect.”

“Mother! You are every bit as obsessive as me.”

She sighed. “I know.”

“You wouldn’t seriously advise me to give less than my best on my schoolwork.”

“Probably not.”

I waited for her to finish and go back upstairs before I dove back into my paper.

My phone rang as I finished the third page.

Finn?

I hit accept and said, “Hi.”

“Hello, Zoe. I’m calling to check on your mother. Is she doing better?”

“Yes. It worked this time. Thanks for helping today.”

“Not a problem. In fact, it was unfortunate that you weren’t able to observe today. You would have found the research interesting.”

Stupid lit exam.

“We can discuss it tomorrow afternoon. I don’t mean to keep you from your studies. If you and your mother are well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“We’re fine. Thanks, Finn.”

School lasted forever on Tuesday. I turned in my paper, trying not to let Mrs. Salcedo see my irritation. She’d noticed my dismay when she’d assigned the paper, and I didn’t want to make her mad. I needed her recommendations for college.

At lunch, Jake was making up a test so I got stuck with Anya.

I chewed my ham and cheese sandwich while Anya messed with my phone.

“I can’t believe you still have the old iPhone,” she said as she scanned through my music.

“What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving?” I asked to distract her from another rant about my phone’s failings.

She shrugged. “The usual.”

“Sounds like fun,” I mumbled. I’d been carefully monitoring every word out of my mouth for two weeks so that Anya wouldn’t find out about Milo’s visit.

She pushed the phone back across the table. “You seriously need some new music.”

I needed something new, all right, but it wasn’t music.

I hoped my mother had gotten things done today at home. I was only going to manage to squeak out an hour or two per day for my experiments while Milo was here. If Mom got a lot done, she wouldn’t need my help tonight. I could hit the limestone after my session with Finn.

When I got inside, I heard my mother in the kitchen and smelled something yummy. Spicy, like nutmeg. She was cooking for Thanksgiving, an encouraging sign.

“Smells good, Mom,” I said as I walked in.

Only it wasn’t Mom. Well, not just Mom. Finn, wearing one of my mother’s aprons, was rolling out some dough on the kitchen island, and my mother was chopping apples.

“Hi, honey! Martin offered to help me get started on some of the Thanksgiving dishes.”

I was about to say that was nice when I realized what she’d said. Martin. Who the heck was Martin? I looked at Finn. Dr. Martin Finnegan. She meant Finn. I raised a brow. “Martin?”

“I gave your mother leave to call me by my given name.”

“He hasn’t heard anyone call him, Martin, in a while.”

“You may call me Martin as well, but I’ve grown used to Finn.”

“Finn’s good,” I said. “I don’t want to accidentally call you Martin in front of Anya.” I’d managed to consistently remember to call him Finn. To think of him as Finn.

“Zoe, we decided to pre-chop all of the vegetables for the dressing and other dishes. I can put some of the dishes together tomorrow and cook them on Thursday. It’s a shame Marjorie won’t be here until Wednesday, or she could help with the cooking. I’m fortunate that Martin enjoys cooking.”

Theoretically Martin was probably more formal than Finn. So why did it strike me as too intimate for Mom to be calling him that? Martin sounded older than Finn. I didn’t want my mother to forget that Finn looked to all the world like a teenager. And I didn’t want her to forget he’d been a wrinkly old man a few months ago.

I know they were both probably lonely. They didn’t have much of a social life, either one of them. I got the need for a friend thing. I wasn’t so sure it was healthy for Mom. Mom hadn’t been dating, and she had been utterly betrayed by my father. Finn wasn’t ugly. Finn was sadly approaching beautiful. My mother could develop feelings for him. Glancing at them working busily on the Thanksgiving desserts, I wasn’t sure she hadn’t already started thinking of Finn in a dangerous way. My mother was too vulnerable. I didn’t want her dating the potions master, but I didn’t want her getting her heart broken either.

One thing was for sure. I had to find my mother a date. An age-appropriate date. I could enlist Milo’s help. He would understand, and I could tell him the full story. Jake would help too, and he wouldn’t be suspicious about my motives. He’d think I wanted my mother to find love. A totally normal thing for a teenage girl to do. I could put Camille on it too. Not Anya though. She might spill it to my mother, and my mother could not know.

“We have a few more minutes of cooking, Zoe. Then you and Martin can get to work.”

“Did you guys make anything for dinner tonight?” I asked, looking around the kitchen.

“Oh no,” my mother said. “I got so caught up in Thanksgiving that I didn’t buy groceries for tonight.”

“Oh dear,” Finn said. “I’m afraid tonight’s meal didn’t occur to me either.”

“I guess we can eat something frozen. Or order pizza. Again.” For the first time ever, I did not want any pizza.

Mom set down the knife and went to the freezer. “I don’t even know what’s in here at this point.” She rummaged around for a few minutes. Then she pulled out a frozen bag of ravioli. “Oh look! You love these.” She shut the freezer and moved to the pantry cabinet. “If we have some sauce, we’re in business.” She held up a jar of spaghetti sauce. “I can make a salad. A pretty good salad since we just chopped up every vegetable known to man.”

My stomach growled with happiness. I did love Mom’s ravioli. “Do we have cheese to melt on top.”

Mom laughed. “I have five different cheeses.”

“I’m starving,” I said. “Can we have dinner early?”

“Sure. If it’s okay with Martin. Can you take a dinner break and eat with us?”

“I would like nothing more.”

My mother beamed at him. “Wonderful.”

Uh oh. Was I already too late? Maybe I was overreacting. Yesterday, she’d been sick as a dog and had sported a rooster comb. Maybe she’s excited to be back to normal.

“In fact,” Finn said. “We can work at the dining room table. We’re not brewing anything today.”

“Then I’ll get to work on the ravioli as soon as I get these pies in the oven.”

“Do we get pie for dessert?”

“Only if it doesn’t do well.”

I made a face.

“Don’t hope that my pies are losers!”

“I won’t.” Maybe. Probably. Possibly.

“Fine,” Mom said. “We’ll cut one for dessert.”

Yes! I was going to get a real dinner and some pie.

“Shall we adjourn to the dining room, Zoe?”

“Certainly,” I said. I grabbed a bottle of water and a can of soda for myself. I had stayed up too late working on the paper, and I didn’t want to fade during the lesson. I needed caffeine plus hydration. “You want anything?”

Finn paused. “I suppose a bottle of water would do.”

I reached for one and handed it to Finn.

Chapter Ten

“You were going to tell me about yesterday,” I reminded him after we sat down at the table.

“Yes, I was,” he said. “Yesterday’s mishap was fascinating. I’d never seen that particular result before. I believe that your brewing skills resulted in a particularly powerful potion, albeit not the potion you were going for. You must have managed to bring that potion off the heat at precisely the right moment. The immediate addition to the soup and the rapid administration to your mother also played a role. Why do you think the result was the rooster comb?”

I’d been thinking about this. “The chicken soup? I’m glad she didn’t end up with chicken wings or a beak.”

“Agreed,” he said. “Your mother was fortunate in the manifestation of the potion, whether she realized it at the time, or not. I believe that yesterday’s mishap may yield some important information once we study it.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s say you need an ingredient that you don’t have. Could you brew yesterday’s potion, and administer it in some related substance? If you were out of cat’s whiskers, could you fine-tune the potion to give you the cat’s whiskers?”

“By ‘give’ you mean make you grow some cat’s whiskers on your own face? Yuck.”

“What if you needed the cat’s whiskers to save your boyfriend’s dog?”

“I didn’t remember telling you about that.”

“I did my homework, Zoe.”

“Mom told you. But yes, I see your point. I would have given that a try for Indiana. If I had to. But I have easy access to cats.”

Finn shook his head. “Then think of another potion ingredient. One that is rare.”

“What if you end up with the chicken wings and don’t have the arms you need to brew the potion?”

“Exactly! You would never do this alone. And not until it’s further tested.”

“Wouldn’t you be taking a big risk? Even if it were tested.”