Trouble's Brewing (Stirring Up Trouble) (24 page)

When Dad started opening his present, I slipped my phone from my pocket and checked the texts. One from Milo, but the other was from my mother.

And there it was, I realized. The first sign of impending doom.
Zoe, did you… did you do something
?

Five minutes later as we helped clean up the wrapping paper, a second text came through.
Zoe Miller! U R N so much trouble.

Why was she so angry? It had to be going well. I mean, I had adjusted the dose. I had learned from my mistake with Jasmine.

Two minutes after that, my dad received a text. He read it and gave me that disappointed parent look. “I’m afraid we’ll have to cut this short,” he said, standing up. “Annie needs Zoe home right away.”

He and Sheree shared a look, and she immediately got the message that I was in trouble for something.

Jake jumped to his feet. “Already? I thought you were staying late.” He leaned in close and said, “We were supposed to have some special Zoe and Jake time.”

“Sorry,” I said to him. “I really am. You have no idea how sorry.” I grabbed my purse.

“Don’t forget your presents,” Sheree said, rising and rushing to load my gifts from her, Dad, and Jake into a large gift bag.

“Call me later,” Jake said, after hugging me tight.

“We’ll be back in town before you know it,” Sheree said, handing me the gift bag. “Have a wonderful Christmas.”

“Let’s go, Zoe,” Dad said.

Sheree planted a big kiss on Dad’s lips. “I’ll be waiting up,” she said.

The glare Dad sent me would have terrified me had I not already been doomed.

I followed him to the car.

While I waited for Dad to get in, I read the latest text. From Finn.
Zoe, I’m on my way back. I’ve talked to the Council. I’m very disappointed in you
.

And one from Mom.
U R Grounded 4ever
.

As soon as Dad climbed in, he said, “Zoe, what did you do this time?”

“I gave Mom a pheromone potion so that some of the guys at the party would ask her out.”

“Zoe! She could have been hurt!”

“I think she’s okay. She has been texting.”

When we walked in the front door, we saw Mom sitting on the couch with Dave down on one knee on the floor beside her. He held a cotton ball in one hand and a bottle of first aid cream in the other.

Her makeup was smeared, and the skirt of her dress was torn and dirty. Her hair was too mussed for there not to have been some sort of scuffle.

Dave dabbed at her leg with the cotton ball as we rushed over to them.

“Annie!” Dad said. “Annie, what happened?”

Mom glanced at Dave. “Thank you so much for everything, Dave, but I’m okay now. You should get back to the party.”

Dave stood and offered my father his hand. “Good to see you again, John.”

Next to Dave, my dad looked kind of old.

I was dying to hear what happened, but none of us could talk freely with Dave around.

“Thank you, Dave,” Dad said. “We can take it from here.”

Dave glanced down at Mom as if he weren’t quite sure about leaving her just yet. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, turning back to Dad. “They just… attacked her. Like she was covered in meat.”

Oh holy crud. My mother was attacked? “Mom! I’m so sorry.”

My mother speared me with a chilling glare. She didn’t say anything though. She couldn’t speak yet.

Dad clapped Dave on the back in one of those buddy-buddy moves and guided him toward the front door.

“Mom,” I said, my voice barely audible in the face of her simmering rage.

Dad shut the door behind Dave, and my mother popped up from the sofa like a jack-in-the-box. Then, she started yelling. “Zoe Miller! How could you! And you lied to me. The cat damage to the house wasn’t from any eye of newt potion. You did this to the cat! And then you did this to me!”

“Annie,” Dad said. “Annie, what happened?”

“Mom, I’m so sorry, but did it work?” I couldn’t tell by her appearance. I hadn’t expected her to be physically attacked.

“Oh, yes, Zoe. Every dog for miles found me.”

Just the dogs? “Weren’t any of them cute?”

Mom laughed. “I don’t know, Zoe. I guess that little Pomeranian would have been cuddly if it hadn’t been abusing my leg.”

My jaw dropped. She made it sound like—. “Mom! You mean they were literally dogs. Bark-bark sniff-sniff dogs?”

“Yes! They were furry four-legged animals. And they were after me like I was raw hamburger.”

Uh oh. She meant dogs. “Did they bite you?” I asked in horror.

“No. The black lab did tackle me, but he mostly licked my face while I screamed for help.”

My father began to laugh.

“John!” Mom shrieked, smacking my father on the arm. “It isn’t funny.”

“I know, Annie. I can’t help it. I got tickled by the image of you fighting off an amorous lab.”

“Mom! I would never send dogs after you. I was trying to brew a potion to attract men. I wanted you to meet people.” What had happened with my potion? There was only one possibility. Milo had given me the hair from Darlene’s father. Had he messed up and given me dog hair? I whipped out my phone and texted,
Does Darlene have a dog
?

“Yes. Martin suspected as much. He figured it out right away. As soon as I called him from the bathroom at the party. As I tried to clean the doggie spit off my face, two more dogs appeared outside the bathroom window. I started to panic, but Martin told me how to tone it down temporarily. I had Dave track down some vanilla extract and bring me the orange juice.”

“It really worked?”

“Yes. Thank goodness. I was pretty shaken up, so Dave drove me home.”

“I’m so sorry, Mom. I messed up.”

“Just be glad your mother wasn’t hurt.” Dad put his arm around Mom.

“I’m fine, John,” Mom said as she shrugged out of his embrace. “Martin should be here soon. You are in big trouble, Zoe. With me. With Martin, and with the Council. I cannot believe you lied to me.”

“The cats weren’t that aggressive with the weaker dose. I’m not sure why the dogs were worse.”

My phone beeped. Milo’s text read,
Yes, why
?

Crud. Apparently a question I should have asked days ago.

“I can’t believe you experimented on your mother and your pet, Zoe,” Dad said. “How many dogs showed up, Annie?”

I cringed and slipped my phone back into my pocket. “I don’t know. Maybe twenty.”

“But there were only five cats. I didn’t think it would be that bad.”

“Where was the cat when you did this?” Dad asked.

“Inside the house.”

“And the male cats?”

“They were stuck outside. They couldn’t get in.”

Dad pinned me with a disappointed look. “You used faulty comparison data. You didn’t factor in your mother’s proximity to the dogs versus the cat’s isolation in the house. Without walls and door between your mother and the animals, your potion would have a much stronger effect on the dogs.”

I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid.

“It’s a good thing the potion didn’t work as you planned. Your mother might have been hurt if grown men started jumping on her and licking her face.”

Mom smiled at Dad’s silly joke. “I doubt they would have reacted exactly like the dogs.”

“We’ll never know,” Dad said in a serious voice.

“You do know what I’m most upset about,” Mom said.

“The lying.” I couldn’t meet her eyes. I had lied, and I’d know Mom would hate it.

“The lying,” Mom agreed.

“Are you going to punish me?”

“By the time the Council and Martin get finished with you, I doubt I’ll need to. Plus there’s always the punishment you’ll have by morning for your self-serving potion.”

Yay. I had failed, and I was still getting punished.

“Do you need anything, Annie? Is there anything I can help with before I leave?”

“No, John, but thanks for bringing her home.”

“Bye, Dad,” I said, giving him a hug. Who knew if I’d have arms to hug with by morning.

“Behave,” he ordered.

“I will.” For a while at least. I didn’t need more trouble.

Dad left, and I turned to my mother. “You know I didn’t mean for dogs to drool all over you.”

“I know,” she said. She hugged me to her and her odd movements made me pull away.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to rub the dog hair and slobber on you so you’ll suffer too.”

“Ewww!” I stepped back a few feet.

“Maybe I’ll just borrow a dog and use the potion on you. Then you’ll see how much fun it is to drown in drool.”

I shuddered. “Please no.”

Finn texted that it would be after midnight before he got to our house. Mom and I eventually fell asleep on the couch.

When Finn rang the doorbell, I woke quickly despite my exhaustion. The cable box read 2:10.

Chapter Sixteen

“Will the Council come tomorrow?” Mom asked.

“No. They’ve sent me as their emissary.” Finn’s pained expression told me he wasn’t happy about his role. “And the news is bad, Zoe. They want to take your powers until you turn twenty-one.”

“Oh, Zoe,” Mom groaned.

Twenty-one? It might as well be forty. I wasn’t even sixteen yet.

“Before you panic, I do have an idea. I’d like to come up with a counterproposal. Something reasonably harsh that will show you are taking this seriously. Something that they will be inclined to consider.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Let’s do that.”

“Don’t get your hopes up too much. I’m not sure they’ll budge on their position.”

“Let’s get some notepads and move to the dining room table,” Mom suggested.

We sat around the table, awake after midnight because of me. Finn and Mom were trying to protect me even though I’d caused them nothing but trouble. “I’m sorry.”

“We know, dear,” Finn said without looking up from his notepad. He was busily scribbling away.

“Sometimes you just don’t think things through,” Mom added.

“I know.”

“Here are my thoughts so far,” Finn said. “I have been hearing that they are rather desperate for volunteers at The Hospital over Christmas.”

The Hospital?

“Oh,” Mom said. “The Hospital. I don’t know if Zoe has heard of it, and I don’t know if she’s old enough to handle what she might see there.”

“What is it?” I thought I knew about everything by now.

“You and your mother have experienced rather minor punishments for brewing self-serving potions. You’ve been quite fortunate. Thus far,” he said with a pointed look at me. “For children who have committed multiple offenses and for many unfortunate teens and adults, the punishments can be debilitating.”

“Like what happened to you?” I couldn’t be around rotting flesh. I’d never be able to do it without vomiting.

“Yes, but also a number of less horrific, though serious, complications. Some of these witches require medical care and constant monitoring while they recover, and because they aren’t able to work off their punishment, they last longer.”

“I’ve never heard of The Hospital.”

“We don’t generally reveal the possibility until we have to. Children who tend to get into trouble with magic learn about it quickly from their peers. You were relatively well behaved as a child, other than the one incident at camp.”

“It sounds like a scary place.”

“You may see witches on oxygen and respirators because they no longer have the lung capacity for their body habitus. I’ve seen more than one adult submerged throughout their stay because they had only gills to use for breathing. Last spring, a child was admitted with a lengthy giraffe neck which prevented him from walking around. He couldn’t support the weight of the neck and was bedridden. The child had to be fed with a special tube because the swallowing mechanisms did not work properly.”

This was not sounding like a happy place.

“But if I volunteer there, will that satisfy the non-selfish component of the volunteer work?”

“Yes. We’ll mask your identity so there will not be any benefit to you as far as contacts. As for the experience, I’ll emphasize the chilling effect it may have on your behavior when I present it to the Council.”

It totally would give me a lot of reasons not to misuse my magic.

“Could you stand it, Zoe?” Mom asked.

“I think so. I can do almost anything to avoid losing my magic.”

“How long would she need to stay there?” Mom asked.

Finn thought for a moment. “Their need for volunteers and the fact that it’s Christmas will go a long way. I think we should offer ten days though. She could leave later today and then return on New Year’s Eve.”

A lump formed in my throat as I realized I was going to lose my Christmas. No rushing down the stairs on Christmas morning to check my stockings and open my presents. “Okay. Let’s try it.”

“Oh, Zoe,” Mom said.

It hit me that I hadn’t only ruined my Christmas but hers as well. All for my mother to get chased by dogs. Tears started to form and I struggled to stop them. I couldn’t speak without going into full cry mode, so I didn’t say anything.

“If you’re sure, Zoe, we’ll go ahead and include ten days in our proposal. I think that will catch their attention. I am also going to disclose the recent events with the unicorn substitution. It is a bit of a risk. I’m only telling the Council, but each and every person who knows increases the chances that the wrong person may find out.”

“The Council knows that you made the discovery though,” Mom said. “And you haven’t encountered any danger.”

“True,” Finn said. “I haven’t had any problems, but I don’t want to downplay the risks. I want everyone on the same page when we go forward with our counterproposal.”

Finally able to speak again, I said, “I think it’s a good idea. I trust your judgment, Finn, and whatever you think will help is fine.”

“Then I guess we have a plan,” Finn said. “I’m going to transport back to the Council. Anything else I should know before I go.”

“Zoe, is there anything we don’t know about?” Mom asked.

“No.”

“And if they agree to this, are you sure you can stand ten days at The Hospital?”