Chapter One
I studied the leaf-green tint building in the potion bottle. I’d thought it would be darker, maybe even forest, considering the ingredients, but you can never tell how a potion will react to charging. Beside me, Thorn’s tail flicked once.
“Shouldn’t it be darker by now?” I wondered aloud.
“I suggested more nettle.” Thorn gave his left paw a desultory lick. “And you’ve added a bit too much turmeric. Good effect, but less intense color. Obviously.”
I rolled my eyes. But he was right, and there was no denying it. “Well, at least the color is nice. And the effects should be sustained and noticeable.”
I bent over the worktable to make a notation in my lab book. As I did, my eye landed on the clock. “Oh my goodness. Is it that late already? I’m going to be late for my lunch with Faye.” I glanced at my familiar, a huge, steel-gray Maine Coon cat. (Please don’t tell him I used the term ‘familiar’. He gets testy.) We’d only been together for a few months, but I had already learned to trust his instincts. Mostly. “We’re going to talk about our entries for the competition.” Stripping off my gloves, I hurried to the herbarium’s large porcelain sink.
“I don’t know why you insist on entering that contest. You know my tail has been tingling every time you talk about it.”
Fighting the urge to roll my eyes again, I sighed. “I really don’t want to hear anymore about your weird tail issues.”
“They are not weird. They are premonitions.” His tail twitched. “And they are never wrong.”
Now I couldn’t help it. My eyes rolled. “What, exactly, do you think is going to happen at a potions competition? One that, if you remember, will earn me entry into the national competition, which could get me an all-expenses-paid trip to Alnwick Poison Garden in Northumberland.”
“If you want to go to the poison garden, go. You have the money.”
“Char has the money,” I corrected him. “And it’s not unlimited. I am not charging the company account for personal travel.”
He passed a damp paw over his already clean face. I suspected it was to hide a whisker twitch, his way of saying he didn’t like how something smelled. This time it was my resistance to using my sister’s resources instead of my own.
“I don’t see why not. From what I’m told — by your sister, I might add — you earned that bonus every bit as much as she did.” He sent another paw across his face. “Even she doesn’t understand your insistence that the money is solely hers.”
“The fact that she almost died earning it might have something to do with it.” Memories of the dark museum and Char fighting for her life flooded my mind. But that was a story from another time. Char’s kind of adventure, not mine.
Pushing the memories aside, I hurried up the stairs to my room. I favor cargo shorts and oversized t-shirts for lab work — roomy and equipped with multiple pockets — but I wasn’t about to go out to lunch in them.
Thorn padded down the hall behind me, self-assured in ways I was quickly becoming accustomed to. “You give yourself too little credit. You are the reason your sister made it out of that situation alive. She owes you.”
Oh, for Lugh’s sake. “She does not. Char has saved me any number of times.”
“Yes,” he agreed easily, but I wasn’t fooled. There would be more. There always was. This time was no different. “From situations she put you in.”
I brushed the comment aside with a wave of my hand.
“That doesn’t mean either of us owes the other anything. It’s what sisters do. What family does. They look out for each other.” I glared at the cat as he curled up on my bed. “I’m going to take a shower. You are not invited.”
Thorn twitched his whiskers. “As it should be, I’m sure.”
Thirty minutes later, I hustled out the door in a tailored denim skirt and my favorite Three Witches and a Wolf band t-shirt. Thorn appeared to be asleep on the bed, but with him, one never knew. At least he’d stopped complaining about the competition.
For now.
Angelica Under Glass releases August 28 on your favorite retailers.