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The voice that had reached me through my soul had felt gentle and calm, maybe more feminine. What with her abundance of magic, there was only one name that sprung to mind.
“How do you feel about Hecate?” I asked, running a hand over her silky fur. “Goddess of magic?”
The Grimalkin purred. Well, that was as good a sign as any.
On the scruffy vanity against the window, I caught sight of a potion bottle filled with pink liquid. Grandmother had left my daily potion out for me to take. This was why I kept all my important things on the roof; she could and did walk in here whenever she felt like it. It would have been nice to have some privacy, but then, this wasn’t my house. One day, though. One day.
I walked over to the vanity and reached for the potion; I’d be in huge trouble if I didn’t take it. But before I could pick it up, Hecate jumped up on the vanity and batted the bottle clear off the table. I gasped as the vial smashed on the stone slabs, the potion exploding up the leg of the vanity.
“What are you doing?” I looked around for something to clear up the mess with and settled for a ratty towel draped on the radiator. “I needed to take that!”
Sweat beaded on my forehead as I cleaned up the potion and collected the pieces of glass into the towel. Would missing it this one day make a difference? Would it set me back even further than I already was?
Hecate jumped down next to me and pressed a paw to my forearm, and yet another message emerged in my soul.
That potion is harmful to you.
“Harmful?” I winced as a piece of glass dug into my fingertip and blood beaded on my skin. “Without that potion, I’ll never get my power.”
Surely a Grimalkin of all things would know things like that.
I hurried to the kitchen and emptied the glass shards into the bin, careful to cover them up with other garbage. If grandmother found out, I’d be toast.
Hecate padded into the kitchen as I shifted from foot to foot, my hands balled up at my mouth. Regardless if she found out or not, if I didn’t take that potion, it might take even longer for me to get my power. I had to take one. Would there be another in the potion lab?
“Yes, you had better help me find one,” I agreed, as Hecate followed me into the living room. “This is your fault, after all.”
I pushed open the panel that doubled as a door to the potion room and slipped inside. I wasn’t exactly supposed to be in there by myself, but I didn’t have much choice. Grandmother wouldn’t understand even if I explained, so I just had to fix it myself.
I rummaged through the shelves of potion bottles, all labelled with beautifully calligraphic writing. But my potion wasn’t there. Even when I peered into the locked glass cabinet looming over the spell circle and cauldron, I couldn’t see any potion that even resembled the one I took.
Did grandmother make it fresh every day? That didn’t seem like her. She stockpiled for days, and longer if she had important engagements going on.
Hecate padded over to a section of the wall between the glass cabinet and the ingredients shelves and pressed a paw to the wall panel. With a creak, it opened up, just like the potion room door did. There was a secret room within a secret room in here?
I stepped over the melted candles around the spell circle and peered through the gap in the door. But Hecate was braver than me and skittered inside. The moment she crossed the threshold, the candles on the walls lit themselves, casting an eerie light throughout the room.
I edged in a little nearer. It didn’t look like it was meant to be a room, and perhaps it had once been a corridor. Long and thin shelves lined the walls, full to the brim with potions and jars of ingredients. What was this place? Extra storage?
But Hecate made her way down the hall and jumped up onto a shelf stacked with potion bottles...my potion bottles. Why would grandmother keep them in here?
I joined Hecate and found not only the stockpile of my potions, but the ingredients next to them. Grandmother’s system was that if she needed potions regularly, she would put the potions and the ingredients together on the same shelf so they were easily findable if she needed to make more at a moment’s notice. But considering the dozens of potions on the shelf, it didn’t look like she’d need to do that any time soon.
But as I looked a little closer at the ingredients, my heart began to pound. Dried strangulating knotweed? Why would that need to go into the potion? As far as I knew, that ingredient suppressed magic, not enhanced it. And a pot of crushed bay leaves, which possessed similar properties.
Hecate stretched a paw toward me, and I met her halfway, her message coming through to me the moment her paw touched my hand.
This potion isn’t going to help you. Please don’t take it.
I swallowed, hard, a conflict battling inside me. Grandmother had never liked me, but she surely wanted me to get my power? I was a burden to her, after all. She wanted me out of here as much as I did. Maybe even more. Okay, maybe not that much.
But something was off about my potion being in this hidden room, and even more so the ingredients that appeared to be in them. Was Hecate right? Was this potion harming me? But why would my grandmother do something like that, especially when she didn’t want me under her roof?
My thoughts were interrupted by a soft thumping somewhere behind me, so gentle that I wondered if it was actually my own pulse. But Hecate’s ears twitched in the same direction, and she placed her paws on my shoulder, stretching tall as if searching for something.
Any curiosity that had piqued in me smashed into a million pieces when the creak of the front door opening sounded.
Chapter Four
