Page 25 of Potion Sickness

“Until the weight comes back,” Annabel says, unwrapping goblets and setting them in a row. “I have a set of brass scale weights. They belonged to my grandmother. Two weeks ago the smallest one disappeared.”

“We don’t know for sure it was him,” Addie argues.

“I don’t know anyone else with a penchant for shiny objects and a documented history of thievery.”

“I didn’t take it,” Bandit says through the gap.

“Then it will turn up.”

“Things go missing all the time,” Bandit says.

“Of course they do,” Englebert says. “When one plays host to burglars.”

I unpack while they argue. Dana numbered the base of every goblet with a strip of masking tape. Folded into the top of the first box, she left a diagram of the banquet table, every place marked with a number and a name. A note in the corner says that any unnumbered cups were spares, not set at the table.

Annabel studies the map. “I want to hire her,” she says.

“Get in line.”

Annabel sets the map where both of us can see it, pulls her stool up to the bench, and picks up the first goblet.

Her method isn’t what I expected. I think part of me was braced for candles, or handwaving, or at least some sort of chant. Instead, she holds the cup in both hands, closes her eyes, brings it to her nose, and breathes in slowly.

“The rim tells you what went in last,” she says. “The bowl tells you what’s been in before. The base tells you about the hands, about the intent behind the magic.” She sets the cup down and opens her eyes. “Number six. There’s been a sleep draught in this cup. Valerian base, decent work.” She turns the cup over and reads the tape. “But it’s old. Whoever lent this cup to the theater dosed a nightcap in it, sometime before last summer.”

“You can smell a sleep draught from a year ago?”

“It’s not smelling, really. Not quite,” she says, handing the cup to Addie. “Shelf by the window. That’ll be the done pile. Mari, next.”

I hand her number eleven, and we find a rhythm. I unwrap and pass, she reads, Addie ferries and keeps the log. Annabel dictates, Addie writes, tongue between her teeth, in pencil, in a composition book, in letters that started too large that have to shrink to fit as she goes along.

The problem becomes clear within the first few cups.

“Number three. A cold remedy. Elderberry and pine, maybe twenty years back, and under that, something older I can’t pull apart.” Cup down, next cup. “Number nineteen. A blessing of some kind, the kind you’d say over a toast. Faded almost to nothing. And a cordial, and some cough syrup, I think. The kind from the drug store, which is definitely not my area of expertise.” Next. “Twenty-two. Oh, this one’s been busy.” She holds it out to me. “Do you get that?”

I smell it. It smells like a metal cup.

“There are at least five different workings in that cup, but the newest one is older than we are.” She takes it back and looks down the row of wrapped shapes still waiting. “That’s the trouble, I guess. We’re in Duskboro. Half of these goblets have been in witch families for generations. Everybody in this town has, at some point, drunk a potion out of a goblet, and the goblets remember all of it.”

“How can you tell what’s new and what’s old?”

“Newer remnants are louder,” she says. “Old residue is like… faded wallpaper. New residue is like a fresh coat of paint.”

We work through the boxes cup by cup, and the log fills up with a detailed history of Duskboro’s potion consumption patterns. More cold remedies, more sleep draughts. A courage tonic. There’s one cup that makes Annabel pull back and laugh through her nose.

“What?”

“Thirty-four. Somebody’s great-grandmother took a love potion.” She holds it up to my nose before I can decline. Under the metal, there’s a hint of sweetness gone slightly wrong, and beneath that, a taste in the back of my throat like old blood.

“That’s what love smells like?”

“That’s what a heart philter smells like. Rose, honey, and copper. They all share those ingredients, no matter who brews them. It’s one of the first smells I teach, because it’s so distinctive.” She passes the cup to Addie. “Here. You try.”

Addie closes her eyes the way Annabel does and breathes at the rim.

“It smells like flowers that are also pennies.”

“That’s exactly it. If you ever smell that on a cup, or on a person, you come tell me, because nobody has any business giving anyone else a heart philter, ever.”