Page 44 of Potion Sickness

“Annabel knows death potions. She told me.”

“Annabel absolutely did not tell you she knows death potions.”

“She said some plants can kill you if you eat them.”

“That’s not quite the same thing. That’s… botany.”

“Botany sounds made up,” Lily says. “Botany is just death potions.”

I pick up my phone and pull up the website for Tiffany’s salon. The booking page has an opening tomorrow at eleven.

I book it. A cut and color. I’ve never dyed my hair, but it buys me an extra hour in the chair.

Hannah looks over my shoulder at the confirmation screen. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”

“If she gives me bangs, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

“If she gives you bangs, I’ll buy you a hat,” Hannah says, and starts collecting apple peels.

* * *

After Addie’s lesson comes mine. I’m on the porch with a tea light while Annabel stands a few feet away. She said she’d supervise, but not hover.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she says, to the hydrangeas.

Englebert is on the railing as usual. He’s brought Maude, or rather, Maude has come, separately, at his own pace.

“Attempt seventeen,” Englebert announces.

“Sixteen.”

“Seventeen. You made an attempt last night when you believed yourself unobserved. The fruit bowl relocated. I saw it with my own eyes.”

I set the candle on the patio table, bare, no saucer, and I hold my intention like a match and offer it to the wick.

The candle shoots forward, toppling off the table and coming to rest against my shoe. It didn’t light, but for the first time in seventeen attempts, the object that moved was the one I was aiming at.

“Ha,” Annabel says, from the flowerbed, as she trims a withered bulb. “There you go.”

“It fell over.”

“It fell over because you hit it.”

“It still didn’t do what I wanted to,” I say.

“You’re getting closer,” Annabel says. “Magic can be chaotic.”

“And if there’s one thing to be known about you, Marigold,” says Englebert, rising to his feet. “It is that you are able to survive — dare I say thrive — in chaos.”

* * *

Rehearsal runs long, because Englebert decides at nine-fifteen that the porter needs a note. The porter is Ms. Pelham’s nephew Dale, who has eleven lines and has been avoiding anyone’s attention for six weeks.

“Three baskets,” Hannah tells the bartender when we finally make it to the Hearth & Stone.

“What’s in a basket?” I ask.

“Fried pickles, fried mushrooms, fried mozzarella sticks, who knows. Whatever they have on hand gets put in the deep fryer.”