Page 72 of Potion Sickness

“I go most mornings. Like I said. Good trash. But anyway. I saw her there. The blonde one. She sits in the car.” He mimes it, badly, with both front paws. “She takes the top off a green bottle, then adds four drops from another. She counts them out loud, actually. She puts the top back on, she shakes it up, and she puts it in the bag. Then the next one.”

“She does this often?”

“Yeah. Like every day. Same little bottle every time, till it got low, and then a different same little bottle.” Bandit scratches behind his ear. “And the last few times, more.”

“More?”

“More drops. She stopped counting out loud and started just tipping it. I noticed because it took longer and I was waiting for her to leave so I could get at the bin.” He looks around at the four of us. “Is that a bad thing? That sounds like a bad thing. Everyone’s making a face.”

“So there’s our answer,” Gabe says. “Whatever tonics he bought himself, and then a philter somebody else was pouring into him every morning.”

“Oh, Skye,” Annabel says. “No wonder she’s been so flustered. She wasn’t trying to hurt him. She was trying to keep him.”

“Is she going to be in trouble?” Addie says.

Gabe and I look at each other, but Annabel takes the question.

“Yes,” she says. “Even though she didn’t want to hurt him. Because you don’t do that to a person, and it doesn’t matter why. You remember what I told you about heart philters?”

“That nobody has any business giving one to anybody, ever.”

“Exactly,” Annabel says. “She’s a kid, and she’s lovesick and scared, but that doesn’t matter. You still don’t get to do something like that. You can’t give a person a potion without their consent, no matter what it does.”

Addie writes this down in her book.

CHAPTER 21

Ms. Carter sets us up in the den and brings a tray nobody touches — cups of juice, a loaf of bread, and one saucer of cream, because Englebert came, of course, because Englebert insisted. He’d argued it out with me in the kitchen while I was still trying to find my keys.

He’s on the arm of the sofa now with his feet tucked, saying nothing. Ms. Carter, I realize, thinks this is about the play. She put out the good napkins and asked whether we’d like the lamp for reading, then turned it on before anyone answered.

Skye comes down and looks to Annabel first, then to me, and then, inevitably, notices the little bottle on the table. She stops on the second-to-last stair.

“Where did you find that?”

“Under a porch,” Englebert says. “A raccoon took it out of your tote.”

She comes down and sits on the ottoman.

“Skye,” Annabel says. “I know what’s in it.”

“Okay,” Skye says nervously.

“I need you to tell me the rest anyway.”

“There’s not much to tell,” Skye says, to the carpet. “It’s just… I don’t know. Things felt off, and I was afraid to lose him, so I did some research and found this website⁠—”

“Glamoury?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t hard to find. Just an easy web search. And it’s got this whole quiz. What are you looking for. And there’s a section for⁠—”

“Devotion,” Annabel cuts in. “I checked it out the other day.”

“Devotion. Yeah. It’s not even in like, a scary part of the site. It’s between the hair thickener and the confidence one. It was forty-one dollars. There’s free shipping over fifty, so you buy something else you don’t need to get the free shipping. I got a night cream I’ve never opened.”

“How much were you giving him?” Annabel asks. “And how long has this been going on?”

“Since March, maybe. I was giving him four drops every day in his morning juice.” She’s talking quickly. “The bottle says two to four for maintenance. I did four because I figured… I figured he’s a big guy, you know? He’s, like, a lot of person, and two seemed like it wouldn’t do anything.” She shrugs. “I kind of didn’t think it was real. Half of me thought it was just, like, rose water and a scam and I was doing something pathetic but harmless. Like a horoscope or burning sage or whatever.”