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“Well, well, well.” Wanda grinned at me over the rim of her cup. “Maybe there’s hope for you, yet.”
I slid my hands to the sides of my head so I could glare at her, but it was half-hearted at best. “So, because you’re all deliriously happy in your relationship, you get to treat mine like it’s there for your amusement?”
Wanda swirled the liquid of her drink around and around in her glass, looking at me like I was nuts. “Well, obviously.” She took a breath. “And I wouldn’t say I’m deliriously happy—such words don’t describe witches.”
“Moderately happy then,” I laughed.
She nodded. “And since when are you in a relationship?”
I frowned. “I’m not.”
“Yet, you just said ‘you get to treat my relationship like it’s there for your amusement’.” She gave me another look. “Hmm, I wonder what Freud would have to say about that.”
“Well, lucky for all involved, Freud isn’t here to say anything about it.” I groaned and dropped my head into my arms on the counter. But I still couldn’t quite banish the happy grin from my face.
Even with Wanda’s teasing, I felt lighter in my chest than I had in days.
Chapter Eight
It was amazing what a good night’s sleep could do.
I’d spent the time after I got home waiting for Marty to drop Finn off by putting together a kind of souped-up version ofDreamtime Oil, that I calledSweet Dream Oilto try and ward off my persistent nightmares, and it had worked like a charm. I’d had lovely, dreamless sleep from the moment my head touched the pillow until my alarm had gone off in the morning.
Everything just seemed a little brighter, and once I was in my store, caught myself humming a few times as I dusted the shelves and refilled them with a rainbow collection of newly brewed potion bottles. It just felt so good to have at least partially filled shelves again, and the ingredients to make more.
There was also my dinner with Andre this evening, and if that had me smiling a little more than usual, well, that was okay.
Nervous energy kept me moving, puttering around the store, checking on the potions brewing in the back room, checking my lists a hundred times just to be sure I was making the right things that people had requested.
The door chimed as I was fixing a string of fairy lights on one of the shelves, making sure that the light hit the bottles and pillar candles just right, and I hurried back to the counter with a bright smile on my face.
A young woman with a fall of chestnut curls partway down her back was looking around, examining the carefully labeled potions. She looked up with a smile when I greeted her.
“Okay, this might sound kind of silly,” she said, a faint blush rising into her cheeks. “But I have a blind date tonight, and I’m really nervous about it.”
“Oh, that’s exciting.”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I want it to go well, you know? Do you have anything that might…” She slapped both hands over her face as the blush got darker. “Draw love to me? Oh, God, I sound so cringe.”
“A lot of people come here for things like that. It’s not cringe,” I tried to reassure her. “And we have a few things that might work for you. But I recommendPink Passion.”
I steered her towards one of the shelves, where there was a pink glass bottle, carefully stoppered, just waiting for the person who might need it.
“Now, it’s not a love spell, or anything like that.” I didn’t do love potions, because they never ended well. “It’s gentler than that. It helps open things up to thepossibilitiesof love. It will help you see if your date is compatible with you, and if he isn’t, it will help to attract someone who is. Just dab it on your pulse points for two weeks. One moon cycle for absolute best results.”
“Oh, that’s perfect,” the young woman breathed. She reached for the bottle and hesitated. “Can I ask what’s in it? Sorry, I have allergies, so I’ve got to be careful.”
Now, I was pretty protective of my recipes. They were handed down in my family since my great grandmother, and they weren’t something I shared lightly. But I also didn’t want to make someone sick because they put the wrong thing on their skin.
I rattled off the recipe, and the girl relaxed, her smile returning full-fledged. “Oh, awesome. I’m allergic to tree nuts, but there’s nothing like that in there, right?”
“Nope. I even used grapeseed oil as the carrier.”
Most of my potions were the magic I put into them, but the essential oils that helped me could be hard on the skin, so I had to dilute them with neutral carrier oils so they wouldn’t cause any skin irritations.
The young lady happily made her purchase, and then carefully opened the bottle to dab a little onto the skin at her wrists right there at the counter.
She lifted her hand to her nose. “Oh, it even smells nice,” she said, delighted.
