My whole body went cold, like my veins had been flooded with ice water. “What? No. How would that happen?” I shook my head. “No, that can’t happen, Finn.”

  My thoughts were spinning. Wanda’s magic was sometimes a little unpredictable, but she was an experienced witch. She was the High Witch of the entire coven. A memory charm was child’s play, excuse the pun. There was no way it would just wear off like that. Alicia remembering the Magicless that had targeted Finn and his class was a grade A disaster but it… well, it wasn’t possible.

  Was it?

  It wasn’t likely that anyone would believe Alicia if she told anyone what had happened, as sad as that was. But still, Alicia regaining her memories could mean serious problems for the supernatural residents of Haven Hollow, and everywhere else, for that matter.

  I’d already reached for my phone without even thinking about it. If something had gone wrong with the memory charm, Wanda needed to know immediately. She might be able to get to the hospital and fix it. Not just for the Council’s sake, but for Alicia’s. I had my own magic, but it wouldn’t be enough.

  Finn’s hands wrapped around his seatbelt, and he started twisting it hard enough that his knuckles blanched white. “Alicia’s been really worried about the test. The teachers have been telling us we have to do well, or the school might get in trouble with funding. She’s been studying even more than I have. But she was still worried, so…”

  It was agony to wait, but I knew I couldn’t push him. Finn would tell me—he wanted to tell me—I just couldn’t rush him about it. Still, my heart was pounding in my chest like a drum, telling me to figure this all out right now and to do something about it.

  Finn took a deep breath, obviously trying to collect himself. “Alicia’s sister has a friend, a couple years older than us. She gave Alicia something that was supposed to help her do better on her test. Whatever it was, it helped Alicia’s memory. But then she started having nightmares, and then she realized those nightmares were all things that had really happened to her—things she forgot—things Wanda made her forget.”

  “Oh, no,” I said and shook my head.

  Finn turned wide eyes on me. “She was so scared. She kept asking me if I remembered standing up for the class, if I remembered what I’d done, or if I’d forgotten, too. I didn’t know what to say, so I just said I didn’t remember anything like that.” He grimaced, like the lie had left a bitter taste on his tongue.

  I wanted to comfort him. I knew Finn hated lying. I wanted to tell him he’d done the right thing, that it wasn’t just us we were protecting with secrets, but everyone. Maintaining our secrets was supposed to keep mundane people safe, too. That was the bargain for living in a Hollow. People had to obey the rules and keep their hands off their human neighbors.

  Thoughts went rushing through my head, like the landscape through the windows of a train barreling down the tracks. The women at the salon, talking about students being suspected of cheating on the state test. Only, it hadn’t been cribbed notes or morse code tapped out through pencils, or anything like that. They’d been using something to improve their memories. If they could remember their notes flawlessly, getting a perfect score would have been the easiest thing in the world.

  And what kind of substance could make someone’s memory so sharp? The smell of lilacs and wood smoke teased my nose, like it was taunting me. The kids were using Memento Mori as a way to cheat on their tests. No wonder those teens had come to my shop, looking for more potions. They had a good thing going, just dab on a bit of potion before flipping through their notes, and then it was perfect scores across the board.

  Problem was, I’d only made three bottles of the stuff. I had one, as a tester, and the other two I’d given to Niamh. I didn’t see her giving it away, not after looking for someone who could make it for so long. And she didn’t seem to me like the type of person who would encourage kids to take the easy, dishonest route.

  But then, there was Jenny. Niamh’s great-granddaughter, tapping away on her phone as we talked. The memory of each eye-roll was insultingly clear. Three guesses who it was that had given the potion to Alicia, and the first two didn’t count.

  That wasn’t great. Potions were kind of a gray zone when it came to keeping secrets. It was a lot like Wanda’s enchanted clothing. The people in the know, they knew exactly what they were getting. Other people just thought it was a gimmick for well tailored clothing.

  Some people who bought my potions knew they were real magic. Other people thought they were just a new age thing, or just another word for aromatherapy, or even a perfumery. The point was, someone using a zest potion or a Sweet Dreams candle wasn’t going to suddenly start thinking Big Foot was real (not only was he real, but he also owned a bar and made a mean hamburger). The point was: a few potions weren’t something that was going to convince the rest of the world that magic was real.

  That was going to change in a really big way if the careful memory charms that smoothed away all the obviously supernatural things that mundane people had seen, suddenly stopped working. There had been so, so many things that the Council just couldn’t keep completely under wraps. It was hard to be subtle when an army of Winter Faeries decides that they want to have their one-sided civil war right down the middle of Main Street.

  Icy horror snaked through my limbs, and I slapped a hand over my own mouth before I could make any kind of sound. I didn’t need to freak Finn out any more than he already was. But if Memento Mori was really doing what I thought it was doing, if it was making Alicia remember all the magically erased bits of the horrors she’d seen, we were all going to have a very big problem.

  I needed to talk to the coven, and I needed to talk to them immediately.

  Chapter Ten

  In a small stroke of luck, Henner wasn’t busy working on his gadgets or out on a date with Darla when I called him, and he said he was more than happy for me to drop Finn off for a movie night.

  Henner might have been Betanya’s grandson, and his own gift of technomancy was really useful, but he wasn’t a full coven member, and he seemed pretty happy keeping it that way.

  As soon as Finn was safely ensconced inside the old Tayir mansion, I threw myself back into the Jeep and hightailed it over to the coven house. Thank goodness Taliyah was out of town on police business, because that gave me a chance to try and clean this mess up before she got back and threw the book at me. Last time, she’d threatened to use an actual book.

  The coven house was a communal living space, though not many members used it as their actual permanent residence. I’d put the call out that I needed to speak to everyone, pronto, so the driveway was just about full by the time I wound my Jeep down the road.

  My hands were shaky when I threw it into park, and all the while, I had to keep reminding myself that everything that had happened was fixable. At least, I hoped it was all fixable. There were only two bottles of Memento Mori unaccounted for, and the effects wouldn’t last forever. And thank God for that—at least the memories of whoever got their hands on it would get softer and blurrier, as time went on.

  I let myself into the coven house and headed straight for the main room, where everyone who was available had already gathered. I took a deep breath as everyone turned to look at me, and I noticed someone had lit the fireplace—the flames were doing a good job of filling the room with dancing light and keeping a bit of the evening chill out of the air.

  As soon as I stepped into the room, a snooty faux British voice piped up from one of the armchairs, “well, look who decided to finally grace us with her presence.”

  Wanda turned towards me, not even glancing at the black cat whose nose was stuck up into the air. “Shut up, Hellcat. No one asked you.”

  “No vun ever asks him,” Olga added.

  Hellcat, Wanda’s familiar, hissed at her before leaping to the floor and then paused to give her one last put down before he stalked towards the stairs. “I don’t have to take anything from any of you, you ungrateful, mealy-mouthed wenches. Enjoy your latest nonsense.”

  Wanda was an old hand at ignoring her irritable familiar and that was exactly what she did as she turned all her focus on me instead, her hands on her hips. “What’s going on, Poppy? I’m sure you had a reason for calling us all here?”

  “Yes,” I answered with a quick succession of nods as I tried to catch my breath.

  “Well, spill.” She then looked at her nails with faux interest. “I had to cancel a spa trip to a nymph grotto for this, so someone had better be dead or dying.”

  There were suddenly a lot of sets of eyes on me. Not just the witches of the coven, Wanda, Imani, Betanya, and the German witch, Olga, but also their familiars. Olga’s racoon, Franz, in his little lederhosen, gave his eerily high-pitched laugh. Meanwhile Betanya’s familiar, Willie-Ray, a skunk in a sleeveless plaid shirt, seemed unimpressed with everything where he sat at his witch’s feet.

  I took another deep breath and let it out. It made me feel a bit better, but the look on Wanda’s face told me that any more stalling was going to end in some unpleasant curses being flung around, and frankly, things were bad enough as it was.

  “I sold a memory enhancing potion called Memento Mori to an old woman,” I started.

  “Ah, ya,” Olga nodded. “I know zat vun vell!”

  I looked at her and nodded, before looking back at Wanda. “And, well… I’m pretty sure her teenage granddaughter gave it to other kids at Haven High as an illicit study aid.”

  “So, what—the kids are doing better on their tests?” Wanda asked, looking irritated. “What’s wrong with that?”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s not why I’m upset.” I took another breath because I felt like I was going to pass out. “There are only three bottles that I brewed and I kept one of them.”

  “So, two are unaccounted for?” Imani asked.

  I nodded at her. “Normally I’d write it off as kids being kids, except…”

  Oh, boy. I drew in another breath, and then spoke all in one big rush, just trying to get the words out as fast as I could. “Except that it seems to be bringing back people’s memories that had been altered by the Council, and now all the supernatural things they’ve seen are coming back to them. And they also seem to be remembering that they were charmed to forget.”

  “Wonderful,” Wanda said as she sighed and shook her head.

  “That sounds like quite the conundrum,” Betanya said.

  I nodded. “The main problem is that the two vials are unaccounted for and… well, I have no idea how many people have used it,” I finished.

  There was a moment of drawn-out silence, and everyone was just staring at me with varying levels of disbelief and horror. Then the babble of voices started up, and that was actually worse. I stood there, watching the others argue, feeling like a big screw up. I’d just been trying to help Niamh, but somehow everything had gone completely wrong.

  “Okay, okay, wait.” Wanda held up her hands. It took a couple seconds and a glare from her, but the others eventually fell silent. “Poppy, I know you’re good at what you do,” she started as she faced me and started drumming her fingers against the top of the sofa. “You brew potions better than some witches I know. But how in the world would a memory potion undo the kinds of enchantments we’ve created? Do you even understand the amount of magic and effort it takes to undo that sort of magic?”

  It was a good question, and it was one I’d been thinking about on the drive over. Wanda was right; potions could be very powerful, but they tended to be limited in their power. Something to ensure that a person had good dreams and easy sleep wasn’t the same thing as a blood bolt, or a hex that dragged a ghost back into a living body. It just wasn’t the same. So, how was it possible that my potion could have ripped through a serious enchantment, one that effectively rewrote someone’s memory? Yeah, it didn’t seem possible. And yet, here we were.

  I grabbed the end of my braid and tugged on it, just to give me something to do with my hands. Suddenly, being the focal point of an entire group of witches and their familiars was kind of uncomfortable. But I owed them an answer, and they weren’t going to be able to help me put this djinn back in the bottle if they didn’t have all the information.

  Wanda’s eyes narrowed as I pulled at my hair. Right. No more stalling.

  “I’m pretty sure people are remembering things they shouldn’t,” I started and then told them about the woman in Imani’s shop who seemed to recognize me. It wasn’t that she’d recognized me—it was that she’d remembered something about me that she shouldn’t have. “When I was making the potion, things went a little… strange.”

  There was a beat of silence before Betanya’s eyebrow quirked into an absolutely scathing arch. “Strange?” she asked.

  As if on cue, blood rushed into my face, and my ears pulsed with a blush, feeling hot.

  “While I was brewing the potion, I was in the graveyard and there was this…” I started and then cocked my head to the side as I tried to find the right words to explain exactly what had happened. “This… well, surge of magic.” I didn’t even know how to explain it. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever done or experienced before. “The power just suddenly boiled up and over, and into the potion. I didn’t think it meant anything, or that it could super charge the potion or something.”

  “A surge of wild magic?” Imani took a step forward, her dark eyes concerned. “Are you okay, Poppy? You aren’t hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” I answered, shaking my head.

  “Where did this power come from?” Betanya asked.

  And that was the part I wasn’t looking forward to explaining. Wanda’s eyes had already narrowed into dangerous slits and I noticed she hadn’t said a word. Anyone else would have thought it was anger, not worry. But I knew her well enough to know it was actually a combination of both, but heavy on the concern.

  I let out a long, gusty breath and moved towards one of the plush armchairs further into the room. It wasn’t helping anything, lingering in the doorway like that. Not to mention I felt like a kid called to the principal’s office.

  The velvet creaked just a little as I sat down on it. Olga followed suit, taking a place on the loveseat and shaking her long skirts out around her legs. Betanya chose another armchair across from mine, all the while watching me carefully, like I might explode at any moment.

  Only Wanda stayed standing. Her arms were folded across her chest, and the toe of her heeled boots started tapping against the rug in a way that told me I’d better get on with it.

  “This magic I experienced—this burst of power, really, well… it wasn’t something that happened around me.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, even though I knew it wasn’t going to help. “It actually came from me.”

  “From you?” Olga blinked and glanced around at the others. Confusion crinkled the skin of her forehead as she looked at me again and shook her head. “I do not understand. You are not a vitch, so you do not have magic.”

  Okay, that stung a little, even though I knew Olga didn’t mean it like that. Regardless, she was right, I wasn’t a witch, and I didn’t have witch powers. But that didn’t mean I didn’t have magic. I did. It had passed down through my family, to me, and even though I wasn’t about to go around summoning lightning from the sky, that didn’t mean my magic was any less real.

  “I’m not a witch,” I agreed quietly. “I am, however, in a… coven.”

  Understanding flashed across Betanya’s face and she breathed in abruptly, immediately looking at Wanda. “The joining. The spell that bound our magic together. It must have linked our power.”

  Wanda did nothing but nod.

  Betanya, meanwhile, got a faraway look in her eyes, her nails drumming against the arm of her chair. “We didn’t fully consider how mixing a Blood Witch’s unstable power into a coven ritual might affect our non-witch members.” She took a breath. “Not to mention a Blood Warlock’s.”

  “How could we have considered it?” Wanda snapped, finally breaking her dangerous silence. “No one’s ever formed a coven with non-witches before. How were we supposed to know the joining could do anything like this?” Then she turned that snapping dark gaze on me. “How long has this been going on, Poppy?”

  The conversation was giving me whiplash. I struggled to keep up. “How long? I only made the potions a few days ago–”

  Wanda made a slashing gesture with one hand, cutting off my words. “How long have you been having this… problem with your magic?”

  I grimaced. I’d really hoped we wouldn’t have to go there tonight, but trust Wanda to get right to it. Maybe she’d been playing vampire for too long—it had taught her to go right for the throat. Well, there wasn’t any getting around it, not when she was clearly in a mood. But it was still a struggle to look at her instead of ducking my head to stare at the carpet. I couldn’t quite manage the anger in her eyes, so I fixed my gaze somewhere around her left cheekbone.

  “Since the binding ceremony,” I admitted quietly.

  “Since the ceremony?” she repeated, and I could hear the shock and hurt in her voice. And her hurt made sense because I’d never told her what had happened. I’d kept it to myself.

  I nodded. “In the beginning, the change to my magic wasn’t much—I mean, I barely even noticed it. And I wasn’t sure what was happening or if anything was happening. And by the time it started turning into a bigger problem, I think I was too embarrassed to ask for help.”

  Imagine, a woman in her forties, losing control of her own power. It was mortifying.

  Wanda cursed, and the sound was foul enough that it should have peeled the wallpaper up in curling strips. “You should have told us, Poppy. Immediately. You should have told me.”

  “I know,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry. It just felt like it was nothing, right up until it was… well, something.”

  “I think this might be one of those, one problem at a time, situations.” Imani shot me a sympathetic look. “What are we going to do about the failing memory charms—I think we should address that first, no?”