I stayed on the phone with Finn for the entire drive, narrating exactly where we were, how close we were getting, and I listened as he tried to breathe, to calm himself down, and I wanted to claw my way through the phone to be at his side so badly that it scared me a little.

  When we screeched into the parking lot, Finn was waiting outside the school gym. The parking lot was basically empty, but there were a few loiterers who were getting picked up. I barely had time to jump out of the car and shove my phone away before Finn was wrapped around me like a limpet, clinging tight.

  “I’m sorry,” he half sobbed against my shoulder. “I really messed up. I didn’t think anyone could get hurt. I’m sorry, Mom.”

  My son was okay, safe in my arms, if upset. But I gave myself that one moment, to just clutch him to me and really feel that he was okay, in one piece, and anything else could just wait for a second while I convinced my heart to ease back down out of my throat and stop trying to choke me.

  Andre put the Range Rover in park and walked around it and as soon as Finn noticed him, he released me and threw his arms around Andre, who immediately held him and rubbed his back as he said in his soft voice, “It’s all going to be okay, my boy. Just breathe and tell us what happened and together, your mother and I will fix whatever it is.”

  Finn pulled away from him then and, looking up, nodded as Andre smiled down at him. Then Finn took a deep breath and wiped his nose on his sleeve and faced me.

  “Okay, buddy, now tell us what’s going on,” I whispered.

  “Instead of telling you, I need to show you,” he answered and then turned around before looking back at me with a little wave. “Come on, we have to hurry.” He turned, heading back towards the school, but reached out and grabbed my hand, as if afraid he’d lose me.

  Andre then returned to his car, grabbed my bag of potions and caught up to us, the bottles clinking together lightly, his long legs easily keeping pace.

  “Mr. Lannister, he’s my science teacher,” Finn started. “And he’s always been a bit of a grump.” Finn turned a corner, leading us down another hallway. “But lately he’s been really picking on my friend, Sophie.”

  “You mentioned something similar,” I said. “I remember.”

  He looked at me and nodded. “I don’t get it. She’s not a bad student. She’s super smart and always aces her tests. Plus, she’s nice, and really quiet. But... well, he really started being extra mean to her after she told him what her science fair project was.”

  Finn was a very gifted young man. He was a budding Magician, and he could tell when a person was lying, but this conversation just revealed how young he still was in that he hadn’t considered that some adults were just mean, or jealous, or petty. Bullies weren’t strictly teenagers.

  We turned down the main hallway, and I realized we were heading for the front office.

  “Sophie’s parents are botanists,” he continued. “Anyway, I told you how her project was grafting a branch from an orange tree to an apple tree, so that the tree would grow both fruits?”

  “Yes, I recall,” I answered.

  Through the office doors, I realized that the secretary who usually ruled from behind her desk, was absent which was just as well. In fact, the hallways had been eerily quiet. Finn hurried towards the closed door of the principal’s office.

  “And it was working—the tree was growing both sorts of fruits, apples and oranges,” Finn said, indignant. Still full of the belief that people should be fair. “And she had all these scientific papers to back her up. But Mr. Lannister just kept telling her that only dummies would believe that apples could ‘turn into’ oranges. That one thing can’t turn into another.”

  He paused then, in front of the door. His hands twisted together, skin blanching white from his grip. He was so angry, he was shaking.

  “It was like he just didn’t want Sophie to do well. And I wanted to prove him wrong, to make him stop. So… so I kind of… made a potion.”

  “Wait, what?” I shook my head as everything started to make a horrible kind of sense. “You made a potion?”

  Finn nodded, looking miserable. “I’ve seen you do it hundreds of times. Thousands. And I have magic, too, so I thought if I just followed the recipe, your recipe…” He took a big, gulping breath. “Anyway. I made Gypsy Gold, Mom, just like you did for Andre. And then I used it to turn a pencil into pyrite. I just wanted to stump Mr. Lannister, to make him realize he was wrong about Sophie and her project. It was just supposed to be a prank,” he trailed off, staring at the floor.

  “Finn,” I said, absolutely appalled. “That is not a prank. And you know better than to show magic to a mundane! That isn’t okay.”

  “Bad business, Finn,” Andre said quietly, shaking his head. “It never ends well for anyone.”

  “I know. I know I screwed up.” Finn blinked rapidly, his eyes shiny. “But Mr. Lannister, he freaked out. He grabbed the pencil, and he kept turning it around and looking at it—like he was trying to find something wrong with it. And then he stormed out of the fair! With him gone, the other judges were a lot nicer, and Sophie ended up taking first place like she should have.”

  “But?” I started.

  Finn’s shoulders slumped, and he raked a hand back through his hair. “But then the next day, Mr. Lannister was even meaner, mostly towards Sophie, like she’d done something personally to upset him. And he’s been getting worse, and then he started missing classes. Well, one day last week, he was so awful to Sophie, he made her cry. So, I went to the principal to see if he could make Mr. Lannister stop. And the principal said he’d talk to him, and, well…”

  Finn turned the knob, and the door to the principal’s office swung open slowly.

  And there sat the school principal, Mr. Stillwater, who had been turned entirely into gold.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Bloody hell,” Andre said as we both tried to make sense of what was facing us.

  I took a staggered step into the office, staring at the principal, or what used to be the principal, in horror.

  I knew Mr. Stillwater. I’d seen him at PTA meetings and fundraisers. He’d reached out to me last year when he’d thought Finn was cutting classes, and he’d let me know that something was very wrong when the Magicless had attacked, posing as a teacher. He was a good man, and good at his job.

  And he was frozen stiff, gold lips still parted as he tapped the desk blotter with a golden finger. Like he’d been frozen into place mid-sentence.

  How could something like this have happened? Gypsy Gold was a party trick, a tiny, harmless little enchantment. It didn’t turn men into statues, or terrorize a town.

  Unless… unless a budding Magician, still new to his power, tried to channel his power into a potion instead of into a Magician’s tricks. I’d seen firsthand what happened when different types of magic came together unexpectedly. Like when Wanda had spilled a potion on a bit of enchanted embroidery that her Blood Warlock cousin had been working on. Blended magic could do bizarre, unexpected things—like make a person out of a mannequin. Or curse a nasty teacher with the Midas touch.

  Finn twisted his hands in the bottom of his sweatshirt, his eyes glassy as he fought not to cry again. “I’m sorry. I know I screwed up. I never meant to hurt anyone.”

  His voice broke on the last word, and he angrily scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve. I wanted to hug him so badly, but that would have to wait. I wasn’t sure how long the principal would be okay in his gold coating, if he was okay at all. Andre set my bag on the desk, as my thoughts raced while I tried to think of what I could do.

  “But, Mom—there’s more.” Finn grabbed hold of my arm. His face was so pale, his freckles looked like sepia ink on the bridge of his nose.

  “Tell us everything,” Andre said, his tone still soft.

  Finn looked up at him and nodded. “Mr. Lannister was really angry when he came out of the principal’s office. He forced Sophie into a classroom, and then he locked the door. And I couldn’t get inside. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m sure she needs help, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Did he touch Sophie?” I asked.

  Finn shook his head. “He just forced her to go with him by yelling at her.”

  Okay, that was good.

  My mama bear mode surged to the front of my brain. A child in possible peril? We needed to get her out of that room, pronto. But first, I needed to see what could be done for Mr. Stillwater, since I didn’t have any idea how long he could survive being gold.

  I just hoped we weren’t already too late.

  “Any ideas?” I asked Andre, hoping he was less out of his depth than I was.

  My heart sank when he raked his hands back through his hair, staring at poor Mr. Stillwater with a question in his eyes. “Honestly, I haven’t the foggiest idea of what in the world to do about this. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Me neither.” I bit my lip, rolling the flesh between my teeth. “Finn, has anyone else seen what happened to the principal?”

  Finn shook his head. “No, it happened after school let out.”

  “But there are still teachers here right?”

  “Yeah, I mean... I guess so.”

  At least this had happened after hours—I couldn’t imagine the panic that would have ensued had it occurred during school. “Can you lock the door please?” I asked Finn who immediately went to do just that.

  Then I faced Mr. Stillwater and took a deep breath. Well, a Midas curse was still a type of curse, right? So maybe what we needed was a bit of curse-breaking oil.

  I grabbed for one of my vials of Uncrossing Oil and crossed my fingers as I smeared it liberally all over Mr. Stillwater’s face. His skin was hard and cool under my fingers, but the gold warmed quickly from my body heat. I took that as a good sign and spread more oil down his neck.

  Hands and feet were next, and all the while, I prayed the oil would work—that it would do something—or undo something, as the case may be. This certainly wasn’t what the potion was intended for, not really, but a curse was a curse (I hoped), no matter how unwittingly it might have been laid.

  It needed to work. It had to work.

  I stood back and watched, searching for any hint of change in the gold principal. My heart was pounding along with the obnoxiously ticking second hand on the old black and white clock hanging on the wall. My skin started buzzing with the need to move, to get to Sophie. Who knew what was going on in the classroom. Who knew if Mr. Lannister had also turned her to gold.

  The seconds ticked by, each one landing like the stab of a needle.

  There wasn’t any change in Mr. Stillwater.

  It wasn’t working.

  Okay, I needed to call Wanda. If my potions weren’t working, that meant I needed witch magic. But Wanda was still at the park, assuming Marty hadn’t taken her home again. Furthermore, she’d need to use the hearse to get to the school, and who knew how much longer Mr. Stillwater had.

  Finn, apparently realizing how bad this situation was getting, let out a little sob, but he tried to muffle it behind his hands. Andre reached over and cupped his shoulder, pulling Finn into him and then wrapped his arm around Finn, who started to quietly sob once more.

  No, no, no, we didn’t have time for this. We didn’t have time for Wanda and the coven to get here. I couldn’t stand around, watching my son stare at the face of a man who’d become a statue, however accidentally. I didn’t want him blaming himself.

  Something had to work.

  I tore through my bag, looking over the potions that I’d brought with me, but came up empty. I couldn’t command Mr. Stillwater to not be gold, and banishing him might just send him back to his house. There had to be something. Anything.

  “Give me your hand, Finn,” Andre said as Finn nodded and together, they approached Mr. Stillwater. “Do you recall the trick you learned for replacing something after making it invisible?”

  Finn nodded. “Do you think that will work?”

  Andre swallowed hard. “I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot.”

  Finn nodded again and they performed the trick, calling out the words in unison, but the only thing that happened was that Mr. Stillwater disappeared for a moment, before reappearing again and he was just as gold as he had been.

  Finn made a little broken sound, so quiet, but so full of grief that it felt like a knife slotting up between my ribs. Just gutting. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes, my breath coming heavier.

  Deep down inside my chest, something broke with a small crack.

  Power then suffused my body, slow and languid, like a cat stretching after it had been curled up somewhere small and snug. That magic slunk through my body, pushing its way between my ribs, through my blood, out into my hands.

  The power was too big, too strong to contain it. It felt like it would push me apart to make room for itself, cracking me open like an egg.

  It should have been terrifying. I’d never felt power like this before. I was strong, probably one of the best potion makers in town, which wasn’t a small brag, since some of the others had literal centuries of experience on me. But my power was of bubbling elixirs and gentle moonlight. Of flowers, and oils and green growing things.

  The magic moving through me now was something completely different. It felt like tidal waves and thunderstorms, graveyard dirt and the silvery glow of a full moon. Faintly, the taste of blood lingered at the back of my mouth, bright and metallic.

  It wasn’t Gypsy magic. It was something else. It felt almost like witch magic, but not quite. There was death to it, blood to it, hunger to it. It wasn’t witch magic, no. Or rather, not just witch magic.

  It felt a bit like all the witches I knew. Like Wanda’s wild blood magic, Imani’s bright prayers. Like Betanya’s thoughtful deliberation, Olga’s passion, and Maverick’s shadowy strength. But there was some of Lorcan in there too—his blood—the same blood that lived in Wanda’s veins. It felt like all of them all bound together, but it also felt like me—I could taste the crispness of morning dew beneath the flow of molten lava. I’d gotten the magic through the coven bonds, but as it sat, maturing in my bones, it had somehow, bafflingly, become mine, too.

  It felt like a storm raging through my body. Strands of my hair blew around my face, caught on a wind that came from nowhere, but still swirled through the windowless office. I pulled in a shaky breath, and thunder rolled up my spine.

  “Mom?” Finn asked, his voice wobbly as he watched the change overtake me.

  “Poppy?” Andre echoed, and there was concern in his eyes.

  But I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t speak. I was completely in my power’s grasp. This was wild magic, a force of nature. I didn’t know how to tame it, much less how to control it. I wasn’t a witch, I didn’t know how to twist a spell. All I knew was potions.

  My eyes fell on my bag.

  I still had a bottle of Uncrossing Oil.

  My fingers were trembling, and I struggled not to drop or crush the delicate glass in my hand. Inside the cheerfully yellow vial, I could feel the spark of power that I put into all my potions, the one ingredient that made them more than essential oils and extracts. Uncrossing Oil was meant to break curses, to help people, to keep them safe from magic that would hurt them. That was what I needed, and I needed it really, really badly.

  I caught that little flicker of magic and cupped it between my palms. My eyes slid closed, but I could still see that little spark, glowing like an ember from a fire in my hands. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my whirling thoughts, and the storm of magic raging inside me paused, listening.

  “Is she okay?” I heard Finn whisper.

  “Trust her,” Andre answered and, even though my eyes were closed, I could hear the smile on his lips.

  I breathed power into that little ember that lit within me, whispering to it.

  Break the curse. Save him. Undo this harm that has been done. Bring him back. Save him.

  I poured all of it into that fragile little vial of glass, and then I opened my eyes to see the potion inside blazing like a captive star was cupped between my hands.

  “Mom?” Finn’s voice sounded so thin and small.

  I still couldn’t speak. The magic had filled my lungs with power, and there was no air left for words. Two steps forward, and I was right in front of Principal Stillwater again. One more big breath, and a quick prayer to anyone who was listening, and I poured the potion on top of his golden head.

  The Uncrossing Oil flowed over the metal, running down Mr. Stillwater’s face, his shoulders, dripping down his body and somehow coating every inch of him. It didn’t make sense. There wasn’t that much liquid in the little potion bottle, but somehow the liquid was defying the laws of science and was multiplying, was spreading all over the man, to encompass every inch of him.

  When the last two drops fell off Principal Stillwater’s outstretched finger, a strange shimmer rolled over his body.

  Slowly, so slowly that at first, I thought I was imagining it, but the longer I watched, the more the gold thinned, lightening to pale skin. A finger twitched. Then a shoulder. Mr. Stillwater blinked, gold flaking away, and then he sucked in a deep breath and started to cough.

  “Oh my gosh,” Finn whispered.

  “You’re doing it, Poppy,” Andre said.

  Yes, I was doing it.

  The magic went out like a snuffed candle then, dropping me back into myself with an almost audible thud. I staggered, sweat dripping down the side of my face and my lungs heaving like I’d just run an entire marathon. Andre was instantly by my side, his arm around me, and I fell into him, feeling suddenly exhausted. No, it was more than that—I felt hollowed out, like I’d been scraped clean on the inside, and my muscles were shivering.

  “Is my mom okay?” Finn asked.

  “I’m... I’m fine, buddy,” I finally managed, even as I wondered if such were the case. Once I could stand on my own, Andre released me and hurried to Mr. Stillwater’s side, trying to help him calm his breathing before he choked. Suddenly, my son’s arms were around me and he was clinging to me so tightly, I could barely breathe.