Page 11

He raced across the room, out the door, and was gone. The doorway stood open after him, and cold poured in.

My knees informed me they’d like to sit down now, thank you very much.

I slumped against the wall with my heart slamming and my neck alive, wanting, of all silly things, him to come back.

His cup still sat in the saucer, the tea half-drunk. Steam rose in lazy spirals above it.

Chamomile was the base because calm and heat were neighbors. But something else had been added, an unexpected herb that made Goran behave in this manner.

Which chamomile had I given him?

Only two people alive knew about our secret chamomile blend. One of them was my mother. The recipe for the secret one stayed locked in a warded tin for this reason.

I’d taken down the warded tin two nights ago to refresh the lock-charm. It had sat on my workbench overnight, next to the regular chamomile canister, with its name card leaned against it.

Both cards still sat on the workbench.

Swapped.

“Ginger!”

She flowed up onto the counter and into a sitting position, her tail around her feet, and stared at me with the golden gaze of a cat who had been waiting for this conversation.

You’re welcome, she said.

“You dosed him.” My voice came out somewhere between a whisper and a whistle. “You swapped my cards, and I dosed him with…with… With a sexual need potion!” I gaped down at my hands. “Oh, my gosh. My hands did it. My shop did it. I did it. Ginger! The one thing my craft never does is⁠—”

Your craft didn’t. She lifted a paw and started cleaning it, one lick at a time. I did. Assign the blame properly. I’ll wear it.

“He’ll think I brewed him a—” I couldn’t even say it. “People have accused Trevil women of exactly this. He drank it, trusting me.”

Look at the facts, witch, Ginger said. Three swallows of your locked blend. On a human male, that’s an evening of poetry and charm. On an ogre? Three heartbeats and it was gone. Her tail tip-tapped the counter. And yet.

“And yet what?”

He crossed the room after it burned off. I’d swear it had already worn off. She blinked again. The tea opened the gate. Everything that walked through it was his.

I sat down on the stool beside my counter, a loosened marionette.

The blend didn’t invent anything. That was the true reason it stayed locked, the reason Mama taught me with the shop shutters closed that we must be careful how we sold it. It would find the heat that was already banked and blow on it. Which meant… Which would mean…

“He might’ve just been—” I shook my head. “No, no, no.”

He said your name, Ginger said, like it was the last dry ground in a flood. I heard and saw everything. This is the best work I’ve ever done.

“It was a violation of him and me, and you’re a menace. You’re getting no fish this week.” I cupped my cheeks and moaned. “None. Dry pet biscuits for you from now on.”

It was worth it.

I was still sitting on the stool, my throat burning where his breath had been, when I spied the face at the window.

Old Tom stood on my stoop with his nose an inch from the glass, his mouth open and his eyes shining, holding the empty cup he brought every morning for his fill-up and gossip. From his angle, he would’ve been able to see the wall. Goran pretty much licking my throat. Goran’s hands lifting as he backed away. His flight.

We stared at each other through the glass.

“Tom,” I said. “Whatever you think you saw⁠—”

He was already gone, moving faster than I’d seen him since the baker’s pie cart tipped over two springs back. Bound for the Silver Bell Tavern, no doubt.