The Potion Diaries (12 page)

‘And if not . . . all the money Mum and Dad spent on me will have been wasted.’

The flower bursts into flame.

We both start screaming. Molly releases the branch, backs away and starts running. I grab the branch further down, trying to snap it off before the flames hit the main tree. After a few tugs, it rips away, and I stomp on the burning embers of the flower.

I look up. ‘Molly!’ I shout. But she’s gone.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Samantha

B
LUE AND RED FLASHING LIGHTS FLARE over Kemi Street, and my heart pounds in my chest. My thoughts instantly jump to Molly. I dash past police vans and fire engines mounted up on the kerb and burst through the front door of the shop.

The scene inside is a disaster. There’s paper strewn everywhere over the dark hardwood floors. A man in a navy-blue uniform barges past me, carrying a toolbox. Forensics. More men in suits stand behind the till; I still haven’t seen my family.

‘Oh, thank goodness you’re here,’ says Mum, coming through the door to the library. She has to shove the door to get it open over the debris. I finally breathe again once I spy Molly standing open-mouthed behind her. And for good reason. If I thought the shop floor was a mess, the library is worse. Pages scattered to the wind, hardback covers ripped apart and strewn across the room. No shelf has been spared the torture – no matter how ancient the book, how delicate its contents, all of it is in complete and utter shambles. We pick our way through what was once Grandad’s prized collection, over to where the forensics team are clustered around an open bookshelf. The door I unlocked before Molly’s ceremony.

The door I’m not sure that I locked again.

The very ancient room, by contrast, isn’t in shambles – at least they had that much sense. But there are gaps in the shelving like a mouth with teeth missing, and black scorch marks on the walls. Then the smell hits me. It’s acrid, metallic. I reel backwards from the ancient library and away from the stench.

‘Who did this?’ I whisper. This is Grandad’s whole world and it’s been violated. And it’s my fault.

One of the detectives approaches me. ‘Are you Samantha?’

I nod, but my actions feel separate from my mind. Like I’ve disconnected.

‘I know this is hard, but you have to help us out here. Whoever broke in to steal your books also attempted to burn the store down. Luckily you have some kind of built-in security system that put out the fire.’

A security system? I didn’t think we had anything other than an old-fashioned deadbolt on the front door.

‘Samantha?’

I’ve drifted away. I try to focus on the detective. ‘Um, this morning I was in the library as I thought I would do a bit of research on love potions . . .’ I look sideways at my mother, chewing the corner of my lip.

‘But you’re out of the Hunt,’ says the detective, scribbling in his notebook. ‘You do know that love potion recipes were banned over a hundred years ago. If your family was hiding one of them, that could mean serious consequences . . .’ Heat rises in my cheeks. ‘We weren’t hiding anything! Sometimes those censoring spells disintegrate over time. It was a long shot but I wanted to see. Then I thought the book might be in the ancient library, and then I had to leave . . .’ Tears well up in my eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum!’ I bury my face in my hands.

‘It’s not your fault, honey.’ Her voice turns hard as she speaks to the detective. ‘You’ve got the answers you need from my daughter now, you just focus on figuring out who did this.’

‘Yes, ma’am. We’ve had some petty vandals loose in this area. We think they saw this as an easy target.’

‘Vandals who steal only books?’

‘We don’t know yet what books are missing, which will make them harder to track down. Mr Ostanes is being . . . less than co-operative.’ He scribbles down some notes. ‘Well, we think whoever it was saw you all leave the house.’

‘So you think this was premeditated?’ my mother squeaks.

The detective hastens to soothe her. ‘Nothing is certain yet. We’re working on a number of theories. For now we’re going to have to close your store for a few hours, dust for prints, do a thorough investigation . . .’

‘Absolutely not!’ Grandad appears in the doorway. ‘Out, out, out. I don’t need all you Talented busybodies in my house. We’ll let you know if we want you.’

The detective holds his hands up. ‘I think we’re just about done here anyway. If you don’t want us to do any more . . .’

‘You’ve done quite enough, thank you.’

The detective stares at him for a few seconds, and then nods. Not many people are brave enough to argue with my grandad when he’s in one of these moods, and the detective is no exception. He snaps his fingers at the rest of his team, and they all shuffle out of our front door. The detective turns around to say something, and Grandad shuts the door in his face.

‘Dad, are you going to tell us what’s going on?’ my dad asks.

‘No. And we don’t need any of those pesky policemen around because I know exactly who did this. John, Katie, I need you to take Molly and leave us,’ says my grandad to my parents.

‘Why?’ my mum asks, flabbergasted.

‘Dad, be reasonable! This is our home that was attacked too.’

‘No. This is alchemist business and my apprentice is the only one who can stay. Now all of you, leave!’ My grandad is at his most terrifying when he’s like this. They obey his order. I want to reach out to them, to ask them to stay, but if this is important Kemi business then I know I have to listen.

‘Can you smell that?’ Grandad asks me once they’re gone. His wide nostrils flare. ‘Whenever a Talented performs magic they leave their own scent, a trace. It’s normally undetectable, but not in here. Not in our store.’

‘A Talented did this?’ I open my eyes wide in alarm.

‘Don’t you recognise the smell?’

I concentrate. It takes me a couple of beats, but my memory catches up with my senses. I do recognise it. It’s the same sickening metallic scent that invaded my nose back in the Palace.

‘Is it . . . Emilia? What would she want with our library?’

Grandad nods. He reaches out and touches the black powder that streaks the wall. They’re not scorch marks at all. ‘Most likely the same thing you hoped to find. When she couldn’t get what she wanted she attempted to set fire to all these ancient books. But this powder neutralises spells.’

‘How is that possible?’

‘Because the knowledge contained within these walls is worth more than either of our lives to protect. Every Kemi has known this. And when Thomas Kemi won the first Wilde Hunt, he spent his prize-winnings building this store and with it, many special protections against magic interference, reinforced with every win since. So that no Kemi would ever have to worry about the likes of Emilia Thoth.’

‘And so the missing books?’

‘I took them so that the police would call it a robbery and be done with it. But nothing ever gets taken from the store while a Kemi master is in charge. Nothing.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Samantha

T
HE NEXT DAY MY ALARM BLARES, AND I curse myself for not turning it off. I feel like I could stay tucked up in bed for a hundred years. Instead, I delay the inevitable by staring at the glow-in-the-dark stickers on my ceiling. I stuck them up after I’d been to a party at my classmate Ella’s house – one of the few Talented parties I’ve ever attended.

Her house was one of the massive mansions almost at the base of Kingstown Hill, and I had pulled up on my bike, cycling past limo after limo queuing to swing around the semi-circular driveway and drop off their dressed up inhabitants. When I had heard house party, I’d automatically thrown on my favourite T-shirt, dark jeans and scuffed up ankle boots – turned out, this was the wrong look. As Wilhelmina stepped out in a sparkly strapless ballgown, I almost made a U-turn right then and there. But Anita had spotted me, and she was as dressed down as I was.

‘You’re not leaving me to face them all alone,’ she’d said, and I’d grudgingly gone with her through the vast double doors, feeling stronger with her by my side.

Strangely, I can barely remember the details from that party now – the beginning of it swallowed up by my nervousness, but the rest dominated by a single detail: Ella’s bedroom. Her parents had opened up the whole house and Anita and I had gone exploring. A few times that made us the unwitting interrupters of closet hook-ups, but most of the time it led to rooms more magnificent and wondrous than the rooms that came before it. But Ella’s bedroom – I will never forget it. I opened the door and gasped – the ceiling was completely enchanted to look like the night sky. But not just the night sky as you would see it on a normal night in Kingstown – a fuzzy grey-black background, stars drowned out by the light pollution or clouds – but the kind of sky you could only see from the top of a mountain, the pitch black cut by swathes of stars, milky-white galaxies shot through with purple and dark, swirling nebulas.

That night I’d come home and plastered plastic stars all over my bedroom ceiling. It didn’t quite have the same effect, but it was the closest I was going to get.

Now I shut my eyes tightly and try to convince myself that the past two days were just a dream, a blip easily wiped from my memory. Well, except for the fact that I know when I go down for breakfast I won’t be able to watch the news – that part of the routine won’t be added back in for a
long
time. But maybe going back to work in the store, helping to restore some order after the chaos of Emilia’s attack, will make me feel normal.

The first few hours of the morning tick by in blissful solitude. I fix the bell above the door and get started on clearing up the mess. The terrifying thought crosses my mind that maybe the media will come by the store, bearing flashbulbs and voice recorders, to capture the Kemi family’s misery on air. Yet obviously our early exit from the Hunt isn’t even news enough for that. We are forgotten as quickly as Princess Evelyn’s early suitors.

Once I’ve piled up the scraps, I tie back my dusty hair and sit down cross-legged on the floor, trying to match them up like some enormous jigsaw puzzle. A line of text on a torn corner catches my eye – I swear it matches with another scrap of paper I’ve seen. I absent-mindedly clamp the first bit of paper between my lips while I reach across the floor for the other.