The Potion Diaries (2 page)

Mr Patel is lucky. At least he’s chosen to close his store, so he has some measure of control. A familiar pit opens in my stomach as I wonder what will happen to me when our time runs out.

Anita slides back along the shelves to where she’d last been working. I try to drum up some enthusiasm for the task again, but it’s disappeared into the ether like the dust motes from the empty jar.

‘Oh my god, Sam, look at this!’

‘What?’ I scramble my way across to her. What could she have found? Sphinx breath? Or maybe even a dragon’s tooth?

She thrusts her phone in my face. Onscreen is Princess Evelyn posing inside one of the grand Palace ballrooms. ‘The Princess is wearing the same Prime Store dress to her eighteenth that I wanted to buy for the summer ball! Great, now it’s going to be sold out everywhere,’ she pouts.

‘I can’t believe you’re actually going to the summer ball.’

‘Yeah well, not all of us shun boys for potions, like
some
people I know.’

‘Very funny. You don’t have a date, though, do you?’

‘I’m lining up my suitors like I’m Princess Evelyn herself, just waiting for my perfect match.’ Anita flicks her long, glossy black hair, then sticks out her tongue.

I throw my cloth at her and she giggles.

‘So who’s your bet for her date tonight?’ Anita asks.

‘What do you mean?’

Anita rolls her eyes at me. ‘Come on, if you’re going to force me to help with your inventory you have to make it a bit fun for me. I’ll go first, I think it’ll be Damian.’

‘No way. The Royals would never let the Princess marry a pop star. It’ll be Prince Stefan from Gergon. It’d be good for diplomacy.’

‘Well
that’s
boring. Ooh, I know. Zain Aster.’

‘You think?’

‘Why not? Arjun says all anyone at uni can talk about is how good friends he is with the Princess.’ Arjun is Anita’s brother, two years older than we are. He and Zain had been in the same year at our school. ‘Have you seen Zain around lately?’ Anita wiggles her eyebrows suggestively.

‘That’s all in your head, silly. Zain Aster has no idea who I am.’

‘If you say so.’

CHAPTER THREE

Princess Evelyn

H
ER HEART POUNDED AS RENEL, THE most senior advisor in the Royal household, announced Zain’s arrival. Around her neck was a silver heart-shaped locket, which she clutched tightly between her fingers. Yet the moment she saw him, she felt all her nerves and tension ease away. She even giggled as Zain strolled straight in as if he owned the place, bypassing her spluttering advisor.

‘Evie!’ He walked right up to her and wrapped her in his arms. He wore a musky, trendy cologne, with chemical undertones from the lab.

‘You’ve dressed up for the occasion,’ she whispered, placing her fingers lightly on the textured shoulder of his dinner jacket.

He laughed. ‘Well, it’s only the biggest party of the year and I have to look good for the ladies.’ He started dancing on the spot and mimicked popping his collar.

‘You scrub up okay, I suppose,’ she said in what she hoped was a normal tone, even though his words had been like miniature daggers to her heart.

‘Renel, a moment?’ she asked, and waited for the beak-nosed advisor to leave the room.

‘You look insane!’ Zain said, stepping back and holding her arm out to admire her.

She did look good. Her long blonde hair was tied back from her face, a ribbon straining to contain the loose tumble of curls, and her stylist had embedded feather-light wisps of gold amongst the strands. Her floor-length dress, made of periwinkle blue sparkles, floated around her lithe frame. So many designers had begged for the commission to style her for her eighteenth birthday party. She’d chosen a local designer, stocked on the high street – a decision called ‘bold’ and ‘courageous’ by the media. She’d just liked the dress.

The locket was the only accessory that didn’t match. But it had its own purpose. And now it was time.

‘Drink?’ she asked, cursing inwardly as her voice squeaked. She crossed to a small table by the window.

‘Of course!’ Zain replied.

She smiled, then turned her back on him to pour wine from a delicate crystal carafe into two of the finest goblets in Nova, with beautiful pewter bases polished to a mirror shine. With one swift movement, she opened the locket. Deep indigo powder fell into the bottom of his glass, dissolving into the dark red liquid.

She examined the glasses closely and breathed a sigh of relief – they looked identical. She waited for a beat, but he didn’t question or confront her. All was going according to plan.

‘To falling in love?’ she proposed.

He took the glass from her outstretched hand and clinked it against hers, smiling.

‘To you, Princess.’

‘To us.’ It came out as barely a whisper as she lifted the goblet to her lips and watched him do the same. Then she closed her eyes, threw back her head and downed the wine in a single gulp. It slid down her throat as gently as honey. A warmth rushed through her body, coursing through her veins until it felt like her fingertips and toes were on fire and her heart would explode with happiness.

Her eyelashes fluttered open.

And staring into the cool blue eyes reflected in the silver base at the bottom of her goblet, she fell madly, deeply and irrevocably in love.

CHAPTER FOUR

Samantha

T
HE BELL ATTACHED TO THE SHOP DOOR jingles, then abruptly snaps off its hinges and tumbles to the floor. I sigh, opening my notebook to another list: ‘Things to Repair’. I scribble down
Entrance bell
underneath
Leaking roof.

Looking down from the ladder, I spy the sweep of my mum’s skirt as she comes out of the back room to greet the customer. My view is blocked by one of the big wooden beams that crisscross the higher levels of the store, supporting the vast expanse of shelves.

Snippets of conversation drift up from the shop floor, the sound bouncing off the hundreds of glass jars. ‘No trouble, Moira dear . . . pay us next week.’

A groan escapes me before I can help it and I scramble down the series of ladders as fast as I can. Even so, I don’t reach the ground floor until the door snaps shut on Moira’s oversized behind.

‘Mum, honestly!’ I head over to where I’ve laid out the mixes due for pick-up that week. Sure enough, Moira’s entire monthly prescription is missing. I bash the button that opens the till and all that’s inside is the float: the pathetic array of coins left in the drawers every night and a dusty fiver so torn and faded I bet it isn’t even legal tender any more.

‘Moira’s seventy-three. You know she can be forgetful.’

‘What, so forgetful she leaves her purse behind every single time?’ I mumble. It’s no use bringing up this argument with Mum. She sees the good in everyone. The trouble is, at seventy-three, Moira is probably one of our youngest customers. No, really – the only people who choose us over one of the megapharmacies are the old folks who refuse to trust the synthetics. And I can tell from the way Moira stops just around the corner from the store to double-and triple-check her prescriptions that she knows exactly what she is doing whenever she comes into Kemi’s Potion Shop.

The thought makes me angry again. ‘This is supposed to be a business.’

‘Sam! How many times do I have to tell you not to talk to your mother that way?’ Dad strides in through the door in the shelving that leads to Grandad’s lab, smoke billowing onto the shop floor before he manages to close it again. Grandad is concocting this week’s mixes for our (admittedly very small) client base. A smidgeon of guilt tugs at me – I should be in there helping like a good apprentice.

Dad wraps an arm around my mother’s waist and kisses her on the cheek. I smile, unable to stay annoyed for too long about Moira. And it’s nice to see my parents so happy: Mum in her bright lipstick, long skirt and flower-print top, Dad staring at her like she is still a beautiful young woman way out of his league. And technically, she
is
way out of his league. She is Talented – a class of society with the ability to channel magic through an object. She’s only got a low-grade ability, and her object – a divining rod – sits on top of her bedroom dresser gathering dust. But she’s Talented all the same. She could have married into another Talented family and had lots of Talented babies. But instead, she fell in love with my dad, and Dad is ordinary – someone with no access to magic. Just like me.

Being ordinary is what makes us great alchemists. Our lack of magic means we can work with magical ingredients without risk of taint or contamination. But it’s not the only factor. What makes the Kemi family special is our unrivalled skill in the alchemical arts – to know by feel the recipe of any potion, to tease out the properties of each ingredient, to understand the mysteries that go into building a cure.

In my dad’s case, the gift of alchemy skipped a generation, so he could never become his father’s apprentice. But if he’s ever felt any disappointment at not having potion-mixing skills, he tries not to show it. Instead, he works as a bus driver around town. Ordinaries dominate any job that requires interaction with technology – pilots and computer engineers are, for the most part, magicless. Mum works in the store but also took a second job teaching music at Molly’s school, so we have a bit of extra income coming in. But despite both of them knowing how bad things are with the business, neither will let me do anything other than be an apprentice to my grandad.

Because when you have the Kemi gift, you have to use it.

When I can coax it out of him (and often only after I’ve scrubbed clean the lab), Grandad tells stories about how our ancestors were once the official potion-makers to the Royal family. Now it’s ZoroAster Corp, the top synth manufacturer in Nova, which holds that honour. They took it from us when the founder of ZA Corp, Zoro Aster himself, won the last Wilde Hunt to occur in Novaen history. Wilde Hunts were these intense competitions between alchemists, established by the first Novaen king, King Auden, to find the best cures whenever one of the Royal family was in mortal danger. King Auden had a legendary hunting horn said to be made from a prehistoric creature that had its own form of Talent. The horn itself was definitely imbued with magic – it called alchemists to the Hunt and determined the winner by turning gold if the correct potion was submitted.

The prize of winning a Wilde Hunt was a pot of gold crowns and, even more valuable, an immense share of the Royal magic. For alchemists, who were almost exclusively ordinary, the dose of magic was invaluable. That didn’t mean Talenteds didn’t try to win the competition.

And Zoro was the first Talented to succeed. He used his winnings to set up the first ever synth lab, producing synthetic potions for every ache, pain and ailment and changing our industry forever. In one fell swoop, he not only took the Kemi royal commission, but doomed the ancient art of potion-making in which we were expert.

Wilde Hunts are a thing of the past, now. The Royal family is so well protected – they have the best doctors, highly trained bodyguards, the Novaen secret service – that mortal danger is very hard for them to come by. They turn up at events, sure, to open hospitals and hand out honours, but not much else. Once it became clear the King and Queen were only going to have one child, and Princess Evelyn was their sole heir to the throne of Nova, they did everything in their power to ensure nothing could ever happen to her.