“Here, drink this,” Morfran says, appearing out of nowhere. He stuffs a mug of some foul, herbal blend into my face, and I recoil.
“What is it?”
“Angelica root rejuvenation potion. With a little thistle tossed in. After what that Obeah did to your liver last fall, you’ve got to take care of it.”
I look at it skeptically. It’s hot, and it smells like it was brewed with ditchwater.
“Is it safe?”
“As long as you’re not pregnant,” he snorts. “I called Thomas. He’s on his way. He went in to school this morning, thinking you’d be there. Some psychic, eh?” We sort of smile and say, “It only works some of the time,” together in Thomas’s voice. I sip at the potion tentatively. It tastes worse than it smells, bitter and for some reason almost salty.
“This is disgusting.”
“Well, the milk was supposed to coat your stomach and the cookies would’ve taken the taste out of your mouth. But you gave it all to the dog, you idiot.” He pats Stella’s rear and she lumbers off of the couch. “Listen, kid,” Morfran says, and I stop sipping at his grave tone. “Thomas told me what you’re going to try to do. I don’t think I need to tell you that you’re probably going to get yourself killed.”
I look down into the brown-green liquid. A smart remark is creeping up on my tongue, something about how his potions are going to kill me first, and I swallow hard to keep quiet.
“But,” he sighs. “I’m also not going to tell you that you don’t have a chance. You’ve got the stuff, power rolling off you in waves I’ve never heard before. And they’re not just coming from that backpack.” He jerks a finger toward my bag, next to me on the sofa. Then he sits down, on the arm of the chair opposite, and runs his hand across his beard. Whatever it is he needs to say isn’t easy. “Thomas is going to go with you on this thing,” he says. “I couldn’t stop him if I tried.”
“I won’t let anything happen to him, Morfran.”
“That’s a promise you can’t make,” he says, his voice harsh. “You think you’re just up against the forces of the other side? That shadowy, dreadlocked dude who wants to finish digesting you from the inside out? You should be so lucky.”
I sip the potion. He’s talking about the storm again. The thing that he senses, coming at me, or pulling me, or tripping me, or whatever the hell he said in that vague, useless way of his.
“But you’re not going to tell me to stop,” I say.
“I don’t know if it can be stopped. I think maybe you’ve got to go through it. Maybe you’ll come out the other side. Maybe you’ll come out the other side looking like a spit-up owl pellet.” He rubs his beard, having gotten off track. “Look. I don’t want anything to happen to you, either. But if my grandson gets hurt, or worse—” He looks me in the eye. “You’ll have made an enemy of me. Do you understand?”
Over these months, Morfran has become sort of a grandfather to me too. Becoming his enemy is the last thing I want.
“I understand.”
He grabs me, his hand striking like a snake and holding mine fast. In the quarter second before a shot of energy makes my blood jump under my skin, I notice his ring: a small circle of carved skulls. I’ve never seen it on his hand before, but I know what it is, and what it means. It means that I won’t just have made an enemy of Morfran, but of voodoo itself.
“Be sure that you do,” he says, and lets go. Whatever it was that ran through me made sweat stand out on my forehead. Even on my palms.
The door to the shop jingles and Stella trots over to meet Thomas, her toenails clicking. At his entrance, the tension dissipates and Morfran and I take a deep breath. I hope Thomas’s psychic thing isn’t working right now, and that he isn’t particularly observant, or he’s going to ask why we look so uncomfortable and embarrassed.
“No Carmel today?” I ask.
“She stayed home with a headache,” he replies. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I was thrown twelve feet through the air and landed on second-degree burns. You?”
“Groggy, and weak as a wet noodle. Plus, I think I may have forgotten a letter from the alphabet. If I hadn’t asked to leave, Mrs. Snyder would have sent me home anyway. Said I looked pale. Thought I might have mono.” He grins. I grin back, and we sit in silence. It’s strange and filled with tension, but it’s also kind of nice. It’s nice to linger here, to hold ourselves back and not barrel through this moment. Because whatever we say next is going to catapult us into something dangerous, and I don’t think either one of us really knows where it might lead.