“So fill it!”
“So keep your hands out of the way!”
She frowned at me, raising one of her exaggeratedly drawn-on eyebrows and wrapping her arms against her flat chest. “Just because you’re a canceled stamp doesn’t mean you should take it out on me!” And she did that pouting thing that made it look like she was constipated. Her acting skills weren’t exactly… skills.
“I’m not a canceled stamp,” I grumbled. A ‘canceled stamp’ was another word for a wallflower.
“Well, I don’t see any hotsy-totsy bachelors lurking around here anywhere, do you?”
“Darla, I’m ready to turn the vacuum on you.”
Darla was scared to death (er, no pun intended) of being ‘Hoovered’, as she called it.
“Phonus balonus!” she said as she shook her head and waved me away with an unconcerned, and see-through hand. But the look she gave me revealed her concern.
“If you break any of these bottles I will find a way to exorcise you,” I continued.
“You keep saying that,” she grumbled as she floated around me. “But I think you’re full of horse feathers.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you and me… we could help each other out.”
“Help each other out?” I eyed her narrowly.
She nodded and gave me a well-rehearsed smile. “Sure. We could be all friendly-like, see?”
“No, I don’t see.”
She shrugged. “Well, you’re worried about the little guy, right?”
I could only figure she was referring to Finn. I flicked a glance toward the high, coffered ceiling, as though I could peer through it to Finn’s room above. I still had almost five hours until I had to pick him up from school.
When I was through pouring this batch of Gypsy Magic into the perfume bottle, I’d be good to go. Gypsy Magic was one of my go-tos: a potion I liked to have on hand because it was popular. Well, popular for people who liked to do their own spells and divination work. Gypsy Magic was a divination oil—it helped strengthen spellwork if the user anointed his or her third eye with the oil. I always used it before whipping up my own potions.
As far as my store was concerned, there were two types of potions I would sell—those I made ahead of time and those that were made to order. My most requested potions didn’t have to be specific to the person requesting them. These types of potions included prescriptions for things like success, generating money, attracting romantic partners, and promoting good health. Then there were the more specific potions—things that required objects belonging to the person in question (like a strand of hair, or a piece of jewelry). If someone had a particular health ailment, they needed a tailored cure. Or, if someone had a cheating husband, she’d need a particular potion to dissuade him from his wanderings.
“Of course I worry about him,” I answered as I finished filling the vial with Gypsy Magic and moved to the next one. “I’m his mom. That’s what we do.”
“Right,” Darla answered with a quick nod. “So what if I became your eyes and ears here, at the house?”
“My eyes and ears how?”
“Well, if I told you what object I’d attached myself to in this house…”
“Then I could get rid of you.”
She nodded, but then screwed up her mouth as though that wasn’t the answer she was looking for. “Or you could break off a bit of my object and hide it in a locket. Maybe that big, gaudy one your mother got you last Christmas.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because I’m attached to the… item,” she answered, being careful not to give out any details as to what said ‘item’ was without first getting me to agree with whatever harebrained idea she was working on.
“So?”
“So if you’re wearing the item, that means I’d be able to come to you in a flash and that way you’d know your onions.”
“Know my onions?” I repeated, facing her quizzically. Sometimes her 1920s vocab was irritating.
She breathed out a sigh of exasperation. “You’d know what was going on here at the house, in case you were… out.” She paused as I searched for a way to refute her idea, but then thought better of refuting it. She might actually be onto something…
“Hmmm.”
“Think of me as a ghostly babysitter.”
I considered it for another few seconds before I focused on the downside. And it was a fairly big downside. Keeping a bit of Darla’s talisman around my neck meant she could flash to my side whenever she felt like it. That was a great way to get a reputation as the town nutso. Furthermore, there had to be something in it for Darla. She wasn’t the type of person—er spirit—who did things without selfish reasons. She probably just wanted to stowaway on the good ship Poppy and explore the world.
No, I’d install a home security system… at some point. When all the other necessary home repairs were done. Which was a day I didn’t imagine seeing for a very long time. A very long time.
What were the odds that something awful would happen in the meantime?
In my experience? Pretty high.
“I could keep an eye on the place,” Darla continued, feigning ennui, but not quite managing it. “Keep an eye on the kid when you’re out.”
“If I were out, the ‘kid’ would be out with me.”
She shrugged. “I could make sure no ghosties came callin’. Point is, I could alert you if somethin’ bad was goin’ on here. Like a fire, a break in, a visit from that cranky, old broad who did a number on your apple tree…”
“Ophelia.”
“Right.”
I let out a sigh, holding up the perfume bottle within pouring distance.
“Which ones that?” Darla asked.
“Memory Drops Oil,” I answered, being careful not to spill any of it.
Memory Drops Oil had always been one of my more popular potions. It was used to improve mental acuity, especially for those who had trouble remembering names, faces, or locations. Equal parts rosemary, vanilla, cinnamon, and clove wafted up to tease my nose as I poured the lot of it into the bottle.
Mixing days with GG had always been my favorite of the month. Even now, the cavernous kitchen smelled like GG’s pantry and the scent took me back so many years—to when I was newly learning the history of my ancestors and the ways of the gypsies.
Maybe that was why I said what I did—because I was suddenly in a nostalgic mood which made my defenses less than what they ordinarily were. “Alright, Darla. You can be my eyes and ears around here, but only until I install a security system. And if you just pop in for no reason, I swear I will exorcise you! Or you’ll get the vacuum.”
Darla squealed and slapped her palms together in what appeared to be ghostly glee. “Oh, this is just berries! I promise you won’t regret this, doll.”
“No showing up unless it’s an emergency!” I said, already regretting it.
“No poofin’ in to spy on you, cross my heart an’ hope to die.” Then she started giggling in a falsetto that made my ears hurt. “Get it? Hope to die?”
“I get it,” I grumbled. Then I looked at her. “I’m serious, Darla, no just showing up because you’re bored or you’re wondering what I’m doing or when I’m going to be home.”