Ghostly Garlic Read online

  “Marge, hold up. Look at this.” They both knelt and observed the strange phenomenon. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  “Never.”

  “A special water potion?”

  Marge’s head lilted to the side. “Perhaps.” Beside her, Max shuffled his paws backward, his trembling ratcheting up several degrees.

  Libby took a deep breath, then she stretched a tentative hand towards the water puddling in the middle of the air. It felt much how she’d expected: wet. Except, there was a solid feel beneath the puddle. She frowned, now adding a second hand to the probing, her fear shoved aside by a deep curiosity.

  Closing her eyes, she let her roaming fingers paint a picture, like a sculptor or someone without eyesight might use their hands to “see.”

  “Oh, crap.” Her fingers fumbled when they felt lips followed by eyes. She recoiled.

  “Libby? What’s wrong?”

  “I-it’s Bea. She’s invisible. And I think she’s dead.”

  Chapter Six

  “SHE’S DEAD?” MARGE’S voice raised a full octave. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. Did you hear the part about her being invisible?”

  “I can see that she’s invisible.” The apothecary squatted, her mouth pressing into a thin line as she poked a finger at the air. It stopped a few inches in front of her as if hitting solid matter.

  Marge’s hands roamed closer to the floor and appeared to check for a pulse. After a couple of tense moments, she sat back on her heels. “Dead.”

  There was such finality to the statement, and Libby’s chest tightened with emotion.

  Her mind frantically searched for an explanation to latch onto, a grasp tying back to reality, something other than the lingering tingle in her fingertips where she had touched the dead woman’s face.

  Their friend was dead.

  Despite being invisible, Beatrice still held substance, unlike a ghost. Marge hated Libby using the word “magic” to describe the effects of their potions, but, as much as she might deny it, their work often defied the laws of physics. Well, known laws of physics, anyway.

  She moved beyond the internal question of how this was scientifically possible as she wandered over to the empty vials laying on their sides.

  “Do you think these might be why we can’t see her? One of these could be an invisibility potion responsible and the other…” She shrugged. “Some sort of bad interaction between the two?”

  A few feet away, Marge still knelt beside the invisible body. Her eyes glistened when she looked up. “Possibly. What are you thinking?”

  “It’s clear something more than just a lab accident happened here.” Libby gestured at the mess. “Either she was experiencing a health crisis, like a heart attack, and thought these potions might help or….” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

  Marge used a table leg to hoist herself to her feet before joining Libby. “Hm, it’s possible they spilled and mixed. Most potions can’t interact without disastrous consequences.”

  Libby nodded, thinking of Gladys’s porch fire fiasco. “And didn’t you tell me that, sometimes, they’ll create an entirely different effect than their intended purpose?”

  “So, you were listening.” Despite the rib, the apothecary’s eyes still glimmered. “But that doesn’t explain the broken vase and this.” She gestured at the scattered ingredients and tipped glassware. “If it was a heart attack, why not call 911? Speaking of, at the moment, we have a bigger problem than a dead friend.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, normally when you find a dead body, you call 911.”

  Libby knew all too well. “Crap, you’re right. If the EMTs show up, how can we possibly explain their patient is invisible?”

  “Exactly. We need to reverse the effect before we can call this in.”

  Libby eyed the air where a few droplets of water continued to hover, most likely sitting on Beatrice’s chest. The thought sent another shiver up her spine. “I don’t suppose the potion can just wash off?”

  “Bea isn’t laundry. And what if she ingested it?”

  “We have to try at least.”

  While they had been talking, Max padded across the room, circled in place, then slumped to the floor, his eyes drooping.

  The potionists gathered roughly where they thought Bea lay, and Libby held the water bottle poised in the air. There was still a little bit of liquid left in the container.

  “I really hate my life right now. I just want that on record,” she said.

  “Noted. And this was your bright idea. Now pour.”

  When wetting and rubbing the water around proved fruitless, they parted through the hole in the floor, with Max in tow. At the bottom of the pull-out ladder, Libby stopped. She stared back up into the dim room above.

  “What is it?”

  “How’d the ladder get put back?”

  Marge shrugged. “There’s probably a way to pull it up from above.”

  Biting her lip, Libby nodded in agreement and followed Marge downstairs, all the while, her mind remaining on the ladder and the body above.

  Outside on the stoop, she sucked in a breath of ocean breeze, drinking it like water. “Now what?”

  “Now, we call an emergency PMS meeting and see if anyone has any bright ideas. Hopefully, most of them are still at Gladys’s cleaning up.”

  Libby opened the rear passenger door to her car, and Max jumped in without being asked. As she settled in behind the steering wheel, Marge was already in the passenger seat, pressing out a text message on her ancient Nokia cell phone. It was painful to watch.

  “At this rate, it’ll be sunrise before you get the message out. Let me.” Libby already had a contact list created of all the members saved in her phone, including Stacy. Although, she hadn’t resisted inputting the woman’s name as “The Devil’s Right Hand.”

  Her thumb swiped back and forth across her device a few times, then she pressed send. “Done. I didn’t give specific information. Only that it was an emergency and for everyone to reconvene at Gladys’s if they’d already left.”

  Driving back, the headlights from her car swathed out over the winding road.

  “I wonder what she was working on.” Then, “Do you have her family’s contact info?”

  Marge shook her head, saying that it was probably in Beatrice’s kitchen somewhere. “I don’t want to call yet until we know more information. And really, that’s a call for Jackson to make.”

  Libby let out a groan, envisioning Deputy Eric Jackson seeing—or rather, not seeing—the body. “We really need to reverse the effects of those potions.”

  Marge’s hand shot out suddenly, causing Libby to slam on the breaks. In the backseat, Max protested with a yelp.

  “What? What is it?” Libby searched the road for wildlife. “Did you see something? Was it Bigfoot? Please tell me it was Bigfoot.”

  “No, you nut. Keep driving.”

  When Libby reached the speed limit again, she side-eyed her companion. “You want to tell me what that was about?”

  “It’s just, when you mentioned that you wondered what Bea was working on, it got me thinking.”

  “That’s never good.”

  Marge ignored the comment. “We got a pretty good look at her lab, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “What wasn’t there?”

  Libby didn’t follow, so Marge pressed on. “What’s the one thing we all keep in our labs, the one thing that makes what we do possible?”

  The answer hit Libby as she pulled into Gladys’s driveway. “Our potion books.”

  Beatrice’s potion book was missing.

  The Potion Masters Society sat in Gladys’s basement in the same circle they had a couple of hours prior, with Max curled up in the corner, only the mood had changed considerably. It was nearing ten o’clock, the time when the majority of the members turned in for the night, evident by the constant yawns and drooping eyes.

 
; Once everyone had settled into their respective seats, Libby and Marge broke the news. Shock turned into denial which turned into an aching sadness that was still palpable. Around the room, everyone either dabbed at their eyes with a tissue or sniffled—except for Stacy. But even she managed to seem forlorn.

  After the news was digested, ideas got bandied about on how best to make Beatrice visible again, ranging from dressing her corpse head to toe in bandages like a mummy, to slathering cream all over her. The aroma of strong coffee preceded the coffee pot as Gladys descended the stairs, a tray in her quivering hands.

  Libby jumped to her feet and offered to take the tray. The tower of styrofoam cups nearly toppled off as she set it on the serving table beside the now-room temperature fruit.

  Members trickled over and fixed cups for themselves before finding their seats again. As Libby settled into her chair, stirring in creamer, Marge had just finished saying how wrong it felt to leave Beatrice behind.

  Libby nodded her agreement at the same time her phone vibrated in her back pocket. When she saw the number on the screen, her mouth turned down, and she pressed “ignore,” a move that didn’t go unnoticed by Marge.

  Libby mouthed, My ex. There was no further need to expound. If anyone understood, it was Marge.

  It was strange that James had broken the silence between them first. It had been nearly two months since she bought a house and moved to Washington, thereby ending their engagement. It was even stranger that he was calling so late. She comforted herself with the fact that if it was important enough, he’d leave a voicemail.

  Shelly’s voice brought Libby back to the problem at hand. “We have to solve this fast. When the police start investigating, they’re going to want to know why we didn’t check on Bea immediately. Everybody knows our book club meets Wednesdays. They’re going to be just as suspicious as we were that she didn’t show up for tonight’s meeting.”

  Libby nodded in agreement. “Even if we fudged the timeline and told Jackson we didn’t go looking for her until tomorrow morning, he’ll have trouble believing it.”

  “Maybe he won’t be the one to investigate it,” Allison suggested.

  “Won’t matter,” Marge answered. “None of them will buy the fact that we didn’t check up on her immediately.”

  Libby took a sip of coffee then rested her elbows on her knees. “We can say that we did go to her place but didn’t notice anything amiss. None of us were aware she had an attic. Then, when we still didn’t hear from her, we went back to check on her the next morning and noticed the attic entrance then.”

  Murmurs of agreement rumbled around. Of course, that would mean getting rid of the overturned table and broken vase.

  “Good thinking,” Shelly said. “That buys us some time. But not much. We have until tomorrow to come up with a means of making her visible. Do we know what the two potions were in those bottles you found?”

  Both Libby and Marge shook their heads.

  “They weren’t labeled,” Libby explained. She turned to Marge. “Didn’t you mention once that you had an invisibility potion?”

  The apothecary’s face turned a flaming, habanero red. “I never said anything of the sort.”

  “Really? I’m sure you did. It was shortly after we first met.”

  The confusion in Marge’s eyes cleared, and she let out a forced chuckle. “Oh, that. I may have exaggerated.” She shifted in her seat, her face searching the others with an almost apologetic expression. “I was referring to my short-term memory potion. If used on someone just before you walk away, you can make them forget you were there, appearing as if you were invisible.”

  Several members tensed, exchanging furtive glances.

  “Mind you, I’ve never used it on anyone,” Marge added hastily.

  “Not even yourself?” Libby joked to lighten the mood, but no one smiled.

  Marge’s hands fidgeted in her lap. The room stilled a moment before Shelly cleared her throat and returned the discussion to how to analyze the potions in the two vials, asking if anyone had the means to determine the ingredients used based on the residue in the bottles.

  What on earth had that been about? Not for the first time during a meeting did Libby feel out of the loop, like she had stepped in a minefield. As wondrous as the world of potion-making seemed at first blush, it was also a labyrinth of botany, chemistry, and a mess of rules more tangled than a ball of string after a kitten had gotten ahold of it.

  “What about her potion book?” Allison asked.

  “Don’t be so calloused,” Gladys threw out.

  “I wasn’t asking because I wanted it. If the two potions were freshly brewed, then the book would be open to at least one of their recipes, right?”

  Several eyes turned towards Libby and Marge.

  Libby became rather enthralled with carving her name into her styrofoam cup using her fingernail. “Funny thing, we didn’t see her book.”

  “No book?” Shelly frowned. “She must’ve hidden it.”

  “It’s better off lost, anyway,” Caroline said.

  Shelly admonished her while Gladys swore at her.

  “Her daughter has a right to inherit that book,” Marge intoned, her voice hard.

  Caroline’s hands flew up in defense. “I’m just saying, if she’s dabbling in potions on the restricted list, then it’s best that the recipe doesn’t see the light of day.”

  The room exploded.

  A storm of name-calling broiled in the room. Accusations were thrown out like punches, with Marge being the worst offender.

  There was a list of restricted potions? Libby thought.

  Amid the roar, Stacy’s words were nearly drowned out, but Libby heard her pronounce that an invisibility potion shouldn’t be blacklisted from the community.

  Clapping her hands, Shelly quieted the group. “Think of the damage someone with ill intent could do with such a potion. Theft. Breaking and entering. Murder.” The last word hung heavy in the air.

  “Regardless of whether or not it should be on the list,” she continued, swiveling her thick glasses in Stacy’s direction, “the fact of the matter is that it is. Let’s move on and figure out how to get our friend some help.”

  “Even if it means Bea went dark?” Caroline said. Murmurs rumbled again, but Shelly cut off the protests before they grew steam again.

  “Sure, maybe she dabbled a bit too heavily in defense potions.” More than a few pairs of eyes shifted in Marge’s direction. “But I’d sooner believe aliens live on the moon than think Bea became a dark potionist.

  “However, we can’t ever know for sure, can we? Not without her book. But we’re going to proceed as though she were still light. She was a good person and our friend, and she deserves a proper death.”

  Libby, Marge, and a handful of others pronounced, “Here, here.”

  Gladys spoke up. “We need one of the more skilled amongst us to get an ingredient breakdown of the vials. Marge?”

  “Why not me?” Stacy protested. “I’m twice the potionist.”

  “Thanks, Stacy.” Marge rolled her eyes.

  “How about it, Marge?” Shelly asked, ignoring Stacy. “You up to the task?”

  Marge rubbed her eyes, smearing her thick eyeshadow as she did. Shadows crept down her face, aging her a decade. Libby knew her well enough to see that Beatrice’s death had been a blow, salt added to an already open wound from losing her best friend.

  “Yeah, I’ll figure out what was in the vials. But if invisibility is a byproduct of the two potions interacting, then I might not be able to reverse it.”

  “Let’s cross that bridge if it comes up. So, that’s settled. We’ll all be on call in case you need anything from us during the night.”

  The meeting adjourned, Libby stood and stretched, glancing around to be sure no one could overhear.

  “You think the potion mixture might also have been what killed her?”

  “I think it’s a possibility, along with our other theory.”
/>   They had mentioned but glossed over the details about finding parts of Beatrice’s house and lab in shambles, not wanting to jump to conclusions until they uncovered her body. Or recovered it.

  Libby yawned. “Tell me you still have coffee at your place?”

  “The same stuff I had the last time you were there.”

  It wasn’t the best blend, but it would do. Marge typically drank tea, so the coffee grounds were a bit old for Libby’s liking. Desperate times called for desperate measures, though.

  “You’re not thinking of coming over, are you?”

  “Why not?” At the hesitation in Marge’s expression, Libby added, “I don’t plan on going into your secret lair or anything. I’ll hang out upstairs, remain on standby in case you need anything, even if it’s just to cook some food.”

  “I’ve had your cooking, and I’m not sure it’s best on the digestion late at night.”

  “It’s better than starving,” Libby protested.

  Marge conceded on that point, but only just. They retrieved Max from the corner where he’d been snoozing.

  Once in Libby’s Honda, they drove back to Beatrice’s to pick up the two empty potion bottles. Libby kept the car running while Marge ran inside—ran being a generous term.

  She sauntered into the house and took so long Libby turned the engine off. By the time they were pulling into Marge’s driveway, the apothecary had talked Libby out of staying over.

  “There’s just not much you can help with. I appreciate the thought and all, but if you really want to lend a hand, you can bring fresh pastries in the morning.” After a bit of a struggle, Marge heaved out of the car.

  “Whoah, wait.” Leaning over, Libby rolled down the passenger-side window. “Where are you going?”

  Marge blinked. “Home, you daft woman. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  As if on cue, Max whined from the backseat.

  “Orchid will murder him,” Libby said. “And you know how jealous Jasper is of anyone in his domain. If I bring home another pet, he’ll fly south for the winter—permanently.” She suddenly realized what she was saying. “On second thought, maybe I’ll take Max home, after all.”