Stirring Up Trouble (Stirring Up Trouble Trilogy 1)

Maybe he could help me plan distractions. “Going.” I went upstairs and started dialing Milo, but before he answered, Jake called in.

I disconnected the call to Milo and said, “Hi!”

“Wow,” he said. “You sound really happy.”

“I am!”

“You had a good day?”

“The best.” Time to set this up. “I finally talked my mother into getting me a chemistry tutor.”

Jake didn’t respond at first. “A tutor? For a class you aren’t even taking yet?”

“Yes. Isn’t it great?”

“Tutors aren’t usually considered to be good things. How could you need one? You’re brilliant.”

True. “Well, thanks, but I wanted to get a jump start on the sciences. Dad was on board, but Mom was hesitant. Today she agreed. Trust me, Jake. This is like an early Christmas present for me.”

“Then I’m excited for you.”

The boy accepted my weirdness. I was lucky. “Thanks.”

“Who’s going to teach you? One of the science teachers from school?”

“No. Somebody from the university, I think.”

Jake asked, “A professor friend of your dad’s?”

I thought about the anti-aging potion. “Maybe a student. I don’t know yet.”

“A college guy?”

Now I started to realize where he was going with these questions. He didn’t want another guy around me. My heart leaped at this hint of his feelings for me. On the other hand, I didn’t need him causing trouble with Dr. Finnegan. “Or girl. Too soon to tell.”

“You should definitely ask for a girl.”

“I should?”

“Sure. Because then you’d have a strong female scientist as a role model.”

“Good point,” I said. “I’ll pass on your suggestion.”

“Glad I could help,” he said, and I could almost hear him smiling through the phone.

The poor boy wasn’t going to like Dr. Finnegan. Maybe I’d get lucky and he’d be back to his nineties. Or at least his thirties. Old enough to keep Jake from paying attention.

“I have to go eat dinner. Mom’s calling me, but I’ll call you after I eat. Okay?”

“Sure. Talk to you then.”

As I hung up, my mother peeked in my doorway. “Got a minute?” she asked.

I made a face at her and said haughtily, “No, I’m busy.”

She smiled at my silliness as she came into my room. “I asked the Council to email me a picture of Dr. Finnegan. I told them we wanted to be sure we would recognize him.”

“Perfect! What did they say?”

My mother shrugged as she held up a picture of my new tutor. “I think we might be in trouble.”

Terrified I’d see something grotesque, I made myself look at the photo.

Dr. Finnegan was not gross.

Dr. Finnegan was one-hundred percent hot, young male. He didn’t look like a college student. He looked like a movie star playing a college student. His mussed dark hair contrasted with his brilliant blue eyes. He wasn’t smiling. His square jaw and serious eyes conveyed a brooding, tortured soul, the kind that drove girls crazy.

I raised my eyes to meet Mom’s gaze. “Jake isn’t going to like this.”

“Anya,” she said, pointing to the picture, “will like this. Anya cannot know that this man is at our house three times a week.”

Anya! “What are we going to do?”

My mother gave me her standard non-answer, the one that she used when she didn’t have a clue. “We’ll figure it out.”

With a groan, I closed my eyes.

“We could turn Anya into a frog,” my mother suggested.

“Not funny.”

We’d better come up with something soon because working with Dr. Finnegan was my dream. I had experiments to conduct, potions to brew, substitutions to find. I didn’t need magic to tell me that Anya and Jake snooping around Dr. Finnegan could only lead to disaster. I was already on the Council’s radar. I’d lost my magic once. I hoped my tutor had an Emergency Aversion Protocol for working with Zoe Miller because the hairs on my arms were standing on end. Like an animal before a storm, I sensed an impending crisis.

Trouble was brewing.