Trouble's Brewing (Stirring Up Trouble Trilogy 2)

Theoretically Martin was probably more formal than Finn. So why did it strike me as too intimate for Mom to be calling him that? Martin sounded older than Finn. I didn’t want my mother to forget that Finn looked to all the world like a teenager. And I didn’t want her to forget he’d been a wrinkly old man a few months ago.

I know they were both probably lonely. They didn’t have much of a social life, either one of them. I got the need for a friend thing. I wasn’t so sure it was healthy for Mom. Mom hadn’t been dating, and she had been utterly betrayed by my father. Finn wasn’t ugly. Finn was sadly approaching beautiful. My mother could develop feelings for him. Glancing at them working busily on the Thanksgiving desserts, I wasn’t sure she hadn’t already started thinking of Finn in a dangerous way. My mother was too vulnerable. I didn’t want her dating the potions master, but I didn’t want her getting her heart broken either.

One thing was for sure. I had to find my mother a date. An age-appropriate date. I could enlist Milo’s help. He would understand, and I could tell him the full story. Jake would help too, and he wouldn’t be suspicious about my motives. He’d think I wanted my mother to find love. A totally normal thing for a teenage girl to do. I could put Camille on it too. Not Anya though. She might spill it to my mother, and my mother could not know.

“We have a few more minutes of cooking, Zoe. Then you and Martin can get to work.”

“Did you guys make anything for dinner tonight?” I asked, looking around the kitchen.

“Oh no,” my mother said. “I got so caught up in Thanksgiving that I didn’t buy groceries for tonight.”

“Oh dear,” Finn said. “I’m afraid tonight’s meal didn’t occur to me either.”

“I guess we can eat something frozen. Or order pizza. Again.” For the first time ever, I did not want any pizza.

Mom set down the knife and went to the freezer. “I don’t even know what’s in here at this point.” She rummaged around for a few minutes. Then she pulled out a frozen bag of ravioli. “Oh look! You love these.” She shut the freezer and moved to the pantry cabinet. “If we have some sauce, we’re in business.” She held up a jar of spaghetti sauce. “I can make a salad. A pretty good salad since we just chopped up every vegetable known to man.”

My stomach growled with happiness. I did love Mom’s ravioli. “Do we have cheese to melt on top.”

Mom laughed. “I have five different cheeses.”

“I’m starving,” I said. “Can we have dinner early?”

“Sure. If it’s okay with Martin. Can you take a dinner break and eat with us?”

“I would like nothing more.”

My mother beamed at him. “Wonderful.”

Uh oh. Was I already too late? Maybe I was overreacting. Yesterday, she’d been sick as a dog and had sported a rooster comb. Maybe she’s excited to be back to normal.

“In fact,” Finn said. “We can work at the dining room table. We’re not brewing anything today.”

“Then I’ll get to work on the ravioli as soon as I get these pies in the oven.”

“Do we get pie for dessert?”

“Only if it doesn’t do well.”

I made a face.

“Don’t hope that my pies are losers!”

“I won’t.” Maybe. Probably. Possibly.

“Fine,” Mom said. “We’ll cut one for dessert.”

Yes! I was going to get a real dinner and some pie.

“Shall we adjourn to the dining room, Zoe?”

“Certainly,” I said. I grabbed a bottle of water and a can of soda for myself. I had stayed up too late working on the paper, and I didn’t want to fade during the lesson. I needed caffeine plus hydration. “You want anything?”

Finn paused. “I suppose a bottle of water would do.”

I reached for one and handed it to Finn.

Chapter Ten

“You were going to tell me about yesterday,” I reminded him after we sat down at the table.

“Yes, I was,” he said. “Yesterday’s mishap was fascinating. I’d never seen that particular result before. I believe that your brewing skills resulted in a particularly powerful potion, albeit not the potion you were going for. You must have managed to bring that potion off the heat at precisely the right moment. The immediate addition to the soup and the rapid administration to your mother also played a role. Why do you think the result was the rooster comb?”

I’d been thinking about this. “The chicken soup? I’m glad she didn’t end up with chicken wings or a beak.”

“Agreed,” he said. “Your mother was fortunate in the manifestation of the potion, whether she realized it at the time, or not. I believe that yesterday’s mishap may yield some important information once we study it.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s say you need an ingredient that you don’t have. Could you brew yesterday’s potion, and administer it in some related substance? If you were out of cat’s whiskers, could you fine-tune the potion to give you the cat’s whiskers?”

“By ‘give’ you mean make you grow some cat’s whiskers on your own face? Yuck.”

“What if you needed the cat’s whiskers to save your boyfriend’s dog?”

“I didn’t remember telling you about that.”

“I did my homework, Zoe.”

“Mom told you. But yes, I see your point. I would have given that a try for Indiana. If I had to. But I have easy access to cats.”

Finn shook his head. “Then think of another potion ingredient. One that is rare.”

“What if you end up with the chicken wings and don’t have the arms you need to brew the potion?”

“Exactly! You would never do this alone. And not until it’s further tested.”

“Wouldn’t you be taking a big risk? Even if it were tested.”

“Yes. You’d have to keep in mind that line we talked about the other day.”

Uh oh. Back to “the line” and ethics.

“Your mother mentioned your restraint this weekend in regards to the unicorn horn substitution. She indicated that you completed your schoolwork and assisted her without any complaints that you had no time for the experiments. Do you recall our conversation about crossing the line and obsessively pursuing experiments?”

“Sure,” I said fully expecting some praise.

“I am impressed with your self-control this weekend, but I’d like to see if you can take it a step further.”

“A step further?” This did not sound good.

“Your mother and I discussed asking you to forego experimentation until the Thanksgiving holiday is over.”

What? “You mean until Friday?”

“We mean until Monday.”

“But I’ve shown restraint. You just said I have.”

“Indeed, Zoe. This isn’t meant as a punishment, but rather a—”

“Test!”

“I was going to say character-building exercise.”

Part of me wanted to throw a fit. A loud, messy yelling and screaming fit. The other part reminded me that Dr. Finnegan could put a stop to my potion substitutions any time he wanted. He could go much further. He could take my powers.

“Monday,” I choked out, “sounds lovely.”

By the time Mom brought in the ravioli and salad, I had lost my appetite. I helped bring in the plates and napkins, and when I saw Mom and Finn digging in, I realized I couldn’t exactly go wrong by eating some.

Thanksgiving holiday should have been amazing. I had time for Milo and Jake. I had time to relax and not do any schoolwork. I had time for brewing potions and checking on my limestone theory. Time… but not permission.

The cheesy, yumminess of the ravioli distracted me somewhat. Mom’s salad tasted great too. I glanced up at Finn and my mother. They were talking about some movie I’d never seen. If something was in black and white, I automatically flipped the channel. I figured I didn’t need to be conversant in the history of cinema when I was a science guru and a potions genius. How

many times had they watched this movie? As Mom and Finn chattered on about the ancient history of cinema, I revisited my earlier concerns. I had to spend part of the holidays brainstorming “the mom situation.”

The clink of wine glasses as my tutor and mother toasted something or other drew me back to the dinner table. The Mom Situation had jumped to priority number one. Finn had replaced my father in the kitchen and at the dinner table. I had to make sure it stopped there.

“I’m sure it’s nothing like that, Zoe,” Milo said later on the phone. “They are two adults spending time together.”

I filled him in on the potion disaster from Sunday, Mom’s sickness, the two times I’d caught them in the kitchen cooking.

“Oh,” Milo said.

“It’s probably nothing, right?”

“Probably.”

“Well I have to stop it before it becomes something. Will you help?”

“I’ll help you figure out a plan, but I’m not doing anything that will hurt your mother.”

“I would never hurt my mother.”

“Zoe, what if Dr. Finnegan is the right guy for her.”

“He can’t be! He’s nineteen.”

“What if all of this happened for a reason, and it’s their fate to be together. What if he is her true love? Her perfect match?”

“First, that’s crazy talk. And second, you reread the Twilight series, didn’t you?”

“No. Mom and I watched the movies over the weekend.”

I snorted. “He isn’t her true love. And even if he is, it is not acceptable.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Milo, you really don’t think they are meant to be together, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. Because my dad is already dating my boyfriend’s mother. I don’t know if I can stand it if my life gets any more complicated.”