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“Edwin, don’t say it.” Charles groans, keeping his voice low and hushed.
From the other end of the wooden hut, there’s a clatter of glass bottles, pots and pans, and what sounds like old, possibly proto-slavic curse words. Edwin should really brush back up on that. Apart from her apparently poor kitchen organization, the space is fairly clean for a witch. Actually, it’s shockingly cozy, sort of a clash between modern and ancient. There’s a colorful quilting project in the works thrown over a plush pink sofa, situated across from a large, almost too thin television mounted on log walls. It should all clash with the gargantuan mortar with a straw broom resting against it, or the bubbling cauldron, currently being licked by flames that seem an awful fire hazard, but somehow the room is oddly tied together.
Unfortunately, him and Charles are tied together as well, right to a y-shaped tree trunk holding up the central beam. He’s guessing that she’s used magic to add in rooms to what must’ve originally been a single-space dwelling.
Edwin strains against the rope infused with just enough iron to make them solid, but not enough to hurt beyond a light-sting, and tries to catch a glimpse of whatever this witch is doing around the corner. God, he hates dealing with witches.
“I told you this would happen,” Edwin replies, smug and sing-songy. They may be hopelessly trapped and seconds away from being subjected to some new horror, but at least he was right.
“Yeah, well, you tell me lots of things don’t you? Said last week that old Mrs. Thompson wouldn’t give us a discount on that bag of white snakeroot, but what do we have back at the office?”
Silently, Edwin rolls his eyes. They do, in fact, have a rather large bag of the stuff inexplicably given to them at half price because of Charles’ relentlessly charming smiles. Admittedly, if Edwin were running an apothecary, he too would probably make slim profit margins with Charles as a customer.
Charles continues on. “See, you’re not always right. Oh, and what about the Case of the Reopened Train station, when…”
Edwin tunes him out, diverting his attention to the unnatural way the house begins to creak and shift. He nudges their shoulders together. “Charles, do you feel that?”
“Feel what—” With another groaning creak, the house sways from side to side as tree branches snap and slide against the windowpanes. “Oh, bloody hell.”
“Still think taking her case was a good idea, do you?”
“Oh come off it, we’ve dealt with way weirder. And you’ve gotta admit, she seemed nice at first.”
When the old woman first arrived at their office, she’d explained that she needed help with a pixie infestation in her home, and was willing to let them choose anything from her collection of magical artifacts in exchange. Edwin thought that sounded too good to be true, but Charles insisted she looked harmless. “Just a nice old lady, nothing to worry about, mate.”
There’s another clatter, followed by the witch triumphantly exclaiming, “Aha, there it is." If Edwin had to guess, he thinks maybe the language is 8th century. “Oh, you will both love this, it will be very good for everyone, I think. Just couple more ingredients.”
Something cold and all too familiar seizes up Edwin’s limbs. All of a sudden, he’s on that table in Esther’s sitting room again, completely out of commission as he’s dissolved and harvested.
Warm fingers interlace between his and squeeze tight.
“Hey, I’m gonna get us out of this mess, promise,” Charles says gently.
With an inordinate amount of effort, Edwin forces himself to nod and squeezes Charles’ hand back.
“If we work together, I think we can knock this beam out of place and collapse the roof. Shouldn’t take more than a few good shoves.” He pauses, waiting for Edwin’s answer, though his throat has gone inexplicably dry. “I can manage actually, you just—you hang tight, yeah?”
It’s awfully frustrating, that Edwin knows that he wants to respond but the words are locked away somewhere in his brain. It’s like the key has been dropped down a grate, and his fingers can just brush against the cold metal.
Charles shoves against the tree trunk, once, twice, a third time, using more effort with each one but it doesn’t budge. The uneven gait of the house makes it difficult for him to time it properly, and he apologizes profusely when once he accidentally knocks into Edwin instead. He gets one more in before he’s interrupted by approaching footsteps.
“No, no, no, stop that. No roughhousing, very lucky for you house is child-proofed,” the witch scolds, waving a long finger at them. Her outfit is more patchwork than original fabric, creating a busily patterned, heavy looking dress layered under a shawl that she tosses dramatically over one shoulder. “Now, which one of you would like to stay here? I can create plenty of space, I have video games—Atari, Nintendo, point-and-click adventure, whatever you like.”
“Ma’am, that’s very nice, but we have a detective agency to run, so really neither of us can stick around. But, um—your home is very lovely,” Charles says.
“Wonderful, you are polite young man. You will stay, yes? My grandchildren do not visit anymore, they tell me I put too many curses on their villages back in the day, and they hold grudge. But I only ever poison two, maybe three wells when villagers are mean to my home. They call her names, you see. Make fun of her legs.”
The house lurches again, and something green and caustic spills out of the cauldron. There must be a number of permanent spells cast around them to account for the instability, because the liquid curls back in on itself like a cresting wave and easily falls back into the cauldron with a plop.
“I am sorry, but you cannot have him,” Edwin says. “And I’ve found that starting off with kidnapping usually sours things.”
“You would not understand. It is very hard to make friends as you get older. I try and try, even joining jazzercise in 80s, but everyone always moves onto something new, and I already learned my lesson in Strasbourg that you should not force people to dance.”
“That was you?”
Charles looks between the two of them. “Feels like I’m missing something.”
“There was an unexplained dancing plague in 1500s France. Hundreds of people were affected, uncontrollably dancing until they collapsed from exhaustion and it lasted months. They thought maybe it was from bad flour carrying a contagion.”
She shrugs. “You know what they say—live, laugh, learn, loot. And I do not like when mistakes are thrown in my face, you are not invited to stay. You should be wearing ‘rude boy’ words on jacket, not him.” From her pocket she pulls a light blue vial, uncorks it, and forces open Charles’ mouth. “This will make you happy to be here. Promise.”
Edwin attempts to fight hard against the bonds, barely noticing how it’s started sending up dark, curling plumes of smoke from his skin. “Get off of him!”
It’s useless.
She’s too in tune with the motions of the house, anticipating a dip that sends Edwin stumbling, and he hears Charles sputtering beside him. His head lolls onto Edwin’s shoulder, and after a few moments Charles pulls himself back up. Edwin’s anticipating what the potion might’ve done, figuring out how to fight on two fronts now that the witch has potentially recruited Charles to her side all while they’re still tied together. Their eyes meet, and Charles looks at Edwin like he’s never seen him before.
Edwin’s heart shatters, and he’s in no position to pick up the pieces.
And then, out of nowhere, Charles kisses him.
As much as he’s tried to stop himself, Edwin’s imagined this happening a lot in the past few months. When he’s at their desk, with Charles propped up on the surface of it across from him, he can almost see it so clearly. Charles leaning down to run fingers under his chin, lifting it up until their lips meet in the middle. Sometimes, Charles has looked at him like he wants to, eyes flicking down and lingering on Edwin’s lips as if he’s working out just the right angle to fit them together. And then—well, it just never happens. Edwin reminds himself that it was a trick of the light like last time, and the time before that, and if it ever happens again, too.
That’s what this must be, another trick.
After this, he’ll have to trick himself into forgetting how soft and warm Charles’ lips were against his own. Charles attempts to part his mouth, and that shocks Edwin enough that he can actually manage to pull away. Though, there’s not a lot of space to claim between them.
“What did you do to him?” Edwin demands.
The witch looks almost as surprised as Edwin feels. “Why do you not tell me you two are in love before we started this process? Very bad luck to separate a couple, it is why I always kill whole village at once. Much kinder.”
Too stunned by nearly having Charles’ tongue in his mouth, Edwin doesn’t have the wherewithal to address that statement. “Charles is not—we are not in love. So please, kindly undo whatever it is you’ve done.”
“I think we are, mate.” Charles nuzzles into the side of his neck. “God, you’re so bloody fit when you lecture someone.”
“Oh, this is new development?”
“No—it is not, we are not—” He suppresses a shudder as Charles presses his lips to where Edwin’s pulse point would be. “You are messing with him.”
“Hmm, I suppose this is very far off from intended use of potion. He should just be excited to move in, ready to help move furniture, and putting art on my fridge,” she says, a little disappointed. Holding a hand up to her forehead, she measures how much taller Charles is and seems to reconsider. “Or, maybe not.”
Edwin almost feels bad, and wonders if she realizes just how old the two of them actually are. At least this is a better experience than the other witches they’ve encountered.
While examining what’s left of the liquid in the vial, her ancient eyes widen. From a hook on the wall she pulls loose, bound leather sheets that Edwin prays are cow or sheep, flips through a variety of colour wheels, and holds the vial to one. “Oh no, no, no. Colour should be dark blue, seems I have forgotten my eyeglasses again and I have added too many cobwebs, easy mistake.”
Edwin cycles through his mental inventory of potion ingredients and their uses. Though, it’s awfully difficult with Charles so close, the curve of his smile pressed against Edwin’s skin. “That is not a component in any love potion I have ever heard of.”
She looks awfully offended. “This is not a love potion, I do not make those, too volatile. I do not even keep ingredients for them around. It is—how do I describe it? You know the wonderful singer Natasha Bedingfield, ‘release inhibitions, feel rain on your skin.’ Oh, I just love her,” she says, leaning over to a sewing table and freeing a large pair of shears. Edwin freezes, but she simply fits them underneath their binding and shears through the layers of rope. Tossing those aside onto the sofa, she scoops up an old broom and shoos them away with it as Charles hangs on to Edwin with his arms looped around his neck. “Okay, okay. Please leave my home now, I do not need to see this.”
“You’re not going to cure him?” Edwin demands.
“Not my job.”
“I feel brills, mate. Don’t worry about it, you’re always worrying too much.”
Edwin jumps as she sweeps at their ankles. “Out the door, this way. Goodbye. So long.”
With a quick spell of last minute thinking, Edwin holds his hand out. “May I please have the rest of the potion? We can call things even, we did come all the way out here after all, and you did tell us we could have our pick of anything.”
“But you did not solve my pixie problem, so, no deal.”
“There weren’t any pixies!”
“Maybe there will be one day,” she says.
Edwin might just tear his hair out. “Okay, in the event that sometime in the future there is a pixie problem, we will agree, just once, to solve it for you. Now, may I have the potion as our payment in advance.”
“Okay,” she says, tossing it over easily with a sly grin as if she’s won. “Just for reputation purposes though, do not mention to anyone that I needed help. I am powerful, ancient witch after all. But, sometimes I get lonely.”
“And how would I relay this information? I do not even know your name.”
“Ah, and here I thought you were clever,” she says, before fully shoving them out the door.
Despite having been a ghost for more than thirty years, unaffected by the laws of gravity and its associated pitfalls, Edwin’s stomach still lurches for a moment as he holds tightly onto Charles while they free fall. Even in his haze, Charles manages to spin them around so he hits the ground first. There’s always a sort of give and take, choosing not to fall through floors and the earth. Both of them have gotten so used to imagining that their shoes—or, in this case, their bodies—are making tangible contact, that they kind of do. There’s never any lasting injury like there would be if they were alive, but it still takes them a minute to readjust.
Edwin rolls off of Charles, who is still grimacing next to him, as they watch the large, ramshackle hut stride away on chicken legs.
“Charles, I think you were nearly kidnapped by Baba Yaga.”
“Okay. Sure, why not,” Charles groans, and reaches over to pat the middle of his chest. “You good?”
Well, there’s a couple of different issues wrapped up in there.
They’re lying in the middle of a forest, after having been thrown from a few stories up. If they were alive, that would be an extremely pressing issue. As it is, it’s just a minor inconvenience. More immediately relevant is the very recent memory of how right and wonderful it felt to be kissed by Charles, and not knowing if any of it was real. Edwin slips the potion vial into his pocket, and extends a hand to haul Charles up.
“I still want to kiss you, by the way,” Charles says, reading his mind.
“As much as I would like to believe that, you must understand that I shall have to run some tests on this potion first.”
Charles looks remarkably like a kicked puppy. “Listen, I’ve been working my way up to it lately, this just helped things along.”
In the direct line of Charles’ big brown eyes, Edwin melts and fits their hands together. He’s unsure if the potion has fully left Charles’ system given the lucidity he’s exhibiting now, but this feels safe enough until he confirms what Baba Yaga said about it. “Now, let’s see about finding our way out of here.”
____
As it turns out, the potion has not worn off. In fact, it seems to only be increasing in potency. Edwin’s working theory is that the fall simply shocked some momentary clarity back into Charles, but its effects have returned in full swing.
Crystal, understandably, has refused to visit the office until they’ve sorted this out, though she relayed this in much crasser terms.
Edwin is currently titrating a sample of the potion to determine the amount of sage in the mixture. It’s made quite difficult by the way Charles is staring at him from their sofa, lounged across it with his arms folded on the armrest, his head turned sideways and cushioned on them. After this debacle is solved, Edwin just might have to figure out how Charles has managed to make stars appear in his eyes.
“How are your lips the perfect shape?”
Edwin resists looking back up. “I do not have an answer for you.”
Giving the beaker one last stir, Edwin draws up a portion of it into a pipette, and tests a few drops over a small, floating ball of flames. Immediately, it sizzles and roils to an emerald green before shifting back to a calmer orange. This is the last ingredient he needs to isolate, a confirmation of whether or not Charles’ feelings for him were just a flash in the pan, too.
Charles lets out a fluttery sigh. “Wish they were on me right now—your hands, too. You’ve got good hands, mate. Good everything, really.” As if he’s floated back down to earth, Charles adds in a more grounded voice, “Sorry, I can’t—it’s like there’s no filter. Or, just a tad less of a filter than I’ve normally got.”
“It is alright, Charles,” Edwin says, taking down one last note. He thumbs through Puzzling out Potions, and his heart skips a beat.
Let Go
Ingredients:
One firefly (must have had dreams of being reincarnated into something larger)
Exactly three more cobwebs than you think you will need
Crocodile Tears (must be real)
Willow bark, from a tree with a pair of initials carved
Sage (to taste)
Fairy thimbles (for colour)
Duration: Until Cured
Most effective on: Goblins, kappas (administer directly to water dish), the undead, werewolves. Not suitable for use on Mothman.
Description: Let Go is ideal for the romantically emotionally obstructed, and clears the channels between the brain, spinal cord, and vocal chords. Let Go cannot conjure emotions, it can only bring to light pre-existing ones. (If you wish to conjure emotions, see pg. 18).
For a cure, see pg. 513. In the case of a reciprocated love confession, may also be cured through sex to completion. For magical sex positions, see pg. 3—
He snaps the book shut.
“You alright, mate?”
Edwin’s face heats up. “Just a moment, please,” he says, higher pitched than intended.
The ingredients list left something to be desired, but after a thorough search flipping between the index and various potions, Edwin can’t find any other one with this same mix.
All empirical evidence points to Charles really, truly being in love with him.
With his hands folded neatly in front of him, concealing the half-full potion vial, Edwin strolls over to Charles. “If I did my equations correctly—”
“Which you did, ‘cause you’re brilliant.”
The tightness constricting Edwin’s chest finally unfurls, blooming into something bright and warm. “—If I did them correctly, then... Charles, I believe you.”
Charles has already leapt up to kiss him before Edwin has the chance to explain further. Desperate hands run through his hair, spinning him around until he’s crowded against the wall. Edwin lets himself melt into it, parting his mouth and attempting to match Charles’ fervent pace. Even if they don’t need to, they’re both breathing hard, chests rising and falling against each other like the swell of a tide. Edwin’s eager to get swept away in it.
The wet warmth of Charles’ open mouth explores a path down his throat. With great effort, Edwin rises to the surface. “There—there happens to be a cure, if you are interested.”
“Might be nice—to—have some control—back,” Charles barely gets out between kissing him.
Edwin just manages to recite the details, which inspires a hungry look in Charles. “I—well, it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to whip up another potion, we do have all the components necessary,” Edwin adds. “Or...”
Charles leans back, leveraging himself with arms wrapped around Edwin’s back. “Or?”
Opening up his hand, Edwin reveals the rest of the potion and downs it in one swallow. “Oh heavens, however will I focus on brewing an antidote now?”
Charles lets out a beautiful, surprised laugh, and Edwin can’t help but pull them both onto the sofa so they can both let go.