Page 72 of Monster's Delight

Louis gripped his hair with his hands and started to pace in front of us. “My thesis is about replacing one flavor with another.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?” Aiden asked, a furrow in his brow.

“Youmight not, but I’m interested in geriatrics. Near the end of your life, it gets harder to chew things, but they still enjoy flavors. So I want to be able to swap out flavors of mush with their favorite foods.”

“What a great idea!” I said.

“Thank you.” He preened. “Now, replacement magic is a type of junction magic. Instead of separating, you swap out magic. In this first one, I’m attempting to swap the flavor of the cake from vanilla to bacon. The bacon beside it will take on the vanilla in its place.” He started pacing again. “Although mint doesn’t affect replacement magic as much as it would junction magic…” He made an explosion sound and waved his hands. “It would still ruin my project.”

“Are you saying that mint introduced into a perfectly normal junction magic’s spell wouldn’t change the spell, but would make it explode?” I asked, shocked.

That’s what Ms. Carlisle was talking about!

“Exactly.” Louis went back to his workstation.

I grabbed Aiden’s arm. “I need to see the scene of the crime again. We need Apollo’s mirror!”

CHAPTER21

I didn’t wantto waste any time. I wanted to go straight to Professor Dunlop’s office and look at the mirror again.

Aiden kept his head a bit better than that.

We started off by making sandwiches.

As he put it, “Nobody thinks properly on an empty stomach, and you’ve been working out pretty heavily this afternoon.”

I couldn’t argue. He was right.

Hence the sandwiches. We made them extra thick, with full slabs of ham and cheese, topped off with lettuce and tomato.

I think they were the best things I’d ever eaten.

I was too hungry.

Damn it, I hate it when I’m wrong.

It wasn’t so bad that Aiden was right. I could handle that. It was when I was wrong that I got grumpy.

Aiden noticed my pout. “Are you okay?” he asked, wiping a drop of sauce from the corner of his mouth. “We’re close to solving this.”

I gave myself a shake. I didn’t want him to think that I was upset with him. “I’m worried. What if I’m wrong?”

“Well, you haven’t fully explained your thought process to me yet, so you can always pretend that you were right.” Aiden wiggled his eyebrows at me.

“Oh, sorry.” I took another bite and tried to arrange my thoughts. After swallowing, I said, “We know that one of the components in the spell that Grandfather and Bridget came up with was ivy. What if that had been switched out with mint? You heard Louis. He said that the spell would explode! That was kinda what happened, right?”

Aiden frowned thoughtfully. “But who would do that? Not one of our grandparents, that’s for sure. And wouldn’t they notice the substitution?”

I sighed. “Yeah, with so much on the line for both of them, I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t notice. Also, why would someone want to kill your grandmother? I don’t get it.”

“Motive.” Aiden hummed as he chewed slowly. “Jealousy?”

“Jealous enough to kill? That seems intense.” I poked at the crumbs on my plate, making a little pile. “Jealous of her husband? Her child? Her soul bond with Grandfather?” I squished the pile. “The motive could have been anger. Did she have any enemies?”

“None that I know of. Everyone loved her.”

“And we circle back to jealousy,” I said. “Okay, who would have had access? Who knew what they were doing?”

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