Page 45 of Potions & Prejudice
Witch’s tits. Today had gone from bad to worse.
“I don’t know...” Adelaide twisted her hands together.
“Yes!” Elspeth burst out. “We’d love to.”
“Great.” Elm clapped his hands together.
“Great,” Elspeth said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Fucking great.
Nineteen
ELSPETH
Mama stood on her tiptoes on the edge of a chair, reaching the duster up toward the top of the bookshelf. The chair tottered, Mama wobbling.
“Mama, you’re going to fall!” I rushed to a stand, my hands wet and grimy from scrubbing the floor.
We’d barely had time to clean the house now that we were selling soup at the market every day. In a week, we’d managed to scrabble together enough gold to give the woodsmith his first payment, which was a relief.
I had to admit, our soup idea was a hit. There was nothing like it in Thistlegrove, and every day, we had patrons stopping by to see what the daily flavor was. So far, we’d had mushroom and potato stew, rabbit stew, squash and carrot soup, and yesterday, we’d made a spicy tomato soup. Adelaide had baked a crusty bread with melted cheese to go with it. We’d sold out before midday. We’d been buying ingredients from the market with our earnings, but we could save so much more if we planted a garden and started growing our own veggies. It was on our never-ending to-do list.
Allof a sudden, the shelves started rattling around us, books falling off and thunking to the ground. Dust rose in a thick curtain.
I coughed, banging my chest as the dust burned through my lungs. After two weeks here, the cottage didn’t seem any keener on us than it had been when we arrived. It kept us up half the night, pots and pans banging inside the cabinets downstairs. I thought if we cleaned the cottage, it would be grateful and start showing some appreciation, but no such luck had occurred.
Prue sat on a bench by the window, reading. I sighed. Prue had always been introverted, but I worried that being in this cottage, surrounded by these books, was making her worse. She was retreating even more into herself than ever before.
At least when we traveled, she’d been forced to mingle with others that we met on the road. Now she was just holed up in the house, reading, helping Mama with new spells, and cleaning.
One problem at a time, I reminded myself as Mama fell off the chair with a shriek. She landed on top of all the books.
“Mama!” I ran to her and helped her to stand. Her curly gray hair was sticking out in all directions, her cheeks red, a sheen of sweat glistening on her pale skin. “Are you alright?”
“You little twat,” she said to the cottage.
“Mama!” I didn’t think I’d ever heard her use that language before.
“Well, she is.”
Prue looked up from her book. “Why do you assume the cottage is a she?”
Mama threw up her hands. “I just do.”
“I’m pretty sure cottages are gender neutral,” Prue muttered, flipping a page.
I bent over and began picking up books to place them back on the shelves.
“Prue, are you going to help us clean or just sit there reading all day?” Mama asked.
“Mm,” Prue said, clearly not paying any attention.
I studied her. “You’ve been glued to that book since this morning. What’s so interesting that you can’t tear your eyes away from it?”
Prue sighed heavily and lay the book on her chest, looking over at me through her spectacles. She took after Mama, her face rounder thanthe rest of us, her hair with more curl to it. “I’m looking up cleaning spells.”
“You can’t do magic,” I said.
