Free A Potion to Die For: A Magic Potion Mystery by Heather Blake Page A

almost a decade ago after we saw the Spider-Man movie and she compared my ability to Spidey’s senses. It had stuck. As had her fascination with Tobey Maguire; she had even gone so far as to name one of her twins Toby (with the spelling changed so Carter wouldn’t catch on).
    I nodded. My witchy senses were indeed acting up, and I couldn’t help but remember Delia’s strange warning this morning. After finding Nelson’s body, I thought it had been about him. But maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe her warning was about something else entirely. . . .
    Ainsley and I tiptoed closer to the shop, and I soon saw what had triggered the feeling. The back door was ajar.
    Ainsley stuck out her flip-flopped foot and pushed the door open wider. “Yoo-hoo!” she called out.
    My heart hammered as if I expected someone to actually reply. Thankfully, there wasn’t so much as a “boo” from Nelson’s ghost.
    After a moment of silence, she looked at me. “No one’s home. Come on.” She grabbed my arm and made to duck under the crime-scene tape.
    I grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
    “What?” she said, clearly exasperated, if her pout was any indication.
    “We should call Dylan.”
    A loud voice rumbled from behind us. “Good decision, Care Bear.”

Chapter Seven
    I f Dylan Jackson called me Care Bear one more time, I might have to throw something at his head.
    He stepped out from behind a small Dumpster.
    “Were you following us?” I asked.
    “Don’t flatter yourself. I saw you two hooligans standing at the end of the alley and suspected something might be up.”
    “So you did follow us,” Ainsley accused.
    He glanced at me, then at her, and apparently decided I was the lesser of two evils. Underneath all that boyish handsomeness, he was a smart man.
    “I watched to see what you were up to. And what exactly are y’all up to?” he said, narrowing his eyes on me.
    “How’s Coach Butts doing?” I asked. “Did you just come from there? Had he drunk whatever was in that bottle?” If it tasted as bad as it smelled, he was probably lucky to be alive.
    Certainly Dylan recognized my diversionary tactic, but he had to also know how much I wanted an update.
    “Coach is fine.” Dylan adjusted his ball cap, sliding it up, then back down on his head. “He didn’t drink anything. Claims the bottle was empty when he found it.”
    “Then what was wrong with him?” Ainsley asked.
    “It turns he hadn’t been poisoned at all. He has diabetes and hadn’t been watching his insulin level closely enough.”
    Ainsley frowned. “He could have died from diabetic shock.”
    “Could have,” Dylan said. “But he’s fine now. He’ll be released from the medical center later today.”
    All that was well and good, but . . . “Why was one of my potion bottles in his hand? Why did he claim he’d been poisoned by me? Why’d he ram his truck into my house?”
    Dylan said, “Apparently Coach had been hearing the rumors all morning about Nelson dying in your shop, so when he found one of Angelea’s potion bottles in her car while he was cleaning it out, he rightly associated the bottle with you, and when he started feeling poorly, he began believing you’d somehow poisoned him. You know how he feels about you and your potions, so it was easy for him to make that leap, especially with his being a bit delusional because his sugar levels were off.”
    I sincerely doubted Coach had been cleaning his wife’s car; there wasn’t an altruistic bone in his body. More than likely, he’d been snooping to see if she was cheating on him again, and found the bottle during his search. Angelea often hid her potion bottles in her car.
    “Plus,” Ainsley added, “he’s never liked you, especially after you almost got him fired that one time.”
    I huffed. “He should have been fired. Fact is, Coach wasn’t poisoned from one of my potions, and neither was Nelson. We have to stop these rumors before they put me out of