Trouble's Brewing (Stirring Up Trouble) by Juli Alexander Read Free Book Online Page A

hug and went back to my side of the counter.
    As I reached my seat, Finn muttered something under his breath that sounded a little like, “I hope not.”
    I didn’t have time to figure out what I’d heard. I had a potion substitution to find.
    “Where do you plan to start?” he asked.
    Yeah. About that. “I haven’t actually had any inspiration yet, but it will come.”
    “When you get your inspiration, I’d like to watch your first session with the problem. I’m interested in your process.”
    “Sure,” I said. “Saturday should work.”
    “Saturday? Are you certain?”
    “I’ll come up with something by then,” I told him. “No worries.”
    Finn gave me a funny look that I assumed was amusement at my confidence.
    When Mom got home, I told her the news. “He’s going to let me work on unicorn horn!”
    “What? You never mentioned anything to me at all!”
    “I guess we’ve both been busy,” I said. “But I want something to work on.”
    “Zoe, you have plenty going on. Finn, school, Jake, and your friends. I don’t want to see your grades slipping.”
    “Please,” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous. My grades will be fine.”
    “Promise?”
    “Promise.”
    “Tell me about your ideas for the substitution.”
    “That’s the weird thing. I really don’t have anything yet. But I will.”
    “Of course you will,” Mom said.
    The tone she used told me she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. I was sure. I got this , I told myself.
    I knew I’d need something to magnify the magic in the substitution. Unicorns had tremendous inherent magic. I was thinking I would use three cat’s meows to start, and one, if not two, other magnifiers.
    The obvious starting point would be some kind of bone. I didn’t feel good about bone as the base though. Bone just didn’t “feel” right.
    I didn’t think it would be as easy as a rhinoceros horn. Plus, I needed something more easily approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Exotic animal parts could be a problem.
    I was puzzling with the base for the potion as I lay in my bed later. I wanted something hard that could be reduced to a powder. I yawned. I’d have to think about it tomorrow.
     
    “Sorry about yesterday,” Jake said on Friday morning. He’d waited for me outside the school until my bus pulled up.
    “It’s okay,” I said. “No harm done.”
    “Can you do something tonight?” he asked. “We could grab something to eat. Or go to a movie. Something besides hanging with Sheree and John.”
    I wanted to spend time with him, but not tonight. I had planning to do for tomorrow. Finn and I were going to start the unicorn horn, and I still didn’t have a starting point. “Actually, I have to do some things with my mother. What about tomorrow night?”
    “It’s a date,” he said. “I’ll have to find another way to avoid my mother and your father.”
    “They aren’t that bad.”
    “At least they’re trying to keep the parental PDA to a minimum. They must have learned something from our PDA plan.”
    Even a minimum of public displays of affection was too much from Dad and Sheree. My gag reflex had a low threshold.
    “Where’d you get that?” Jake asked, holding my hand up.
    “What?” Oh, the ring.
    “Dad, I mean Mom gave it to me.” Mom would make more sense.
    “It’s pretty. What’s the occasion?”
    It’s to signal for help for a witch catastrophe. Because I’m a witch. “Nothing special. She just saw it and thought of me.”
    He may not have noticed that I was lying, but I felt rotten.
     
    At three, Mom picked me up to run errands. She needed another new outfit for her next show. My mother had an interior design show on HGTV. We did a lot of shopping for her wardrobe. Apparently, if she could write it off on her taxes, she didn’t mind spending the money. She had some sponsors, upscale clothing stores that gave her clothing in exchange for mention in the credits, but she didn’t always find what she