Chapter 4
FOUR
JUNIE
Junie woke to sunlight stabbing through her bedroom curtains and the distinct sensation of wanting to die.
Not literally. Probably. But the memory of last night crashed over her with the subtlety of a tidal wave, and she pulled her pillow over her face with a groan that came from deep in her soul.
She’d ruined his suit. His stupidly expensive, probably-imported-from-Italy, definitely-cost-more-than-her-monthly-rent suit. In front of the entire town. While calling him an idiot with more money than sense.
Glimmer’s tongue flickered against her ear, a cool, questioning touch. The snake had coiled on her pillow overnight, scales shifting from deep purple to concerned violet.
“I know.” Junie’s voice was muffled by the pillow. “I know, I know. It was bad. It was so bad.”
Glimmer’s scales shifted to a rueful violet—sympathy layered over a distinct I told you not to bring that vial energy.
“You didn’t tell me anything. You hissed at the cat.” Junie threw the pillow across the room and sat up, her hair tumbling around her shoulders in a tangled mess. “Marzipan started it. That cat is a menace.”
Glimmer’s scales flickered skeptically.
“Fine. I finished it. Spectacularly.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stared at the chaos of her apartment.
Half-read books stacked on every surface.
A failed experiment crystallizing on her kitchen counter.
The remains of last week’s attempt at cooking actual food still crusted to a pan in the sink.
“The whole town saw me yell at the visiting alpha about his fabric choices. Elder Sue is probably already planning my intervention.”
The thought of Sue’s knowing smile made Junie want to crawl back under the covers and not emerge until spring.
But she had a shop to run. Potions to brew. A reputation to salvage—what was left of it, anyway.
She shuffled to the bathroom, Glimmer relocating to drape around her neck, and confronted her reflection. Wild hair in a shade caught between copper and auburn. Shadows under her eyes from too many late nights troubleshooting failed batches.
“We look like hell,” she told Glimmer.
The snake bumped its nose against her jaw. Agreement and comfort, all at once.
Junie turned on the shower and tried not to think about the way the visiting lion had looked at her.
She definitely didn’t think about the moment his hands had closed around her wrists. The heat of his grip. The way her breath had stuttered for reasons that had nothing to do with the smoking potion.
Nope. Not thinking about it.
She thought about it the entire shower.
Moonrise Mixology greeted her with the familiar scent of dried herbs and brewing magic. Junie unlocked the back door from the alley, bypassing the front entrance where she might run into neighbors with questions about last night. Coward’s move. She owned it.
The shop’s interior wrapped around her—antique apothecary shelving lined with colorful bottles, her grandmother’s old display cases polished to a shine, the consultation nook with its velvet chairs where she’d helped hundreds of clients find exactly the right formulation for their needs.
This was her place. Her identity. The thing she’d built from nothing after Grandmother died and Mom left and everything fell apart.
Except lately, even this felt wrong.
She crossed the shop to where her brewing station waited.
Three copper cauldrons of varying sizes sat cold and empty.
The distillation system she’d spent two years perfecting gleamed in the morning light.
Shelves of ingredients surrounded her—jars organized by a system only she understood, labels written in her grandmother’s flowing script and her own hurried scrawl.
Junie pulled out her ledger and stared at the numbers.
Three refunds this week. Three. She’d gone months—years—without a single complaint, and now she was hemorrhaging customers faster than she could replace them.
The Hendricks situation was the worst. Margaret Hendricks had ordered a simple love-drawing elixir.
Standard stuff. Junie had brewed it exactly the way Grandmother taught her, followed every step, triple-checked every ingredient.
And Margaret had proceeded to fall passionately, desperately, unshakably in love with her mailbox.
Not the mail carrier. The actual mailbox. She’d named it Gerald.
It had taken Junie four hours and a deeply awkward house call to undo the effects, and Margaret still sent the mailbox love letters every Tuesday.
Then there was the focus potion for Tommy Chen.
He’d wanted help studying for his bar exam.
What he’d gotten was an obsessive need to collect spoons.
Not any spoons—specifically, spoons from restaurants.
He’d been banned from three establishments before Junie caught up with him and administered the antidote.
And yesterday’s disaster with Mrs. Patterson’s Dreamless Sleep formulation.
Junie’s grandmother had perfected that recipe decades ago.
It was foolproof. Except Mrs. Patterson had started having prophetic visions so intense, she’d called Junie at 3:00 a.m. to warn her that “the lion brings chaos and clarity in equal measure.”
Junie had hung up on her. In retrospect, she should have listened.
Glimmer slithered from her shoulder onto the workbench, scales catching the light as she investigated the ingredients Junie had laid out for today’s attempts. The snake’s tongue flickered over a jar of moonpetals, and her colors shifted to warning orange.
“I know, I know. The ley line’s been acting up.” Junie rubbed her temples. “But I have to try. I’ve got orders to fill. Mrs. Watters needs her arthritis tincture. The harbor master wants another batch of seasickness preventative. And I promised Narla—”
She stopped. The birthday present. The one she’d been so excited to show off last night. Currently a purple stain on a lion shifter’s very expensive suit.
“Fantastic.”
Glimmer nudged her chin, scales easing to a sympathetic violet.
The basement door rattled slightly—the ley line running beneath the shop responding to her frustration.
That was new. The surge had made the magical current running under Moonrise Mixology stronger, more reactive, more alive in ways that should have been exciting but were mostly terrifying.
The energy that had once made her potions exceptionally potent was now making them exceptionally unpredictable.
She was losing control. Of her magic, her business, her life. And she had no idea how to fix it.
“Okay.” Junie straightened her shoulders and reached for her smallest cauldron. “Okay. One thing at a time. Mrs. Watters’s arthritis tincture. Simple. Basic. I’ve made it a thousand times.”
Glimmer’s scales flickered doubtfully.
“Your faith in me is overwhelming.”
The snake coiled on the hot stones near the brewing station, prepared to watch the impending disaster.