Hexed Up (The Eccleston Sisters #1)
Chapter 1
Chapter One
Love potions are the bane of my existence.
Fiddly, time-consuming and bloody annoying. Add one ingredient a little too early or a little too late, and the whole thing blows up in your face. Literally. And then you’ve lost another pair of eyebrows and are left scraping pink goo from the ceiling.
When you’re a freelance witch whose current star-rating on Witch-Bay is the difference between surviving on toast or nutritious and well-balanced meals, there’s no room for error.
Especially when, for the first time since I started this gig four years ago, business is booming.
Maybe it’s this heatwave, sending everyone into a lust-fuelled frenzy and resorting to desperate measures. Maybe it’s that rave review from one very satisfied customer. But requests for love potions are blowing through the roof.
I’m inundated. I may actually be able to afford to buy avocados this month.
It’s also why I’m brewing this current love potion in my kitchen on a Saturday lunchtime despite the sweltering heat and without the relief of AC.
Not that I’m complaining.
I’m in no position to turn down orders. Besides, this may be the start of something great. Expansions, empires, and eventual worldwide domination.
A witch can dream!
McGruff has retreated to the relative cool of the bedroom, abandoning me to my fate.
I’ve opened all the windows and stripped down to my bra and a pair of hot pants, but I am still melting like an ice cream in the sunshine.
In fact, I didn’t think it was possible for one person to sweat this much.
I’m probably creating puddles on the floor.
I drag a tepid cloth around my face, my neck, and between my boobs, then squint down at the concoction slowly bubbling on my stove.
It’s a deep purple colour, but any moment now it’ll turn pink, and that’s when I need to add the moth wings.
They’re ready in my hand, crushed to a fine powder and smelling frankly revolting.
Just like the aroma spinning around my small kitchen-living room.
I can hear McGruff gagging in the bedroom.
I’ve fastened a peg on my nose to stop the worst of it.
I stir the potion. It’s definitely on the cusp of turning. I bite on my lip, hand hovering in anticipation.
And the buzzer sounds, nearly startling me right out of my skin. In fact, I jolt so hard, the powder flies up into the air and all over the floor.
McGruff immediately comes charging out of the bedroom, barking manically in the direction of the door and skidding on the wooden floorboards.
“Oh yes,” I say to him, rolling my eyes, “you’re so big and scary.”
In fact, McGruff is about a foot tall, white and fluffy like a sheep, with a round tummy that just about fails to scrape the floor. The lazy grump may like to sound all tough and mighty, but he’ll run and hide at the first whiff of danger.
I inherited him five years ago, like I did this flat, when my Aunt Beryl died in a freak broomstick flying accident.
The buzzer sounds again, McGruff yaps in response and I flick my gaze between my potion and the door.
It’ll be the parcel guy. I’m expecting a delivery of frog’s eyeballs. I’m running dangerously low.
“Urgh!” I say, flustered, wiping my powder-stained hands on a tea towel and yanking the peg off my nose.
Fred the delivery man is psychopathically impatient. If I don’t answer the door in precisely three seconds, he’ll take a sick delight in returning my delivery back to the depot.
“Coming,” I yell, racing across my apartment and flinging myself at the door. I twist back the collection of locks and latches and yank open the door, coming, not face to face with the delivery man, but face to chest with a very solid, very muscular frame.
Not Fred.
I tip my head back slowly and peer up into the startled face of Mr H. Shaw – a man who has made it his mission to ring my doorbell at least once a week with an ever-growing list of complaints.
As well as this delightful personality trait, he also happens to be outrageously hot.
Think pulse-quickening, knee-buckling, cheeks-flushingly attractive - what with his perfectly chiselled jawline, his dazzlingly blue eyes and his sun-kissed tan.
He looks like he stepped right out of an advertising campaign for a dating app.
I should have known it would be him. Saturday. One of the few days the man is actually home. And when he is home, he is usually buzzing on my door with one of his complaints – my music is too loud, McGruff is barking too much, I’ve left boxes in the hallway, I’ve dared to exist!
I grimace in anticipation of his latest moan-fest. However, the frown that usually hovers on his ridiculously handsome face is absent. Instead, his pair of dark brown brows have leapt up his forehead and he’s staring down at me in horror.
It takes me a moment to realise what’s wrong. Then I remember the bra situation.
“Oh,” I say, attempting to shield my boobs with my arms, “I was just …”
He shakes his head and drags his sky-blue eyes from my cleavage and up to my face – and oh, if only those eyes weren’t quite so pretty. They really are wasted on a man like this.
The startled look lasts a fraction of a second longer and then his brows descend in unison, down into that all-too-familiar frown.
I don’t actually know his first name – he probably told me that first day we met almost eighteen months ago when he moved in across the hall, and, being the friendly neighbour I am, I skipped over to introduce myself.
But, as always, my little introduction soon descended into chaos as I tried to stop McGruff from humping his leg (I guess I’m not the only one who finds the man attractive) and his name passed me by.
He works in banking or finance or something equally as ludicrously well-paid. He’s most likely a Henry or a Harry, but Damien nicknamed him Mr Hottie and that has stuck.
My neighbour swallows, his gaze flickering across my face, and even though I find the man an incredible annoyance, heat crawls up into my cheeks. I am standing here in nothing but underwear after all.
“There’s a strange sme–” Mr Hottie begins in his American drawl.
But he never finishes that sentence, because in the next moment, a thundering boom rips through my apartment and a cloud of purply-pink smoke blasts both of us right off our feet.
And then that purply-pink cloud comes wafting towards us both.
I stare down at Mr. Hottie in horror.
Merlin’s toenails! The love potion!