Chapter 5 #2
Okay. I could see where those might help.
He continued to list the properties of several other stones in his arsenal, including lapis lazuli, tiger’s eye, sodalite, azurite, and more. I got a little overwhelmed with all the information he was throwing at me, to be honest.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t test me on this later. I could remember information about baking ingredients, no problem, but stones? Not so much.
Then he moved on to describe the little satchels of herbs and powders, explaining how they were special blends that’d help trace the remnants of old spell work and such.
He talked about rosemary, bay leaves, sage, and juniper.
I felt like I was back in school again. And I guessed I was, only this was magic school.
Which meant I probably needed to start carrying a notebook around with me.
The other toolbox had even more things. Some were things I expected to be in a witch’s toolbox, like tarot cards, a stone mortar and pestle, and candles of various colors.
But the mirror wrapped in wrinkled linen, knife, earthenware bowls, twine, and salt surprised me—the salt especially, because they were the little paper packets you found in fast food restaurants.
Tucked in with the rest was a mason jar filled with clear liquid.
“It’s just water,” Elwood said when he caught me eyeing the jar warily.
“Right. I knew that.” I absolutely had not known that, but maybe I should have.
I’d sensed something in Ivan’s beer, so I should be able to sense when something was just water, right?
I poked at it tentatively with my magic, and sure enough, I felt the purity of the water inside the glass jar.
But there was something more to it. “Are you sure it is just water?”
“Excellent.” Elwood’s eyes twinkled.
Ugh. So, he was testing me.
“I wondered if you’d pick up on anything special about the water. It’s been charged under the full moon. Moonlight cleanses it and makes it an excellent building block for spells and potions.”
I felt like a little kid getting a pat on the head.
“Are you coming in?” Ivan shouted as he paced across his wide front step. Back and forth. Back and forth. “I don’t have all day.”
“Good morning, Ivan,” Elwood said with a friendly smile. He didn’t sound the least bit perturbed or bothered by anything. But that was a bit of a lie, because I knew he was deeply concerned about the magic he’d found tainting Ivan’s beer.
I had a vague recollection of coming home more than a little tipsy last night to find him obsessively testing the contents of the growler.
Elwood had a make-shift magical chemistry lab set up on the kitchen table.
Amid the beakers and jars were crystals and stones and who knew what else.
I’d stumbled through the door and received a sharp reprimand for causing too much disruption to the energy in the room.
Apparently, using a tiny pipette to transfer droplets of beer to various herbs and powders was serious and exacting business.
And when I crawled out of my bedroom this morning feeling like death and smelling like I’d bathed in a barrel of beer, he’d still been at it.
Thankfully, he’d stepped away from his experiments to make me the most magical hangover cure I’d ever tried.
It was amazing. Seriously, he should sell that stuff; he’d make a fortune.
Then he turned to me and told me we would be going to Ivan’s this morning.
Ivan looked like he’d had as little sleep as Elwood.
He had deep bruise-like bags under his bloodshot eyes.
His brown hair was greasy and sticking up in every direction, like he’d been running his hands through it incessantly.
The grim frown pulling at his mouth only seemed to deepen as we got closer.
“Well?” The coyote shifter crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at us as soon as we stepped inside the door. “What have you found?”
“There was magical interference, but the spell is cloaked,” Elwood explained. “I can feel the magic, but none of its intricacies. That’s why I asked to come today. I want to see if I can find its source.”
“And if you can’t?”
“Then I’ll look at the festival grounds.”
Ivan grunted as he turned toward the steps leading to the basement. “Brewtopia HQ is in the basement. I suppose you’ll want to start there.”
The basement was one massive room, and I gaped at the setup.
This was a lot more involved than what I’d imagined when Elwood told me Ivan brewed beer in his basement.
It was surprisingly bright with large windows and more fluorescent lights than I’d ever seen in a house.
They hummed overhead as Ivan led us around the room, explaining what the various tools and equipment were.
Along one wall was a large sink and a long, wide workbench, all stainless steel.
A range of tubes, thermometers, and hydrometers were all arranged on racks over the workbench.
A huge vent hood stretched across the brew kettles along another wall.
Each kettle had the names of his beers clearly labeled–Midnight Lager, Solstice Stout, and so on.
And the rest of the space held carboys, a racking cane, bottling equipment, stirring paddles, kegs, and boxes of bottled beer.
There was even a small shelving unit with stacks of t-shirts sporting his Brewtopia logo, all neatly folded and arranged by size.
The logo was a bit bland–just the name in vintage lettering placed under a pint of foamy beer on an oval medallion.
My graphic design prof, Professor Schmidt, wouldn’t have been impressed, but it got the idea across.
At least it wasn’t a target like Malcolm’s.
His Bull’s Eye Brewery logo matched his brand, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that guns and beer didn’t mix.