Love Potion #911 (Hot Flashes & Hexes #2)
Prologue
“Dating apps are a scam,” Diane announced, stabbing at her phone with the energy of someone committing a small murder. “A scam designed by people who hate women and want us to die alone surrounded by cats.”
“I resent that,” Luna said from her perch on the back of the couch. “Dying surrounded by cats sounds ideal.”
“Not helpful.”
Cassie poured more wine into Diane’s glass—the third refill of the evening—and settled back into the armchair that had become her favorite spot since the house stopped rearranging furniture without permission.
Sunday dinner had wound down an hour ago.
Margaret had gone home with promises to return Tuesday for Cassie’s lesson on weather-reading.
Liam was in the kitchen doing dishes because he was the kind of man who did dishes without being asked, which still felt like a miracle.
Sophia had driven back to campus that morning, leaving behind a trail of borrowed sweaters and a note that said “Don’t be weird. Be happy. Call me if the gnomes do anything new.”
Now it was just Cassie and Diane and wine and Diane’s ongoing war with modern romance.
“Look at this.” Diane thrust her phone at Cassie. “Brad, forty-seven, loves hiking and craft beer. His photo is him holding a fish. Why do they always hold fish? Is that supposed to be attractive? ‘Look at me, I killed something slimy, want to mate?’”
“Maybe he really likes fishing.”
“Nobody likes fishing that much. It’s performative masculinity disguised as a hobby.
” She swiped left with violent satisfaction.
“Next. Oh, this one’s bio just says ‘ask me anything.’ That’s not a personality, that’s an interrogation invitation.
Left. And this guy—fifty-two, ‘young at heart’—his photo is from 1997. I can tell by the frosted tips. Left.”
Cassie laughed, reaching for her own wine. As she did, her elbow knocked against the small dish on the side table—the one where she’d been keeping the spelled quartz Margaret had given her for grounding practice.
The quartz rolled.
Landed against Diane’s phone.
And pulsed, once, with a soft golden light that Cassie really hoped Diane hadn’t noticed.
“Did your rock just—”
“No.”
“It definitely—”
“It didn’t. More wine?”
Diane squinted at her suspiciously but accepted the refill. Crisis averted. Probably. Cassie quietly moved the quartz to the other side of the room while Diane returned to her swiping.
“The problem,” Diane continued, “is that all the good ones are taken. Or gay. Or taken and gay. Or they’re perfectly nice but there’s no spark. Remember sparks? I miss sparks. The last time I felt sparks was—”
Her phone buzzed.
“Match,” she said, surprised. “Huh. I don’t remember swiping right on—”
It buzzed again.
And again.
And then it didn’t stop buzzing.
“What the—” Diane stared at her screen as notification after notification cascaded down. “I have twelve new matches. Thirteen. Seventeen. Cassie, why do I have seventeen new matches?”
“That seems like a lot.”
“It is a lot! I’ve been on this app for six months and gotten maybe twenty matches total, and now—” She refreshed the screen. Her face went pale. “Twenty-three. Twenty-eight. Why are so many men suddenly interested in me?”
Luna’s ears perked up. “Oh dear.”
“What do you mean, ‘oh dear’?” Diane demanded. “What does the cat know that I don’t?”
“Many things. But specifically—” Luna looked at Cassie with an expression of feline amusement. “—I think your grounding crystal may have… grounded into the wrong thing.”
Cassie’s stomach dropped. “The quartz touched her phone.”
“And the quartz was charged with your energy. Which has been very… romantically satisfied lately.” Luna’s whiskers twitched. “Congratulations. You’ve accidentally enchanted your best friend’s dating profile.”
“WHAT?”
“I didn’t mean to! It was an accident!”
“EVERYTHING IS AN ACCIDENT WITH YOU.” Diane was scrolling frantically now, her face cycling through emotions Cassie couldn’t quite track. “Why is my app showing matches from—this can’t be right. This says I matched with someone in 1987. That’s not how apps work. That’s not how time works.”
“Let me see.” Cassie grabbed the phone.
The Tinder interface looked normal at first glance.
But the matches—there were forty-three of them now, and climbing—weren’t behaving normally at all.
Some of the profile photos were crisp and modern.
Others had the grainy quality of old photographs.
One appeared to be a Polaroid. Another was clearly a yearbook photo, complete with feathered hair and a powder-blue tuxedo.
“That’s Jimmy Kowalski,” Diane said faintly. “From high school. He took me to prom. In 1986.”
“Maybe he’s… also on Tinder?”
“He’s fifty-two. And married. And a grandfather.” Diane grabbed the phone back, scrolling with increasing horror. “And apparently eighteen again, according to this photo. Which is definitely his senior portrait. I remember it because he had that stupid earring his mom made him take out.”
A message notification popped up.
Jimmy K. says: Hey. Long time. Coffee?
Diane made a sound like a tea kettle reaching boiling point.
“Cassie.”
“Yes?”
“Why is my high school boyfriend messaging me through a dating app that didn’t exist when we dated?”
“I don’t—”
“Why does he look eighteen?”
“I can’t—”
“WHY IS TINDER SHOWING ME MATCHES FROM FORTY YEARS AGO?”
“I might have accidentally enchanted your phone with residual romantic energy from my grounding crystal which may have been absorbing ambient magic from my extremely satisfying relationship and I’m very sorry?”
Diane stared at her.
Cassie attempted an apologetic smile.
The phone buzzed again. And again. And again.
“Fifty-seven matches,” Diane said, her voice reaching octaves usually reserved for dog whistles.
“I have fifty-seven matches. Men are messaging me from multiple decades. My ex-husband just appeared in my queue, Cassie. My ex-husband. The one who left me for his CrossFit instructor. He’s nineteen in this photo. NINETEEN.”
“That’s… thorough?”
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.”
“To be fair,” Luna offered, “you did say you missed sparks.”
“NOT LIKE THIS.”
The phone kept buzzing. Diane kept scrolling. The matches kept coming—sixty-three, seventy-one, eighty-four—men from every decade of her romantic history and quite a few she’d never met, all suddenly very interested in Diane Martinez and her accidentally enchanted dating profile.
“I can fix this,” Cassie said. “Probably. Margaret can help. We’ll figure out how to un-enchant your phone and everything will go back to—”
“Back to what? Normal?” Diane laughed, slightly hysterically. “Cassie, I have a match with a guy whose profile says he’s looking for ‘a groovy chick who digs disco.’ DISCO. The app is pulling men from the SEVENTIES.”
“That does seem excessive.”
“You THINK?”
Liam appeared in the doorway, dish towel over his shoulder, looking like a man who had learned not to be surprised by anything that happened in this house.
“Problem?”
“Cassie hexed my love life.”
“I didn’t hex it. I just… accidentally supercharged it. With magic. Across multiple timelines, apparently.”
He blinked. “Right. I’ll put the kettle on.”
Luna stretched luxuriously, hopping down from the couch to wind between Diane’s ankles. “Look on the bright side. You wanted excitement. You wanted sparks. You wanted men to notice you.”
“I wanted ONE man. A NORMAL man. From THIS DECADE.”
“Details.” The cat’s eyes gleamed. “This is going to be so much more interesting.”
Diane’s phone hit one hundred matches and showed no signs of slowing down. Somewhere in the app’s depths, algorithms were breaking. Rules were bending. Men from her past, her present, and possibly her future were all suddenly, inexplicably, magnetically drawn to her profile.
She looked at Cassie with the expression of a woman who had just realized her life was about to become very, very complicated.
“You’re helping me fix this.”
“Of course.”
“And you’re buying all the wine.”
“Obviously.”
“And if a single man from my romantic history shows up at my door in person, I’m moving in here and you’re dealing with it.”
The phone buzzed. One hundred and seventeen matches.
A new message appeared:
Greg, 51 (but looking suspiciously 25 in his photo): Hey beautiful. Remember me? Junior year. The parking lot behind the gym. ;)
Diane screamed.
Luna purred.
And somewhere in the cosmic machinery of love and magic and accidentally enchanted technology, something that had been dormant for a very long time began to wake up.
Diane Martinez was about to have a very interesting few weeks.