Bonnie
If only Uncle Oswald’s recipe book had a wakefulness potion, thought Bonnie, who was presently being buffeted by wave upon wave of exhaustion. She was starting to feel like the subject of a psychological experiment. The busy nights and long days of prep and admin were already a major undertaking.
Bonnie checked the Memory Lanerecipe store in the massive fridge out back, which Clark had helped her lug inside a few days earlier. Demand for the charmed concentrate continued to grow. She’d gone from a few pitchers a night, to a bar fridge, to this huge industrial beast whose energy consumption would surely give Effie a fit. Although handily, Bonnie was now in a position to cover it.
It was hard to deny the profitability of this enterprise, she thought, going over the takings from the past week. The margins on the magical cocktails were excellent, and the high demand combined with the kickbacks from Uncle Oswald had taken Bonnie out of the red and into thriving local business status. So much so that Oswald had come in the other day talking about scaling up to other locations.
‘We could even franchise!’ he’d suggested, pulling out a set of numbers that the bank would love but that had just about made Bonnie break out into hives. The thought of unleashing her wayward magic on whole cities and states terrified her,especially now that she was almost certain that the recipes were having more than the intended effect.
But when she’d tried to broach the subject with him, he’d waved her off.
‘Drinking makes people forget their heads,’ he pointed out. ‘Isn’t that the whole point?’
Bonnie had pressed him about it, but to no avail.
‘Magic has side effects,’ he’d said, his eyes glinting with a darkness that had made Bonnie glance away. ‘And you’re the one with the magic, after all.’
Oswald was right. Anything that happened washerfault, really. She was the one preparing the spells. She was the one passing out the drinks.
‘But I’ll make sure this is our little secret,’ he’d said soothingly, with a thin smile. ‘Just so long as you do, too.’
She’d nodded, but her stomach had refused to settle.
‘Cassandra’s here, hon,’ called Clark from the patio.
Great. On top of the issues of conscience and the endless demand for the hexed liquor, a journalist had just arrived to interview her about the business’s success. All right, so it wasn’t for theYellowbrick Grove Gazette. But student journalism still counted. Even if said journalist had mostly gotten wind of the story because she’d bumped into Clark at the college library and had stopped by over the weekend for discount cocktails. At least the mates’ rates paid off with some good PR.
Ah, there she was now.
Bonnie opened the door to Cassandra, who had a penchant for the structured but baggy look, and fiery hair that matched the chrysanthemum planters outside.
‘Sorry I’m late. I decided one of those scooters was a good idea, and I took a wrong turn. No sense of direction, I suppose!’
Bonnie winced. It was absolutely impossible to take a wrong turn from the college to the bar: the two were astraight shot from each other. Not to mention that the college–downtown trip was the one journey that every freshman mastered (mostly drunkenly and on the first night of semester). Were her drinks at fault? Or was Cassandra just terribly disorganized?
‘Happens to the best of us,’ said Bonnie brightly, just in case.
She cleared a table, inviting Cassandra to sit down. ‘Um, you’re welcome to record. Especially if it involves video. I’m at my best on video.’
‘Oh, I don’t need to record. I have a photographic memory.’
‘Right. Like Terrance,’ said Bonnie.
Cassandra frowned. ‘Terrance?’
‘He’s memorizing a deck of cards as part of a College Kids Got Talent audition.’
‘You interviewed him, hon,’ Clark reminded her as he pulled a stack of dishes from the dishwasher and started putting them away. ‘You did a two-page piece, with sidebars including the probability of drawing a certain card, and ways that he could conceivably cheat.’
Bonnie swallowed. Poor Terrance. He’d never get past the first round unless he went cold turkey on the pitchers of Memory Lane. But he hadn’t been great at his chosen talent prior to trying Bonnie’s hexed drinks, so was she really to blame here? Maybe he could switch his talent to latte art or something.
‘So, tell me about your bar. You just opened, right? This week.’
‘It was a few months ago, actually,’ said Bonnie, trying to keep the alarm from her voice. ‘But we changed the menu recently, which might be what you’re thinking of.’
‘No, I don’t think that’s it.’ Cassandra leaned forward, eyes sparkling. ‘So, everyone’s obsessed with this, um...’
‘Memory Lane,’ supplied Clark.
