The witch’s shop apparently wasn’t the most frequented of businesses on the street, and it was nearly an hour before another customer appeared.

The man came directly up to the counter without any fussing about. “I need some kind of… happiness spell, or cheerful potion. Any kind of magic that will put me in a good mood,” he said to Tessa.

“What's the occasion?”

“I’ve got a work party coming up in a few days that I can’t get out of, and I absolutely loathe my boss and half my coworkers. Have you got anything that can put me in a decent enough mood to survive the nightmare?”

Tessa laughed. “That’s a tall order, but I think I can whip something up for you. I’ll have to make it fresh though. Do you mind waiting a few minutes?”

“Take your time,” the man replied, and he meandered off to go browse the store while Tessa got to work.

“Come on,” the witch said to Nikola.

“What?” Nikola started, looking up quickly.

“I have to make this potion from scratch. It’s a lot of tedious mixing and measuring, and you’re supposed to be here to make my job easier today. So come help me get this potion going.”

Nikola scrambled to her feet and hurried in Tessa's wake.

On the far end of the counter was a wooden cutting board, and from a cabinet underneath Tessa began pulling out mixing bowls, measuring cups, a long handled wooden spoon, and rather unromantically, a blender.

“We’re going to be making a cheering potion, so you need to go back over to those ingredients you’ve got scattered all over the floor and find the following.” She rattled off a long list of items, which ranged from innocent dried daisy petals, to the slightly more alarming powdered children's teeth.

Nikola brought the lot over to Tessa and carefully arranged them on the counter beside the cutting board.

Tessa tossed the measuring spoons at her. “A quarter teaspoon of the powdered teeth—don’t look like that, they’re only teeth for God’s sake. I just buy them off local parents and grind them up. I’m like a real life tooth fairy. A quarter teaspoon of the teeth, that’s all, to create a sense of childlike wonder. Now a pinch of the daisies… a little more than that… that’s better. That’ll impart a generally sunny disposition. A half tablespoon of the snake pinfeathers for whimsy, make sure you don’t let any spill, they’re difficult to get a hold of. A quarter cup of sugar, for obvious reasons. Nice and sweet. Honey is almost always better in any potion honestly, but it’s cheaper just to use sugar and the end result still works nearly just as well.

“All right, now the all wet ingredients go into the larger bowl. Go over to the coffee pot and pour about a half a cup of coffee. Using coffee as the base will give an extra kick of energy to the potion. Some people use lemonade, but I find that coffee allows for more focus whereas the lemonade leaves you feeling a little too dreamy. Add a dash of rose water, so the drinker views the world through rose colored glasses—that was more of splash than a dash, but it’ll do. Now, have you ever made your own yogurt before?”

“I… what?”

“Yogurt. Have you ever made yogurt from scratch?”

“No?”

“Well, yogurt is pretty much just milk that’s been left to sit in a dark, warm place for a few days. But to get it going, you need to add in a little bit of the last batch. That spoonful of yogurt has all the bacteria and cultures and things that proliferate and turns the milk into more yogurt. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Good,” said Tessa, and she leaned forward and spat into the bowl. Nikola looked on in horror as Tessa mixed it all together. “That’s the magic,” was all she said. “Now add the dry ingredients.”

Nikola did so, and Tessa gave the mixture another brief stir before pouring the lot into the blender.

“You could just grind the dry ingredients together with a mortar and pestle if you want to be traditional about it, but that takes forever and I'm lazy. So I invested a lot of money into this baby here,” she patted the blender on the base fondly, “which gives you a perfectly smooth consistency every time. Worth every penny.”

She hit the pulse button, and in a few seconds the concoction was a watery brown liquid. Tessa instructed Nikola to find an empty bottle and pour the potion into it. Tessa stopped it up with a cork, and then held the bottle cupped in both hands up to her face. She frowned sternly at it.

“You are a cheering potion, you got that?” she said. “When your owner drinks you, you will put him in a pleasant mood, during which not even the most obnoxious of casual acquaintances will cause him irritation. He will feel delighted at the most asinine of comments, he will find even the most moronic excuse for a joke to be perfectly hilarious. He will be genuinely pleased to have been invited to this work function, and he will lament that the festivities had to come to an end when he leaves. Did you follow all of that? That’s your job, so you better take a little professional pride in your work and make sure it’s done well.”

Nikola eyed the silent, motionless, entirely inanimate bottle. “Um, did you need to… I mean, was what you just did part of making the potion?”

“It’s part of the magic. You can’t just throw a bunch of random crap into a bottle and shake it up and expect it to do anything magical. So I spit, and then I give it instructions.”

“Do all witches do it that way?”

“Witches rarely do much anything the same way. That’s my magic. You could probably sit there and talk to that bottle until you’re blue in the face, and it wouldn’t do a thing.”

“How do you find out how you do your own kind of magic then?”

Tessa tossed the bottle into a paper bag and folded the mouth over, sealing it with a sticker that had the shop’s name printed on it. “That is an enormously complicated subject, and a topic for an entirely different day.” She caught the look on Nikola’s face, and quickly added, “which will never come of course, because you’re leaving as soon as you finish organizing my shelves.”

She waved the customer back over to the counter and gave him the instructions for taking the potion--no more than fifteen minutes before the event he needed it for, or he would run the risk of getting distracted by passing ice cream trucks or beautiful sunsets and never make it to the party. Money and thank yous were exchanged, and with a tinkle of the bell the man was gone.

Customers continued to trickle into the shop throughout the rest of the day, sometimes looking for something specific, sometimes only curiously browsing after having been lured inside by the sign outside that read “Apothecary and Witchery: Spells, Charms, Potions, Hexes, and General Supplies”.

Nikola helped make two more potions under Tessa’s direction, and was even allowed to clumsily carve the symbols into a blank amulet for a customer because Tessa complained that carving made her carpal tunnel flare up.

Nikola’s hand did indeed ache by the time she was finished, and her runes were hardly legible, but Tessa didn’t seem bothered. She gave the amulet a stern talking to the same way she had done to the potions, and the customer left happy.

A few books and a pack of tarot cards were also sold, and one woman came in wearing a cloak as black as pitch with the hood pulled so far over her head that her face was entirely shadowed. She purchased a two foot long sickle, an iron bell the size of a cowbell, and a candle that burned with a black flame.

Tessa seemed to know the woman and chatted casually as she rang up the purchase on the ancient cash register, but somehow Nikola could never quite catch the woman’s reply, just the vague sensation of a low voice too indistinct to make out.

By 8 o’clock, Nikola had had only finished alphabetizing and relabeling about half the potion ingredients.

Once she had flipped the sign on the front door to ‘closed’, Tessa came over to inspect the progress. She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “I honestly expected you to get much more than that done. You work awfully slowly for someone who thinks they can handle an apprenticeship at my shop. Well, I suppose you’ll just have to finish the job tomorrow. Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?”

Nikola didn’t answer.

Tessa heaved a put-upon sigh, and gestured for the girl to follow her through the curtained doorway. She motioned for Nikola to go up the stairs ahead of her.

Nikola hesitated, hovering at the landing.

Tessa raised her eyebrows. “You don’t have to stay here tonight if you don’t want to. Hell, I’d rather you didn’t. By all means, go home and leave me in peace.”

Nikola scurried up the stairs.

The apartment above the shop was small, just a compact living room, half-kitchen, bathroom, and a single bedroom. The futon however unfolded into an acceptably comfortable bed, and Tessa piled it high with blankets.

“I like to sleep in,” Tessa warned her before turning off the living room light, “so if you’re an early riser, mind that you keep quiet and don’t wake me up, or you’ll be out of here faster than you can say candle, book and sword.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Tessa looked vaguely annoyed at being called ma’am, but couldn’t find a good reason to complain about it. She flicked off the light, plunging Nikola into darkness, and headed by memory into her own room.

Nikola lied awake for a long time, her eyes open and staring at the ceiling. After a while she heard the sound of Tessa snoring in the other room through the closed door.

Nikola rolled over, buried herself deeper into her nest of blankets, and tried not to form any expectations about what the next day might be like.