Mollified Magic Ch. 11

"Now, how can I help you?" the white-haired lady asked, appearing seemingly out of nowhere behind us.

As we turned to face her, her eyes fixed on the pendants of the black cats that we wore.

"Oh, I see," she said, as her hand instinctively reached for the pendant hiding underneath her apron. It was a small white skull with ruby-red jeweled eyes.

"My name is Samantha," she said, extending her hand, "Samantha Potts."

"Nice to meet you, Samantha," Molly said, "I'm Molly Spellman and this is Tom Ward."

"Spellman, not the Spellman's of Salem?" she asked, then looking at the pendants again, "Of course, from the Salem Coven! I'm with the mid-Atlantic chapter. Is your grandmother, Morina still head of the Salem chapter? I hope she's in good health."

"She is," Molly said, smiling, "I'll let her know you asked."

"What about him?" Samantha asked in a stern voice, referring to me.

"He's safe," Molly said, "He's with me. We can talk freely in front of him."

"I'll trust you Molly, but only because you're a Spellman," Samantha said, "Now how can I help you?"

"We're looking for ingredients for a couple of potions," Molly began, "Agnes gave me this list and I was hoping you could help us with these ingredients."

"Agnes gave you this list?" Samantha asked as she looked at Molly's laptop. "That wouldn't be Agnes Brewster, would it?"

"Yes," Molly answered in a surprised voice, "Why, do you know her?"

"Know her?" Samantha said, smiling, "My, what a small world! Why Agnes and I went to Radcliff together. We were both chem majors, although I recall she was a dual major if I'm not mistaken. She was a year ahead of me. Oh, she was brilliant. You could learn a lot from her."

"If it's all right with you," Molly said, "I'll let her know you're here. I'm sure she would like to keep in touch."

"Oh, please do. I would love to hear from her."

I cleared my throat. "Could you help us with this list?"

Samantha looked at me, not quite as crossly as she did at first, but still seemed a little uncomfortable with my presence.

"Let me see that list again," she said.

Molly gave her the laptop.

"Hmm. Yes, I have most of this stuff," Samantha said, "But I don't carry powdered yak milk or sawdust from the honey locust tree. You'll have to get those at the pharmacy. Look under the protein supplement section for body builders for the powdered yak milk. It only comes in 6-ounce jars. The saw dust you're looking for will be under weight loss products. Be sure to get the stuff in the yellow box that come 20 pills to the box, otherwise you'll get saw dust from the wrong kind of tree."

"Do you mean to tell us that those weight loss pills have sawdust in them?" I asked.

"Most of them do," Samantha replied casually with a sigh, "I wish I thought of that years ago. I could be sitting on a fortune right now, buying sawdust for practically nothing and selling it at such expensive prices!"

She led us through the door marked "Employees Only" where there were open bins marked "dried mandrake root," "dried frog tongue," "powdered rat testicle," and so forth.

"I see you already have the goat's milk, and the "devil's cigar" mushroom," Samantha said. "This looks like you're making some kind of gender-changing potion. Can I ask what it's for?"

"We have a couple of friends who have recently broken up and we want to change them both so they can better understand and appreciate each other," Molly explained.

Samantha began filling our basket with the ingredients we needed.

"Are either of these people magical?" She asked.

"No," Molly explained, "We're hoping to convince them that's they're having a dream."

"I see," said Samantha.

She opened a desk drawer and took out a small bottle containing a white powder.

"Here," she said, "take this. Sprinkle it on their food and it will fog their vision and make them feel a little light-headed for about 10 hours. That should give them the sense that they're dreaming without affecting their libido."

Samantha was able to complete nearly all of our shopping list. She walked us to the front of the store, where she placed all the ingredients into a couple of paper bags.

"How much do we owe you?" I asked.

"Let this be my gift," she said, looking at us carefully, "but it comes with a condition."

"What's the condition?" Molly asked.

"That you call me if anything goes wrong," Samantha said, "Agnes had to bail me out a couple of times in college when . . . well, I'll leave it at that, but if you should need my help, here's my cell number."

Molly put Samantha's number in her phone and gave her a hug. She also gave her Agnes' phone number in exchange.

"This is so nice of you to do all this for us," Molly said, gratefully.

I don't often see folks like us around here, and anyone who is a friend of Agnes Brewster is a welcome guest of mine."

We thanked Samantha profusely as we left the store. As we were leaving, she turned around the "closed" sign to the "open" side. She had apparently closed the store during our visit after the other customers had left.

Our next stop was the pharmacy. It was one of those large chain stores. We found the protein supplement we were looking for. It was labeled "creatine," but the ingredient listed the source as yak milk. It was only available in 6-ounce jars, just as Samantha had mentioned. The weight loss pills were a little trickier to find, there were so many of them. There were two products in yellow boxes. We took the one that had 20 pills to the box.

"I can't believe we found all those weird ingredients," I remarked on the way back to campus, "and to think that the health food store owner was a wit - was one of you. Did you know that in advance?"

"No," Molly said, "that was something Agnes mentioned. A lot of health food stores are owned by people like us, and Agnes suggested we see if that was true here."

Do you know how to add all these things together?" I asked.

"Agnes gave me some instructions, but she thought we should call her and keep her on speaker phone when we put this together tonight."

Molly put the bags of ingredients in the closet of her room while I went back to class. We met up again for supper in the dining hall and Molly suggested we each take a short nap after, as it looked like we were in for a long night ahead.

We met up again shortly after 9:30 outside the chemistry lab as planned. I carefully laid out each ingredient, measuring the exact amounts called for in Agnes' recipe. I had the glassware ready, and two Bunsen burners were lit and ready to go. Molly brought along two empty soda bottles to put the potions in afterwards.

At 10 PM, she called Agnes and placed her on speakerphone.

"Good evening, dears," Agnes said, "Did you have any problem finding the ingredients?"

Molly recounted our shopping trip at noontime.

"Oh, Samantha Potts!" Agnes exclaimed, "I remember her. She was a year behind me and was always making love potions to get dates with the guys. As I recall, I think she joined a sorority and had to fill some sort of quota. She had a problem with a couple of those potions, but I was able to help her clean things up afterwards."

"She made some reference to something like that," I said, "and gave us her number in case we ran into problems."

"I'm happy to hear that," Agnes said, "I was going to suggest you wait until Morgana joined you before you gave your friends the potions in case you did run into trouble, but with Samantha there, I feel a lot better about this."

"Agnes," Molly said, "she gave us all these ingredients for free. We only had to pay the $20 for the powdered yak milk creatinine at the pharmacy and $25 for the honey locust sawdust."

"How nice of her," Agnes said. "If you could give me her number, I can thank her now that I know where she is."

"I hope you don't mind, but I already gave Samantha your phone number," Molly said.

"That's fine dear, Agnes replied, "By the way, I forgot to mention this earlier. Is that powdered yak milk creatine from China or Nepal?"

Molly checked the container. "It says China."

"Oh, dear," said Agnes.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Well, the China product will remove all the hair below the neck for the female," she said.

"That's perfect, Agnes," Molly said.

I looked at Molly, I wasn't so sure. "Will the hair come back once the potion wears off?" I asked.

There was a pause at the other end of the line.

"Eventually, I believe," Agnes replied.

"Let's get started," Molly said anxiously.

I tried to imagine Peter's reaction when he turns back into a male and finds his pubic and body hair missing. I guess we'll deal with that when the time comes.

"Now one of the short-cuts for making two potions is to make one batch up until the last few steps," Agnes explained, "Then you could split the potion into two separate containers and complete separate steps for the male and female changing potions."

Agnes stayed on the line as she took us through the process step by step. It was complicated because each ingredient needed a separate chant when mixed. It also made a difference whether you stirred clockwise or counterclockwise. In addition, we needed to keep the lighting low, as the mixture was light-sensitive during various portions of the process.

Near the end, we separated the potion into two equal portions and completed the remaining steps separately, as Agnes recommended. That was the part that needed either the left or the right piglet-rib powder. We completed the process around 1 AM.

"Agnes," I asked, "When we give them these potions, can we mix them in their drinks or something?"

"I think it's better if they drink it straight, dear," she replied, "There are so many artificial ingredients in some of these beverages nowadays, that they might bring about some unexpected and bizarre results. You should also know that for the first three hours after they change genders, they're going to be quite horny. I thought I should warn you."

"Agnes, Samantha gave us a powder to sprinkle on their food that would fog their vision and make them feel light-headed. Will that interfere with the potion?" Molly asked.

"Was that a white powder, dear?"

"Yes!" we both said together.

"Oh, that's Witch Haze," she said, cackling, "She used to use that stuff on some of the boys she dated. It's perfectly harmless. You can use that if you'd like."

"Agnes, don't you mean witch hazel?" I asked.

She cackled again.

"Oh, no dear. Witch hazel is a plant that is often used in potions. The non-magical community uses it for things like hemorrhoids, which is such as waste of such a valuable plant if you ask me. Witch Haze is used to cloud a person's mind and vision just enough to make them think they're in a dream-like state. It was created for much of the very purpose you intend to use your potion for. It is also "potion-neutral" so that it could be mixed with other potions without changing their properties. I didn't know it was available in your area, otherwise I would have recommended you get some of that, too."

We thanked Agnes before cleaning up. Molly poured the two potions into separate soda bottles and labeled pink" and "blue" for the gender that would result from drinking it. It was almost 2 AM when we finally dragged ourselves out of the chem lab.

"I'll see if I can find something more exotic to put these into," she said.

"How were you planning on getting them to drink it?" I asked.

"Well, originally I thought we would all go out for drinks, and I could slip it into their glasses," Molly replied, "But after Agnes said they needed to drink it straight, I thought maybe we could host a pizza party in your room and tell them it's something local that we brought from Salem."

"That sounds like it might work," I said while yawning, "You can then sprinkle the witch haze on their pizza."

Molly yawned back at me.

"I'll see you at breakfast tomorrow morning and we can finalize our plans then," she said.

We gave each other a quick, tired kiss goodnight before going back to our respective rooms.

*******

Next chapter: Peter and Heather transform