Clare seemed to think this over.

He hurried to get behind the wheel, as if afraid she was going to ask him to unload the cardboard boxes he’d just loaded into the truck bed. He shut the door and drove off.

The maker of love potions scowled.

“Waste,” she said to Cameron. “People are going to regret all the things they throw out when it all falls apart.”

Cameron said, “Hi, Clare. This is Mary Anne Drew. We’ve come to ask you about—”

“A love potion,” Clare answered. “Let’s go inside.”

Cameron cast Mary Anne a sidelong look, inviting her to be impressed by the woman’s powers. Mary Anne wished she was back at the newspaper office, accepting defeat with dignity.

The walls of the cabin’s kitchen were lined with shelves full of canning jars containing leaves, roots and other unidentifiable things. Clare asked, “Would either of you like a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine.” Mary Anne was a little bit uneasy about accepting a cup of tea from someone who brewed love potions. Whatever this woman made, would it be safe to give Jonathan? What if it poisoned him?

“Thank you,” Cameron said. “Do you have nettles?”

“Yes.” Clare gave her an approving nod. Mary Anne wondered again why Cameron didn’t simply marry Paul, who was handsome, intelligent and employed—a keeper and interpreter at the state park zoo by day and a musician by night. Except that Cameron didn’t especially want to be married, and she had said Paul definitely didn’t want to be and she didn’t like him that way anyhow. But Cameron seemed so at home in this atmosphere.

In contrast, Mary Anne felt out-of-place, felt exactly what she was. A woman who liked highlights and pedicures and bikini waxes and shopping and New York, who wouldn’t reject the idea of Botox or tooth bleaching, who could lie around watching entire seasons of Sex and the City on DVD over and over again.

They sat at a beautiful handmade wooden table on mismatched chairs.

Mary Anne said, “Cameron, this is unnecessary.”

Cameron gave her a fierce look.

“Good,” said Clare.

Mary Anne blinked. Wasn’t this woman peddling snake oil? But she seemed to be encouraging Mary Anne not to buy a love potion.

“Mary Anne,” Cameron said, “I think they work.”

“They work,” Clare agreed. “But usually not in the way people intend.”

Despite herself, Mary Anne found her curiosity piqued. But surely Cameron didn’t believe—

“What do you mean?” Mary Anne asked Clare.

The woman’s gaze was penetrating—a basilisk stare.

“I tell people everything. I give them their instructions for activating the potions. They follow the instructions. Then, unexpected things happen. For instance, you are thinking of giving a love potion to a man who has a girlfriend.”

“Actually, they’re engaged.” The journalist side of Mary Anne was scrupulously truthful. “How did you know that?”

Clare ignored the question. “Yes, well, if he drinks my potion and falls in love with you, things may get messy with the other woman. You need to look into your heart and make sure that this is what you really want, because the person who drinks the potion will fall in love with you with a force you’ll be unable to stop or countermand.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem,” Mary Anne reflected. “For me, I mean.”

Clare gave her an almost disapproving look. “It’s better to let nature take its course, you know. You think you know what you want, but it’s very important you understand that the experience may be different from what you’re expecting.”

Mary Anne was quite sure that all the ways Jonathan Hale could fall in love with her would be wonderful. She shrugged. The love potion couldn’t work, so what was the big deal? “I’ll take my chances.”

That look again, the expression of a woman who was warning against disaster and knew that the person she warned was deaf to the message. Clare donned reading glasses and opened a spiral notebook, making a notation with a short stub of pencil. She was a thin, reedy woman, not at all bent by age. Drawing a resolute breath, she turned a page in the notebook.

“You’ll do it?” Mary Anne said.

“Of course.”

The teakettle whistled. Soon a concoction that smelled like grass clippings sat in front of Cameron. “Nettles,” Cameron said. “They make your hair grow.”

Mary Anne envisioned her cousin with Rapunzel-like tresses—which wasn’t too far from what Cameron actually had already.

While Clare worked, mixing various ingredients into a clear liquid, straining, tapping, the journalist in Mary Anne came alive. What went into a love potion? The only ingredient she could identify was a piece of chocolate. Seeing her looking, Clare said, “Green and Black’s Organic Extra Dark. Here, have a piece.”

Mary Anne took it warily and ate the piece. She had to admit, it was extraordinary chocolate. “It won’t hurt him, will it?” she asked. “The love potion?”

Cameron put her head in her hands and shook it.

Clare simply looked at her. “Write this down,” she instructed. “Just take a piece of paper out of that notebook. A blank piece, please.”

Mary Anne did as directed, picking up the stub of pencil.

“This is what you need to do to activate the potion,” Clare said, working with the clear liquid as she spoke. “You must perform three acts of love, each for a person you dislike, someone you can safely say you don’t particularly love. It can be one, two or three people. Break it down anyway you like. Just make sure it’s someone you quite detest, someone you think is a terrible person.”

Graham Corbett leaped to mind.

“You must give one of these people a treasured possession of yours. You must speak to a disliked individual with kindness. And finally you must perform a secret good deed for that type of person.”

“It can all be the same person?”

“You have someone in mind?” Clare said with no inflection whatsoever. “People usually do.”

“Quite,” Mary Anne said, finishing copying the directions. She read them back to Clare.

“Yes. Well, that’s it.” Clare turned from the sink, twisting the cap on a half-ounce vial of clear liquid. She handed it to Mary Anne. “Slip it into something he’ll drink. He shouldn’t notice any difference in the taste.”

“Don’t you need a piece of my hair or something?” Mary Anne asked, deciding not to repeat the question about the potion hurting Jonathan.

The look the midwife gave her was withering. “No, I don’t,” was all she said. Then, seeing Mary Anne’s still doubtful expression, she seemed to take pity and explained, “Your essence is there. Believe me.”

Mary Anne tore out the piece of paper. “What do I owe you?” If this was expensive, she was going to kill Cameron.

“Twenty-five dollars.”

Cheaper than highlights. Mary Anne readily produced the cash.

Clare stared hard into her eyes and said, “Finally, the most important thing.”

“What?”

“Make sure the right person drinks it.”

Cameron and Mary Anne both laughed. Mary Anne said, “Won’t be a problem.”

A TREASURED POSSESSION, a kind word, a secret good deed. Graham Corbett was the obvious recipient of all these things. “A terrible person,” Mary Anne murmured with satisfaction as she steered the car out of Myrtle Hollow.

She had forty-eight hours in which to accomplish these tasks. Then, she could slip the potion into a drink for Jonathan at his engagement party. And watch her happiness unfold.

Except that love potions did not work, could not work.

Beside her, Cameron said, “I’ll come back to Nanna’s with you, then walk home.”

A good three miles, but nothing for Cameron.

“I can drop you,” Mary Anne said.

“No, I want some books.”

Aside from a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1969, nearly all the books at their grandmother’s house, where Mary Anne also lived, were romance novels. No pirates, nothing sexy. Also, nothing published since the early 1950s—Mary Anne suspected that sexy romances had been written before then, but Nanna owned none of them. In Nanna’s books, the heroines were constitutionally upbeat virgins who never smoked, drank or kissed on dates, not only because it might be bad for them but also because it might set a bad example for their peers. American heroes and heroines were fiercely patriotic and always punctual. No one ever even mentioned sex. The only historicals Nanna owned had been written by Barbara Cartland—Nanna didn’t even particularly care for Jane Austen. Mary Anne believed that this was because Lydia Bennet had lived in sin with wicked Wickham before Darcy had bribed Wickham to marry the ruined creature. Cameron countered that it was because Fitzwilliam Darcy stirred Nanna’s own repressed sexual nature. Pride and Prejudice was, Cameron maintained, an inherently sexy book.