The next day ended up being much the same as the first. Tessa cooked them a rather meager breakfast, complaining about having to go shopping soon now, and Nikola was sent back to the task of organizing the potion shelf.

Again, Tessa occasionally enlisted her help in the basics of charm weaving and spell casting, and even let her watch while Tessa broke a minor curse that had been placed on a girl who had had a rather unfortunate arrangement of pimples appear on her face, spelling out a very rude word.

By the end of the second day, the potion shelves had been completely rearranged, and were neater than they had ever been. Nikola was certain that she would be told to hit the road.

Tessa, however, complained that she felt like she might be coming down with something, and Nikola would just have to stay one more day to help run the shop if Tessa ended up bedridden.

Tessa did not end up bedridden the next day, and in fact didn’t seem to recall ever claiming to be sick when Nikola mentioned it. At the end of that day, Tessa bemoaned that with the potion shelves all rearranged, she couldn’t find anything anymore. Nikola pointed out that it was all alphabetical, but Tessa insisted that Nikola stay another day so she could continue fetching the proper potions and ingredients while Tessa relearned the system.

On the fourth day, Tessa sent Nikola out to do the grocery shopping, stuffing a fat envelope of bills into her hands and practically shoving the girl out the door. She seemed rather surprised when Nikola returned an hour later, laden with grocery bags.

On the fifth day Tessa gave no excuse for allowing Nikola to stay, and Nikola didn’t push her luck by asking for one.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into a small handful of months. Soon everyone in the neighborhood knew that the witch had a new apprentice--though whenever they used the word “apprentice” in front of Tessa, she roundly denied any such thing.

But Nikola was soon creating potions on her own, and carving charms and amulets regularly. She even hexed a teenage boy she saw kicking at a stray cat, a hex she had invented herself on the spot.

Her magic was different from Tessa’s, quieter and more intense. She couldn’t bring herself to spit into a potion that she knew someone would have to drink, so she went out and bought a diabetes lancing device with the weekly salary Tessa had started paying her, and added a tiny drop of blood from her finger to each potion instead.

Tessa had argued that that was dangerously unsanitary, but when Nikola pointed out that spitting couldn’t be much better, Tessa just muttered something about magic negating potential bio-hazards and didn’t bring the subject up again.

Tessa always talked to her potions and spells to encourage them, usually in the same stern, no-nonsense tone that she spoke to Nikola in. It took Nikola a long time to feel out the path that her own magic took. She had tried talking to her potions, usually only when Tessa wasn’t around to hear, but she always just ended up feeling a little ridiculous and very aware that it didn’t seem to be working.

But she thought sometimes that she could feel the emotion of the potion or spell, that when she touched the bottle or package some of the intended effects were being absorbed through her skin. So she tried holding them in her hands and closing her eyes. She opened her heart and her mind, and let herself feel what she thought a happiness potion might feel like; or a confidence spell; or a hex of unluckiness.

It was the end of the second month of Nikola’s unofficial apprenticeship when the man arrived at the little shop. Tessa was reading a magazine behind the counter while Nikola dusted the books shelves, and both looked up at the tinkling of the bell.

Tessa was too busy putting on her customer service face to notice that Nikola had turned very white, and dropped the duster she was holding.

“Hi, welcome to the shop,” Tessa said.

He came up to the counter and placed both his hands on it, his expression intent and grim. “You have an apprentice working for you? A teenage girl, long dark hair?”

Tessa glanced in the direction of the shelves where Nikola had been only a few moments before, and was surprised to find she had silently vanished. She looked back at the man: in his mid forties, bald, somewhat on the heavyset side. He had the perpetually anxious look of someone who was probably going to die early from a stress-related disease.

“I own the shop, I can help you with whatever you need. Is there anything I can get for you?”

“I want to talk to your apprentice,” he insisted.

Her eyes narrowed into slits, and when she spoke it was in the tone she reserved for people who came to the shop asking for the kinds of spells no respectable witch dealt in.

“If I had an apprentice, it would be none of your business.”

“I demand to see Nikola! I know she’s here!” the man nearly shouted, banging his fist on the counter top. He seemed shocked by his own outburst, and drew back a little from the counter as if it might strike him back.

“Who’s asking?” Tessa snapped, not impressed in the slightest.

“Her uncle,” he sneered.

Shit, Tessa thought. She stood motionless for a moment, trying to think what to do. Then she said, “Wait here,” and abruptly came out from behind the counter and crossed the room, ducking through the curtained doorway into the hall beyond.

Nikola was standing at the top of the stairs, staring down at Tessa with guarded eyes.

Tessa went up to meet her. “Do you know that man?” she demanded.

“He’s my uncle,” Nikola admitted.

“Why did you take off like that?”

Nikola looked down at her feet, letting her hair fall over her face.

“If you won’t tell me, then I’ll just go down there and-”

“No!” Nikola pleaded. “Please, don’t.”

“Is he your legal guardian?” Tessa asked, her arms folded across her chest. “I was willing to look the other way when it was just a good deed for a kid in need, but if you’re a runaway and he’s going to get the police involved-”

“He won’t go to the police,” Nikola assured Tessa hastily. “I could probably get him into trouble if he did. He won’t want to risk it.”

“You better tell me what the hell is going on here this instant. What have I gotten myself involved in?”

“I’ll tell you everything, if you just please make him go away. Please?”

Nikola looked up at Tessa with fearful eyes, fearful of the man downstairs, and fearful of the witch’s response.

Tessa stared fiercely back down at her, then sighed. “Fine. I’ll go frighten him off. If he comes back with a cop or a lawyer or something though-”

Tessa went back down the stairs, still grumbling under her breath.

The man hadn’t moved from the spot, and fixed her with a surly look.

“Sorry,” she said, sliding back behind the shop counter and smiling humorlessly at him, “I checked every room in the place, and I definitely don’t have a teenaged, dark haired apprentice named Nikola stowed away anywhere. I can offer you a road-safety amulet though, or perhaps a tonic for balding?”

The man’s cheeks turned a splotchy red. “I know she’s here,” he insisted.

“Well, I say she’s not. What are you going to do about it?”

The man glared at Tessa, his hands balled into fists at his sides.

She glared back.

Evidently sensing that he wasn’t going to be able to bully her into giving in, he grunted and left the shop without another word, slamming the door behind him.

Tessa turned the shop’s sign to “closed” and locked the door, and hurried back upstairs.

Nikola was sitting quietly on the couch, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

Tessa sat down on the edge of the coffee table and looked at the girl for a long moment. “Well? Out with it. What felony did I just commit? Aiding and abetting? Harboring a fugitive?”

“Probably the second one?” Nikola ventured without looking up.

Tessa nearly fell off the table. “Are you kidding me? I wasn’t being serious!”

Nikola seemed to shrink into herself more than ever. “I mean, it’s not like the police are after me or anything, and I didn’t do anything to hurt anybody.”

Tessa groaned. “For god’s sake, what did you do?”

Then Nikola told her everything.

Her father had died two years previously, and she had had to go live with an aunt and uncle that she barely knew. Her father hadn’t been well off, but there had been a trust set up for her, into which almost all her father’s savings had gone.

Since she was underage, control of it went to her legal guardians—the aunt and uncle. Nikola hadn’t known any of this at the time. Her father had never mentioned the fund, and no lawyers or social workers had said anything about it to her. It wasn’t until four months ago that she had discovered the account’s existence; and that it had been completely drained.

“They never beat me or starved me or anything,” Nikola explained, “but they didn’t really try to hide the fact that they didn’t want me around. At first they weren’t around much. They traveled a lot, all around the world, even though my aunt doesn’t work and my uncle doesn’t make much money. Now I know how they afforded it all,” she said bitterly.

But then the money dried up, and their resentment of having to take care of a teenager they barely knew and didn’t want grew even stronger.

And then she had figured out that they had stolen every penny that had been rightfully hers, everything her father had left for her.

“I hated them,” she spat. “They had no right. I confronted them about it, and they barely even tried to deny it. They just said that they were the ones who really deserved that money, for taking care of me; that they’d had to spend so much of their own hard earned money to feed me and clothe me when they didn’t even want me in the first place. They said that it was legally theirs, since they were my guardians, and that there was nothing I could do about it, They said I hadn’t even known it had existed until after it was all gone, so what was the point in being upset now?” Nikola’s hands were trembling with suppressed emotion, and she clenched them together tighter to steady them.

“I couldn’t live there anymore. There was this big case of silver, an eight person dining set. I knew it was worth a lot of money because my aunt always made a huge deal about it whenever anyone came over to the house. It had been passed down from my grandfather—so technically it was as much mine as it was theirs. If they took the money that my dad left me, then it was only fair that I took the silver.” Nikola shifted in her seat, as if she didn’t quite believe the words she said, but she forged ahead. “That night when my aunt and uncle were asleep, I packed my things, grabbed the silver, and left. I pawned a few spoons to pay for a motel room.

“At first I was terrified that my aunt and uncle would call the police, but no one ever came looking for me. I think they were afraid that if I was questioned I would tell the police about the money I had been left, and that was when I started to think that what they had done wasn’t legal. But all I cared about was not having to live in the awful house anymore, so I just figured it would be best if I tried to make it on my own.

“But then the silver started to run out, and I couldn’t find a job because I dropped out of high school, and I was getting desperate, and…” she trailed off.

“And then you remembered your friends talking about my shop,” Tessa finished for her. “And you figured that no one goes to school to become a witch, so I wouldn’t be fussed if you were a drop out or not; and that you might be able to talk me into taking you on as an apprentice.” Tessa shook her head. “And now, unfortunately, it seems like those relatives of yours have tracked you down. I’d be willing to bet that it’s the stolen silverware they really want back, not you.”

“But it’s all gone,” Nikola said in distress.

“Like you said, I don’t think they’ll be willing to go to the police about it, but now that they know—or think they know—where you are, they might try to make trouble for you.”

“What can I do?” begged Nikola.

“You’ll have to keep your head down for a while,” said Tessa firmly. “Keep out of sight until they think they’ve got the wrong place after all, or that I’ve thrown you out because I didn’t want the trouble. We’ll give it a few days and see if they come prying around here again.”

Nikola’s eyes welled with tears, and she threw her arms around Tessa’s neck. “Thank you, thank you so much!”

Tessa patted the girl awkwardly on the back.