“He likes carrots,” Sean said with disgust.

Sophie choked back more giggles. Marcus’s dietary habits ran to a lot more salads and crunchy vegetables than did your average resident of Fisher’s Cove.

“What was the part about the baby?” Kevin handed Lizzie a napkin-he had plenty of experience with milk-bubble incidents.

“Dunno.” Lizzie shrugged. “I heard that a baby might come to live with Uncle Marcus, but that can’t be right.”

Twin heads nodded in agreement-nobody in their right mind would give a baby to the village’s most crotchety bachelor.

Sophie stared at her stock of chamomile, wondering. Adele had looked like everyone’s idea of witch fraud-but her eyes had spoken of truth.

And she’d busted into the Witches’ Lounge on some kind of trail that Jamie and Daniel couldn’t follow-all the gold lamé in the world couldn’t manufacture that kind of stealth.

“It’s a mystery,” said Lizzie solemnly.

It certainly was. Sophie sighed-and then looked at the jar in her hand in disgust. It most definitely wasn’t chamomile. The label said so, but chamomile wasn’t purple. She hadn’t made a mistake that basic in twenty years. Rule number one of a healer-never mess with herbs while distracted.

Or excited.

Sophie paused-she wasn’t the only witch who’d been playing in the herb supplies lately. Or the one most likely to make beginner mistakes. Time to see how well their youngest healer knew her plants. “Lizzie, come help me organize my jars. I think we’ve got a bit of a problem here.”

Lizzie bounced over. “That one’s gentian. I used it in Uncle Marcus’s tea.”

It was indeed gentian-and his insides would be stained purple for a year. Sophie was a little afraid to ask. “And why did you put it in his tea?”

The grin was pure trouble-and irresistible. “So he’d have purple poop.”

Sophie tried not to laugh, really she did. And then she gave up and made another mental note. One about not making pint-sized witches mad.