She started the car, put it into gear and thought about the last hour of her life.
No one questioned an old lady wandering around the office, no one said word one when she walked through, giving a breezy wave to the security guard, and headed (slowly) up the three flights of stairs to Colin Morgan’s office.
When his harried secretary ran into the kitchen to make Colin a cup of coffee, Marian was waiting, sitting at the table and knitting. Although she didn’t knit and didn’t know what she was doing, no one really noticed anything but masses of yarn and the clicking of the needles. Knitting was what stereotypical old ladies did and, since Marian was in disguise, she felt it was a good prop.
She was right; the secretary barely reacted when Marian spoke.
“Would you like me to make that for you, dear?” she’d offered in her kindliest, old lady voice.
She knew it was Colin’s secretary, Mandy. She’d been paying close attention to a lot of things about Colin Morgan’s Bristol offices since she began her stakeout some time ago. Colin worked later than everyone, his secretary left the building a quarter of an hour before him every night.
The Mandy’s startled eyes came to Marian.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m Neil’s mother. Come for a visit,” Marian lied.
She knew a Neil worked there, on that very floor. She had sat next to him at lunch one day in the busy café down the street. There were no other tables and she was “forced” to ask him to share his table with a tired, old, talkative lady who just needed a cuppa and a rest of her weary feet. Being a polite young man, he’d agreed. He’d also (somewhat magically, Marian had to admit) talked a great deal about the comings and goings at the office and how a girl he liked, the boss’s secretary, was too tired to go out to drinks after work because her boss always worked her later than anyone else.
“I’m making coffee for Mr. Morgan, he’s kind of picky about his coffee,” Mandy explained, breaking into Marian’s thoughts.
Marian had no doubt Colin Morgan was picky about his coffee.
Marian thought the young secretary looked like she had a great many other things she would prefer to be doing rather than making coffee.
“I think I can handle coffee, dear. How does he take it?”
The girl hesitated only briefly before her expression changed and then she looked thrilled to have one less task. With vows of gratitude, she gave Marian instructions and left.
And then Marian carefully made the coffee, not wanting Mandy to get into trouble and definitely needing Colin to drink it. When she was finished, she surreptitiously took the vial from her old lady handbag (she didn’t normally carry such an unfashionable handbag but she was undercover). She tipped the concoction in the drink and stirred. Colin liked his coffee strong; a splash of milk, no sugar, the potion wouldn’t change the taste one bit (she hoped).
Mandy rushed back in and Marian handed her the steaming mug and was flashed a grateful smile.
Then Marian made good her escape, again without anyone even looking at her.
Now, wending her way through the hated Bristol traffic, Marian went through the ingredients of the potion in her mind.
It would take awhile to work; hopefully he would be back to Sibyl by the time it happened.
Of course, it could start working earlier, or later, or do something entirely different than it was supposed to. She liked to call it her “volatile cocktail”. Marian thought that was amusing and she vastly preferred to be amused than to be consumed with worry about all the appalling things which could go wrong with her cocktail. This was very advanced magic and could backfire easily.
It was a huge risk but Marian felt it was a risk she had to take.
Hopefully, the coffee made it to Colin. She’d hate to think what would happen if some other person drank it. Someone with, perhaps, a rather unsavoury past life who might go on a killing spree and would genuinely not remember it.
Never mind, Marian thought, these were the risks one took when in pursuit of facilitating true love.
Then Marian resolutely set these thoughts aside and hummed to herself the rest of the way home.
* * * * *
Sibyl was working in her laboratory in the Summer House in her back garden.
Janis Joplin was blaring from the radio and Sibyl was singing with Janis about Bobby McGee. It was six o’clock and the days were much longer since daylight savings time began. They were also back to being unseasonably warm. The cold, grey spell had started the day Colin went away but it cleared the evening he returned. The sun was shining day after day, the tulips were out, the trees were budding, the hyacinths had opened and life was good on this green earth.
Well, mostly.
Colin would soon be at her house, arriving sometime between seven thirty and eight, the way he was nearly every night except the weekends. The weekends, he stayed with her almost all the time (the weekend before, most of this spent in bed). This past weekend, he went into the office for several hours on Sunday.