The Masquerading Magician by Gigi Pandian Page B

can’t figure out your real motive for coming over.”
    Veronica blushed. “We didn’t come over just for food.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œBrix knows you’ve been working too hard lately,” Veronica explained. “What with getting up in the middle of the night to cook for Blue Sky Teas and managing your online business, Brix said you were bummed you didn’t have time to fix up your spring garden like you wanted to.”
    â€œThat’s why he invited you two over?”
    She gave a shy smile. “Yeah, but he also promised Ethan you’d cook for us. Your pastries are so popular at Blue Sky Teas that they’re usually gone by the time we wake up on the weekend.”
    â€œAh.” I looked on through the window as Brixton pulled back a giant stalk of fennel and let it go, snapping it directly into Ethan’s face. I’d taught Brixton enough about gardening and plants for him to know the weed-like plant was hearty enough for roughhousing. He wouldn’t dare mess with the dwarf lemon trees that were still finding their footing.
    â€œReally?” Ethan said to Brixton, then sneezed. “That’s the best you got?” He broke off a thick fennel stem and held it like a sword. The impact was diminished by the fact that the tip was a bunch of yellow flowers. Brixton snapped off a stem of cabbage left behind after I’d harvested the edible portion. As faux weapons went, Brixton’s was a much better selection.
    â€œSo, um, Ms. Faust?” Veronica sat on a countertop with her cell phone in her hand. “Can I talk to you about something else?”
    â€œOf course.” With the grim look on her face, I wondered what could be on her mind. Was she worried about how Brixton would react if she started spending more solo time with Ethan? I’d seen how things were headed with the trio of friends.
    â€œIt’s your website,” she said somberly. “It isn’t mobile friendly. Like, at all.”
    â€œMy website ?” Was it really that bad? “There was no such thing as a smartphone when I built the site,” I said for the second time that day.
    She gaped at me. “But how do you expect to sell anything?”
    â€œI don’t think my buyers are shopping on their cell phones.”
    Her confused expression deepened. “Um, I could help you with it. You know, if you wanted. I’m kind of good at stuff like this.”
    â€œI couldn’t ask you to—”
    â€œIt’s fun, so I’d be happy to. You don’t have to use it if you don’t like it, but I could play around and see if you like what I come up with. You at least need to fix your SEO.”
    â€œMy what?”
    â€œI think you’d like something like this.” Veronica moved so we could both see the screen, and showed me an assortment of mobile-friendly websites for merchandise like mine. “Since you’ve got a bunch of items from China, I could draw Chinese characters that could go next to the English descriptions. And I’ll ask my mom to check my work, to make sure I got them right. I think that would look really cool.”
    I smiled. I’d probably spent more time in China than Veronica’s Chinese-American mother, and I could have checked the Chinese myself, but I didn’t like to advertise the fact that I knew as many languages as I did; it invited too many questions. And I was pleased it would give Veronica something to do with her mom. Brixton had told me she was closer with her Italian dad, because of their shared love of soccer. “That sounds great, Veronica. You should pick out something from Elixir to let me thank you.”
    I wrote down the login information to get into my website. When I looked up and glanced out the window, instead of seeing Max at the grill and the boys fencing with plants, I saw the three of them gathered around something else: Dorian’s alchemy book. The dangerous, secret