The Baker's Guide to Risky Rituals

by Kathryn Moon

  “Here,” he said, patting his lap. Josie’s eyebrows rose on her forehead, and he schooled his expression into stern neutrality. “I didn’t save your life just to let you go skidding across the pavement when you fall off my bike half-asleep. Sit here.”

  She was so small anyway, what difference did it make? Bell reached out and tugged at her waist, hefting her onto the seat in front of him, facing him with her legs around his waist. She sat stiffly, eyes wide with surprise, forehead just in front of his lips.

  “I need to be able to catch you if I have to,” he muttered, and then ended the discussion by kicking the engine to life with a roar.

  Josie’s arms curled around his back and up his shoulders, under the cover of his leather jacket, as Bell walked his bike into motion and gave it gas. Her head was tucked beneath his chin as he rode, fingers clutching over his shoulder blades. If he still had them, she would’ve been touching his wings, and the thought gave him a jolt of discomfort. He’d meant to be practical, and as Josie softened against him—her breasts against his chest and warm breath on his pulse—he realized he’d landed on intimate instead. And he was fairly sure he couldn’t blame his satisfaction at the way she fit against him on a human hunger. This was pride and vanity and lust all churning together in him.

  It took longer to reach Sweet Pea than he would’ve liked, and also somehow not nearly long enough. By the time he was pulling his bike into the alley behind Josie’s shop, he suspected she might have been dozing.

  Carry her inside, a wicked voice suggested, and he thought of sliding back the sheets on Josie’s bed, taking her shoes off and tucking her in. There was a version where she parted those heavy lashes of hers, and he slid in beside her too.

  Fuck no.

  “Wake up,” he grunted, and she jerked back, head knocking against his chin.

  “Ah! Ow. Huh?” She blinked as Bell unwound her limbs from around him and stood. “Oh. Okay.”

  She was sleepy and soft, and she practically fell off the seat of his bike. Bell thought he might be grinding his teeth down to smooth stubs the longer he was around her. Her voice was croaking, and she fumbled in her jeans pocket for her keys, steps plodding to her door. Bell dug her bag out from the compartment in his bike and crossed to her, setting it on her shoulders.

  “Thanks,” she rasped.

  By the light over her door, he could see the shadows growing on her throat, anger boiling in his gut.

  “Look up at me,” he ordered.

  Josie turned her head and tilted it back to look up at him. There was no reserve in her gaze, no fear, no teasing.

  You’ve already lost the battle, he thought, but he wasn’t sure which of them he meant. His hands reached up, and Josie didn’t even flinch as he cupped his fingers over the growing bruises. Warmth spread through his touch into her skin, ready and willing this time, and Josie sighed, her eyes drifting shut in relief. When she opened them again, there was something in their dark depths that Bell recognized as inherently dangerous to his well being. And in spite of that, he might have considered standing there and soaking it in for another hour or week at least.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Bad News,” Josie said, cheeks swelling with her smile.

  “Goodnight, Cupcake,” Bell said, head tilting down to hers before he caught himself and turned away.

  His haste in pulling away on his bike was born out of self-preservation more than impatience to leave.

  Chad Schmidt, property developer, was jacking off to mediocre porn when all the electricity in his hotel room cut out at once.

  “Shit,” he hissed. “Shit, shiiiit.”

  Despite the fact that his laptop wasn’t plugged in but was now dead—as well as every single tiny LED light in the room—Chad was too deeply embedded in the fantasy to quit working his dick now. He was fucking close, and even though he claimed to hate the entire concept of imagination, he could still hear the high pitched siren squeak of the woman he’d been focusing on for the past three minutes.

  “So close,” he said, as a personal congratulatory mantra. “So close!”

  “Does your hand cramp around a dick that small?” a deep voice asked in the dark.

  Later, when the shock of what came next had lessened, Chad would wonder to himself if it was the low tenor of the man’s voice that sent him writhing and groaning, cum splattering over his stomach, or just the element of surprise.

  “Ahhhhfuuuckkkyaaaaa,” Chad shouted, even as he scrambled back against the headboard.

  “Fucking humans,” the voice muttered.

  Chad was catching his breath, wondering why that was one of the best orgasms he could recall, when his sheets set on fire and the figure at the foot of the bed was illuminated by the glow. He screamed, kicking down the sheet, his boxers tangled around his thighs, and stared at the handsome man in front of him with vivid coal red eyes.

  “What the fuck? What the fuck? Who the fuck are you?!”

  Bell watched as the man tried to climb his way out of his burning bed. He raised his hands, and Chad’s bedsheets wrapped themselves like snakes around his wrists, dragging his arms out to the corners of the mattress. Chad’s screams escalated, steady brief exclamations of terror, not unlike the porn star’s repetitive shouts of feigned ecstasy. Bell waited for the noise to settle, his nose wrinkling as pungent urine soaked the bed.

  “Please. Please, let me go,” Chad whimpered, drawing his legs back to try and avoid the flames, failing to realize that if they hadn’t already burnt him they weren’t going to.

  The illusion was thorough, right down to the smoke billowing up and the curling red lace of fire on cotton, but Bell didn’t want any unnecessary visitors, so he wasn’t actually setting the bed on fire. Chad was an idiot.

  “I need you to listen to me and quit staining the linens, Chad Schmidt,” Bell murmured, circling the edge of the bed to tower over the quivering human. “I don’t care what you do in this town. I don’t care what you turn that preserve into when you get your hands on it. I have one rule for you. If you break it again, I will cut you open with a nail clipper and hang your innards around this hotel room like fucking party streamers.”

  There was a soft whistle of air and the stench of shit.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Bell breathed, covering his eyes.

  “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I- I- Oh, Jesus! No!”

  Chad screeched as Bell transformed into his beast, finally free and whole in his form again, claws popping through the cover of the mattress as he pinned the man down, snarling muzzle snapping over the thin flesh of a tender throat.

  “The girl is off limits!” Bell growled. “You lay another finger on her, and you’re dead. And when you’re dead, I can guarantee that you will be seeing me again, because I know exactly where you’re going next!”

  Chad Schmidt sobbed, snot bubbling in his nostrils, and head tossing. “What girl? What girl? I didn’t- I didn’t! Not since college.”

  Bell’s eyes narrowed on the man’s red and sweating face. Below, Chad’s cock stirred and lifted hopefully upwards. It was a natural reaction to fear that would haunt the man with confusion for a long time to come. Bell huffed and jumped off the bed, digging through the human’s thoughts. Chad Schmidt had spent the evening in the hotel bar, attempting to find a sexual partner and striking out unanimously. He had definitely not been in the woods, and had just completed masturbating for the second time that night. The girl he mentioned was a drunk and reluctant one night stand from decades ago who had been resentfully persuaded to sleep with him. Whenever an inkling of remorse stirred up over the experience, Chad helpfully reminded himself that she’d said yes eventually.

  “I see,” Bell said. He felt no particular inklings of remorse for being perhaps a little too hasty in assuming this man was the killer. After all, nothing was actually on fire, and Chad Schmidt was a weevil of a human being.

  Bell sighed and rolled his shoulders, drawing up his human disguise again. He flicked his fingers, dulling
the details of the conversation in Chad’s mind, but leaving the general impression. At the very least, he’d ensured the man wouldn’t have an appetite for pastry any time soon.

  “Wait!” Chad cried as Bell moved to the door. The room still glowed orange with a fire that never grew. “Wait! You gotta let me go! Please! Please!”

  The door shut behind Bell with a soft click, the neon lighting of the hall flicking on again. Inside the hotel room, the high pitched moans of the woman on the computer started up again, and Chad whimpered as he watched the screen, entirely uncertain what to do about his latest erection.

  The next day, Josie cursed herself for not considering why the killer might have been in the woods in the first place. She was exhausted from calling Papa Legba, confused from the extended time spent with Bell, and then just relieved not to be dead. If she had two more brain cells to rub together, she might have deduced what happened.

  Instead, June entered the bakery through the back door in the early hours before either of their shops were open, her hands wringing in front of her. “There’s been another murder on the preserve,” she said.

  Josie paused in her mixing of the choux pastry for just a beat, before picking up again and pushing her worry down through her arms and into the motion.

  “Last night. This one has a circle too.”

  “Shit,” Josie said, eyes closing. Pastry splattered over the edge of the pan, burning the back of her hand. “Shit. June, what do we do?” She opened her mouth to tell June about Bell and Legba, about the killer in the woods, about being strangled.

  But none of it had come to anything. She had no answers from Legba, only the horrific memory of the campers’ deaths, and no bruises around her neck after Bell had taken care of her.

  Bell…

  Not the time, she scolded herself, and locked away the memory of his hands on her skin or the heat of him as she curled around his chest on the way home.

  “We answer all the questions we’re asked. When they want to know where we were last night, we tell them. Alibis or not.”

  “Fuck!” Josie shouted, and slammed the pan on the burner.

  The choux pastry was split, and she was completely screwed. June stood frozen, just out of the corner of her eye, and Josie turned the stove off and faced her.

  “I was in the woods last night,” Josie said, watching June. “With Beleth,” she added reluctantly. That got a response, just a faint one because June was a queen at keeping her shit under control, but Josie caught the slight widening of her gray eyes.

  She spilled the story from beginning to end, skipping over the ride home and that half-second of excitement where she thought the demon was about to kiss her goodnight.

  “I see…” June said, squaring her shoulders and taking in a deep breath as she absorbed the information.

  “If you were an investigator, you’d think that was some crazy bullshit,” Josie said, scrubbing her hand over her head.

  “As a story it… probably needs to be simplified,” June agreed. “I’d say you could say you were at my place but I was at Imogen’s and—”

  “And I’m sure someone in this nosy ass town saw me on the back of that bike heading out of town,” Josie agreed.

  “So you went to the preserve at night with an attractive new man in town,” June said, all matter of fact.

  “A preserve where a couple was recently murdered,” Josie pointed out, eyebrows raised. She turned back to her stove, scraped out the failed dough, and set herself to start over. “At a scene where they found two sets of footprints?”

  “Maybe you’re… into that sort of thing? The macabre?” June suggested. “It’s better than being caught in a lie. Better than being the killer, too.”

  “Not as good as if I’d just kept my dumb ideas to myself and stayed home,” Josie said, plopping butter into the warm pan with a sigh.

  “Yes, well… next time,” June said. “It’s a shame you have to give the demon an alibi though.”

  Josie frowned and glanced at June over her shoulder. “But we know it wasn’t them.”

  June shrugged. “We also know they’re here to do potentially worse.”

  Josie swallowed, whipping flour into the butter in her pan. The night before she’d been so grateful when Bell had healed the bruises off her neck. It solved the problem of what to explain to others, not to mention the radiating burn and ache in her throat. She’d admit, only to herself, that she’d taken the gesture as a kind of truce between them. How bad could a demon really be when they were capable of kindness of that measure? Now, perhaps it would’ve been better if the bruises were still there, and she could say they’d tried to catch the killer. Maybe it would clear their own names.

  “Right. So. Just say I was in the woods, with Bell. Hope he doesn’t blow my alibi. Hope the investigators don’t automatically assume we’re the murderers. Doesn’t sound stressful at all. Who was it, by the way?” Josie asked. “Who was killed?”

  “The Ranger. Imogen said it looked like maybe he’d surprised the killer, because the circle wasn’t complete.”

  “Imogen saw it?”

  “She found it.”

  That’s twice now, Josie thought. Once was a coincidence. Twice was…

  The timer went off behind her, and Josie took a deep breath. “Can you grab an oven mitt and check the canelés?”

  Twice was probably Imogen keeping an eye on the woods. Josie really didn’t need to start side-eyeing her friends. And it definitely wasn’t Imogen who’d been digging their knee into her back last night. Imogen was tall but she wasn’t heavy like that.

  “I spent the night at Imogen’s, Josie,” June said softly.

  Shit. “I know, babe,” Josie said, nodding too fast. “I know.”

  She needed to get it together, especially before the investigators showed up.

  At first, it was nice to have a slow day in the bakery. Her head was buzzing like a beehive with worries and she’d had to start half her recipes over again throughout the morning. But by noon, with only a small handful of tourists stopping by, Josie realized what was happening. How long had it taken, she wondered, before the word of the latest murder scene spread, and the locals started looking at her? At Rosa, June, and Imogen? It was the twenty-first century, and they hadn’t made a secret of their practices. For the most part, the population of Sweet Pea was charmed by their local coven rather than wary, but these murders were bad press. They’d be worse than that if the real murderer wasn’t caught.

  She was about to text Rosa to see if business was slow, or she’d gotten a weird vibe from anyone, when the shop bells rang and and in walked the investigators.

  “Detective Bagley. Sergeant Crowley,” she said, a strange combination of anxiety and relief bubbling up in her, and reminding her that she’d had nothing to eat but pastry fumes yet that day.

  “Miss Benoit. We’d like to ask you a couple questions about last night.”

  “Of course,” Josie nodded and gestured to her tables. “Why don’t y’all have a seat and I’ll bring some coffee and extras up.”

  “We’d also like your permission to search your apartment, but at this point it’s entirely voluntary.”

  At this point, Josie thought, pressing her hand to her stomach where it flipped and tossed.

  “I’m happy to hand the keys over to your team,” Josie said, eyeing the officers waiting on the sidewalk outside. “Door’s round back. Sticks a little when you turn it.”

  “We appreciate your cooperation,” Crowley said, eyes narrowing to the contrary.

  “Trust me, Sergeant. I’ve got no interest in being the squeaky wheel.”

  She just wished she had a lawyer she could call. Cornell was out because he’d be working for the county on this one. She’d ask him for a reference after the officers left. Damn her for not thinking of it before they’d arrived. Instead, she’d been holding her breath like an idiot, hoping somehow they’d all just forget about her.

  When she returned with her keys a
nd a tray of coffee and food, Josie sat down at the table, handing over her keys to Mark Nolan. He didn’t smile at her today. Barely even met her eyes.

  Five years sucking up to everyone in Sweet Pea, building her shop’s respect and reputation amongst an audience that still would’ve rather she made cupcakes. And now she was just gonna be the Murder Suspect around town. Outside, across the street, Mrs. Montgomery and her ladies who lunched stood outside Love & Lattes watching the activity of the Sheriff’s department around the bakery, their hands raised over their mouths to hide the breakneck pace of their whispering.

  “Now someone mentioned seeing you last night, heading out of town with…” Crowley frowned at his notes where Bell’s name was missing. “On the back of the motorcycle.”

  “Yeah.” Josie sighed, and raised her eyes to Detective Bagley, because of the two, he at least looked smarter. And a little less mean. “I took my stupid ass out to the preserve last night. On a date with…Bell,” she said. Damnit, the demon didn’t even have a last name. She blushed as Bagley’s eyebrows raised. “I dunno his last name. He’s down at the corner with the new motorcycle club.”

  “What were the pair of you doing at the preserve, Miss Benoit?” Bagley asked.

  Josie sucked her teeth. “Well it was a date, so I guess you could call it sight-seeing,” she said, offering a smile.

  “We’re gonna need better specifics than that,” Crowley muttered. “If you’d prefer a formal setting, we can do the interview at the station. There won’t be snacks,” he said, eyeing her food with derision, “But it might help you take this seriously.”

  Josie sat up straight. Rude. But fair e-fucking-nough. “We rode to the north entrance of the park.” She rattled off their path, trying to remember what forks they’d taken. “Had normal conversation about our backgrounds. Stopped at the oak at the fork there. I think we were there for about a half hour. Fooling around,” she said when Crowley shot her a look.

  “Did you hear or see anything unusual while you were out?” Bagley asked.