by Erin Johnson
Maple raised her brows and sighed, poking a thumb at the bathroom.
She shuffled into the hall in a stained nightshirt, a large hole at the seam revealing a bony shoulder. She scratched her side. “When you get old, your bladder ain’t what it used to be. When I need to get to the toilet, I need to get there fast. Which is why”—she shuffled past us and balled her bony hand into a fist, then bellowed—“it does not fly to have young things occupyin’ the toilet to do their hair and makeup.”
I cringed, covering my ears. Lillian continued to pound at the door. At that rate she’d wake up the entire women’s floor and maybe the men above us, too.
The door flung open and Lillian jumped back, fists still raised to pummel the door… or maybe the person behind it. A tall, impeccably dressed blond stood huffing in the doorway. She stared daggers at Lillian with her piercing blue eyes. Her straight nose flared at the nostrils and her thin lips peeled back in a snarl. “Done. You satisfied, you old witch?”
Lillian dropped her fists and gave the blond a cheeky grin. “Very.” She shouldered past, turning to Maple and me. “Cutting ahead. You girls understand.” She slammed the door behind her, leaving us alone in the hall with the tall, fuming blond. She shook long, pale locks out her eyes.
“Hi, I’m Imogen.” I reached forward to shake her hand.
She looked me hard in the face. “You said already.” She walked away, leaving me hanging. Her perfume filled the whole hallway with its cloying scent.
Maple gave me a nudge with her shoulder. “She’s like that with everyone.”
“Oh, and Imogen?” I turned to find Pritney poking her head out her door. “I really like your shirt. Very brave.” She slammed the door shut before I could respond.
I glanced down. What’s wrong with a unicorn tee?
Maple put a hand on my shoulder. “I like it, personally. What is it?”
I pulled the hem of my shirt down so she could see it clearly. “A unicorn.”
Maple’s blond brows jumped up her forehead. “That’s not what any unicorn I’ve ever seen looks like.”
“You’ve seen a unicorn?”
Lillian threw the bathroom door open, and to Maple’s pleading look, I waved an arm. “Go for it.”
I did eventually get to brush my teeth and hair. I piled a big round bun on the top of my head and did my best to smooth down my red curtain of bangs. I then grabbed my collection of recipes and headed down the hall, toward the sound of voices. I stepped through a small crowd gathered at the front door and joined Maple outside on the lawn.
“So, these are the other competitors?” I glanced at Maple, who nodded. “Have you met them all?”
“Briefly.” Maple sighed and tilted her head to the side. “I’d like to get to know him, I mean them better.” She blinked lazily, and I followed her gaze to a tall, dark-skinned guy. He had black curly hair and a neatly sculpted black beard. With his arms folded across his chest, an intricate brown tattoo was visible, wrapping around his right hand and forearm. Intense.
“I can see why.” I grinned. “What’s his name?”
“Wool.” She barely breathed it.
“Where’s Mr. McHottie from?”
Her cheeks flushed bright pink. “Fire Kingdom.”
I laughed. “Of course, where everything’s hot.”
Wool looked up, and I followed his gaze to the field. Three people walked toward us. I recognized Amelia with her short white hair, but I’d never seen the other two before. More contestants?
Maple edged closer. “The judges.” Her voice came out as a squeak.
Amelia raised her arms “Contestants, welcome! Congratulations on making it into the competition. Today, we’ll give you a tour of the grounds, the rules of the competition, and a chance to get to know each other. As you all know, I’m Amelia Tate, Contest Coordinator. If you need anything or have any questions, I’m the one to ask.”
A dark-skinned, stocky guy shot his arm into the air.
“Let’s hold our questions until after I’ve explained a few things.” He nodded but kept his arm raised. Amelia’s nostrils flared. “Glenn, just put your arm down.”
Glenn? The name sounded familiar.
Maple leaned in. “Glenn’s on the Earth Kingdom’s Baker’s Guild board.”
Recognition slipped into place. Her father had been shouting about Maple beating Glenn. “So, he’s your mortal enemy?”
Maple rolled her eyes, but grinned.
“As I was saying,” Amelia continued. “The competition will begin tomorrow. Each day, you’ll face a trial, as determined by our judges. At the end of each day, one contestant will be eliminated, for the first seven days. The remaining three will move on to the final. The winner will earn the title of Royal Baker for the Water Kingdom, a prestigious and lucrative position, and can hire two from the pool of contestants on as staff. We hope this contest will foster friendship and cooperation among the kingdoms in preparation for the Summer Solstice. Speaking of which, the new royal baker will be charged with creating a special bake for the Summer Solstice feast to be held the day after the final.”
Glenn raised his hand but when Amelia gave him a sharp look, he dropped it.
“Next, I’d like to introduce you to two people, who likely need no introduction.” Amelia stepped to the side and swept her arm out in a grand gesture. “Francis Valhaven, vampire celebrity personality with an exquisitely refined palate.”
The tall vampire loomed above us, narrow shoulders squared, long black hair slicked back, eyes lined in charcoal like an Egyptian. He bowed. I frowned. Was anything I thought I knew about vampires correct? Francis hovered in the sunshine, so they could clearly venture into the light. And if he were judging a baking contest he ate things besides blood.
Unless all of our bakes were to be blood cakes with blood frosting. I shuddered. Gross.
“And Rhonda the Seer, celebrity psychic and renowned baker.”
The dark girl with a halo of shoulder-length tiny braids stepped forward, smiling beatifically. Suddenly, her body jerked, and she threw her head back to the sky, slapping a palm over her eyes. I leaned forward as a golden circle of light glowed on her forehead. Just as suddenly, she relaxed with a gasp, dropping her hand.
“I have just received a vision,” she announced in a slightly stuffy voice, as if her nose was plugged. She pointed at the tall, dark-haired young man with the large nose. “You there. You shall not marry a princess.” Rhonda smiled, looking very pleased with herself.
The guy froze for a moment, his thick brows lifted. Then he shook his head slightly. I leaned closer to Maple and whispered, “Yeah, and I shall not turn into a spider.” I chuckled at my own joke, but Maple gave me a serious look.
“She’s never wrong, like ever, and she has a lot of visions.”
I swallowed, my laughter dying. “Really?”
Maple nodded.
Amelia smiled at the blond bathroom hog. “Why don’t you all introduce yourselves to each other and the judges? Pritney, how about you start us off?”
She perched on a stone windowsill as if she were posing for a magazine shoot. “I’m Pritney. I apprenticed under the last royal baker.”
Wool spoke next, his voice low and his accent seductive. I nudged Maple, whose cheeks glowed pink. Then came Zeke, a scruffy, pudgy guy with a long brown ponytail and bushy brown beard. “I’m Zeke. Grew up in the Earth Kingdom, then moved to the Air Kingdom. I believe in natural living, so I hope to show you that baked goods can be healthy and delicious.” He nodded several times, grinning and brushing his hair out of his eyes. Maybe it was the way he sounded like a surfer, but there was just something instantly likable about Zeke.
Next came Bern from the Air Kingdom, a tall, bald guy wearing glasses. He worked as a magicneer, and brought a technical mind to baking. Then Lillian introduced herself—it involved a lot of wild laughter. Then came Glenn.
“I’m on the council for Earth’s Baking Guild, the most prestigious guild in the kingdoms.
”
Wool snorted.
A man named Sam shifted nervously, shrugging as if his clothes fit too tight. His voice, when he spoke, startled me, for the low drawl didn’t seem to belong to the chinless man with large ears and glasses.
Then came the tall, brooding guy with the overlarge crooked nose, who according to Rhonda would not marry a princess. “I’m Hank and I’m from the Water Kingdom.”
Next, Maple stammered her way through introductions, and I went last.
“Hi, I’m Imogen. So, I’ve just discovered magic exists—”
“What!” Amelia stalked toward me, her gray eyes round. “Repeat. Repeat what you said. You just discovered magic? What do you mean by that?”
I swallowed, and smiled brightly out of nerves. “I always thought I was human… until yesterday.”
“Your parents didn’t tell you you’re a witch?” Amelia panted.
You’re a witch, the childish part of me wanted to retort.
Even Maple blinked at me in surprise.
I rubbed my neck with both hands. “I never knew my parents, my birth parents. I was adopted.” I should probably clarify. “By humans.”
Amelia staggered a few steps back. She held the gumball earpiece thing and spoke into it. “We have a situation.”
11
Visions
Amelia waved at me to follow her. “Talk amongst yourselves.”
I felt the other contestants’ eyes on me as the judges and I followed Amelia to the back of the house. I felt like I was being led to the principal’s office.
We stopped under a massive tree.
“What do you mean, you just discovered magic?” Amelia’s big gray eyes darted up and down the length of me. “You can’t compete if you don’t know magic. Oh geez, we’re going to have to get an alternate in here.” She pressed the white gumball thing to her ear. “Smit, I’m gonna need you to call up our list of alternates and see who can be here by this afternoon.” The wind shook the heavy boughs above us.
The tall vampire raised his dark, lined eyes to mine. “Hold on, Amelia,” Francis drawled in a deep voice. “I tasted her bake. It reeked of magic. The girl may not know how to control it, but she possesses magic, I’m certain of it.”
I still didn’t believe I possessed magic, despite the vampire’s confidence. Next to him, Rhonda the young Seer held up her hands, neon pink and green nails flashing.
She nodded, sending her shoulder-length black braids bouncing. “I had a vision, you know, that she would do quite well in the competition.”
Really? Or was she just trying to help me out? Exasperated, Amelia lifted her eyes and said to the person on the other end of her ear gumball, “Forget it. Imogen’s staying.”
Francis literally floated back into the shadows, his feet hovering an inch above the ground. Rhonda, though, smiled and walked up to me. “You’ll figure it out. My visions are never wrong.” She suddenly threw a hand over her eyes and lifted her glowing forehead to the sky. “I’m getting another vision… two.”
The spot at the center of her dark forehead glowed golden, her whole body seeming to suspend and stay still in a way that didn’t seem humanly possible. Then again, apparently Rhonda wasn’t human—and neither was I.
Suddenly, the glowing circle disappeared and Rhonda gasped in a huge breath of air. She grinned. “Woo. Doozy.” Her smile dropped, and she said in her stuffed-up sounding voice, “You’ll be intimately involved in a murder investigation.”
My eyes blinked wide open. “Come again?”
“You’ll be intimately involved in a murder investigation,” she repeated, louder and slower.
I’d heard her. I just couldn’t make any sense of it. Maybe her visions weren’t time specific. Maybe, in the future, I became a detective or something? That seemed unlikely.
She lifted her chin, then dropped it. “In the next ten days during the competition.”
“Whose murder?” Amelia gasped, her face full of horror. “She can’t be in the competition if we know she’s going to murder someone.” She threw a wild look my way, and I hugged my collection of recipes to my chest like a shield.
“Don’t know who dies. It’s a gift, it reveals what it reveals and nothing more, nothing less.” Rhonda held her hands with their brightly painted nails palm up and shrugged. “But you can’t remove her from the competition, because I see her in it. Definitely in it. And I didn’t say she killed anyone, I mean she might, she’s just involved in the investigation. But I would tighten security, yeah, for sure.”
Amelia looked like she wanted to strangle Rhonda but stepped back a few paces and began hissing at someone through her ear device. Rhonda turned back to me.
“The second vision….”
I didn’t want to know.
Rhonda smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s good news.” She stepped closer. “That bowel movement you’ve been waiting for is on its way. Soon, I’d say, very soon, you’ll have relief.”
My mouth dropped open.
“Don’t be embarrassed, travel always messes up my rhythm, too.”
The word rhythm had never sounded so gross.
Rhonda, a few inches shorter than me, patted my shoulder bracingly and lowered her voice. “Around two thirty, three o’clock-ish, I should find myself near a toilet if I were you.”
We rejoined the others, and Amelia led us across the green grounds toward the tent where we’d be doing our baking. We passed by a cypress hedge and a tall stone wall behind it.
“On the other side of this fence is the Water Temple, the biggest and oldest on the island. Just beyond that is the Royal Palace. All of you will be invited to attend the Summer Solstice feast, but with heightened security due to threats from the Badlands Army, I’m afraid we won’t be able to tour the palace beforehand.”
“They normally do tours?” I tried to peek over the hedge, my curiosity piqued.
Maple nodded. “It’s beautiful, I’ve gone a few times.”
We reached the tent, the long white fabric peaked in three places, and one side rolled up. We entered it through the rolled-up side, and as we did I felt a shimmery cool tingle fall across my skin. I looked around, but saw nothing.
“You know, if you’ve rolled the sides for airflow,” Bern said, peering through his glasses at the flaps, “it’d work much better if you lifted the other side as well.”
Amelia nodded. “That side is rolled up because that’s where the bleachers will go.”
“Bleachers?” Maple paled.
Amelia gestured to the grass just outside the tent. “We’ve invited spectators to cheer you on. And….” She pressed her lips together and raised her thin brows high. “There’ll be some very special guests at tomorrow’s opening day.” She looked around. “Any guesses?”
Glenn’s hand shot up.
“No? I’ll tell you then, it’s the Water Kingdom’s royal family!”
Maple gagged and pressed her hands over her mouth, and Hank, who’d seemed so cocky and sure up till now, turned white as a cloud.
“Oh, don’t let the pressure get to you.” Amelia’s smile dropped, and she practically growled, “Seriously. Don’t. That’s an order. Tomorrow has to go perfectly. The royal family’s watching.”
Maple slumped against me for support.
“Anyway.” Amelia plastered on her smile again. “Each of you will have a station.” The tent was divided into two rows, one closer to the open flap, the other set back. Each row contained five butcher-block countertops, with a sink set into each one, a pizza oven, and a cupboard.
The stations were staggered so that people in the bleachers could easily see all ten contestants working away. Watch their every move. I was not usually one to cave under pressure, but even my stomach turned at the thought.
“Some of you have expressed special needs and concerns.” Amelia shot Glenn a flat look. “Pritney, we’ve arranged for a cushioned mat for your feet.” She raised a brow at Pritney’s stilettos. “Zeke, you’ll have the table in the north
east corner, as requested.”
Zeke grinned and nodded. “Nice. Thank you very much.” He addressed the rest of us. “Best spot for vibrational energy reasons, hope y’all don’t mind.”
“And Glenn,” Amelia continued, “we understand that you have a severe allergy to snake venom. Obviously none will be allowed in the tent, but we’re also banning snake eggs, just to be on the safe side, as the yolks can be a source of venom. You’ll also be required to pass through a magical protection field—you may have felt it on the way in. It’ll scan you for anything contraband—poisons, black magic, snake eggs, etcetera, as well as reveal shifters.”
Sam devolved into a coughing fit, and Lillian pounded his back. Francis drew himself up taller, hovering another couple of inches above the ground. “How singular.” His dark eyes bored holes into Amelia.
She cleared her throat. “The spell forces shifters to reveal their second form, so if any had been among us, they would have transformed into their animal.”
The vampire’s full lips peeled back, revealing fangs. Amelia shrank back. “So I shall have to enter as a bat each day? Wonderful.” Francis huffed. “And if a shifter should be revealed among them”—he swept his arm toward us—“they’d be disqualified?”
Amelia scratched her ear and looked away from Francis. “You obviously didn’t turn into a bat, Francis. We made sure the spell excluded vampires. And as for a shifter, yes, he or she would be disqualified. The contest rules clearly excluded shifters from entering.”
Francis hissed like a cat, and Amelia shrunk back. The vampire snarled, “Everyone seems to forget that vampires are a form of shifter and that as such, I too suffer when the magical world shows shifters such distrust.”
I glanced at Maple. “What’s all this about?”
“He’s right,” she said in a small voice. “Shifters aren’t treated equally—people fear how deceptive they can be. Think about it—other kingdoms have shifter spies, people who can turn into bees and butterflies and cute little cats. It’s hard to feel totally safe when a shifter’s around.”