Fangs and Frenemies

by Cherry Andrews

  “Check out the grins on Ma and Pa Kensington,” Landon observed. “Has anyone ever seen them so happy? I mean, she’s pretty much always happy, but Fred?”

  “Fred happy when Seahawks lose Super Bowl,” Marina recalled in her thick accent. “But not so happy, you have point.”

  “Drew is their only child,” Leeza reminded me somberly. “This is as special a day for them as for him.”

  “Aww . . . sniff . . . ” Landon pretended to wipe away a tear.

  The others laughed. This crew was obviously tight. And collectively their attitude toward the powerful family they served was between amused and fondly mocking. For all their blustering humor about them, though, The Help did seem to care about the Kensingtons. And Estelle and Fred did indeed look happy. Arm in arm, grey haired but unbent, and dressed to the nines, they were the ultimate golden years power couple. They had it all: capital, class, effortless confidence, a loving son.

  I was a bit surprised to see Estelle wasn’t holding Sammy Boy in her arms, or in her assistant Leeza’s arms for that matter. But maybe the venue was strict about dogs?

  When Ashlee Stone, accompanied by harp music, stalked down the aisle with her brassy-haired, spray-tanned mother—the one person who seemed to fit in less at this wedding than I did—I wondered if this would be the first wedding I ever attended where I didn’t cry. Where I felt nothing at all.

  But as Drew leaned in to tenderly kiss his bride, my bully’s face seemed to soften before my eyes. She tilted her head, glanced down, and let out the lightest sigh. I stared, riveted as if by a wild plot twist on some TV drama. Was it possible a husband’s love could humanize Ashlee Stone? What if these two were soul mates who shared a destiny? In which case, perhaps my little spell would have made no real difference either way? Watching them kiss, anything seemed possible.

  As the rest of the wedding unfolded, I remained in a hopeful trance. While the cocktails flowed from the open bar during the photography hour, and at the elegant grey-laid tables decorated with cream-colored roses where the waiters served beef Wellington, and while the best man gave a rambling, self-focused speech during the champagne toast, I let myself daydream about my own wedding, someday in the future. Before Bryson, that kind of thinking was strictly off-limits for me. But finally I had a man in my life that I could contemplate settling down with.

  I glanced up from my reverie just in time to see a harried-looking waiter—the same one who’d labeled me a cake-gawker—place in front of me a slice of raspberry crémeux, with silky vanilla fondant. My cake, my beautiful failure of a cake. All around me, guests were demolishing it with gusto. Fred Kensington wore a frosting mustache that his wife daintily wiped off, to the amusement of everyone.

  Cake slices were disappearing fast as guests stuffed themselves with seconds and demanded thirds. No one had a clue what was wrong with my cake, only I knew its awful secret. Rarely had I felt so lonely. The friendly conversation going on all around me at the vendors’ table blurred into noise. I was only dimly aware of applause when the groom gave a shout out to me as a “visionary in the cake space.”

  Plates were carried away empty. Guests began to mingle from table to table, sliding into each other’s seats, though our crew of vendors remained steadfast, a working-class island amid the sea of plutocrats.

  On stage, a rock band began warming up—an impossibly tasteful, avant-garde rock band, with a cellist (female) and designated tap dancer (gender unclear). Dancing looked imminent.

  Time to make my escape.

  As I stood from the table, my heart felt heavy, but it might just have been the beef Wellington and all that Veuve.

  “Hey, cake artist, I saw you using your phone to snap pictures earlier.” A strong male hand was on my shoulder. David the hot photographer was standing right behind me. “For your website, right?”

  I nodded, pleased I’d come up with such a plausible excuse for why I was, well, gawking at a cake. Of course we didn’t have a gallery on our website, nor did we exactly have a website. But we should get right on that. Now that I was in charge . . .

  “You know, I’d be happy to let you use some of the footage I got earlier.”

  “Really?” David was offering to contribute free photography for our website? I was touched. Perhaps there were multiple silver linings to my coming to this wedding? “That’s awfully nice of you.”

  “No, it’s not. I want them to be good pictures, not phone camera garbage.” His wink and teasing look made me laugh, and before I knew it I’d reached out and playfully punched his arm.

  “Hey, you’re a ton of fun, cake artist.” David clapped a friendly hand on my shoulder. “You really should join us for drinks sometime. We’re always at the Moonlit Barrel on Thursday nights. Rain or shine. We drink beer, we snark about the people whose money pays for our beer. Nipping at the hand that feeds us, as it were.”

  “Sounds like a good time.” I pulled off the tux jacket that still smelled like David’s spicy cologne. “Thanks for saving my life with this.”

  I practically ran out the door and past the roundabout into the vast parking lot.

  There was no way to rationalize it to myself this time. I was flirting. With another man. While my boyfriend worked on a Saturday.

  I was a bad girlfriend today.

  A bad witch, too. The thought of reporting my big fail back to Grandma Sage filled my stomach with dread—and since my stomach was already full of wedding dinner, it felt pretty crowded in there.

  I was contemplating how to break it to Gran when I nearly crashed into a woman who was wandering the parking lot, hunched over her phone.

  She was tall and thin, wearing skinny jeans and an oversized grey sweatshirt, furiously thumbing out a text so she didn’t even see me. Her hood was up, covering half her face. But I’d recognize that proud plastic chin anywhere.

  What was Ashlee doing out of her wedding gown, wandering the parking lot incognito? If she and Drew were buying party drugs for their wedding night, you’d think they could afford a smoother hookup.

  Or was this the type of thing a personal assistant handled, heheh?

  Curious, but not so curious as to risk her spotting me, I hurried on to my car.

  Poor Trixie was sandwiched between a gleaming Porsche convertible and a blue BMW five series, near the outer reaches of the parking lot. The instant I hit the clicker to unlock her and she called to me through our psychic bond, sounding really down.

  “Thank goodness you’re back, doll. It’s been so lonely. All these other cars out here are soulless hunks of metal.”

  “Sorry you had a bad time, Trix.” Only a witch’s car could have a soul, and I wasn’t surprised if the Kensingtons didn’t associate with too many of us. “Trust me, this bash wasn’t exactly my speed either.” I wedged the door open and squeezed inside. “Let’s roll.”

  “About that. Did you have a plan for how we’re getting out of here? What with all these cold, unfeeling chrome-piles blocking us in?”

  Oh geez. Of course I couldn’t get out; the cars were packed in with tight efficiency. I’d forgotten it was valet parking. From across the lot, I could see the twelve-year-old kid in his red livery striding toward me, an annoyed expression twitching beneath his three-hair mustache.

  All right, so he was more like seventeen, but still.

  Mentally preparing myself to be scolded by an adolescent, I hopped outside to wait for him. That’s when I noticed a bottle-green Mustang parked only two rows away from Trixie.

  What was Max’s car doing here.

  Max hated Ashlee, even more than I did. What was she doing at the wedding?

  Now would be a very good time to ask her in person, seeing as how Max was sitting right there in the car.

  Or someone was.

  The top was down, but I could see a long-haired silhouette moving inside. I stalked over to the driver’s side window, weighing my options. Should I say hi? Confront her? About what, exactly? The wedding? Cheating on the bakery? Ditching me on g
rad night?

  Funny how it never felt like the right time to bring that up. But if I couldn’t work up the guts to do it now, when would I? Sixty years from now at some nursing home, when the orderlies gently poured us into side-by-side rockers, it would still feel too raw. Too soon.

  While I was gathering my courage to speak, a plastic coffee cup sailed out the back window, landing with a wet splat inches from my shoe. I stared at the cat logo on the cup’s side with unbridled loathing. A plastic iced coffee to-go cup from Java Kitty Café.

  It was, no pun intended, the last straw.

  Fuming, I banged on the driver’s side window, ready to have it out with Max once and for all.

  Only there was no Max.

  The silhouette I thought I’d seen was gone. Incredulous, I peeked into the back window. A thick legal folder sat on the passenger seat, open and overflowing with papers.

  But there was no one in there.

  A gust of wind must have blown the cup outside.

  Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t even be 100 percent sure it was Max’s car in the first place. I hadn’t memorized her license plate. Other people had green Mustangs too.

  “Ma’am?” The valet infant in red had caught up with me, his voice aggressively upbeat. “Do you understand how valet parking works, ma’am? You stand by the roundabout, and I bring your car right to you like you’re a princess.”

  I nodded numbly and tossed him the keys.

  An hour later, I was in flannel PJs, winding down in front of the TV when my phone bleeped. The screen lit up with Grandma Sage’s photo. And for the first time in my life I toyed with the idea of not answering her call.

  I sighed. Who was I kidding? This was my ailing, aging grandmother, not just my boss. “Hi Gran. What’s up? The wedding was—”

  “Did you complete the spell or not?”

  Right to business then. “Don’t you want to know about how the wedding was? And how much people loved our cake?”

  “So the magic didn’t go well.” I could hear the pain in her voice. It was clear she’d been anxiously awaiting this news.

  “No. It didn’t go well.”

  “Oh Hazel.” Her voice cracked on the line. “You must be devasta—“

  “Because it went great!” Yep. I lied. Oh well. It was just like Gran had said about Ashlee and Drew. Spell or not, they’d never know the difference.

  Well, neither would she. Even if Ashlee and Drew had a crappy marriage, it wouldn’t implode overnight. Probably.

  “Oh Hazel dear, you’ve made my day!” Gran gave a huge sigh. “Lowered my blood pressure, too. Maybe I’m going to live to enjoy retirement after all.”

  “Semiretirement, Gran. Of course you will.” As long as those bozos Ashlee and Drew can keep it together for a few years with couples therapy, I thought guiltily. But did I even need to feel guilty? Lying wasn’t one of the three laws of being a Green Witch, so that meant it must be ok sometimes, right? When I became Gran’s apprentice I took a solemn vow that I would try to make things better, if I could. Well, there was nothing I could do now to bless that stupid cake of Ashlee’s—every slice had been devoured. It was history.

  But the one thing I could do was make Gran feel better . . . that, and promise myself I’d be a better witch from now on. Show up on time for work, for a start. Pick up some weekend catering gigs and sink the extra cash into investments in the bakery. Updating our equipment. Remodeling the dining room. Bigger windows, shiny new espresso machines.

  Take that, Java Kitty.

  And, as much as I feared the outcome, there was one final thing I needed to do.

  “Gran? I have a boyfriend.” There, I could say those four words. Just not to David. “His name is Bryson, he has piercing dark-blue eyes, and I want you to meet him as soon as possible. I want the whole world to know we’re together.”

  Chapter 5

  “Hazel dear, what’d you say this young man of yours does for a job?”

  It was the following Tuesday at 4:35 PM—almost half an hour before our early winter close time, but we hadn’t had a customer in hours so I’d already done most of the cleanup.

  Grandma Sage was stirring honey into her chamomile tea at the cozy corner booth while I discreetly repacked trays of our unsold rosemary cherry muffins into plastic bags for the homeless shelter three towns over. The treats were topped with brown sugar crumble and imbued with our Best Rest spell. At least the homeless would be sleeping well tonight, even if our bakery was doomed.

  Remembering Gran’s question, I said, “Bryson’s, um, a life coach.” I mentally high-fived myself for avoiding the word therapist. She tended to call them “head-shrinkers” and it wasn’t a compliment.

  “Life coach? What a peculiar-sounding job.” Gran dropped her zig-zagged honey spoon onto a checked cloth napkin and leaned toward me with suspicion in her eye. “Almost sounds like a head-shrinker.”

  I sighed. “Ok, fine, he is a head-shrinker. But what do you think of these centerpieces I just made?”

  She fell for my distraction, turning her sharp gaze to mason jar of cut sunflowers on the table. It was tied with a rough sisal bow for a country touch. “Never saw the point of a centerpiece.” She shrugged. “But it’s pretty, I guess.”

  “That is the whole entire point, Gran.”

  Plus, the flowers were from my own garden and we needed to go all-in on our homegrown branding if we had any hope of regaining market share from Java Kitty. It was key that we niche down from generic bakery café to a market space we could dominate . . . yeah, I might have been reading a few biz books over the last couple of days. With Bryson busy with that continuing ed thing in Portland, I’d found myself with time on my hands for the first time in months and hit the library. And then the craft store. It had been, I had to admit, kind of nice to throw myself whole-hog into my work for the first time in so long.

  “Great bats, are my old eyes deceiving me?” Gran squinted at the solitary pop of blue amid the otherwise deep orange blossoms. “Deadly belladonna has no place in a house of Green magic.”

  I steeled myself for another minor battle. “You’re being old-fashioned, Gran. Customers don’t know anything about flowers. Besides, if you’re passing the bakery on to me, you need to start letting me make my own choices.”

  She twisted her lips. “I suppose you’re right, dear. I only hope they’ll be good choices.”

  Bryson took that moment to show up, carrying a bouquet of lavender which he handed Gran with a respectful bow.

  He glanced at the jar on the table. “Hey, aren’t those poisonous?”

  “Indeed they are, young man.” Granny gave me a pointed look. She brought the bouquet of lavender to her nose, then breathed out a sigh of satisfaction. “Ah, lavender. Safe, edible, classic.”

  It was all I could do not to roll my eyes. Here I’d been worried about Bryson not making a good impression. The man was already in better standing with Gran than I was.

  As I watched them make small talk about Main Street’s bad drivers—ok, so maybe I’d prepped him a tiny bit—the clench of my jaw began to loosen.

  You have to understand that Gran’s approval meant everything to me. Growing up, my parents favored my sisters. Everyone did, and even I couldn’t blame them. Beatrix, the firstborn, had made every honor roll, and grown up to be Blue Moon Bay’s number one Pinterest Mom. Cindra, the baby, earned a glam living in Los Angeles as a glove and shoe model, having been born with perfect hands and feet. Then there was me, the middle sister. What made me special? Just one thing.

  I was Granny’s sole magical heir.

  Her blessing was all I had, and all I ever needed.

  I don’t know what I’d been so afraid of. The conversation between them went swimmingly. Even when Gran asked, with barely concealed bewilderment, what had possessed “a tourist” to pick up and move to Blue Moon Bay, Bryson met her eyes and answered with disarming warmth and sincerity.

  “Miss Sage, I’m aware that it may sound crazy to y
ou.” He slid his hand across the table and I instinctively placed mine in it. “But I had a feeling something wonderful was waiting for me here. You could call it destiny.”

  Awwwww! Nailed it.

  Gran glanced thoughtfully from me to him and gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I can’t think of a more perfect response.”

  Needless to say I was beaming from ear to ear.

  After Bryson headed out and hopped on his bike, she turned to me and said, “Better luck next time, Hazel dear.”

  All the heat left my hands. “You’re joking, right?”

  “He is not the one,” she said in a very nonjoking tone.

  “But, but, but!” I sputtered. “You two got along like a house on fire.”

  “Well, that’s neither here nor there,” she snapped. “I can’t help it if he’s charming, but . . . ” She hesitated, as if there was something she was debating sharing with me. “But don’t you notice anything odd about him? He’s too . . . ”

  “Too what? Perfect?”

  Again the hesitation. “Yes, Bryson is too perfect.”

  I stared at her. “Whoa, you’re not seriously suggesting I dump Bryson for a reason as dumb as that?” I couldn’t believe her nerve. As if the choice were hers. But hadn’t I been acting as if it were? Time to assert myself. “Look, it’s one thing for you to micromanage my flower arranging—“

  “Which reminds me.” She snapped her fingers and murmured, “Don’t beguile us with your charm, when in truth you mean us harm.” In a flash, my six blue delphiniums disappeared from their jars.

  “Hey!” Anger was coursing through me like a wave. I never got mad at Gran. Then again, she’d never told me to dump Bryson. “What’s gotten into you? You just said it was time I made my own choices and now you’re trying to control everything like always. Well, I have news for you. I’m not a kid anymore. And I am taking over this bakery.”

  “I know you’re no child, Hazel.” She sounded oddly weary. “Believe me, I’ve watched you grow through the years from a timid little mouse into a strong witch. I respect your talent. But if you really believe that . . . .that head-shrinker is your soul mate, then you’re not as ready as I’d hoped.”