My mouth dropped open. “How dare you? I’m a founding member, going all the way back to last week.”
Max looked contrite. “The bloodsucking cheerleader is right, though. I’m scared you might be dating someone who’s capable of murder. Or at least really weird stuff. Bad-weird.”
“Ok, ladies, here’s an idea,” Britt said, standing with a glance at her watch. “And then I really do need to go bite that waiter. You suspect Maxy’s delinquent brother, you suspect Hazel’s boring man—”
“Hey,” I protested.
“So investigate both of them, as a team. No more secrets. No more suspicion. Just get it all out in the open and hopefully they’re both cleared and Bryson just has a weird sleep disorder.” She looked from me to Max. “Deal?”
I sighed. Well, fair was fair. “But only if Max promises no more breaking and entering.”
“Flying and entering,” she corrected me. “And if I don’t do, how else are we going to gain information?”
I snapped my fingers like I’d just suddenly thought of something. “How about a dream spell? We want to know what’s in their hearts, not their apartment. So why not go right into their dreams and take a look around their psyche.”
“Wow.”
“You can really do that?”
“Yeah, and remember I only just thought of this spell idea now, on the fly,” I lied. “Get it? On the fly?”
Ok, but they had looked impressed with me there, for a moment.
“Hey, bro!” Max swung into the Java Kitty lot and yelled out the car window just as Kade was about to hop into his POS truck.
He turned, eyes flashing orange in the moonlight. “What’s up?”
The parking lot reeked of burning grass, as always. At the sight of its dumpsters, I shuddered from recent bad memories. How this place was open after being the scene of a murder only a day earlier, was beyond me. Guess Gantry had to have his usual double latte.
“My friend Hazel wants to talk to you for a minute.”
A minute, I thought, would be about all I could stand.
“Talk about what?” Kade looked nervous, almost like he was about to bolt. He must have just gone off-shift.
I hopped out of the car and presented the dream cookie I’d baked that day. “Would you mind trying this cookie and letting me know what you think? It’s a . . . new recipe.”
“Oh, sure.” He looked relieved. “I thought my sister sent you to talk to me about the Ashlee stuff.” Kade took the half of the cookie I offered and bit into it. His eyes flashed orange. “Wow, it’s amazing. Like a chocolate cloud with vanilla rain inside . . . ”
“ . . . that drums softly on your rooftop as you sleep,” I finished, having taken a rapturous bite of my half.
Kade sighed happily. “Sage’s Bakery makes the best cookies. The best everything.” He stuffed the rest of the cookie in his mouth, and nodded to himself. “Mmmm.” Without the defiant perma-smirk, his face looked startlingly different. I wondered how much of his bad boy attitude was just self-protection. “The baked goods here show up on a truck,” he confided, looking troubled by the thought. “And the coffee is made by machines. It’s like a factory, but Sage’s—”
“Is like a museum,” I filled in bitterly. “No, a crypt.”
Kade started to say something, then stopped and looked embarrassed. I felt bad for having dropped that much resentment on him. But it hurt, to be constantly hearing about how great we were while fearing for our future daily.
“Um, to be honest?” He lowered his voice. “I have no idea why everyone is here instead of there. The white mochas are ok, that’s the one recipe Elton brought with him from Palo Alto. But I’d never choose to be here, if they weren’t paying me.”
“Really?” I remembered how the ramble juice hadn’t worked on Max. Was it possible that Grey magic didn’t work on shifters either? “Wait, Elton’s from Silicon Valley?”
“Yeah, told me he pitched his idea for ‘the perfect modern café’ to a ton of VCs back in the valley and got laughed out of town. But then the weirdest thing happened. Some company up here heard about it and not only offered funding and assistance, but insisted he open up shop in downtown Blue Moon Bay, Oregon.”
“Really.” It struck me that underneath the swagger and attitude, Kade was a lot like Max. Observant. Curious. Kinda geeky. “What company?”
He gave a hell-if-I-know shrug.
“Does the company ever send over consultants?” Someone had to be performing the Grey magic I could smell even now. “A businesswoman in a grey pantsuit, maybe, and every time she visits, business is booming afterward?”
Kade shook his head. “Nah, doesn’t ring a bell. But really, business is always booming here. You’d think it would make Elton happy, but he’s always crying these days, the poor guy. Maybe the place is secretly driving him nuts . . . it sure drives me nuts.”
That made three of us. “I’m sorry you have to work there,” I said, realizing it couldn’t be easy for a guy with Kade’s background to find gainful employment.
“It’s ok.” Kade flashed a stoical smile that looked more like a grimace. “But that said I’d rather work for Sage’s, if you were hiring.”
So that’s what Max’s original phone call had been about. She’d been asking if there might be a holiday part time job for Kade. I bit my lip.
“I notice you guys have your tea game dialed in,” he added, looking thoughtful. “But you’ve never thought much about coffee, have you? I’ve been reading about what it takes to start a roastery and I think Sage’s would be the perfect venue for it. You’ve got room to showcase some of the roasting equipment, makes customers feel like they’re part of the process.”
That was an intriguing notion. Shoot, maybe it was just my old crush on him rearing its head . . . “I’ll let you know if things pick up.”
“Really? Thanks.”
Max tossed me a grateful look from the car, but by the time I fastened my belt in her passenger seat for the short ride to the bakery, I was already regretting my words.
Even if Kade turned out not to be a murderer, he was still a thief. Sure, he might be attractive and get our younger female demographic to show up, but could I risk my family’s bakery on a known criminal?
Oh well, no need to feel guilty for saying I’d call if things picked up.
Things were never going to pick up.
Not when some big, rich company was about to stomp us out of existence like ants underfoot. Geez, of all the bad luck. Our bakery had to be the established coffee shop in the very town that this company insisted their “perfect café” be. But why had they picked our town in the first place?
Unless . . . they had it in for us, specifically? Now I was getting paranoid, like Jenna.
Grateful for the distraction of the dream spell project, I ushered Max into the darkened bakery kitchen. Flipped on the florescent light, hung up my coat, lit all four stove burners. And with a snap of my fingers, a large cauldron appeared on the stovetop, full of boiling water. I added my herbs and murmured the spell words I made up spontaneously:
Kade seems cool, but is he up to his old tricks?
Man, fly, or bobcat, what makes him tick?
We’re going to find out how he gets his kicks,
Sandwoman 306, once known as Nyx, gimme the fix.
“That’s seriously what you do, make up a dumb little rap?”
I turned, startled. I’d almost forgotten Max was in the room. “For a new spell or a unique one, I do come up with my own rhyming incantations, yeah,” I said, realizing it made me feel kinda vulnerable to be doing magic in front of a nonwitch. “Most spells use a standard script, though, and some have pretty old-sounding language. It’s kinda fun to vary it.”
“Fun,” she repeated, shaking her head. “Dang, your witch stuff is so . . . tame.”
She wasn’t exactly easing the situation with her smirking commentary.
“We keep our clothes on, if that’s what you mean by tame.”
<
br /> Max’s laugh dislodged the tension, as she seemed to acknowledge the dig on shifters. “Well, that’s just sensible, working around these bubbling cauldrons.”
“Speaking of cauldrons.” I grabbed her hand and interlaced our fingers. “This is only going to burn for a second or two.”
“You’ve got to be kid—ahhhhh!”
The dreamscape opened in a forest. I recognized Corvid Woods Park. Fall leaves formed a colorful patchwork on the slushy, muddy ground. The ground was so far below me, most of what I could see was the canopy. I felt a sense of youthfulness, wistfulness, all across the landscape. Was Kade a daredevil child, climbing a tree?
And what was I, in his dream?
I tried to move my hands in front of my face so I could see what I looked like. A feathery gray wing appeared in its place.
“What the hex?” I blurted out, but it came out as “hoot! Hoot!”
I was an owl.
Next to me on the branch was another owl, who had apparently just realized what she was.
Max made excited owl sounds and flew madly in circles around our branch. She was really getting into this. I tried to tell her we needed to focus on Kade, this was his dream, we were only observers. Unfortunately, being an owl, all I could communicate was, “Hoot! Hoot!”
But luckily, being an owl, I had excellent vision and hearing.
On the ground under my tree, a tall red-haired boy was playing, kicking a soccer ball up against the thick trunk of a three-hundred-foot pine tree. He looked around twelve or thirteen, his expression wondering, the way Max looked when she was deep in thought. I could feel his curiosity about the world, and also his contentedness. Then shadows began to lengthen.
The forest was abruptly darkened as the sun began to set rapidly, replaced by the rising of a huge full moon.
The boy cried out in terror and began bursting out of his clothes, his skin changing into spotted fur. From my owl perch, I held my breath in silent sympathy. Within seconds he had grown a stubby, furry tail. His face was the last to change into a bobcat’s short muzzle. His screams changed to piercing caterwauls.
Something scurried by us in the forest, a small furry something.
The boy, now a bobcat, went crazy. He dived after the furry thing, a pale white snowshoe hare, and began to chase it.
Oh man. I’d paid enough attention in biology class to know what would likely happen next . . . and I didn’t want to watch. Yes, I was the type of person who covered my eyes during the scary parts of movies.
The big bunny dove behind a bush and bobcat-Kade dove after it, letting out a growl.
Please let him wake up before he catches it, I prayed.
I averted my eyes to the tree bark, expecting to hear horrible tearing sounds, but all I heard was a human yell.
I looked down to see Kade, no longer a boy nor a bobcat, but in his normal adult form, standing in front of an unmoving woman’s body. Her long blond hair splayed out. Her fuzzy white boots and beige yoga pants displaying her long slender legs.
Ashlee Stone, who else?
“No,” yelled Kade. “No, please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t know!”
What did he mean he didn’t know?
Suddenly the other owl, Max, was circling around him. Hooting at him, trying to get his attention—what was she doing? She was supposed to be observing, letting it unfold. Not interfering. Not trying to get him to stop saying incriminating things in front of me.
Kade ignored the bird and went on berating himself, pleading with Ashley’s body. “Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. If you’re dead then it’s my fault. I don’t deserve to live.”
The Max-owl landed on his head and began pulling his hair, making him yell. A second later we were back in the bakery. The cauldron was bubbling over.
I snapped my fingers to make it vanish. “What the hex were you doing?”
She huffed. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“That you were trying to get Kade to stop saying incriminating things in front of me?”
“No, I was trying to comfort him!”
“What, by flying around threatening to poke his eyes out?”
“It’s not easy to be comforting when you’re a bird! Avian states are inherently creepy, who can relate to a tiny flapping dinosaur?” She sighed and grabbed her coat off the hook. “Look, I could try to explain. But you can’t possibly understand what people like Kade and I go through, growing up. The guilt and confusion we feel. About what we are.”
“You think I, a witch, wouldn’t understand that?” Not only a witch but the only one of my line to show up with the spark since Gran herself was born.
“Hazel, I’m not trying to put down your magic. What you do is truly amazing, even with the terrible poetry.” She shuddered. “But imagine how I felt when suddenly around age thirteen, I started to sleepwalk . . . and wake up in the middle of the forest. As a bobcat. And yeah, plenty of times I’d already killed and eaten smaller animals before my consciousness awoke inside the bobcat. It’s not a smooth operation, at first. You lose time. I used to go to bed praying I wouldn’t wake up in the woods staring at a dead hiker. Which would have been super unlikely,” she added. “Bobcats fear and avoid humans. We’re not a menace.”
I shook my head. “But you just told me that shifters miss time. And attack while they’re ‘unconscious.’” In other words, Kade could be guilty and not even know it?
“No, no, no. Only during the first changes. Not now. He’s a grown man. All this dream proves is that my brother was traumatized by his experiences growing up.”
The high school version of me, the people-pleasing part, desperately wanted to shut up and nod along. Be agreeable. But a new part of me had been born over the last week or so, and that part cared about clues. Evidence. Facts. That part of me wouldn’t let it go. “That’s bs, Max. This dream may not prove anything, but it clearly points to Kade’s feeling panicked and guilty. About something to do with Ashlee.”
I thought she would argue with me, but her green eyes flashed orange and filled with tears. “I thought he’d come clean, that his big secret was he flirted with my high school bully! He knew how much I hated her, especially after grad night. And now he’s —”
“Grad night? Wait, what did Ashlee do on grad night?”
“Nothing, it doesn’t matter.” Max bit her lip. “Anyway, she’s dead. What matters now is that Kade’s still holding out on me. How can I help him when I don’t know the truth?” She shook her head and, without bothering to wipe her eyes, turned to walk out.
“Max.” I touched her arm and she whirled back around. “Yes, he’s probably been keeping something from you. But I also think, unlike me and my sisters, you two are honestly close. There’s a lot of love between you. If you talk to him, he might tell you the truth.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, but when opened them her gaze was resolute. “I’ll talk to him, in the morning. And tomorrow night, same drill,” she added, she reached out to poke my upper arm, “but with your boyfriend’s mind.”
“Great.” I tried not to groan out loud. Kade’s internal landscape had been more intense than I’d expected. Sneaking into a person’s head, I now realized, was a way bigger deal than entering their apartment.
A tiny part of me was getting worried about what we might find in Bryson’s psyche. Not that he was a murderer, but, well, what if something was up with him? Sleeping standing up? Max saying I always seemed “tired and miserable” after being with him? Then there was the fact that Gran had never made a wrong call about a boyfriend of mine.
But I told the worried part of myself to shut up, and press on. Whatever the truth turned out to be, with the vampire and shifter at my side I could handle it.
Chapter 13
The hardest thing about giving Bryson the dream cookie was lying to him. Sure, I was technically lying to him all the time by not sharing the fact that I was a witch. But this was the first t
ime I was going to do magic on him.
Was it ethical?
On the other hand, if this was the only way to stay in the detective club with Britt and Max, then it was unethical not to. Right?
We were having another stay-in date—I know, I know, but at least this time we’d switched it up and gone to his place instead of mine. Bryson’s waterfront studio had a postcard view of the sunset, but we rarely went up to his place, because my couch was comfier. Which showed you that we had the right values as a couple.
The gas fireplace in front of the couch looked new and snazzy, but its gleaming mantel was bare. No paintings on the walls. Bryson hadn’t added a lot of personal touches yet, I noticed. Even the built-in shelf over the mantel contained no books, just the last week’s junk mail. Typical guy, he sucked at decorating. Oh well, after we got married he’d probably move into my place. Though tiny it was still bigger than his.
Bryson paused after his first bite of dream cookie, as if he couldn’t believe what he was tasting. “This . . . is this . . . ?”
I beamed with pride. “Like having faeries gently brush your hair for hours, then snuggling into a soft bed, surrounded by kittens?”
He didn’t answer, his face faraway as if deep in thought as he chewed. But when he finally looked up all he said was, “Pretty tasty, Haze. You’re a good baker.”
Hardly the poetry of Kade’s response, but Bryson didn’t have to be a poet, I reminded myself. He was a stand-up guy.
There had to be a solid explanation for why he slept standing up.
I hoped.
I ate my half of the dream cookie, savoring each bite, and we settled onto Bryson’s pullout futon where he casually threw his arm around me. At his warm touch, I started to feel relaxed, despite the incredibly stressful week we’d both had.
It was my idea to meet up at his place for a change, so he could give me a guided tour of his family photo album. I figured it was past time I got to know his folks, even if only through photos. Since he was about to meet mine in the flesh come Thanksgiving.
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